The Mormon Prophet - Lily Dougall (rom com books to read txt) 📗

is also by obeying my doctrine that they are cast out of their own lands and from their own hearths. Whether the Lord hath spoken or no, it is by obeying the doctrines that I have taught that they are in wretchedness." He rose, pacing the room, apparently unconscious of what he did.

"I know that this has been weighing upon you, as it has upon my husband."

He shook his head impatiently, striking his breast suddenly with one hand. "There is but one heart," he said, "in which the pains and sorrows of them all are gathered."

She began to see that he had a plan to unfold.

At length he stopped in his pacing, looking toward her. "We must go to their relief," he said. "We must gather an army and conduct our suffering brethren back to their homes in Zion."

"By force of arms?" she asked.

"If need be."

He left time for the significance of these words to be fully comprehended, and then went on speaking as he paced again. "It may be that we will not need to fight, that if we get ourselves in readiness we shall need but to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord; and in plain language to you, who expect no miracle, Mrs. Halsey, I would be understood to say that if a sufficient number of our strong men, armed for defence, join our brethren in Missouri, the Gentiles will be afraid to attack."

At last she asked, not without excited tremor in her voice, "Who? How many? When?"

These were important questions with regard to the organising of an army, but the prophet had in mind a point that must previously be determined.

"Your husband," he began abruptly, "he has still upon him the taint of his Quaker upbringing, for the Lord Christ indeed taught long-suffering, and he sent them out at first, as we also have sent our missionaries, with nothing in their hand save a staff only, but afterwards he said, 'Let him that hath a sword take it,' and they said unto him, 'Lord, here are two swords,' and he said, 'It is enough,' which I take to mean that where one sword is raised there must be another to ward off a blow or to strike in return. But your husband is teaching the people that to bear arms, even in self-defence, is wrong."

Susannah saw that already in Smith's indomitable will the era of armed defence had begun. Her hatred of the persecution caused her sentiments to chime with his. She only said in defence of Halsey's meekness, "My husband would have gone before now to give himself and all that he has to help these poor people if you had not interfered, Mr. Smith."

A change of expression came in a moment over Smith's hulking form, as if a different phase of him came forward to deal with a change of subject. He turned upon her almost sharply, "There is one man in Kirtland who shall not go to Zion till peace is there. If he went, would he not of his own accord rush into the forefront, into the hottest of the battle, not to fight but to receive the sword in his breast and be slain, even as Uriah the Hittite was slain? Wherefore, I say unto you, he shall not go."

Susannah, like all good women, had no keenness of scent for scandals, ancient or modern. She did not remember who Uriah was, and took no offence.

The prophet had tarried in his pacing by the window; with hands clasped behind him he was looking absently out upon the driven snow. Upon his face was an expression which Susannah only sometimes saw, and that in the moments which she felt to be his best. She believed this man to have true moments of humility and high resolve; it was only a question with her how far they permeated his life. In a minute more he turned again and spoke modestly and sadly enough.

"As I have said before, it is not in me to greatly love our brother Halsey's manner of thought, but I perceive his holiness and the Church shall not lack his counsel. I am here to-day to tell you how much it grieves me to set a constraint upon his conscience, yet I am here also to ask you to tell him from me that it is not the will of the Lord that he should continue to preach against the spirit of self-defence."

When he was gone Susannah realised how angry she would have been if she had heard that Smith had rebuked her husband on this subject, yet now that the fiat lay in her own hands to impart with all gentleness, the task, because of her own fierce attitude toward the oppression, was grateful to her.

When the roof had been set on the white walls of the first great Mormon temple upon Kirtland Bluff, a small army, well armed, well provisioned, went out from Kirtland for the deliverance of Zion amid the prayers and huzzahs of the little community. There were many who, like Halsey, bewailed in secret this taking of the sword, but the doctrine of non-resistance was never preached again.


CHAPTER VIII.

After this Susannah's attention was centred upon the coming of her first child.

"'Tain't lucky to have a child when the leaves are falling," said Elvira Halsey, a certain mist of far-off vision clouding her sparkling eyes.

