At length a step was heard. Ephraim came in bearing Susannah's rain cloak and goloshes. He was wet, pale, and breathless, but he would not betray his weakness and excitement by a word.

"You were looking for me, Ephraim, and some one told you that I had come home. Did you hear who brought me? O Ephraim! I have been out walking with the false prophet, and then with one of his disciples." Susannah, sitting by the fire, looked at him trying to smile through his gloom.

She began again, then stopped; how to impart the full flavour of that which had befallen her she did not know. It seemed to her that the difficulty lay in Ephraim's silence. She was not aware that she had not even a distinct thought for a certain interest in her late companion which she most wanted to put into words. "Ephraim, it's all very well for you to stand there drying your feet, but--but--they were just like other people, as you told Mr. Finney, you know."

"Did you expect them to have horns and tails?"

"I don't think they are very wicked," said Susannah. She looked down as she said it, speaking with a certain undefined tenderness of tone begotten of a new experience.

"Well?"

"That's all."

"How could you know whether they are wicked or not?" he burst out angrily. "Do you suppose that they would show _you_ the iniquity of their hearts?"

"Why, Ephraim, you've always stood up for them before!"

He gave a sort of snort. "I never stood up for them by making eyes at my hands and cooing out my words."

She looked up in entire bewilderment.

"It doesn't matter what I mean," he added. "What did they say? What did they do? Tell me. If I'd known these fellows had come back, do you suppose I'd have let you go?"

"You are so strange," she said. "They did nothing but just bring me home and hold the umbrella, and Joseph Smith said he knew he'd been a bad man and didn't know anything. I thought you'd be interested to hear about them, Ephraim."

"I should have thought you'd had too much self-respect to allow him to talk to you like that. Of course he was trying to work on your feelings."

"No, he wasn't, Ephraim. You are quite as unjust as my aunt to-day. He wasn't trying to work on my feelings. He was just--well, he was sorry that my frock got so wet, and he just happened to say the other thing. I am sure--"

Her conviction concerning the naturalness of Smith's conduct and the Quaker's sincerity had arisen in the presence of each, and was not now to be ascribed to any particular word or action which she could remember and repeat.

"Oh, he was sorry your frock was splashed, was he? And the other fellow they call Halsey, was he concerned about that too?"

"Who told you that his name was Halsey?" The interest of her tone was unmistakable.

"That is his name, and he must be a degraded fellow to take up with Smith."

She saw that Ephraim's clothes were very wet; he must have walked far.

She attributed his exhausted look entirely to fatigue, and his ill-temper to the same cause. "Mr. Halsey seemed quite good and in earnest, like the people that come to see Mr. Finney when he stays here, asking about saving their souls, as if their souls were something quite different from the other part of them; and, Ephraim, I have often wanted to ask you, but I didn't like to. You don't believe what aunt and uncle do, do you? Aunt talks as if you didn't believe. Do you think"--her voice trembled--"do you think that I ought to think about my soul--that way?"

Ephraim never perceived the nature of her difficulty. He thought she questioned the earnestness of life. He leaned back against the jamb of the chimney, vainly trying to dispel his anger and bring his mind under the command of reason. He looked at Susannah steadily; she was somewhat pale with weariness and excitement; she could never be other than beautiful. How perfect was the moulding of the strong firm chin, of the curving nostrils! The breadth of the cheek bone, the height and breadth of the brow, beautiful as they were in their pink and white tinting, conveyed to him almost more strongly the sense of mental completeness than of outward beauty. He did not dare to look at her questioning eyes; his glance travelled over the amber ringlets, damp and tossed just now, drooping as if to say "Susannah is lonely and perplexed, and she needs your help." Ephraim, proud, and mortified to think how ill he compared with her, laughed fiercely within himself. This was a young woman of distinction, and just now she knew it so little that she sat looking up with respect at his ill-conditioned self. How long would that last? How long would she remember any word that he chanced to say to her?

"Susannah, I think you are very ignorant. Were you never taught anything when you were a little girl?"

"My father and his friends were always polite to me." She spoke with grave, rather than offended, dignity.

"She is entirely sweet," he said to himself; "she will never answer me in anger." Then he went on aloud, "And I am not polite; I am ill-trained and ill-bred. Well, listen, Susannah. Whatever my mother may or may not tell you about my peculiar opinions, whatever _I_ choose to believe or to do, remember this, that I tell you that _you have_ a soul to be eternally lost or saved, and it behoves you to walk carefully and concern yourself about your salvation." There was a vibration of intense warning in his voice. He was thinking of the life that might be so n.o.ble if will and reason sided with G.o.d, and of the snares that the world lays for beauty, and the light way in which beauty might walk into them; and, as with all dreamy minds, he was too absorbed in his thought to know how little it shone through the veil in which he wrapped it.

Susannah grew a shade paler. She had struggled in a blind child-fashion to maintain a religion that would embrace her manifold life, but now it appeared that, after all, Ephraim endorsed the general view; his refusal to comply openly with it came of wilfulness, not unbelief. The stronghold of her peace was gone. "My papa never spoke to me about religion in that way, but I don't think he believed that."

Ephraim thought of the weak and reckless young father, of the careless life broken suddenly by death.

"He has learned the truth now," he said shortly.

After a pause, in which she did not speak, he betook himself to his own rooms, leaving Susannah to the companionship of the lonely house, the howling wind, the gathering night, and a new fear of a state eternal and infernal, into which she might so easily slip. Ephraim said so, and he would never have proclaimed what he would not comply with unless its truth were very sure.

