CHAPTER XXX.
_How the World Did not Come to an End_
In doubt and fear, the phantom of a dreadful certainty creeping alwayscloser, the final years went by. When the world came to be in its verylast days, when the little bent man was drooping lower than ever, andPrudence was seventeen, there came another Prince of Israel to save herinto the Kingdom while there was yet a time of grace. On this occasionthe suitor was no less a personage than Bishop Warren Snow, a holy manand puissant, upon whom the blessed Gods had abundantly manifested theirfavour. In wives and children, in flocks and herds, he was rich; while,as to spiritual worth, had not that early church poet styled him theEntablature of Truth?
But Prudence Rae, once so willing to be saved by the excellent Wild Ramof the Mountains, had fled in laughing confusion from this laterbenefactor, when he had made plain one day the service he sought to doher soul. A moment later he had stood before her father in all his yearsof patriarchal dignity, hale, ruddy, and vast of girth.
"She's a woman now, Brother Snow,--free to choose for herself," thefather 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 TomPotwin could be seen, hastening importantly upon his endless andmysterious errands, starting off abruptly a little way, stoppingsuddenly, with one hand raised to his head, as if at that instantremembering a forgotten detail, and then turning with new impetus towalk swiftly in the opposite direction.
"There ain't any one else after her, is there, Brother Rae,--any ofthese 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 sidewisenoddings 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--atleast, 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 theafter-time."
"I remember; I could see myself sitting by him on a throne, with theSaints all around us on other thrones, and the Gentiles kneeling toserve us. We were in a big palace that had a hundred closets in it, andin 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 Snowcould save you."
"Yes--but he would kiss me--he wanted to just now." She put both handsover her mouth, with a mocking little grimace that the Entablature ofTruth 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 kissme."
"You may be lost."
"I'd _rather_!"
And so it had ended between them. Ever since a memorable visit to SaltLake City, where she had gone to the theatre, she had cherished someentirely novel ideas concerning matrimony. In that fairyland of delightsshe had beheld the lover strangely wooing but one mistress, the husbandstrangely cherishing but one wife. There had been no talk of "theKingdom," and no home portrayed where there were many wives. That lover,swearing to cherish but one woman for ever, had thrilled her to newconceptions of her own womanhood, had seemed to meet some need of herown heart that she had not until then been conscious of. Ever after, shehad cherished this ideal of the stage, and refused to consider theother. Yet she had told her father nothing of this, for with herwomanhood had come a new reserve--truths half-divined and others clearlyperceived--which she could not tell any one.
He, in turn, now kept secret from her the delight he felt at herrefusal. He had tried conscientiously to persuade her into the path ofsalvation, when his every word was a blade to cut at his heart. Nor washe 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 anguishto 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 toknow certainly his own fate and hers--to have them irrevocably fixed--sothat he might no more be torn among many minds, but could begin to payhis own penalties in plain suffering, uncomplicated by this torturingnecessity to choose between two courses of action.
And the time was, happily, to be short. With the first day of 1870 hebegan to wait. With prayer and fasting and vigils he waited. Now wasthe day when the earth should be purified by fire, the wicked swept fromthe land, and the lost tribes of Israel restored to their own. Now wasto 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 springcome and go, with a dawning uneasiness. For the time was passing withnever the blast of a trumpet from the heavens. He began to see then thathe alone, of all Amalon, had kept his faith pure. For the others hadfoolishly sown their fields, as if another crop were to beharvested,--as if they must continue to eat bread that was earth-grown.Even Prudence had strangely ceased to believe as he did. Something fromthe outside had come, he knew not what nor how, to tarnish the fair goldof her certainty. She had not said so, but he divined it when heshrewdly observed that she was seeking to comfort him, to support hisown faith when day after day the Son of Man came not.
"It will surely be in another month, Daddy--perhaps next week--perhapsto-morrow," she would say cheerfully. "And you did right not to put inany crops. It would have been wicked to doubt."
He quickly detected her insincerity, seeing that she did not at allbelieve. As the summer came and went without a sign from the heavens,she became more positive and more constant in these assurances. As theevening drew on, they would walk out along the unsown fields, now grownrankly to weeds, to where the valley fell away from their feet to thewest. There they could look over line after line of hills, each a littledimmer as it lay farther into the blue through which they saw it, fromthe bold rim of the nearest shaggy-sided hill to the farthest featheryprofile all but lost in the haze. Day after day they sat together hereand waited for the sign,--for the going down of the sun upon a nightwhen there should be no darkness; when the light should stay until thesun came back over the eastern verge; when the trumpet should windthrough the hills, and when the little man's perplexities, if not hispunishment, should be at an end.
