Part 23 (1/2)
”_Because I know what you are._”
”My G.o.d! You know--” and the strong man turns from her, and hides his face in his quivering hands.
Then she goes on, faltering a little over the words, but still goes on: ”Why have you disgraced our name? Why have you become a Mormon--a POLYGAMIST?”
Here he astonishes her by whispering, with white lips, these curious words: ”I did it that I might settle upon you a million! For your sake I became Mormon--for your sake I became polygamist. I DID IT FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES!”
CHAPTER XII.
A DAUGHTER OF THE CHURCH.
For a moment, Erma believes this extraordinary statement, and falters, seeming almost to invite his caresses, at least not to repulse them.
Seeing this, Ralph Travenion mutters, ”Thank G.o.d, you believe me!” and flies to take her in his arms; but suddenly her dead mother's face seems to the girl to rise between her father and herself. She shudders, turns away from him, and says coldly: ”You ask me to believe this monstrous thing,--that for my sake you became a Mormon?”
”Yes, as G.o.d is above me!--to make you rich,--to place you above the care of poverty,--to surround you with luxury,--the thing that has been my one thought in life.”
”Was that your thought?” cries the girl suddenly, with a face that to him is beautiful as an angel's, but just as that of the angel's G.o.d--”was that your thought when you entered into polygamous marriage with those women down there? Oh, don't attempt to deny it!” for he is about to open his lips. ”I saw two of them. I was at the Sunday-school meeting of the Twenty-fifth Ward, and beheld your hostages to your faith--five little ones, I believe. One of them, a girl, Mr. Oliver Livingston was kind enough to say, looked like me.”
To this, for a moment, he does not reply. Then suddenly, forcing his tongue to do his wish, he repeats: ”For your sake I did that also!”
”For my sake?” gasps Erma, astounded, then cries out: ”Absurd!
Impossible!” and having exhausted tears two days before, mocks him with unbelieving laugh.
”As G.o.d is above me!”
”Prove it!”
”I will!” And so, being driven to his defence, and knowing that he is pleading for his own happiness--for this child of his _other_ life is to Ralph Travenion, once club man of New York City, but now Mormon bishop of Salt Lake, the thing he loves best in this world--he begins to tell his story, earnestly, as a man struggling to win the lost respect and esteem of the one woman whose respect and esteem he must have,--pathetically, as a father striving to keep his daughter's love.
His voice trembles slightly as he begins: ”In New York, Wall Street practically ruined me. The ample fortune that I had determined to devote to your happiness and your life, Erma, my daughter, had pa.s.sed from me.
I had, after leaving sufficient for your education, but a few thousand dollars to take with me to this Western world. I had promised my old friend to settle a million dollars on you, so that if he kept his contract to make over a like amount to his son, you could wed Oliver Livingston and take the place in New York society to which you had been born. To keep this promise, I left the old life that was pleasant to me, and came, G.o.d help me, to _this_!” He looks about the bare room, with its rough furniture, its uncarpeted floor, its pioneer discomfort, and out through the open window over the long waste that covers the West Tintic Valley. And she looks also, and sees naught but sage brush, unrelieved save by a few floating clouds of dust that, thick and heavy, mark the course of ore-teams from the Scotia mine, making their hot and alkaline way towards the furnaces in Homansville.
Then Ralph iterates, ”I came to this life for your sake,” a far-away look getting into his eyes, for recollections of his old club life and the friends and companions and chums of other days, and pretty yachting excursions on the Sound, and gay opera and dinner parties and _fetes_ at fas.h.i.+onable Newport, come to this exile.
Noting this, some idea of what is in his mind comes also to his daughter, and makes her tender to him, and this change in her face gives him courage.
He goes on, ”For your sake I did this!”
”For my sake it was not necessary to be a Mormon.”
”To make a fortune it was!” he cries. ”I wandered about the Mississippi for a year. At the end of that time, I was poorer than when I left New York. St. Louis and Chicago did not seem to me a quick enough opportunity. I came further West. I had a wild hope of making money in furs, in some stage line, as Indian trader, but found no chance, and so, in pursuit of one will-o'-the-wisp and another, I journeyed on until I found myself in Salt Lake City. Here I saw a fortune for a man of ability. The Transcontinental Telegraph Company was building its line. A contract to supply them with telegraph poles, properly handled, would make me rich. But it could be so handled only by a Mormon, and I joined the Church of Latter-Day Saints,--a stern sect, who will have no wavering disciples, no half-way apostates in its ranks. By that contract I made a considerable sum. Then the building of the Union Pacific Railway came, and by it I made a fortune, because I was a Mormon.”
”A Gentile might also have succeeded,” suggests his daughter.
”Impossible! As a Mormon, and only as a Mormon, I could hire thousands of Mormon laborers at one dollar and fifty cents per day,--and pay them by store orders on Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Inst.i.tution, who liquidated them in goods at, practically, fifty cents on the dollar.
Mormon labor cost me seventy-five cents per day against Gentile labor at three or four dollars; as a Latter-Day Saint I could command the cheap article. That is why I joined the Mormon Church--for your fortune and your happiness.”