CHAPTER VIII.

After this Susannah’s attention was centred upon the coming of her first child.

“’Tain’t lucky to have a child when the leaves are falling,” said Elvira Halsey, a certain mist of far-off vision clouding her sparkling eyes.

Susannah had been greatly weighed down by depression, not fearing ill-luck, but regretting for the first time unfeignedly that she had ever joined herself to the sect in which her child must now be nurtured.  For herself, feeling often that all religions were equally false, it had mattered little; with strange inconsistency she now perceived that she would greatly prefer another faith for her child.  Susannah literally found no place for repentance; to confess her grief to Halsey would only have been to crush out all the domestic joy of his life; she was too courageous to do that when she saw no corresponding good to be gained.  Yet when the baby at length lay on her lap, grew and smiled, kicked and crowed, Susannah forgot at times, for hours together, the superstitions of the Latter-Day Saints.  The motherly solicitude which she had long exercised over Halsey changed into something more like friendship when she saw him hang over her and her child as they played together.

Susannah had given up her school.  The winter was severe, and mother and child hibernated together by the sweet-scented pinewood fires till the stronger sun had melted the frost flowers on the panes.  Spring had nearly come before Susannah divined that for the child’s sake Halsey had been protecting her for months from the fear of a near disaster that was weighing upon his own heart.

This was the year of what was called in the early Mormon Church “the great apostasy.”  One evening Halsey came in looking so white and ill that Susannah drew back the baby, which she had held out for his evening kiss.

In a few minutes she understood what had occurred.  Some four or five leaders in the Church, with their families and friends, had charged Smith with hypocrisy and fraud.

It was not Susannah’s own opinion that such a charge could be maintained.  Smith appeared to her to be like a child playing among awful forces—­clever enough often to control them, to the amazement of himself and others, but never comprehending the force he used; often naughty; on the whole a well-intentioned child.  But she could well see that childishness combined with power is a more difficult conception for the common mind than rank hypocrisy.

Angel had been assisting in a solemn excommunication of the apostates.  He looked upon them as having been overcome by the devil.

After this Halsey instituted a series of unusual meetings for prayer and revival preaching, which he held after the ordinary evening classes in the School of the Prophets, which was now removed to the upper chambers of the finished temple.  Now, as at other times, his preaching was successful.  His power was with men rather than with women; they gathered in excited crowds, and their prayer and praise went up in the midnight hour.