He broke off, for the girl came leading in the son, who, as soon as he saw the white-haired old man with his open book, sitting beside the wasted woman on the bed, flew to them with a glad cry.
They embraced him and smoothed and patted him, tremulously, feebly, with broken thanks for his safe return. The mother at last fell back upon her pillow, her eyes shining with the joy of a great relief, while the father was seized with a fit of coughing that cruelly racked his gaunt frame and left him weak but smiling.
The girl had been placing food upon the table.
"Come, Joel," she urged, "you must eat--we have all breakfasted, so you must sit alone, but we shall watch you."
She pushed him into the chair and filled his plate, in spite of his protests.
"Not another word until you have eaten it all."
"The very sight of it is enough. I am not hungry."
But she coaxed and commanded, with her hands upon his shoulders, and he let himself be persuaded to taste the bread and meat. After a few mouthfuls, taken with obvious disrelish, she detected the awakening fervour of a famished man, and knew she would have to urge no more.
As the son ate, the girl busied herself at the mother"s pillow, while the father talked and ruminated by intervals,--a text, a word of cheer to the wasted mother, incidents of old days, memories of early revivals.
In 1828, he had hailed Dylkes, the "Leatherwood G.o.d," as the real Messiah. Then he had been successively a Freewill Baptist, a Winebrennerian, a Universalist, a Disciple, and finally an eloquent and moving preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now he was a wild-eyed old dreamer with a high, narrow forehead depressed at the temples, enfeebled, living much in the past. Once his voice would be low, as if he spoke only to himself; again it would rise in warning to an evil generation.
"The end of the world is at hand, laddie," he began, after looking fondly at his son for a time. "Joseph said there are those now living who shall not taste of death till Jesus comes. And then, oh, then--the great white day! There is strong delusion among the wicked in the day in which we live, but the seed of Abraham, the royal seed, the blessed seed of the Lord, shall be told off to its separate glory. The Lord will spread the curtains of Zion and gather it out to the fat valleys of Ephraim, and there, with resurrected bodies it shall possess the purified earth. I shall be away for a time before then, laddie--and the dear mother here. Our crowns have been earned and will not long be withheld. But you will be there for the glory of it, and who more deserves it?"
"I pray to be made worthy of the exaltation, Father."
"You are, laddie. The word and the light came to me when I preached another faith--for the spirit of Thomas Campbell had aforetime moved me--but you, laddie, you have been bred in the word and the truth. The Lord, as a mark of his favour, has kept you from the contamination of doubters, infidels, heretics, and apostates. You have been educated under the care of the priesthood, close here in Nauvoo the Beautiful, and who could more deserve the fulness of thrones, dominions, and of power--who of all those whose number the after-time shall unfold?"
He turned appealingly to the mother, whose fevered eyes rested fondly upon her boy as she nodded confirmation of the words.
"Did he not march all the way from Kirtland to Missouri with us in "34--the youngest soldier in the whole army of Zion? How old, laddie?--twelve, was it?--so he marched a hundred miles for every one of his little years--and so valiant--none more so--begging us to hasten and give battle so he could fight upon the Lord"s side. Twelve hundred miles he walked to put back in their homes the persecuted Saints of Jackson County. But, ah! There he saw liberty strangled in her sanctuary. Do you mind, laddie, how in "38 we were driven by the mob from Jackson across the river into Clay County? how they ran off our cattle, stole our grain? how your poor old mother"s mother died from exposure that night in the rain and sleet? how we lived on mast and corn, the winter, in tents and a few dugouts and rickety huts--we who had the keys of St.
Peter and the gifts of the apostolic age? Do you mind the sackings and burnings at Adam-Ondi-Ahman? Do you mind the wife of Joseph"s brother, Don Carlos, she that was made by the soldiers to wade Grand River with two helpless babes in her arms? They would not even let her warm herself, before she started, at the flames of her own hut they had fired. And, laddie, you mind Haun"s mill. Ah, the b.l.o.o.d.y day!--you were there, and one other, the sister, happy, beautiful as her in the Song of Songs, when the brutes came--"
"Don"t, father--stop there--you are making my throat shut against the food."
"Then you came to Far West in time to see Joseph and his brethren sold to the mobocrats by that devil"s traitor, Hinkle,--you saw the fleeing Saints forced to leave their all, hunted out of Missouri into Illinois--their houses burned, the cattle stolen, their wives and daughters--"
"Don"t, father! Be quiet again. You and mother must be fit for our journey, as fit as we younger folk."
He glanced fondly across the table, where the girl had leaned her chin in her hands to watch him, speculatively. She avoided his eyes.
"Yes, yes," a.s.sented the old man, "and you know of our persecutions here--how we had to finish the temple with our arms by our sides, even as the faithful finished the walls of Jerusalem--and how we were driven out by night--"
"Quiet, father!"
