Part 14 (1/2)
”Mr. Smith, you can't possibly be in the slightest doubt but that it would be very wicked for any man now to have more than one wife.”
”I've heard a great many of the ministers who in times past, in the time of our bondage we heard and believed, say as it would be very wicked for any one nowadays to take G.o.d at His word and expect Him to do a miracle or heal the sick; but I've come to the conclusion, Mrs. Halsey, that it isn't a question of what we in our ignorance and prejudice might think wicked, but it's a question of what's taught in this book, looked at without the eye of prejudice and tradition. What we call civilisation is too often devilisation--_devilisation_, Mrs. Halsey.”
He tapped the book. He was becoming oratorical. ”The idea of one wife came in with the Romans. 'Twas no inst.i.tution of Jehovah, Mrs. Halsey.”
Susannah, more accustomed to his oratorical vein than to private conference, became now more frank and at ease.
”You said you didn't know that the idea was from the Lord, Mr. Smith, and I don't think it is. I don't think you'll entertain it very long, and I don't think, if you did, many of the Saints would stay in your church.”
She bade him good-day, and went on up the slope. When she was walking along the brink of the bluff in the open beyond the nut-trees she heard him call. He came after her with hastened gait, Bible still in hand. She was surprised to find that what he had to say was very simple, but not the less dignified for that.
”I sometimes think, Sister Halsey, that you look down on us all as if we weren't good enough for you, although you're too kindly to let it be seen. According to the ways of the world, of course, it's so. If I'm as rough and uneducated as most of our folks, at least I can think in my mind what it would be not to be rough, and I can think sometimes how it all seems to you.”
His words appealed directly to strong private feeling which had no outlet. While she stood seeking a reply the natural power that he had of working upon the feelings of others, vulgarly called magnetism, so far worked in connection with his words that tears came to her eyes.
”I don't often think about my old life,” she said with brief pathos.
Smith was looking at the ground, as a huge, shy boy might stand when anxious to express sympathy of which he was somewhat ashamed. ”I know it must be a sort of abiding trial to you.” After a moment he added, ”I wouldn't like to make it worse by having you think that I was goin' to preach any strange doctrine. I'd sometimes give a good deal if the Lord would raise me up a friend that I could speak to concerning the lights that come to me that I know that it wouldn't do to speak of in the public congregations, because of their upsetting nature, and likewise because I doubt concerning their meaning. And of this matter there was no thought in my mind to speak in public, for it is for the future to declare whether it be of the darkness or of the light; but to you I spoke, almost unwittingly, and perhaps in disobedience to the dictates of wisdom.”
He looked at her wistfully.
Susannah leaned her arm upon the topmost log of the snake fence and looked down the slope. His insight into her own trials caused her to sympathise with him in spite of his absurdity. She made an honest effort to a.s.sist him to self-a.n.a.lysis. She said, ”A great many things come into our minds at times, Mr. Smith, that seem important, but, as you say, if we do not speak about them, afterwards we see that they are silly. Of course with you, if you think some of your thoughts are revelations, it must make you often fancy that the others may be very important too, but it does not follow that they are, and, as you say, time will weed them out if you are trying to do right.” She wondered if he would resent her _ifs_. She stood looking down the bank in the short silence that followed, feeling somewhat timorous. The steep ground was covered with the feathery sprays of asters, seen through a velvety host of gray teasles which grew to greater height. Through the teasles the white and purple flowers showed as colours reflected in rippled water--rich, soft, vague in outline. At one side, by an old stump, there was a splendid feather, yellow and green, of fading golden rod; yellow b.u.t.terflies, that looked as if they had dyed their wings in the light reflected from this flower, repeated its gold in glint and gleam over all the gray hillside, shot with the white and the blue. At the foot of the bank lay the flat valley, and from this vantage ground the river could be seen.
The soft musical chat of its waters ascended to her ears, and among the huge bronze-leafed nut-trees, whose shelter she had just left, the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were tapping and whistling to one another.
