Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  * * *

  All the way back up the hill, Lydia was deep in thought about what Joseph had said. Finally she turned to Joseph. “I have a question. It’s related to what you were saying.”

  “All right.”

  “Sometimes that’s happened to me. I pray and pray and pray for something, but there doesn’t seem to be any answer. So I’m left to wonder. Is it because I’m not faithful enough to hear the Lord? Or is it because he chooses not to answer me?”

  He smiled, somewhat sadly. “I have asked myself that very question on more than one occasion. Especially after the Salem experience.”

  “And what answer did Brother Joseph find to that question?” Lydia said, laughing lightly.

  “ ‘It is not meet that I should command in all things,’ ” he quoted softly, “ ‘for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant: wherefore he receiveth no reward.’ ”

  Lydia was nodding. That was from the revelation Joseph had received shortly after he had arrived in the land of Zion back in 1831.

  “And ‘men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause,’ ” Emma continued for him, “ ‘and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.’ ”

  Lydia’s face was wrinkled in thought. “So sometimes the Lord just wants us to act, without waiting to be told everything?”

  “Yes,” said Joseph. “And that may be another reason why the Lord was not displeased with us. We went to Salem without waiting to be told exactly what to do to get out of debt. So even though we may have been a little shortsighted, he let us go, then used it as an opportunity to teach us an important lesson.”

  “I see,” Lydia responded, her thoughts tumbling now with interesting new insights. Then she had a completely new thought. “Brother Joseph, there may be another reason for the whole Salem experience.”

  “Oh, and what might that be?”

  “A test.”

  “Oh, it was definitely a test.”

  “Not for you. For us.”

  His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Explain.”

  She took a deep breath, still letting the thoughts fall into position. “Let’s say Brother Burgess had been able to find the treasure and you had come back with a chest full of gold. Everyone would have hailed you as a prophet.”

  Emma started, giving Lydia a strange look. “But when Joseph didn’t,” she said slowly, “when he came back empty-handed, even some of the leaders began to doubt. They’ve started to criticize.”

  Lydia nodded, feeling a little chill. Her father-in-law was one of those who were doing that criticizing. And she knew that Martin Harris and others were just waiting for Benjamin Steed to return home so they could bring him into the growing circle of critics.

  “A test for us?” Joseph mused. “That is a most interesting thought, Lydia. I should like to ponder more on it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The first day of January, 1837, dawned cold and wet and dreary over the town of Preston, England. The heavy fog which had rolled in off the Irish Sea during the night had lifted and become a steady drizzle. By afternoon the temperature had dropped, and the rain became half mixed with sleet. It was miserable weather to be out in, but the few people hurrying about gave it little thought. This was a typical winter’s day in the county of Lancashire. They expected no better.

  Derek and Peter Ingalls hurried along under the gray overcast. Their shoes, wooden clogs worn with no stockings, made a sharp rattling sound against the cobblestones. Young Peter, twelve years of age, was shivering violently. He wore a ragged shawl over his narrow shoulders, but the wetness had penetrated through that and the thin coat beneath. Derek, about six and a half years his senior, wore only a thick woolen shirt. He was likewise wet and chilled, but he had grown used to the cold long before this and gave it little thought.

  There was no mistaking that the two were brothers. Though Derek was more heavily built—something enhanced by four years of shoveling coal in the boiler rooms—and Peter was thin as a wafer, their features were similar. Both had thick black hair that kept falling into their eyes. Both had the same deep blue eyes, straight nose, and full mouth that, when they smiled, changed the whole countenance. Peter smiled a lot still. Derek’s smiles came with increasing rarity.

  They were passing one of Preston’s several churches. The windows glowed yellow with lamplight, and through the thin curtains they could see the shadows of the worshippers sitting in the pews next to the windows. The sound of voices singing a hymn floated softly in the air.

  Peter stopped, his eyes fastened on the church. This particular year, New Year’s Day happened to be the Sabbath also. Special worship services were being held throughout the country in celebration.

  “Come on, Peter,” Derek said, “we’ve got to get home or we’re going to freeze to death.”

  Reluctantly, Peter fell into step again beside Derek, but his head turned and he looked longingly back at the church. “Couldn’t we wait long enough to see them come out?”

  Derek shook his head firmly. He understood what was going on in Peter’s young mind. He had once done the same thing himself. There was something mesmerizing about watching the congregations of the upper and middle classes as they came out of church. The women were the most arresting, with their long, full dresses of exquisite colors and material. Their beautiful faces were half-hidden beneath carefully coiffured hair and matching bonnets. But the men were not far behind them in dress and demeanor—long coats, vests with golden watch chains or jeweled fobs, high brimmed top hats of beaver skin or silk.

  They would brush by the thinly clad, sometimes half-naked throngs of beggars, ignoring the pitiful cries and the clutching hands as the men helped their wives into the shiny carriages pulled by matching teams of horses. Then they would canter off to their cottages or castles to eat leg of mutton and plates full of steaming vegetables and dishes of English trifle. After dinner they would sit before blazing fires, the men smoking fine cigars and sipping brandy. Then they would retire to their wide beds with mattresses full of goose feathers, covered by fine down comforters.