And always when the dusk came she would try to cheer him to new hope forthe next night, counting the months that remained in the year, thelittle time within which the great white day _must_ be. Then they wouldgo back through the soft light of the afterglow, he with his bentshoulders and fallen face, shrunk and burned out, except for the eyes,and she in the first buoyant flush of her womanhood, free and strong andvital, a thing of warmth and colour and luring curve, restraining herquick young step to his, as she suppressed now a world of strange newfancies to his soberer way of thought. When they reached home again, herwords always were: "Never mind, Daddy--it must come soon--there's onlya little time left in the year."
It was on these occasions that he knew she was now the stronger, that hewas leaning on her, had, in fact, long made her his support--fearfully,lest she be snatched away. And he knew at last that another change hadcome with her years; that she no longer confided in him unreservedly, asthe little child had. He knew there were things now she could not givehim. She communed with herself, and her silences had come between them.She looked past him at unseen for
ms, and listened as if for echoes thatshe alone could hear, waiting and wanting, knowing not her wants--yetdriven to aloofness by them from the little bent man of sorrows, whosewhole life she had now become.
His hope lasted hardly until the year ended. Before the time was over,there had crept into his mind a conviction that the Son of Man would notcome; that the Lord's favour had been withdrawn from Israel. He knew thecause,--the shedding of innocent blood. They might have made war;indeed, many of the revelations to Joseph discriminated even betweenmurder and that murder in which innocent blood should be shed; but thetruth was plain. They had shed innocent blood that day in the Meadows.Now the Lord's favour was withdrawn and His coming deferred, perhapsanother thousand years. The torture of the thing came back to him withall its early colouring, so that his days and nights were full ofanguish. He no longer dared open the Bible to that reddened page. Thecries already rang in his ears, and he knew not what worse torture mightcome if he looked again upon the stain; nor could he free himself fromthese by the old expedient of prayer, for he could no longer pray withan honest heart; he was no longer unselfish, could no longer kneel inperfect submission; he was wholly bound to this child of her mother, andthe peace of absolute and utter sacrifice could not come back to him.Full of unrest, feeling that somehow the end, at least for him, couldnot be far off, he went north to the April Conference. He took Prudencewith him, not daring to leave her behind.
She went with high hopes, alive with new sensations. Another world layoutside her valley of the mountains, and she was going to peep over theedge at its manifold fascinations. She had been there before as a child;now she was going as a woman. She remembered the city, bigger andgrander than fifty Amalons, with magnificent stores filled with exoticnovelties and fearsome luxuries from the land of the wicked Gentile. Sherecalled even the strange advertisements and signs, from John and EnochReese, with "All necessary articles of comfort for the wayfarer, such asflour, hard bread, butter, eggs and vinegar, buckskin pants andwhip-lashes," to the "Surgeon Dentist from Berlin and Liverpool," whowould "Examine and Extract Teeth, besides keeping constantly on hand asupply of the Best Matches, made by himself." From William Hennefer,announcing that, "In Connection with my Barber Shop, I have just openedan Eating House, where Patrons will be Accommodated with every EdibleLuxury the Valley Affords," to William Nixon, who sold goods for cash,flour, or wheat "at Jacob Hautz's house on the southeast corner ofCouncil-House Street and Emigration Square, opposite to Mr. OrsonSpencer's."
She remembered the hunters and trappers in bedraggled buckskin, theplainsmen with revolvers in their belts, wearing the blue army cloak,the teamsters in leathern suits, and horsemen in fur coats and caps,buffalo-hide boots with the hair outside, and rolls of blankets behindtheir high Mexican saddles.
More fondly did she recall two wonderful evenings at the theatre. Firsthad been the thrilling "Robert Macaire," then the romantic "Pizarro," inwhich Rolla had been a being of such overwhelming beauty that she hadfelt he could not be of earth.
This time her visit was an endless fever of discovery in a realm ofmagic and mystery, of joys she had supposed were held in reserve forthose who went behind the veil. It was a new and greater city she cameto now, where were buildings of undreamed splendour, many of themreaching dizzily three stories above the earth. And the shops were morefascinating than ever. She still shuddered at the wickedness of theGentiles, but with a certain secret respect for their habits of luxuryand their profusion of devices for adornment.
