The Mormon Prophet | Page 7

look at her.
"Are you Lucy Smith?"
The woman clapped her hands suddenly together and laughed aloud. Then she rose, but, only glancing a moment at the visitor, she turned her smiling face again toward the sky.
Into Susannah's still defiant mood darted the thought of a new adventure. "Will you tell my fortune?"
"Who am I to tell fortunes when my son Joseph has come home?" Again came the excited laugh. "It's the grace of God that's fallen on this house, and Lucy Smith, like Elizabeth, the wife of Zacharias, is the mother of a prophet."
"He isn't a prophet," said Susannah, taking a step backward.
"Seven years ago was his first vision, and all the people trampling upon him since to make him gainsay it, but he stood steadfast. I dreamed it--when he was a little child I dreamed it, and it has come true." Then, seeming to return into herself, her gaze wandered again to the sky, and she murmured, "The mother of a prophet, the mother of a prophet!"
On the other side of the road a few acres of ground were lying under disorderly cultivation. In one patch the stalks of sweet maize had been fastened together in high stooks, disclosing the pumpkin vines, which beneath them had plentifully borne their huge fruit, green as yet. At the back of this cultivated portion an old man, the elder Joseph Smith, was digging potatoes; his torn shirt fluttered like the dress of a scarecrow. Behind him and all around was the green wood, close-growing bushes hedging in the short trees of a second growth which covered a long low hill. Above the hill ominous clouds like smoking censers were being rolled up from the east; the waving beards of the corn stooks rustled and streamed in wind which was growing colder. Susannah's dress and bonnet were roughly blown, and the clothes on the line flapped again around the tall figure of the witch in the doorway.
Susannah contradicted again with the scornful superiority of youth. "I don't believe that your son is a prophet."
Lucy Smith, having the sensitive receptive power of an hysteric, was sobered now by the determination of Susannah's aspect. She looked almost repentant for a moment, and then said humbly, "If you'll come in and see Emmar--Joseph and Emmar have come home--Emmar will tell you the same."
A gray vaporous tint was being spread over the heavens, folding this portion of earth in its shadow and darkening the interior of the cabin which Susannah entered.
Upon a decent bedstead reclined a young woman. Everything near her was orderly and clean. She belonged, it would seem, to a better class of the social order than the other, certainly to a higher type of womanhood.
"What have you got? Is it a kitten?" asked Susannah. Advancing across the dark uneven floor, she perceived that the reclining woman was caressing some small creature beneath her shawl.
"Emmar, Emmar," said Lucy Smith, "tell Miss from the mill about the angel that appeared to Joseph."
Emma Smith was a nobly made, dignified young creature. She looked at Susannah's beautiful and open countenance, and straightway drew forth the young thing she was nursing for her inspection. It was an infant but a few days old. Surprised, reverent, and delighted, Susannah bent over it. The child made them all akin--the squalid old hysteric, the respectable young mother, the beautiful girl in her silken shawl.
Some minutes elapsed.
"Emmar, Miss here doesn't know nothing about Joseph. She says it ain't true."
The young mother smiled frankly. "I suppose it seems very hard for you to believe," she said, "but it's quite true, and the Lord told Joseph where to find the new part of the Bible that he's going now to make known to the world. Shall I tell you about it?"
Susannah looked at her dazed; she had heretofore heard of the Smiths' doctrines as of the ravings of the mad. It had not occurred to her that a sane mind could regard them seriously.
"It was seven years ago," said Emma, "at the time the big revival was here and Joseph was converted; but he heard all the Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians disputing together as to which of them was right, and he felt so burdened to know which was right, and he felt a sort of longing in him to be a great man, bigger than the revival preacher that had been here that all the people ran after, and Joseph felt that he could be bigger than that, and preach and tell all the people what was right, if they would all come to hear him. And he was so burdened that one day he went out into the woods, and he began crying and confessing his sins and calling out to God to show him what was right and make him a great