  It was exciting to watch such people, but Derek had learned long ago that it made the harsh realities of their own situation all the more unbearable. Where Derek and Peter were headed now there would be no fire, no well-laid table—cold coffee or tea and moldy bread, if they were lucky—no wardrobes filled with warm clothes. They lived in a cellar beneath a cottage which two other families shared. It was dark, cold, and damp, half-filled with coal, and home to three or four rabbits and several pigeons kept by the families above them. Two other men, older and hardened drinkers, shared the cellar with them.

  The house was one of hundreds in the poorest section of the town, all made of the same red brick, stretching away for blocks in dreary sameness. The scene was identical to that found in a thousand other towns and villages throughout England’s industrial belt. These were the working-class neighborhoods, inhabited by the illiterate and wretchedly poor factory workers who kept the flax and textile mills and other industries running. The homes were usually two-story, consisting of one or two rooms—each never larger than nine by twelve feet—and a kitchen. Open trenches in the alleys behind them carried raw sewage down to the rivers or the sea. In summer, the refuge thrown into the streets became fly infested and unbearably rank.

  There were two beds in the cellar where the Ingalls brothers lived, both simple boxes made of unfinished lumber, with corded ropes for springs. The mattresses were straw filled and lumpy as a toad’s back. And filthy. It was common to wake in the morning with fiery red welts from bedbugs. There were no pillows, and only a thinly worn blanket for a covering. Derek and Peter shared one of the beds. The two men shared the other.

  It wasn’t much, their little cellar, but Derek knew they were very lucky. The usual ratio was more like three to four persons per bed, requiring children either to sleep in shifts or on the floor. And here they were all males. Usually a whole f
amily—husband, wife, single young women and maturing young men, little children, infants—would all have to share the same room, which was filled with beds, leaving only a small space in the center for all to dress or undress.

  Peter had no clear memory of that kind of crowding, that utter lack of privacy. Just before his sixth birthday, cholera had swept across western England from Liverpool, probably brought from China or Japan on some ship. Wherever it had come from, it decimated the Ingalls family—father, mother, three older brothers, a married sister—and many other families. When it was over, twelve-year-old Derek Ingalls had been left to care for his only surviving sibling.

  He grasped Peter’s arm and gave it a gentle tug. “Come on, Peter,” he said, his voice softening. “We need to get home.”

  * * *

  Peter’s voice trailed off. Derek looked up from the piece of slate that was on the bed between them. The flickering light of the stub of a candle played across the smoothness of Peter’s cheeks and the fineness of his mouth. It also threw deep shadows across his eyes, but not enough that Derek couldn’t see that they were getting heavy.

  “Come on, Peter. Ten more words, then we can stop.”

  “I’m tired, Derek.”

  “I know. We’re almost done.”

  It was ironic. For almost seven years now, Derek had fought against all the odds in order to care for his brother. He had begged and stolen and scavenged food. Twice he had fled from the town in which they were living when nosey government women came around asking about two orphan boys. He had finally come to Preston and clawed his way into a job at one of the mills. They had started out living in the streets. Through Derek’s sheer tenacity, they had moved from there to a wooden packing crate, then to a corner of a floor in a filthy tenement house, and finally to this cellar.

  And now Peter was repaying it all by teaching his older brother how to read and write.

  Three years previously the shameless exploitation of children by the factory and mine owners had finally reached the point where Parliament had acted. The Factory Act of 1833 was passed. The new law prohibited children under the age of nine from being employed in anything except the silk mills. Children under eighteen were limited to sixty-nine hours per week—shifts of twelve hours per day, with three hours less on Saturdays. Unfortunately, Derek was nineteen and was no longer protected by these limits.

  But most important, the new law said that mill owners could employ children ages nine to thirteen only if those children could produce a “school certificate.” This was an attempt to cure the widespread illiteracy among the poor. Many factories established schools of their own in order to comply. Peter attended the factory school for two hours each morning before moving into the mill to work an eight-hour shift. He was bright and inquisitive and learned quickly. And so, even though they were both exhausted at the end of the day, Peter was teaching Derek what he was learning each day.

  “My eyes hurt, Derek,” Peter moaned.

  Derek sighed, then reached over and took the slate. He slid it under the bed. “All right. We’ll do some more tomorrow night.”

  “Thank you.” Peter immediately slithered down and pulled the blanket around him. Even though his clothes were still damp from their being outside, there was no thought of undressing. The cellar would be in the forties before the night was over, and one blanket was not sufficient.

  Derek stood, pinched out the candle, then slipped off his wooden clogs. He set them at the foot of the bed, then looked over to the other bed. Their two roommates were still out, probably at the pub spending what tiny pittance they made on some kind of grog. Derek shook his head. He understood the desire to dull the senses. Many were the days when he longed to do the same. But alcoholism had become the bane of England’s working-class poor, and many men spent more on liquor than they did on rent. That was not a challenge for Derek. Every penny dropped in the pubs meant one less penny he could put away in the leather pouch he had carefully hidden in the coal pile.

