CHAPTER XVI.

It was that same evening, after Smith's commendation of Susannah, that Darling decided to lay the destruction of her letter before the prophet, hoping for approval.

Smith was looking over Darling's accounts in the t.i.thing office, giving voluminous and minute directions. The May night had closed in. The men were in a corner of the large shed in which the stores were kept, a corner fenced off for an office by a low wooden part.i.tion. The candle flickered on the table between them.

The business side of Smith's soul was uppermost. He had power to keep in mind a huge number of details, and to cla.s.sify them, and he estimated the relative importance of the cla.s.ses as no other man would have estimated it.

Darling interrupted before Smith's interest in business began to wane.

He prefaced his communication concerning Susannah by speaking of the much shepherding needed by the sheep. Some, he said, had done worse than be lax in manners; some had presumed to have revelations; some had doubted the faith.

Here Darling paused, feeling sure of rousing Smith to the mood he desired.

At the mention of revelations Smith's soul took a turn, like a ball on its axis; the plain speech that he had been using about business and stores and accounts changed into phraseology of a Scriptural cast, and the shrewd glance of his blue eye into a more distraught and distant look. Heretofore, as Darling well knew, heresy had been a greater evil in his eyes than any other; but Smith had come now out of long months of prison; days and nights in which a horrible death had faced him closely had not pa.s.sed over this particular soul of his dreams without moulding it. It is noticed by all his historians that after this period he spoke little "by revelation," in comparison with his former full habit in this respect. At Darling's abrupt speech he sighed heavily. He looked, not at Darling as before, but at some vague object beyond him.

"There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy," he said wearily, and then, gathering himself up with more pompous unction, he asked of the surprised Darling, "Who art thou that judgest another?"

Darling had grown fatter since he came to Quincy; the lines of haggard care were still upon his face, but were modified by dimples of good cheer. Much taken aback by the unexpected rebuff, he rubbed his head.

"But, Mr. Smith, if they are all going to be allowed to think whatever they like--"

The obvious difficulty of church government under these conditions confronted the n.o.bler impulse of humility in the visionary's mind. "When have I said, Brother Darling, that they all should think what they like?

But, behold, I say unto thee, it is not with the Lord to save with many or with few, but by whom he will send."

This was a little vague as to grammar and as to sense, but Darling had not the ability to criticise. He only perceived that to secure commendation he must be tactful in the setting forth of his act.

"It was in the case of Sister Susannah Halsey--" he began again apologetically.

A more eager look came into Smith's eyes; still a third phase of his character there was, the soul of his personal affections, and this began to merge now with his religious self. "Hath she prophesied? Hath any revelation been granted to her?"

If Darling had not understood the prophetical vein, he did understand a certain vibration in this tone. "Ha!" thought he, "if the prophet ain't a bit soft on her himself I'm out." He had lowered his eyes, and now he said evasively, "It is our sister Elvira on whom the spirit of prophecy has fallen; you will have heard how she gave praise concerning you before the Saints upon the road and was moved to dance before the Lord."

Smith saw through the evasion, but by shrewd reading of the sanctimonious face, saw also the inward suspicion as clearly as if Darling had spoken it. His tone and manner betrayed him no more.

"The head of our sister Elvira is not always set firmly on her shoulders," he remarked, "but I am glad if the Lord has given her grace."

"I've been hoping that he'd give grace to our sister Susannah, for she's been writing a letter to say as how she was without faith and wanting to leave us."

Smith answered him now only with a cool silence that puzzled his coa.r.s.er understanding.

"'Twas in our first days here, when a good many of the women were flighty, and Elvira Halsey, she was ill enough to have worked the patience out of any one as they work the milk out of b.u.t.ter, and Sister Susannah came with a letter. She gave it to me unsealed."

"Was she without wax to seal it?" interrupted Smith in a casual tone.

Darling could not know that the thought of such poverty wrung Smith's heart.

"Waal, I dunno" (which was a lie). "Mebbe she had no wax--I didn't think of that, but anyhow she gave me the letter. 'Twas too late for the mail; 'twas too heavy for one stamp. An' I didn't like to tell her, poor thing, that we'd mighty little to spend on stamps. So after she'd gone I just had a look to see who it was to."

"The address would be on the outside?" Smith rose, hat in hand, as if to depart, but fixed his eyes on the candle till Darling should have done.

"The name gave me very little hint as to whether the matter was worth the two stamps, so I just had a glance inside. Thought it might be but a line asking money of her friends, which, under the sad circ.u.mstances, of course I knew you'd rather the Church would supply."

This drew the first spark of the approval he was expecting. "Certainly, certainly, the widows and the orphans of those who have perished for the truth must ever be our most tender care."