As for him, his self-despite was pain that rendered him oblivious of her real danger. Where was his boasted justice? Gone before a breath of jealousy. The neighbours had told him that she had smiled on Halsey, and the abuse of the Smithites, in which his mother indulged in the blindness of religious party-spirit, had fallen from his lips as soon as his own pa.s.sion had been touched. Had his former candour, then, been the thing his mother called it, _indifference_ to, rather than reverence for truth?

This was the travail of soul that Susannah could have as little thought of as he had of hers. It held Ephraim in its fangs for many days.

CHAPTER V.

The return of Smith and his few followers, and the speedy publication of the first edition of the Book of Mormon, stirred anew the flames of religious excitement. All other sects were at one in decrying "the Mormons," as they now began to be called by their enemies. There was perhaps good reason for intelligent disapprobation, but Understanding was left far behind the flying feet of Zeal, who, torch in hand, rushed from house to house. It was related that Joseph Smith was in the habit of wounding inoffensive sheep and leading them bleeding over the neighbouring hills under the pretext that treasure would be found beneath the spot where they would at last drop exhausted; and there were dark hints concerning benighted travellers who, staying all night at the Smiths' cabin, had seen awful apparitions and been glad to fly from the place, leaving their property behind. There was a story of diabolical influence which Smith had exercised in order to gain the young wife whom he had stolen from her father's roof, and, worse than all, there were descriptions of occult rites carried on in secret places, where the most b.l.o.o.d.y mysteries of the Mosaic priesthood were horribly travestied by Smith and his friends, Cowdery and Rigdon, in order to dupe the simple into belief in the new revelation.

Ephraim Croom had again withdrawn himself out of hearing of the controversy. Judging that Susannah was sufficiently guarded by his parents to be safe, he became almost oblivious of conversation which he despised. He did not reflect that Susannah knew nothing of his hidden conflict, that she could only perceive that, after uttering an ominous warning, he had left her to work out its application alone.

It was at first not at all her liking for the Smiths, but only her unbia.s.sed common sense, which convinced her that the wild stories told concerning them were untrue. When she became enraged at their untruth she became more kindly disposed toward the young mother, whose baby had made a strong appeal to her girlish heart, and the big kindly lout of a man who had sheltered her from the rain. This benevolent disposition might have slumbered unfruitful but for the memory of the fine and resolute face of the young disciple who had promised to wrestle in prayer for her. There was novelty in the thought. The gay witch Novelty often apes the form of Love. Susannah did not know Love, so she did not recognise even the vestments falsely worn, but they attracted her all the same. Her young blood boiled when her aunt, dimly discerning some unlooked-for obstinacy in her niece's mind, repeated each new report in disfavour of the Mormons. It was the old story about the blood of the martyrs, for ridicule and slander spill the pregnant blood of the soul; but they who believe themselves to be of the Church can seldom believe that any blood but their own will bear fruit. Every stab given to the reputation of the Smiths was an appeal to Susannah's sympathy for them.

Mrs. Croom, with a sense of solemn responsibility, was at great cost bringing all her influence to bear upon the young girl whom her son loved. She drearily said to herself, after many days, that her influence was weak, that it accomplished nothing. The strength of it pushed Susannah, who stood faltering at the parting of the ways, and the impetus of that push was felt in her rapid and unsteady step for many and many a year.

One day, when the men were out cutting the maize, Susannah rode with her uncle to the most distant of his fields, and found herself on the hill called in Smith's revelation c.u.morah.

The sound of the men at work and the horses shaking their harness was close in her ears while she strayed over this bit of hilly woodland. It is one of the low ridges that intersect the meadows on the banks of the Canandaigua, and here Smith professed to have found the golden book. It was because of this that Susannah had the curiosity to climb it now.

The beech wood grew thick upon it; the afternoon sun struck its slant sunbeams across their boles. Once, where the beeches parted, she came upon a fairy glade where two or three maples, fading early, had carpeted the ground with a mosaic of gold and red, and were holding up the remainder of their foliage, pink and yellow, in the light. The beauty wrought in her a dreamy receptive mood. Climbing higher, she came upon a very curious dip or hollow in the ground. In its narrowest part a man was lying prostrate; his face was buried in his hat, which was lying upon the ground between his hands; the whole expression of his body was that of attention concentrated upon something within the hat. When she came close he moved with a convulsive start, and she saw that it was Joseph Smith.

His look changed into one of deference and satisfaction. He rose up, lifting his hat carefully; in it lay a curious stone composed of bright crystals, in shape not unlike a child's foot.

"It's my peepstone," he said. "It's the stone I look into when I pray that I may be shown what to do." Exactly as one child might show to another some worthless object he deemed choice, he showed the stone to her.

"I don't know what you mean. How could a stone help you?"

"All I know is that when I've been lying for a long time, feeling that I'm a poor fellow and haven't got no sense anyway, and the tears come to my eyes and gush out, feeling I'm so poor and mean, then when I lie and look and look into this peepstone, I see things in it, pictures of things that is to be, and sometimes of things that are just happening alongside of me that I didn't know any other way. I can't say how it may be; I only know when I see it that I am 'accounted worthy.'"

"You couldn't see anything in the stone."

"No more I couldn't. The stone's nothing, an' I'm nothing, and that's why, when I do see the pictures, I know it must be either G.o.d or the devil that sends them; and it's not the devil, for I always work myself up to a mighty lot of praying first, and why should the pictures come after that if it was the devil?"

"What do you see?"

"I'll tell you one thing I have seen. Mebbe you'll know what it means; mebbe you won't. I don't know myself rightly yet. I've often to study on those things a long while before I know what they mean, but lately I've seen you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you, miss. The things I see are like small tiny pictures inside the stone. Your bonnet was off. You were inside a room. There was tables and chairs, and there was a man there. He wasn't very old; he had light hair."