"Yes, yes. Ah, this gathering out! How far shall we go, laddie?"
"Four hundred miles to winter quarters. From there no one yet knows,--a thousand, maybe two thousand."
"Aye, to the Rockies or beyond, even to the Pacific. Joseph prophesied it--where we shall be left in peace until the great day."
The young man glanced quickly up.
"Or have time to grow mighty, if we should not be let alone. Surely this is the last time the Lord would have us meek under the mob."
"Ho, ho! As you were twelve years ago, trudging by my side, valiant to fight if the Lord but wills it! But have no fear, boy. This time we go far beyond all that may tempt the spoiler. We go into the desert, where no humans are but the wretched red Lamanites; no beasts but the wild ones of four feet to hunger for our flesh; no verdure, no nourishment to sustain us save the manna from on high,--a region of unknown perils and unnamed deserts. Truly we make the supreme test. I do not overcolour it.
Prudence, hand me yonder sc.r.a.p-book, there on the secretary. Here I shall read you the words of no less a one than Senator Daniel Webster on the floor of the Senate but a few months agone. He spoke on the proposal to fix a mail-route from Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River in that far-off land. Hear this great man who knows whereof he speaks. He is very bitter. "What do we want with this vast, worthless area--this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snows? What can we ever hope to do with that Western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbour on it. Mr.
President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer to Boston than it now is!""
The girl had been making little impatient flights about the room, as if awaiting an opportunity to interrupt the old man"s harangue, but even as she paused to speak, he began again:
"There, laddie, do you hear him?--arid deserts, shifting sand, snow and ice, wild beasts and wilder men--that is where Israel of the last days shall be hidden to wait for the second coming of G.o.d"s Christ. There, having received our washings and anointings in the temple of G.o.d on earth, we shall wait unmolested, and spread the curtains of Zion in due circ.u.mspection. And what a migration to be recorded in another sacred history ages hence! Surely the blood of our martyred Prophet hath not smoked to heaven in vain. Where is there a parallel to this hegira? They from Egypt went from a heathen land, a land of idolatry, to a fertile home chosen for them by the Lord. But we go from a fair, smiling land of plenty and pretended Christianity into the burning desert. They have driven us to the edge; now they drive us in. But G.o.d works his way among the peoples of earth, and we are strong. Who knows but that we shall in our march throw up a highway of holiness to the rising generation? So let us round up our backs to the burden!"
"Amen!" replied the young man fervently, as he rose from the table.
"And now we must be about our preparations for the journey. The time is short--who is that?"
He sprang to the door. Outside, quick steps were heard approaching. The girl, who had risen in some confusion, stood blushing and embarra.s.sed before him. The mother rose feebly on her elbow to rea.s.sure him.
""Tis Captain Girnway, laddie. Have no alarm--he has befriended us. But for him we should have been put out two days ago, without shelter and without care. He let us be housed here until you should come."
There was a knock at the door, but Joel stood with his back to it. The words of Seth Wright were running roughshod through his mind. He looked sharply at Prudence.
"A mobocrat--our enemy--and you have taken favours from him--a minion of the devil?--shame!"
The girl looked up.
"He was kind; you don"t realise that he has probably saved their lives.
Indeed, you must let him in and thank him."
"Not I!"
The mother interposed hurriedly.
"Yes, yes, laddie! You know not how high-handed they have been. They expelled all but us, and some they have maltreated shamefully. This one has been kind to us. Open the door."
"I dare not face him--I may not contain myself!"
The knock was repeated more loudly. The girl went up to him and put her hands on his shoulders to draw him away.
"Be reasonable," she pleaded, in low tones, "and above all, be polite to him."
She put him gently aside and drew back the door. On the threshold smiled the young captain he had watched from the window that morning, marching at the head of his company. His cap was doffed, and his left hand rested easily on the hilt of his sword. He stepped inside as one sure of his welcome.
"Good morning, Miss Prudence, good morning, Mr. Rae, good morning, madam--good morning--"
He looked questioningly at the stranger. Prudence stepped forward.
"This is Joel Rae, Captain Girnway."
They bowed, somewhat stiffly. Each was dark. Each had a face to attract women. But the captain was at peace with the world, neatly uniformed, well-fed, clean-shaven, smiling, pleasant to look upon, while the other was unshaven, hollow-cheeked, gaunt, roughly dressed, a thing that had been hunted and was now under ban. Each was at once sensible of the contrast between them, and each was at once affected by it: the captain to a greater jauntiness, a more effusive affability; the other to a stonier sternness.
"I am glad to know you have come, Mr. Rae. Your people have worried a little, owing to the unfortunate circ.u.mstances in which they have been placed."