"And won"t she be glad to see us again. And she will come before Christina and Lorena, because she was your first wife, wasn"t she?"
He was awake all night in a fever of doubt and rebellion. By the light of the candle, he read in the book of Mormon pa.s.sages that had often puzzled but never troubled him until now when they were brought home to him; such as, "And now it came to pa.s.s that the people Nephi under the reign of the second king began to grow hard in their hearts, and indulged themselves somewhat in wicked practises, like unto David of old, desiring many wives--"
Again he read, "Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord."
Still again, "For there shall not be any man among you have save it shall be one wife."
Then he turned to the revelation on celestial marriage given years after these words were written, and in the first paragraph read:
"Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David, and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives--"
He turned from one to the other; from the many explicit admonitions and commands against polygamy, the denunciations of the patriarchs for their indulgence in the practise, to this last pa.s.sage contradicting the others, and vexed himself with wonder. In the Book of Mormon, David was said to be wicked for doing this thing. Now in the revelation to Joseph he read, "David"s wives were given unto him of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant."
He recalled old tales that were told in Nauvoo by wicked apostates and the basest of Gentile scandalmongers; how that Joseph in the day of his great power had suffered the purity of his first faith to become tainted; how his wife, Emma, had upbraided him so harshly for his sins that he, fearing disgrace, had put out this revelation as the word of G.o.d to silence her. He remembered that these gossips had said the revelation itself proved that Joseph had already done, before he received it, that which it commanded him to do, citing the clause, "And let my handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me."
They had gossiped further, that still fearing her rebellion, he had worded a threat for her in the next clause, "And I command my handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph and to none else.
But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy G.o.d, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law ... and again verily I say, let mine handmaid forgive my servant Joseph his trespa.s.ses and then shall she be forgiven her trespa.s.ses."
This was the calumny the Gentile gossips back in Nauvoo would have had the world believe,--that this great doctrine of the Church had been given to silence the enraged wife of a man detected in sin.
But in the midst of his questionings he seemed to see a truth,--that another snare had been set for him by the Devil, and that this time it had caught his feet. He, who knew that he must have nothing for himself, had all unconsciously so set his heart upon this child of her mother that he could not give her up. And now so fixed and so great was his love that he could not turn back. He knew he was lost. To cling to her would be to question, doubt, and to lose his faith. To give her up would kill him.
But at least for a little while he could put it off.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
_How the World Did not Come to an End_
In doubt and fear, the phantom of a dreadful certainty creeping always closer, the final years went by. When the world came to be in its very last days, when the little bent man was drooping lower than ever, and Prudence was seventeen, there came another Prince of Israel to save her into the Kingdom while there was yet a time of grace. On this occasion the suitor was no less a personage than Bishop Warren Snow, a holy man and puissant, upon whom the blessed G.o.ds had abundantly manifested their favour. In wives and children, in flocks and herds, he was rich; while, as to spiritual worth, had not that early church poet styled him the Entablature of Truth?
But Prudence Rae, once so willing to be saved by the excellent Wild Ram of the Mountains, had fled in laughing confusion from this later benefactor, when he had made plain one day the service he sought to do her soul. A moment later he had stood before her father in all his years of patriarchal dignity, hale, ruddy, and vast of girth.
"She"s a woman now, Brother Snow,--free to choose for herself," the father had replied to his first expostulations.
"Counsel her, Brother Rae." In the mind of the Bishop, "counsel,"
properly applied, was a thing not long to be resisted.
"She would treat my counsel as shortly as she treated your proposal, Brother Snow."
The Entablature of Truth glanced out of the open door to where Tom Potwin could be seen, hastening importantly upon his endless and mysterious errands, starting off abruptly a little way, stopping suddenly, with one hand raised to his head, as if at that instant remembering a forgotten detail, and then turning with new impetus to walk swiftly in the opposite direction.
"There ain"t any one else after her, is there, Brother Rae,--any of these young boys?"
"No, Bishop--no one."
"Well, if there is, you let me know. I"ll be back again, Brother Rae.
Meantime, counsel her--counsel her with authority."
The Entablature of Truth had departed with certain little sidewise noddings of his head that seemed to indicate an unalterable purpose.
The girl came to her father, blushing and still laughing confusedly, when the rejected one had mounted his horse and ridden away.
"Oh, Daddy, how funny!--to think of marrying him!"
He looked at her anxiously. "But you wanted to marry Bishop Wright--at least, you--"
She laughed again. "How long ago--years ago--I must have been a baby."
"You were old enough to point out that he would save you in the after-time."
"I remember; I could see myself sitting by him on a throne, with the Saints all around us on other thrones, and the Gentiles kneeling to serve us. We were in a big palace that had a hundred closets in it, and in every closet there hung a silk dress for me--a hundred silk dresses, each a different colour, waiting for me to wear them."
