The Mormon Prophet by Lily Dougall (best e book reader for android .TXT) 📖

crumpled rose-leaf fists into the air and making strange grotesque smiles with its little red chin and cheeks was undoubtedly a true baby, a good and delightful thing in Susannah's estimation. Had the Bible in the hill been a true Bible? Susannah intuitively knew that Emma Smith, bending with grave rapture over her firstborn, was not trying to deceive her.

"It seems to me," she said, "that it is terribly wicked of you to believe about this Bible." Her utterance became thick with her rising indignation. "How can you sit and hold that child and say such terribly wicked things?" She could not have told why she referred to the child; the moment before it was spoken she had not formulated the thought. She was not old enough to reason about the sacredness of babies; she only felt.

The tears started to Emma's eyes. She clasped her child to her breast. "Yes, I know how you feel. I felt that way too myself, and sometimes even yet it frightens me; but, you see, I know it is true, so it must be right. But I've given up expecting other people to believe it just yet, until Joseph is allowed to preach, and then it's been revealed to him that the nations shall be gathered in. Only you looked so--so beautiful--you see, I thought perhaps God might have sent you to be a friend to me. I have no friends because of the way they persecute Joseph."

Susannah turned in incredulous wrath and tramped, young and haughty, to the outer door. The first drops of a heavy shower were falling; she hesitated.

"But tell her about the witnesses, Emmar." Old Lucy stood half-way between the bed and the door, making nods and becks in her excited desire that Susannah should be impressed. "For when the dear Lord saw that folks wouldn't b'lieve Joseph, He didn't leave him without witnesses."

Susannah, stopped by the weather, felt more willing to conciliate. She returned gloomily within the sound of Emma's gentle voice.

"It was Mr. Cowdery and Mr. Whitmer and Mr. Harris," Emma said. "Mr. Cowdery and Mr. Whitmer saw the gold plates held in the air, as it were by hands they couldn't see, but Martin Harris he had to withdraw himself because he couldn't see the vision, and he went away by himself and sobbed and cried. But Joseph went and put his arm around him and prayed that his faith might be strengthened, and then he saw it. So they three have written their testimony in the front of the book that's being printed."

A storm had now broken upon the house in torrents. The door was shut. Emma wrapped her child closer in her shawl. Susannah sat sulky and disconsolate. She had a vague idea that the vengeance of heaven was overtaking her for merely listening to such heresy. Over against this was a shadowy doubt whether it might not be true, roused by Emma's continued persistency.

"Is it any easier to believe that those things happened to folks when the Bible was written? Don't you believe that God appeared to Moses and Samuel and told them the very words to write down, and showed them visions; and isn't He the same God yesterday, to-day, and for ever? It's just what it says in the Bible shall come about in the latter days. It's because of the great apostasy of the Church, no one really believing in Jesus Christ, that a new prophet had to appear--that's Joseph."

"They do believe," Susannah spoke sullenly.

"Well, there's your aunt, Mis' Croom. Now she's as good as there is in the modern Church, isn't she? She's doing all she can to save her soul. She can't do it, for she don't believe. Why the Lord, He said that signs and wonders should follow them that believe. Have they any signs and wonders up at your place? And He said that believers must forsake all, houses and lands and all; what have your people forsook? And as to its being hard to believe about Joseph--you just take the things in the Bible, Elisha and the bears, for instance, and Paul bringing back Dorcas to life, and just think how hard they'd be to believe if you heard they happened yesterday, next door to you. And with God all times and places is the same. Souls is only saved by believing; the Lord says so, and accepting the things of faith to come to pass, and being baptized and giving up all and following; and it's an awful thing to lose one's soul."

At this reiteration of the doctrine of the soul as a thing apart from the development of reason and character, Susannah rose, ready to cry with anger. Her aunt's agitation on the subject had left a sore to which the gentlest touch was pain.

"I don't believe it," she cried. "I don't believe God wants us to do anything except just good. That's what _my_ father told me. I'm going home. I don't care how it rains."

Emma did not hear her. Over her pale young face had come the peculiar expression of alert and loving listening. She had detected the sound of a footstep which Susannah now heard coming heavily near.

A large man of about twenty-five years of age entered from the bluster of the storm. As Susannah was trying to push out past him into its fury, he paused, staring in rough astonishment.

Lucy hung on to her arm. "Stay a bit! Joseph must hold the umbrella over Miss. Emmar, tell her she can't no wise go alone."

Susannah fled into the driving sheets of rain, but Joseph Smith, umbrella in hand, followed her.


