Part 15 (2/2)

For the most part there was intense silence in the congregation, although sometimes an audible whisper of prayer or a groan of suppressed emotion was heard. The infection of mental excitement was strong.

Susannah was experiencing disappointment. Accustomed as she was to excitement in the meetings of the Saints, her mind easily resisted the infectious influence. Finney's teaching had not differed in any respect from the doctrine which she heard from her husband daily, a doctrine which she knew by experience did not save men from delusion and rancour.

She still listened eagerly to hear of some provision made in the scheme of salvation against injustice and folly. Surely Finney would say something more.

As it happened he did say something more. When for more than an hour he had explained the great plan of salvation he touched upon the responsibility that the hearing of such conclusive reasoning imposed.

The sower had sown broadcast; it remained for him to speak with awful impressiveness of those forces which would be arrayed against the convicted soul. Under this head he referred at once and with deep emotion to the devil, who, in the guise of false teachers lying in wait, caught up the seed.

There could be no doubt that the Mormon leaders were in his mind, as they were in the mind of his congregation. It became swiftly evident to Susannah that Finney was stirred by what he believed to be righteous indignation, and that he was as content to be ignorant concerning the doctrines and morals of the people against whom he spoke as were the rudest members of the outside rabble who now pressed with excitement to the open doors and windows.

The righteous Finney had no thought of unrestrained violence. He spoke out of that deep well of hatred for evil that is, and ought to be, in every good man's heart, but he had not humbled himself to gain any real insight into the mingling of good and evil.

”They are liars, and they know that they are liars,” said Finney, striking the pulpit cus.h.i.+on. ”The hypocrisy of their religion is proved by the lawless habits of their daily lives. Having sold themselves to the great enemy of souls, they lie in wait for you and for your children, seeking to beguile the most tender and innocent, that they may rejoice in their destruction.”

He used only such phrases as the thought of the time warranted with regard to those who had been proved to be workers of iniquity, but to Susannah it was clear, in one brief moment, what effect his words would have when heard by, or reported to, more brutal men. She knew now that Rigdon's words were true. The so-called Christian ministers, even the n.o.blest of them, stirred up the low spirit of party persecution.

She rose suddenly, sweeping back her veil from her face. ”I will go out.” She said the words in a clear voice.

A way was made to a back door by the side of the pulpit. Every one looked at her. Finney, going on with his preaching, recognised her as she began to push forward, and he faltered, as if seeing the face of one who had arisen from the dead. The excited audience felt the tremor that pa.s.sed over its leader; it was the first signal for such obvious nervous affections as frequently befell people under his preaching; before Susannah had reached the door a stalwart man fell as if dead in her path.

There was a groan and a whisper of awe all round. This was the ”falling”

which was taken by many as an indubitable sign of the divine power.

Susannah had seen it often under Smith's preaching. She waited with indifference until he was lifted up.

Then the sea of faces around her, the powerful voice of the preacher resounding above, pa.s.sed away like a dream, and were exchanged for a small room and a dim light, where two or three people were gathered round the form of the insensible man. She escaped unnoticed through a private door into the fields, where the March wind eddied in the black night.

CHAPTER IV.

The house in which the Smiths lived was small. Susannah crossed a field-path, led by a light in their window. In the living room a truckle bed had already been made up. By the fire Joseph and Emma were both occupied with two sick children. These children, twins of about a year, had been taken out of pity at their mother's death, and Susannah was told as she entered that they had been attacked by measles.

Susannah found that the fact that she had been to the meeting had not irritated the Smiths, although Mrs. Rigdon had called to make the most of the story. Emma, absorbed in manifold cares for the children, was only solicitous on Susannah's account lest a night's rest in that house should be impossible. Smith, pacing with a child in his arms, seemed to be head and shoulders above the level whose surface could be ruffled by life's minor affairs. With the eye of his inner mind he was gazing either at some lofty scheme of his own imagining, or at heaven or at vacancy. All of him that was looking at the smaller beings about him was composed and kind.

One of the twins, less ill than the other, had fallen asleep in Emma's arms. The other was wailing pitifully upon the prophet's breast.

”Do you and Mrs. Halsey go in and lie down with that young un, Emmar, and rest now for a bit while ye can.”

”I can't leave ye, Joseph, with the child setting out to cry all night like that.”

But he had his way. Long after they had lain down in the inner room Susannah heard him rocking the wailing babe, or trying to feed it, or pacing the floor. Emma, worn out, slept beside her. Upstairs the owners of the house, an old couple named Johnson, and Emma's own child, were at rest.

Susannah lay rigidly still in the small portion of the bed which fell to her share. Her mind was up, wandering through waste places, seeking rest in vain. The wail of the child in the next room at last had ceased. The prophet had lain down with it on the truckle bed. Long after midnight Susannah began to hear a low sound as of creeping footsteps in the field. Some people were pa.s.sing very near, surely they would go past in a moment? She heard them brus.h.i.+ng against the outer wall, and gleams of a light carried fell upon the window.

In a minute more the outer door of the house was broken open. Emma woke with a cry; instinct, even in sleep, made her spring toward the door that separated her from her husband.

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