At length Smith sighed deeply, but without affectation. ”Yes, I reckon that's a good deal how it is. It ain't easy, Mrs. Halsey--I hope in your thoughts when judgin' of me you'll always remember that it ain't easy to be a prophet.”
When he had gone, Susannah found herself laughing, but for Halsey's sake the laughter was akin to tears.
CHAPTER III.
Ohio was being quickly settled. Within a few miles of Kirtland, Cleveland and Paynesville were rising on the lake sh.o.r.e, and to the south there were numerous villages; but the society of the Saints at Kirtland was especially prosperous, and so sudden had been the increase of its numbers and its wealth that the wonder of the neighbouring settlers gave birth to envy, and envy intensified their religious hatred. Twice before Smith had left Fayette he had been arrested and brought before a magistrate, accused of committing crimes of which the courts were unable to convict him. Now the same spirit gave rise to the same accusations against his followers. About this time webs of cloth were taken from a woollen mill near Paynesville, and several horses were also stolen. The Mormons, whether guilty or not, were accused by common consent of the orthodox and irreligious part of the community. Hatred of the adherents of the new sect began to rise in all the neighbouring country, as a ripple rises on the sea when the wind begins to blow; the growing wave broke here and there in little ebullitions of wrath, and still gained strength until it bid fair to surge high.
About Christmas time there were a number of cases of illness in Kirtland. Joseph Smith healed one woman, who appeared to be dying, by merely taking her by the hand, after praying, and commanding her to get up. After that he went about with great confidence to others who were stricken, and in many cases health seemed to return with remarkable celerity. It is hard to understand why the report of this, going abroad with such addition as gossip gives, should have greatly added to the rage of the members of other religious sects. Perhaps they supposed that the prophet arrogated to himself powers that were even more than apostolic. They threatened violence to Kirtland on the prophet's account, so that before the new year he took Emma and the child and established himself with them in an obscure place called Hiram, some twenty miles to the south. Sydney Rigdon, who by this time was, under the prophet, the chief leader of the Saints, went also to Hiram to be beside him. Smith was toiling night and day to produce a new version of the Hebrew Scriptures, believing that he was taught by inspiration to correct errors in them. Rigdon was scribe and reviser. These two being absent from Kirtland, responsibility and work without limit rested again with Angel Halsey.
With unsatisfied affections and thoughts wholly perplexed, Susannah beheld the days of the new year lengthening. Then she fell into the weakness, to which humanity is p.r.o.ne, of hoping eagerly for some external circ.u.mstance that should lighten the inner darkness. A bit of stray news one day came to her with the shock of an apparent fulfilment of her vague expectation. Finney was pa.s.sing through that part of the country preaching. Of all human beings she had ever met, this remarkable evangelist most impressed her as a man who had intimate dealing, awful, yet friendly, with an unseen power. She had no sooner heard that he was within reach than her mind leaped to the determination to hear him preach and speak with him again. She would lay her difficulties before him; she would hear from him more intelligence concerning the home which she had left than a thousand letters could convey.
It was March now. The winter's snow was gone. Finney, as it chanced, was to come as near to Kirtland as the village of Hiram. Susannah spoke to her husband.
”Did you hear that Mr. Finney was going to preach at Hiram?”
She stood turning from the white spread table in the centre of the room.
The morning light was s.h.i.+ning on the satin surface of the planed maple wood with which walls and ceiling were lined. Halsey was putting on his boots to go out to his day's round of business and pastoral work. He knew just as well as if she had explained it to him that a great deal lay behind what she said. He fell to wondering at once what she could want. Was it to send a message to the old home by the man whose very name must recall all its memories?
”I want to go and hear him preach,” Susannah went on.
Halsey was disturbed. ”Thou canst not really have such a desire,” he said severely.
”Why not? A great deal that he preaches is just the same as what you preach, Angel.”