"Exactly so, prophet; I knew that would be your opinion; so when I saw that our sister had felt drove to asking for money from some fellow--I guess there must have been some sweethearting between him and her before she married Halsey. She said in this letter that she'd go to him if he'd send her cash. She said as how she thought the religion of the Latter-Day Saints was a lie; but of course I could see it was not her right judgment, that she was awful lonesome."

"It was taking a great liberty, Mr. Darling." Smith tapped his stick upon the floor. He was far more angry than he showed, for policy had laid a soft hand of reminder on his shoulder. "Our sister, Mrs. Halsey, is not--" he coughed slightly, and sought by prophetical phrases to explain that Susannah was not upon the level of Darling and his kind--"is not, as it would be said in the Scriptures, among those who deck themselves with crisping pins or are busybodies, but she is as that lady to whom John wrote (and the letter is preserved unto the edification of the Church unto this day); for it was revealed unto me in the beginning that she was the elect sister, and to sit as one who judges--as one who judges Israel." He was just going to add in the flow of his phrases "upon twelve thrones," but the words died because even he perceived the lack of sense.

Darling grew testy. "Waal, I dunno, but it seems to me that if she'd gone off by now to be Mrs. Ephraim Croom somewheres in the East there wouldn't be much more elect sister about her."

"The gentleman whose name you have just been mentioning, Mr. Darling, is the lady's uncle. I was reared alongside them, and I know." He knew that he fibbed between uncle and cousin, but the slip was so slight and the end so worthy--to silence Darling.

"'Twas no uncle that she wrote that 'ere letter to," said Darling hotly.

He stuck out his legs and leant back in his chair, the picture of offence.

"You are mistaken concerning the meaning of the letter, Brother Darling, and it appears to me that in casting your eyes upon it you have gone beyond what is written concerning the duty of an elder; but as to your duty in destroying it--considering that our sister asked for money, which it is our duty and privilege to supply--But I promised Emmar to be back soon. I will consult the Lord, Brother Darling, and have a word with you in the morning."

Smith tramped with dignity over the long wooden floor of the darkened shed and let himself out with decisive clatter of the latch.

To his right lay the wooden town with twinkling lights, to his left the black prairie, and above the crystal vast a moonless night, so clear that the upward glance almost saw the perspective between nearer and farther stars innumerable.

This man was at all times possessed with the sense of otherness, sense of a presence around and above. He was no sooner beneath the stars than he hung his head as if some one saw him. With shame and pain written in the att.i.tude of his hulking figure, he skulked out into the black fields.

Later that night, a lad, not of the Mormon brotherhood, making his way home in the dark to the town of Quincy, a little afraid of the dark, as lads are apt to be, was terrified by hearing a voice in the darkness, by dimly descrying a man's figure prostrate upon the ground. The lad shrank back to a recess of the snake fence. There, trembling, he listened.

The voice in the hoa.r.s.e whisper of intensity repeated, "Give me--this woman--give--give." The breathing, like command rather than prayer, set the words grating on the air again and again. "This woman--this woman--give! give! give!"

The cause of the lad's terror was a strange conviction that the writhing creature on the earth was certainly conversing with something not of earth, whether G.o.d, or angel, or devil he did not ask. He was encompa.s.sed by the dreadful belief that the other saw and heard what he could not.

The prostrate man clenched his fists and struck the black ground on which he lay. There was an intense silence, and then again the grating breath of a hoa.r.s.e throat that lay among the gra.s.s blades babbled forth a mult.i.tude of confessions and fiercely-worded supplications which the little lad could neither understand nor remember.

There was a sudden change of att.i.tude and voice. The lad saw that the man on the gra.s.s sat up, and as if he had received an answer, spoke in reply, not now in wailing supplication, but in quick whispered argument.

The lad cowered with a fresh thrill of ghostly terror which burned the mad words into his memory.

"The loss would be to thee of the fairest of thine handmaids, and to her of her own soul, and to me--" but here the words of irritable contention failed in deep choking sobs. Then, to the lad's perfect dismay, the black figure bounded to its feet and the arms were flung about in the darkness as if wrestling with an unseen enemy. Now, being desperate, the lad darted forth from his nook; pa.s.sing in tip-toe rush at the back of this struggling figure, he sped home in his gust of fear, and, with the fantastic secrecy of youth, did not tell what he had heard and seen till years had come and gone.

CHAPTER XVII.

The May morning was wreathing itself with opening flowers to meet the first hour of sunlight when Susannah was startled by hearing that the prophet inquired for her. There was in the house where she lived an empty chamber, unfurnished because of poverty; it was in this that the prophet, who demanded a private audience, awaited her.

So vexed was she at the public advertis.e.m.e.nt which he had made of her, that she forgot the bereavement she had suffered since she last saw him; but when she looked up she saw that Smith's face wore signs of emotion that he was not trying to conceal.