The old man looked up from his Bible as his son entered.
“It’s sore sad, laddie, we can’t have the temple for your sealing-vows.”
“Prudence will not be sealed to me, father.” He spoke dazedly, as if another like the morning’s blow had been dealt him. “I—I am already sealed to the Spirit for time and eternity.”
“Was it Prudence’s doings?” asked his mother, quickly.
“Yes; she has left the church with her people.”
The long-faced, narrow-browed old man raised one hand solemnly.
“Then let her be banished from Israel and not numbered in the books of the offspring of Abraham! And let her be delivered over to the buffetings of Satan in the flesh!”
Chapter V.
Giles Rae Beautifies His Inheritance
By eight o’clock the next morning, out under a cloudy sky, the Raes were ready and eager for their start to the new Jerusalem. Even the sick woman’s face wore a kind of soft and faded radiance in the excitement of going. On her mattress, she had been tenderly installed in one of the two covered wagons that carried their household goods. The wagon in which she lay was to be taken across the river by Seth Wright,—for the moment no Wild Ram of the Mountains, but a soft-cooing dove of peace. Permission had been granted him by Brockman to recross the river on some needful errands; and, having once proved the extreme sensitiveness, not to say irritability, of those in temporary command, he was now resolved to give as little éclat as possible to certain superior aspects of his own sanctity. He spoke low and deferentially, and his mien was that of a modest, retiring man who secretly thought ill of himself.
He mounted the wagon in which the sick woman lay, sat well back under the bowed cover, clucked low to the horses, and drove off toward the ferry. If discreet behaviour on his part could ensure it there would be no conflict provoked with superior numbers; with numbers, moreover, composed of violent-tempered and unprincipled persecutors who were already acting with but the merest shadow of legal authority.
On the seat of the second wagon, whip in hand, was perched Giles Rae, his coat buttoned warmly to the chin. He was slight and feeble to the eye, yet he had been fired to new life by the certainty that now they were to leave the territory of the persecuting Gentiles for a land to be the Saints’ very own. His son stood at the wheel, giving him final directions. At the gate was Prudence Corson, gowned for travel, reticule in hand, her prettiness shadowed, under the scoop of her bonnet, the toe of one trim little boot meditatively rolling a pebble over the ground.
“Drive slowly, Daddy. Likely I shall overtake you before you reach the ferry. I want but a word yet with Prudence; though”—he glanced over at the bowed head of the girl—“no matter if I linger a little, since Brother Seth will cross first and we must wait until the boat comes back. Some of our people will be at the ferry to look after you,—and be careful to have no words with any of the mob—no matter what insult they may offer. You’re feeling strong, aren’t you?”
“Ay, laddie, that I am! Strong as an ox! The very thought of being free out of this Babylon has exalted me in spirit and body. Think of it, boy! Soon we shall be even beyond the limits of the United States—in a foreign land out there to the west, where these bloodthirsty ones can no longer reach us. Thank God they’re like all snakes—they can’t jump beyond their own length!”
He leaned out of the wagon to shake a bloodless, trembling fist toward the temple where the soldiers had made their barracks.
“Now let great and grievous judgments, desolations, by famine, sword, and pestilence come upon you, generation of vipers!”
He cracked the whip, the horses took their load at his cheery call, and as the wagon rolled away they heard him singing:—
“Lo, the Gentile chain is broken!
Freedom’s banner waves on high!”
They watched him until the wagon swung around into the street that fell away to the ferry. Then they faced each other, and he stepped to her side as she leaned lightly on the gate.
“Prue, dear,” he said, softly, “it’s going hard with me. God must indeed have a great work reserved for me to try me with such a sacrifice—so much pain where I could least endure it. I prayed all the night to be kept firm, for there are two ways open—one right and one wrong; but I cannot sell my soul so early. That’s why I wanted to say the last good-bye out here. I was afraid to say it in there—I am so weak for you, Prue—I ache so for you in all this trouble—why, if I could feel your hands in my hair, I’d laugh at it all—I’m so weak for you, dearest.”
She tossed her yellow head ever so slightly, and turned the scoop of her bonnet a little away from his pain-lighted face.
“I am not complimented, though—you care more for your religion than for me.”
He looked at her hungrily.
“No, you are wrong there—I don’t separate you at all—I couldn’t—you and my religion are one—but, if I must, I can love you in spirit as I worship my God in spirit—”
“If it will satisfy you, very well!”
“My reward will come—I shall do a great work, I shall have a Witness from the sky. Who am I that I should have thought to win a crown without taking up a cross?”
“I am sorry for you.”
“Oh, Prue, there must be a way to save the souls of such as you, even in their blindness. Would God make a flower like you, only to let it be lost? There must be a way. I shall pray until I force it from the secret heavens.”
“My soul will be very well, sir!” she retorted, with a distinct trace of asperity. “I am not a heathen, I’d thank you to remember—and when I’m a wife I shall be my husband’s only wife—”
He winced in acutest pain.
“You have no right to taunt me so. Else you can’t know what you have meant to me. Oh, you were all the world, child—you, of your own dear self—you would have been all the wives in the world to me—there are many, many of you, and all in a heavenly one—”
“Oh, forgive me, dearest,” she cried, and put out a little gloved hand to comfort him. “I know, I know—all the sweetness and goodness of your love, believe me. See, I have kept always by me the little Bible you gave me on my birthday—I have treasured it, and I know it has made me a better girl, because it makes me always think of your goodness—but I couldn’t have gone there, Joel—and it does seem as if you need not have gone—and that marrying is so odious—”
“You shall see how little you had to fear of that doctrine which God has seen fit to reveal to these good men. I tell you now, Prue, I shall wed no woman but you. Nor am I giving you up. Don’t think it. I am doing my duty and trusting God to bring you to me. I know He will do it—I tell you there is the spirit of some strange, awful strength in me, which tells me to ask what I will and it shall be given—to seek to do anything, how great or hard soever, and a giant’s, a god’s