CHAPTER III.

The umbrella was a very heavy one. Susannah certainly could not have held it against the wind. Joseph Smith held the shelter between Susannah and the blast, looking at her occasionally with a kindly expression in his blue eyes, but merely to see how far it sheltered her.

They walked in silence for about a quarter of a mile. The rain swept upon her skirt and feet; she saw it falling thick on either side; she saw it beating upon Smith's shoulder, upon one side of his hat, and dripping from his light hair. The wind was so strong that the very drops that trickled from his hair were blown backward. His blue coat was old--not much protection, she thought, against the storm.

The false prophet had hitherto appeared quite as terrible to her imagination and as far removed from real life as the wild beast of story books; now he appeared very much like any other man--rather more kind in his actions, perhaps, and distrait in his thought. Susannah began to think herself a discoverer.

"You are not keeping the rain off yourself."

"It don't matter about me. I don't mind getting wet."

His tone carried conviction. After a while gratitude again stirred her into speech.

"I'm afraid you find it awfully hard holding up the umbrella."

He gave a glance downward at her as she toiled by his side. "Why you're most blown away as it is. You couldn't get along without the umbrellar." Regarding her attentively for a minute, he added, "Emmar will be vexed when she hears that your dress got so splashed."

They were both bending somewhat forward against the wind; the road beneath them was glistening with standing water. When they passed by the woods the trees were creaking and cracking, and over the meadows hung shifting veils of clouds and rain.

"I guess I'd better not take you farther than Sharon Peck's. Your folks would be pretty mad if you walked through the village with Joe Smith."

The lines round Susannah's mouth strengthened themselves; she felt herself superior to those whose attitude of mind he had thus described.

"You have been very kind to come with me. I'd like better to go home than stop, if it isn't too far."

"I guess not. If you'd lived here longer you'd know that there was all manner of evil said about me, and the worst of it is that some of it's true. I've been a pretty low sort of fellow, and I hain't got any education to speak of."

She looked up at him in astonishment; the expression of his face was peaceful and kindly. "Then why do you go about preaching and saying--"

"I hain't got nothing to do with that at all. If an angel comes from heaven and gives me a partic'lar revelation, calling me by name, namely, 'Joseph Smith, Junior,' tain't for me to say he's made a mistake and come to the wrong man, though goodness knows I hev said it to the Lord often enough; but now I've come to see that it's my business just to do what I'm told. But as to the low ways I hed--why, I've repented and give them up, and as to the education, I'm trying to get that, but it won't come in a minute."

Her conscience was not at rest; to be silent was like telling a lie, and from motives of fear, too! At length she burst out, "I don't believe you ever saw an angel, Mr. Smith. I think it's very wicked of you to have made it up, and about the gold Bible too."

They were still half a mile from the nearest house. Susannah gasped. When she had spoken her defiance she realised that if she had nothing worse to fear, she at least deserved to be left alone among the raging elements. She staggered somewhat, expecting a rebuff.

"I guess you'd better take my arm," he said. "It ain't no sort of a day for a woman to be out."

When she hesitated, flushed and frightened, a smile came for the first time across his face. "You're almost beat back by the wind. It won't hurt you to grip hold of my sleeve, you know, even if I am a thundering big liar. I don't know as I can expect you to believe anything else. Emmar didn't for a long time, but then, after a spell, she gave up all the comforts of her father's house just to stand by me, and no one's ever had a word to say against Emmar."

They stopped at a farmhouse on the outskirts of the village.

Smith had said to Susannah, "There's a gentleman I know stopping at Sharon Peck's. I'll pass the umbrellar on to him, and he'll take you home. He's been a Quaker, but I guess you'll find him a pretty nice young gentleman. Mrs. Peck, she isn't to home."

He left Susannah standing upon the lee side of a wooden house amid treeless fields. The eaves sheltered her. She stooped down and with both hands wrung the water from her skirts. She was busy over this when the promised escort joined her.

The remnants of his forsaken Quakerism hung around him; his coat was buff, his hat straight in the brim, his manner prim, and when he spoke it was in the speech of his people. His complexion was very light, hair, eyebrows and lashes, and the down on his chin--almost flaxen; his face was browned by exposure to the weather, but so well formed that Susannah found him very good to look upon, the features pointed and delicate, but not without strength.

"Thou wilt walk as far as thy home with me?" he asked.

He held Smith's huge umbrella, but he did not hold it with the same strength, nor did he show the same skill in keeping it against the wind.

He spoke as they walked. "Thou hast walked a long