Susannah had been greatly weighed down by depression, not fearing ill-luck, but regretting for the first time unfeignedly that she had ever joined herself to the sect in which her child must now be nurtured. For herself, feeling often that all religions were equally false, it had mattered little; with strange inconsistency she now perceived that she would greatly prefer another faith for her child. Susannah literally found no place for repentance; to confess her grief to Halsey would only have been to crush out all the domestic joy of his life; she was too courageous to do that when she saw no corresponding good to be gained. Yet when the baby at length lay on her lap, grew and smiled, kicked and crowed, Susannah forgot at times, for hours together, the superstitions of the Latter-Day Saints. The motherly solicitude which she had long exercised over Halsey changed into something more like friendship when she saw him hang over her and her child as they played together.

Susannah had given up her school. The winter was severe, and mother and child hibernated together by the sweet-scented pinewood fires till the stronger sun had melted the frost flowers on the panes. Spring had nearly come before Susannah divined that for the child's sake Halsey had been protecting her for months from the fear of a near disaster that was weighing upon his own heart.

This was the year of what was called in the early Mormon Church "the great apostasy." One evening Halsey came in looking so white and ill that Susannah drew back the baby, which she had held out for his evening kiss.

In a few minutes she understood what had occurred. Some four or five leaders in the Church, with their families and friends, had charged Smith with hypocrisy and fraud.

It was not Susannah's own opinion that such a charge could be maintained. Smith appeared to her to be like a child playing among awful forces--clever enough often to control them, to the amazement of himself and others, but never comprehending the force he used; often naughty; on the whole a well-intentioned child. But she could well see that childishness combined with power is a more difficult conception for the common mind than rank hypocrisy.

Angel had been assisting in a solemn excommunication of the apostates. He looked upon them as having been overcome by the devil.

After this Halsey instituted a series of unusual meetings for prayer and revival preaching, which he held after the ordinary evening classes in the School of the Prophets, which was now removed to the upper chambers of the finished temple. Now, as at other times, his preaching was successful. His power was with men rather than with women; they gathered in excited crowds, and their prayer and praise went up in the midnight hour.

Susannah was not in the habit of going to bed till her husband returned. One night, after twelve had struck, while she sat warming the dimpled feet of her restless babe at the rosy fire-light, she was greatly astonished to hear a tapping, low but distinct, on a window that opened to the back of the house. She lifted her head as mother animals prick their ears above their young at the faint sound of any danger.

After an interval the tap was repeated; it was no accidental noise. Susannah laid the child in its cradle and went nearer the window shutters, hesitating.

She knew only too well that this secrecy was the sign of some one's dire distress. She knew the habits of the people; a neighbour's aid was sought freely and with confidence; doors were open at all times to need or social intercourse.

To her intent listening the accents of a low and guarded tone came in reply to her challenge; the voice was Joseph Smith's.

Susannah looked with anguish toward her child's cradle. Had some army of mad persecutors invested Kirtland? Nothing less than fierce persecution could be thus heralded.

For years Susannah had known Smith as a near neighbour, and the stuff of which the man was at this time made is indicated by the fact that instinctively she opened the window with noiseless haste.

Smith climbed in. "Has Halsey returned?"

The fire gave the only light in the room. Smith did not shut the window, but remained sitting on the sill. A bake-house at the back hid the place from neighbouring eyes.

"It's all up with our bank," said Smith.

"I feared so," said Susannah.

"The apostates took such a lot of money out of it. No bank anywhere in this region could have stood it. You have always been down on our management of the bank, Mrs. Halsey, but if it was not good, why then have so many of the Gentiles put in their money, and why have they taken our notes all over the State?"

"You never had the capital you advertised."

"We have land that stands for it."

"It is not worth half what you value it at."

Then Susannah became sorry for her sharp recrimination. Punishment had befallen; it was a time for mutual help, not for reproach. She saw that although Smith kept himself calm he was greatly stirred.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

Smith's huge frame was poised awkwardly on the window sill. He moved restlessly and touched one thing and another with nervous hands. Then he said with a short laugh, "The size of it is, I'm running away, Mrs. Halsey. Ye may think I feel pretty mean, but ye'll do me the justice just to think how it is. If they'd shoot me in fair fight, I'd go and, if it were the Lord's will, be shot to-morrow, and be thankful too; but ye know the sort of vengeance they'll take. I have been beaten time and again before now, and covered with pitch, and I've been knocked down and kicked and ducked in ponds a good many times, as ye know, and I ain't ashamed to say that I'm afraid of that sort of thing and afraid of the results on Emmar and the children. If the Lord clearly told that 'twas his