Part 17 (2/2)
”Are you not wrong to speak so lightly of our religion?” asked Susannah, feeling that she was an elder's wife.
”First let me be sure that you have any religion to speak of.” She looked up prettily in Susannah's face. ”What a beautiful creature you are!” she cried. ”And is it to please my cousin Angel that you wear a snuff-coloured dress and a white cap and a neckerchief like an old lady of seventy?”
As they proceeded together up the white curving road, over the crest of the verdant bluff, Elvira announced her further intentions.
”I am not going to live with you. I am going to board with the Smiths. I want to get to the bottom of this business, and see the apparitions myself.”
”There are no apparitions,” said Susannah gently.
”Gold books, you know, flying about in the air, and the angel Maroni and hosts of the slain Lamanites.”
”You expect too much. Such visions as Mr. Smith had came but at the beginning to attest his mission and give him confidence.”
”Tut! I should think he had sufficient of that commodity. It is I who require the confidence, and have I come too late?”
”I would question, if it did not appear unkind, why you have come at all?”
”Bless you, it's relations, not revelations, that I came after.”
”I fear that Angel will not be satisfied with that att.i.tude,” Susannah sighed. She supposed that Elvira represented all too well the att.i.tude of educated minds in that far-off world whose existence she tried to forget.
”Therefore,” said Elvira, ”I will board with the Smiths.”
Elvira's whim to be received into the prophet's family could not be carried out, but by persistency she succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng herself in the household of Hyrum Smith, where she distinguished herself by two peculiarities--a refusal to marry any of the saintly bachelors who were proposed to her, and a perpetual good-natured delight in all that she saw and heard. She resisted baptism, but to Susannah's surprise, remained on perfectly friendly terms with the leaders of the sect.
The next two years pa.s.sed quietly in Kirtland. Susannah, imbued, as indeed were all Smith's friends, with his belief that the peace was but for a time, cherished her husband as though death were near, and grieved him by no outward nonconformity to pious practices. Many chance comments which she made were straws which might have shown him the way the current of her thought tended underneath her habitual silence, but they showed him nothing. It was mortifying to her to observe that Smith, rarely as he saw her, was always cognisant of her mental att.i.tude, while her husband remained ignorant.
Susannah gave up the girlish habit of fencing with facts that it appeared modest to ignore. She was perfectly aware that she exercised a distinct influence over the prophet, of what sort or degree she could not determine. Little as she desired this influence, she could not withhold a puzzled admiration for Smith's conduct. He rarely spoke to her except in the most meagre and formal way, and all his decrees which tended for her elevation in the eyes of the community or for her personal comfort were so expressed that no personal bias could be detected.
She asked herself if Smith practised this self-restraint for conscience'
sake, or from motives of policy, or whether it was that several distinct selves were living together within him, and that what appeared restraint was in reality the usual predominance of a part of him to which she bore little or no relation. There was much else in his character to admire and much to condemn. He had steadily improved himself in education, in mental discipline, and in personal appearance and address. He could hardly now be thought the same man as when he had first preached the new doctrine in Manchester. This bespoke an intense and unresting ambition, and yet the selfishness that is the natural result of such ambition was absent. As far as his arduous work would permit, he gave himself lavishly to wife and child, to all the brethren, rich and poor, when they asked for his ministrations. The motherless babies whom he had helped Emma to nurse through their infancy had gone back to their father's care, but there was never a time when some poor child or dest.i.tute woman was not a member of his household. On the other hand, many of the actions of his public life were questionable. He had established a bank in Kirtland, of which he was the president. Even Halsey admitted to Susannah that this was a great mistake, that the bank ought to have been under the control of some one who understood money matters; the prophet did not. He had also set up a cloth mill, and undertaken to farm a large tract of land in the public interest. The prophet showed to much better advantage when inst.i.tuting new religious ceremonies, of which there were now many and curious, or when giving forth ”revelations” which had to do with the principles of economy rather than its practical details. Susannah thought that the voice of the Gentiles all around them, shouting false accusations of greed and dishonesty, would sooner or later find much apparent confirmation if no financier could be found to lay a firm hand upon the prophet's sanguine tendency toward business speculation.
CHAPTER VII.
In the bleak December two elders came from Zion, the holy city in Missouri, bringing the history of dire tribulation.
It was a cold night; the first snow was falling upon the wings of a gale. Susannah was sitting alone quietly working out problems in algebra, in which study Smith had desired that her elder pupils should advance. The storm beat upon the window pane, and set the bright logs of the fireplace now flaming and now smoking, the varnished wooden walls dimly reflecting light and shadow.
Halsey had been out to see the newcomers, who were staying at the prophet's house. It was late when she heard his tread, m.u.f.fled in the drifted snow. He hardly paused to shake it from his clothes before he came near. She saw that he was in a mood of strong grief and excitement.
”Angel,” she spoke pityingly, ”you have had a hard, hard day; you have stayed so very late at this evening's conference.” She held out her hand to him. ”Do not tell me to-night if you can rest before telling.” Young as she was, her countenance, as she lifted it toward him, was motherly.
She remembered what a mere boy he was, fair and hopeful, when she had first seen him three years before, and now strong lines of purpose and endurance were written upon the face that was thin and pale, the paler, it seemed, because of the transient colour that the storm had given a moment since to the clear skin.
”I would that thou didst not need to hear, but it is not for us to turn our eyes from that which the Lord hath written for our instruction in the suffering of our brethren.” Then he added, ”The elders from Zion have told us all. There was great joy and prosperity among them, and the more foolish boasted of their wealth to the Gentiles, saying also that the Lord had given the whole land to them for an inheritance.”
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