The revelation in the mountain

Contents

I — The Revelation in the Mountain y

II — The Day of His Judgment 17

IV — The Garment of Salvation 38

II The Revelation In The Mountain

turned white when I said that. 'Don't, Anne,' he fairly begged ; 'don't talk so, an' I'll do anything in the world for you/

" Then/ says I, seeing my advantage, 'promise that you'll never take another wife, not while I live. The children I'm willin' to bear — for you an' the glory of Zion, but I'll let no other woman bear them for you.' I guess I was gettin' some fevered, for I see Sister Sary, who was waitin' on me, motion to him, an' he says, quick like, 'No, Anne, there never will/

"I rested on his word, an' every time my children came I prayed there would be two of them, at once. When we had been married six years we had five children, two pair of twin boys an' my little Maidie. Maidie was about six months old when Sister Julia come over one mornin' an' says, seemed kind of spiteful like, 'Brother Jonas has a new wife ; I seen them down street. You'll have to get at an' freshen up the east rooms for her. He'll fetch her home to-night/

"I had my Maidie in my lap. I was knittin' a sock for Jonas, an' she kept grabbin' at the needles, an' cooin'. I could hear her coo right through Sister Julia's words. It seemed as though she had been talkin' an' lookin' at me hours, an' that she had said everything.

"I picked the baby up in my arms (she seemed like she was so heavy, all at once, that I could scarcely lift her) an' made my way to the door. I called to Sister S'lomy's Beda, who was standin' in their door; I had to call three or four times before she heard, my lips was so hard an' stiff.

"Sister Julia looked at me, an' says : 'You must have a sore throat, Anne/

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"'Why?' I said.

" 'Because your voice sounds so queer/ she made answer.

"I said no word to her, but spoke to little Beda, who had just come in. 'Beda,' says I, 'I'll give you two pieces of ginger cake if you stay an' mind Maidie for me/ Sister S'lomy's was powerful poor them days, an' the children wasn't used to sweetened dough, so she promised joyful. I gave her Maidie, an', not stoppin' to say a single word to Sister Julia, or to put anything on my head, I ran out, an' fast as I could run, I rushed on out to the river , on up the canon where, when Artie an' me had talked that day, I had sensed the vision of them men an' women. I didn't know why I went, but something made me. I ran, an' cried out wild things as I went. The sharp rocks an' briers caught at my hands an' dress, but I felt no hurt. I was wild, but sure, sure that I would see something. I didn't know what, but something that would take that awful feelin' out of my heart.

"I went on, rushin' up an' up. It almost seemed as if I was gettin' closer to God. When I got to the top, clear up where the snow never melts, where I could make Him hear, I would ask Him what He meant. I wouldn't have felt no fear — not of the whole host of heaven — not then.

"I never got to the top, though; I fell down just when I got to the snow-line. I tried to get up, but I couldn't. My heart seemed, all at once, to just close up my breath. I couldn't so much as lift my hand.

"I looked up, into the sparklin', dazzlin' brightness of the mountain-top, an' I saw them again ! The same

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procession — a man an' a woman, a man an' a woman ! They seemed, somehow, to be dressed in the light — I'd admire to make it clear to you if I could — I could see the sun, an' the blue shadows back of them, but I sensed them plain.

"An' — an' then I heard a voice, deep an' soothin' ; it was sayin' part of the last Sunday's readin', 'Lo, I am with ye alway, even unto the end.' I began to breathe, soft an' easy, just as my Maidie did when she dropped, smilin', to sleep; an' it seemed that a wind, soft an' sweet as her breath, came gently down the canon, an' that voice, sweet as the cooin' of doves, spoke in it, so low I could scarce hear it, but I knew who it was, an' got my comfort. I went to sleep.

"When I woke it was dark ; no moon or stars, but pitchy black. I couldn't find my way, so bided 'til sunup. It wasn't long until I see her comin', like a lovely lady, I thought, throwin' off the night covers. I stayed to watch her dress (I was full of fancies, an' happy). First she put on soft, pinky petticoats, but they didn't suit her, so she threw them away — up in the sky — an' kept puttin' on others, brighter an' brighter, until she got a flamin' red, an' then she put on a dress of gold, that made me glad, some way, as if she had put it on for me.

"Then I went home.