  He crawled into bed beside his brother. Sliding beneath the blanket, he moved across the rough mattress and reached for Peter’s shoulder. Immediately Peter moved over against him and they curled up together, spoon fashion. Out of necessity, they always slept that way throughout the winter months.

  After several minutes, Peter turned his head. “Derek?”

  “Eh?”

  “Are we gonna go to hell?”

  “What?” Derek started to laugh. Peter’s question had caught him completely by surprise. “Why do you ask a fool question like that?”

  There was silence for a moment, then in a troubled voice Peter went on. “Jenny said her mother’s preacher said that people who don’t go to church on Sunday are gonna go to hell.” Jenny Pottsworth was an eleven-year-old who worked with Peter in the cutting department at the factory.

  Derek snorted in derision. “It was also Mrs. Pottsworth’s clergyman who said that what we need is another good war to kill off two or three million of the working-class people and solve our population problems.”

  “What is hell like?”

  Sobering, Derek rubbed a hand along Peter’s shoulder. He could tell he was really troubled. “It’s nothin’ you have to be worryin’ about. God ain’t going to send you to hell, Peter. You’re too good. I mean that.”

  Peter thought about that and seemed pleased. But then a moment later he asked another question, and Derek knew he hadn’t really satisfied him. “Why don’t we ever go to church, Derek?”

  For a moment Derek was tempted to snap out a glib answer, something cute and clever and funny, something to take Peter’s mind off this troublesome subject. But then he changed his mind. Peter would be thirteen in May. Before too long he would be a man. He was already doing a man’s work.

  Peter turned. “Why don’t we, Derek? I don’t want to go to hell.”

  “I know,” Derek nodded. After a moment, in a low voice, he went on. “One time, I made the mistake of going in one of those churches like we saw today. I wanted to see what it was like inside.”

  “What happened?”

  “The preacher drove me out. Told me to go to a workingman’s church.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. For a few times.”

  “And?”

  He let out his breath. “I don’t know. I had lots of questions about God. I tried to ask the preacher, and he got angry with me.”

  “What kinds of questions?”

  “Is God really there? If he is, how come things are so different for people? How come some people get to live in castles or big mansions while others live in a place like this? How come, when we’re already so poor, God takes Mama and Papa and the rest of our family away from us?”

  “I’ve wondered that too,” Peter said. His voice sounded both frightened for having such thoughts and relieved that he was not alone in them.

  “Know what I decided?”

  “What?”

  “If there is a hell and you and me end up there, it can’t be much worse than old Mr. Morris’s textile factory.”

  “At least it would be warm.”

  Derek laughed aloud. Every now and then, Peter’s humor surprised him.

  “Yeah. That can’t be all bad, then, can it?”

  They lay there together for several moments, each focusing on his own thoughts. Then Peter spoke again. “Derek?”

  “What?”

  “Do you believe there is a God?”

  He let the question hang for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Me too, Derek.”

  “But . . .” He hesitated a moment, debating whether to share thoughts that to this point he had never talked about with another living soul.

  “But what, Derek?”

  “If there is a God, I don’t think he cares too much about people like us. We’re too poor, Peter. There’s too many of us. I think he’s too busy running the world and the universe to spend much time worryin’ about two nobody people like us.”

  “O
h.” It was a word laden with disappointment.

  Derek pulled Peter’s thin, cold body closer to him. Now there was almost a fierceness to his voice. “That’s why we got to help each other. That’s why you’ve got to teach me to read, Peter. We’re on our own, and we’ve got to help each other get along.”

  * * *

  “Do you know what this is all about, Benjamin?”

  He shook his head as he pulled on his coat. “When the boy came last night, all he said was that Joseph had called an urgent meeting of those involved with the new bank for eight o’clock this morning.”

  Mary Ann reached up to the coatrack and got his scarf. “Melissa said she thought she saw Oliver Cowdery yesterday.”

  He turned around in surprise. “Really? Where?”

  “She was walking down past the temple after worship services. He was nearly a block away, so she wasn’t positive it was him. But she thought so.”

  “Hmm. That could be it. If Oliver’s back from Philadelphia, that means he’s got the printing plates.”

  “But has Elder Hyde returned from Columbus yet?”

  Benjamin shook his head. “I don’t think so, and that could be a bad sign.”

  “Surely the legislature will grant us a charter.”

  Benjamin took the scarf and wrapped it around his neck. He withdrew some gloves from the pockets in his coat and began to put them on. “If I was sure of that, I’d feel a lot better. Right now the hard-money Democrats pretty well control the state legislature, and I hear they’re turning down applications for bank charters at every hand.”

  “What will Joseph do if they don’t grant it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been the number one thing on his mind since Nathan and I returned home. I know he has high hopes for the bank.” He leaned over and kissed her. “I don’t know how soon I’ll be home.”

  “Good-bye. I’ll be anxious to hear.”

  * * *

  When Benjamin arrived in the upper assembly room of the temple, the meeting had not begun. He was surprised and pleased to see that not only Oliver Cowdery but also Orson Hyde had returned, and both were now huddled in conference with Joseph and Sidney. Benjamin shook hands with several of the brethren, then turned toward one corner. Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards were standing around the stove, rubbing their hands together.