The Mormon Prophet | Page 5

own
name, and curiosity began to subside into awe. After this the preacher
brought forward the case of Joseph Smith.
Before the prayer ended Susannah was troubled by so strong a sense of
emotion that she desired nothing so much as relief. It seemed to her that
the emotion was not so much in herself as in the others, or like an
influence in the room pressing upon them all. At length a kitten that
had been lying by the hearth got up as if disturbed by the same
influence, and, walking round the room, rubbed its fur against
Ephraim's knee. She saw the start run through his whole nervous frame.
Opening his eyes, he put down his hand and stroked it. Susannah liked
Ephraim the better for this. The kitten was not to be comforted; it
looked up in his face and gave a piteous mew. Susannah tittered; then
she felt sorry and ashamed.


CHAPTER II.
Two quiet years passed, and Susannah had attained her eighteenth
birthday.
On a certain day in the week there befell what the aunt called a
"season" of baking. It was the only occasion in the week when Mrs.
Croom was sure to stay for some length of time in the same place with
Susannah beside her. Ephraim brought down his books to the
hospitable kitchen, and sat aloof at a corner table. He said the sun was
too strong upon his upper windows, or that the rain was blowing in.

The first time that Ephraim sought refuge in the kitchen Mrs. Croom
was quite flustered with delight. She always coveted more of her son's
society. But when he came a third time she began to suspect trouble.
Mrs. Croom stood by the baking-board, her slender hands immersed in
a heap of pearly flour; baskets of scarlet currants lay at her feet. All
things in the kitchen shone by reason of her diligence, and the windows
were open to the summer sunshine. Susannah sat with a large pan of
red gooseberries beside her; she was picking them over one by one.
Somewhere in the outer kitchen the hired boy had been plucking a
goose, and some tiny fragments of the down were floating in the air.
One of them rode upon a movement of the summer air and danced
before Susannah's eyes. She put her pretty red lips beneath it and blew
it upwards.
Mrs. Croom's suspicions concerning Ephraim had produced in her a
desire to reprove some one, but she refrained as yet.
Susannah having wafted the summer snowflake aloft, still sat, her
young face tilted upward like the faces of saints in the holy pictures,
her bright eyes fixed upon the feather now descending. Ephraim looked
with obvious pleasure. Her head was framed for him by the window; a
dark stiff evergreen and the summer sky gave a Raphaelite setting.
The feather dropped till it all but touched the tip of the girl's nose. Then
from the lips, puckered and rosy, came a small gust; the fragment of
down ascended, but this time aslant.
"You didn't blow straight enough up," said Ephraim.
Susannah smiled to know that her pastime was observed. The smile
was a flash of pleasure that went through her being. She ducked her
laughing face farther forward to be under the feather.
Mrs. Croom shot one glance at Ephraim, eager and happy in his
watching. She did what nothing but the lovelight in her son's face could
have caused her to do. She struck the girl lightly but testily on the side
of the face.

Ephraim was as foolish as are most men in sight of a damsel in distress.
He made no impartial inquiry into the real cause of trouble; he did not
seek Justice in her place of hiding. He stepped to his mother's side,
stern and determined, remembering only that she was often unwise, and
that he could control her.
"You ought not to have done that. You must never do it again."
With the print of floury fingers on her glowing cheeks the girl sat more
astonished than angry, full of ruth when her aunt began to sob aloud.
The mother knew that she was no longer the first woman in her son's
love.
It was without doubt, Mrs. Croom's first bitter pang of jealousy that lay
at the beginning of those causes which drove Susannah out upon a
strange pilgrimage. But above and beyond her personal jealousy was a
consideration certainly dearer to a woman into whose inmost religious
life was woven the fibre of the partisan. As she expressed it to herself,
she agonised before the Lord in a new fear lest her unconverted son
should be established in his unbelief by love for a woman who had
never sought for heavenly grace;