"But have you thought sufficiently--now? The time is short. Bishop Snow could save you."
"Yes--but he would kiss me--he wanted to just now." She put both hands over her mouth, with a mocking little grimace that the Entablature of Truth would not have liked to see.
"He would be certain to exalt you."
She took the hands away long enough to say, "He would be certain to kiss me."
"You may be lost."
"I"d _rather_!"
And so it had ended between them. Ever since a memorable visit to Salt Lake City, where she had gone to the theatre, she had cherished some entirely novel ideas concerning matrimony. In that fairyland of delights she had beheld the lover strangely wooing but one mistress, the husband strangely cherishing but one wife. There had been no talk of "the Kingdom," and no home portrayed where there were many wives. That lover, swearing to cherish but one woman for ever, had thrilled her to new conceptions of her own womanhood, had seemed to meet some need of her own heart that she had not until then been conscious of. Ever after, she had cherished this ideal of the stage, and refused to consider the other. Yet she had told her father nothing of this, for with her womanhood had come a new reserve--truths half-divined and others clearly perceived--which she could not tell any one.
He, in turn, now kept secret from her the delight he felt at her refusal. He had tried conscientiously to persuade her into the path of salvation, when his every word was a blade to cut at his heart. Nor was he happy when she refused so definitely the saving hand extended to her.
To know she was to come short of her glory in the after-time was anguish to him; and mingling with that anguish, inflaming and aggravating it, were his own heretical doubts that would not be gone.
In a sheer desperation of bewilderment he longed for the end, longed to know certainly his own fate and hers--to have them irrevocably fixed--so that he might no more be torn among many minds, but could begin to pay his own penalties in plain suffering, uncomplicated by this torturing necessity to choose between two courses of action.
And the time was, happily, to be short. With the first day of 1870 he began to wait. With prayer and fasting and vigils he waited. Now was the day when the earth should be purified by fire, the wicked swept from the land, and the lost tribes of Israel restored to their own. Now was to come the Son of Man who should dwell in righteousness with men, reigning over them on the purified earth for a thousand years.
He watched the mild winter go, with easy faith; and the early spring come and go, with a dawning uneasiness. For the time was pa.s.sing with never the blast of a trumpet from the heavens. He began to see then that he alone, of all Amalon, had kept his faith pure. For the others had foolishly sown their fields, as if another crop were to be harvested,--as if they must continue to eat bread that was earth-grown.
Even Prudence had strangely ceased to believe as he did. Something from the outside had come, he knew not what nor how, to tarnish the fair gold of her certainty. She had not said so, but he divined it when he shrewdly observed that she was seeking to comfort him, to support his own faith when day after day the Son of Man came not.
"It will surely be in another month, Daddy--perhaps next week--perhaps to-morrow," she would say cheerfully. "And you did right not to put in any crops. It would have been wicked to doubt."
He quickly detected her insincerity, seeing that she did not at all believe. As the summer came and went without a sign from the heavens, she became more positive and more constant in these a.s.surances. As the evening drew on, they would walk out along the unsown fields, now grown rankly to weeds, to where the valley fell away from their feet to the west. There they could look over line after line of hills, each a little dimmer as it lay farther into the blue through which they saw it, from the bold rim of the nearest s.h.a.ggy-sided hill to the farthest feathery profile all but lost in the haze. Day after day they sat together here and waited for the sign,--for the going down of the sun upon a night when there should be no darkness; when the light should stay until the sun came back over the eastern verge; when the trumpet should wind through the hills, and when the little man"s perplexities, if not his punishment, should be at an end.
And always when the dusk came she would try to cheer him to new hope for the next night, counting the months that remained in the year, the little time within which the great white day _must_ be. Then they would go back through the soft light of the afterglow, he with his bent shoulders and fallen face, shrunk and burned out, except for the eyes, and she in the first buoyant flush of her womanhood, free and strong and vital, a thing of warmth and colour and luring curve, restraining her quick young step to his, as she suppressed now a world of strange new fancies to his soberer way of thought. When they reached home again, her words always were: "Never mind, Daddy--it must come soon--there"s only a little time left in the year."
It was on these occasions that he knew she was now the stronger, that he was leaning on her, had, in fact, long made her his support--fearfully, lest she be s.n.a.t.c.hed away. And he knew at last that another change had come with her years; that she no longer confided in him unreservedly, as the little child had. He knew there were things now she could not give him. She communed with herself, and her silences had come between them.
She looked past him at unseen forms, and listened as if for echoes that she alone could hear, waiting and wanting, knowing not her wants--yet driven to aloofness by them from the little bent man of sorrows, whose whole life she had now become.