And there were strange new faces to be seen, people surely of adifferent world, of a different manner from those she had known,wearing, with apparent carelessness, garments even more strangelyelegant than those in the shop windows, and speaking in strange, softaccents. She was told that these were Gentiles, tourists across thecontinent, who had ventured from Ogden to observe the wonders of the newZion. The thought of the railroad was in itself thrilling. To be so nearthat wonderful highway to the land of the evil-doers and to a land,alas! of so many strange delights. She shuddered at her own wickedness,but fell again and again, and was held in bondage by the allurementsabout her. So thrilled to her soul's center was she that the pleasure ofit hurt her, and the tears would come to her eyes until she felt shemust be alone to cry for the awful joy of it.
The evening brought still more to endure, for they went to the play. Itwas a play that took her out of herself, so that the crowd was lost toher from the moment the curtain went up in obedience to a little bellthat tinkled mysteriously,--either back on the stage or in her ownheart, she was not sure which.
It was a love story; again that strangely moving love of one man for onewoman, that seemed as sweet as it was novel to her. But there was warbetween the houses in the play, and the young lover had to make a wayto see his beloved, climbing a high wall into her garden, climbing toher very balcony by a scarf she flung down to him. To the young womanfrom Amalon, these lovers' voices came with a strange compulsion, sothat they played with her heart between them. She was in turn the youth,pleading in a voice that touched every heart string from low to high;then she was the woman, soft and timid, hesitating in moments ofdelicious doubt, yet almost fearful of her power to resist,--half-wishing to be persuaded, half-frightened lest she yield.
When the moment of surrender came, she became both of them; and, whenthey parted, it was as if her heart went in twain, a half with each,both to ache until they were reunited. Between the acts she awoke toreality, only to say to herself: "So much I shall have to thinkabout--so much--I shall never be able to think about it enough."
Feverishly she followed the heart-breaking tragedy to its close,suffering poignantly the grief of each lover, suffering death for each,and feeling her life desolated when the end came.
But then the dull curtain shut her back into her own little world, wherethere was no love like that, and beside the little bent man she went outinto the night.
The next morning had come a further delight, an invitation to a ballfrom Brigham. Most of the day was spent in one of the shops, choosing agown of wondrous beauty, and having it fitted to her.
FULL OF ZEST FOR THE MEASURE AS ANY YOUTH]
When she looked into the little cracked mirror that night, she saw astrange new face and figure; and, when she entered the ballroom, shefelt that others noted the same strangeness, for many looked at heruntil she felt her cheeks burn. Then Brigham arose from a sofa, where hehad been sitting with his first wife and his last. He came gallantlytoward her; Brigham, whom she knew to be the most favoured of God onearth and the absolute ruler of all the realm about her--an affable,unpretentious yet dignified gentleman of seventy, who took her handwarmly in both his own, looked her over with his kindly blue eyes, andwelcomed her to Zion in words of a fatherly gentleness. Later, when hehad danced with some of his wives, Brigham came to dance with her, lightof foot and full of zest for the measure as any youth.
Others danced with her, but during it all she kept finding herself backbefore the magic square that framed the land where a man loved but onewoman. She remembered that Brigham sat with four of his wives in one ofthe boxes, enthusiastically applauding that portrayal of a single love.As the picture came back to her now, there seemed to have been somethingincongruous in this spectacle. She observed the seamed and hardenedfeatures of his earliest wife, who kept to the sofa during the evening,beside the better favoured Amelia, whom the good man had last married,and she thought of his score or so of wives between them.
Then she knew that what she had seen the night before had been thetruth; that she could love no man who did not love her alone. She triedto imagine the lover in the play going from balcony to balcony, sighingthe same impassioned love-tale to woman after woman; or to imagine himwith many wives at home, to whom would be taken the news of his death inthe tomb of his last. So she thought of the play and not of the ball,stepping the dances absently, and, when it was all over, she fellasleep, rejoicing that, before their death, the two dear lovers had beensealed for time and eternity, so that they could a
waken together in theKingdom.
They went home the next day, driving down the valley that rolled inbillows of green between the broken ranges of the Wasatch and theOquirrh. It was no longer of the Kingdom she thought, nor of Brigham andhis wives; only of a clean-limbed youth in doublet and hose, a plumedcap, and a silken cloak, who, in a voice that brought the tears back ofher eyes, told of his undying love for one woman--and of the soft,tender woman in the moonlight, who had trusted him and let herself go tohim in life and in death.
The world had not ended. She thought that, in truth, it could not haveended yet; for had she not a life to live?
The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old West Page 32