"When I got back to my house I crept up soft an' looked in the east window. She was there. She was just a young thing, nothing but a child. She was asleep, but I could see that she had been crying ; there was a pinched look about her mouth an' red spots, like fever marks, on her cheeks. I knew she didn't love Jonas, an' a feelin' almost tender come over me for her.

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I thought of my Maidie, an' I says, soft an' low, 'My poor girl !'

"Then I walked around an' opened the door.

"Jonas looked up, his face like snow. 'Anne,' says he, chokin', 'Anne?'

" 'Yes, it's Anne,' I said, smilin'.

" 'Where ?' says he, 'where in God's name have you been?'

" 'Up in the mountains, where all prophets go,' I says. 'I've had a revelation.'

"Jonas looked at me, his face whiter than ever. 'You look,' he said, 'as though you'd been to heaven.'

" 'I ain't,' I says, 'but I think I have almost seen its door.'

"I sat down by him an' held his hand ; it shook just like old Bishop Farnley's, who had palsy. I told him all I'd seen an' heard. 'For them that don't sense sin,' I said, 'maybe it ain't sin, but for us, I've sensed it, an' if we go higher, we must go just us alone. I've seen, an' the path is only wide enough for two.' "

The voice of old Anne trembled away into silence.

The Gentile lady looked at her forgotten embroidery with eyes that saw the familiar pattern as from a long distance. She tried to match the green of a leaf, which blurred and widened grotesquely in the mist through which she looked. She could not speak, and, for the moment, dared not look at old Anne, but she felt, from an inner sense, a reflection of the light on the old woman's face, with her remembering eyes turned to the silent majesty of the abiding hills.

The story needed but a sentence to complete it. It was added presently, after the knitting had been resumed, with a patient sigh, as from one who has seen

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the heights and descended again to the valley of life. "I said to Jonas, 'Jonas/ said I, 'that little girl in there will be our daughter. You mind?' An' Jonas said, speakin' slow an* solemn as if it was meetin', 'She won't ever be anything else.' "

II.

THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT.

The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings ; they have made them crooked paths ; whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. — Isaiah lix. 8.

In a tumble-down, decaying house, which looks down on the river Jordan, winding like a soiled gray ribbon at the bottom of the hills, and up to where their whitetrimmed tops embroider the sky, lived Grandma West, and Sister Millie, and Auntie May, and, for the present (because she had nowhere else to go), Sylvia Smith.

Sylvia was a newcomer in Zion. She had come with a party from Australia, converted to the faith by the eloquence of a well-favored young missionary. She had been imbibing the teachings and enjoying the companionship of the chosen for less than a year, when on this day, as on many a weary one preceding, she tossed feverishly on grandma's best bed and prayed monotonously and hopelessly for death.

Somewhere, before the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants had become her entire literary diet, and she had learned how sufficient for all mental and spiritual needs were these inspired volumes, Sylvia had read that with honor all was lost, and odd as it seemed, her honor seemed to be regarded as lost, although she had only poured the red of the stain of shame over the white of her virgin soul in response to

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a revelation from God Himself to one of His favored followers, a man who had stood at the helm of the saintly craft of Mormonism for so long that his hair was snow-white in the service, at the time the Lord had given him the vision of Sylvia Smith. He had hastened to the factory where his influence had obtained for her a position at six dollars a week (less, of course, the tithing, which the faithful collected from her employers, to save her the trouble of counting it out). A great system, the tithing, and one which has ever the fascination of mystery as to what becomes of it.

Sylvia was excused from her work to speak to the bishop. She had listened with a fast beating heart to the fact that God had mirrored her face on the spiritual lens which He showed His servant, and that the revelation meant great glory for her in the day, now fast approaching, when the king was to appear to reward the righteous.

Now, sacrifice is a strange thing. As long, as it is in the abstract, how we glory in it ; but when it comes down to the concrete me, here, now, it is terrible ; most of us all would relinquish the almost certain light of a hard won heaven for the dark of a lost earth when we hear the roar of the lions and the rending of sacrificial limbs.

Poor Sylvia clung desperately to earth, no vision of a near enthronement in heaven could soothe her shame and self-loathing. She wished wickedly that she had never seen the bishop, never left Australia, let the one means of salvation pass, and stayed far away from

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Zion. Especially and more ardently did she wish these wicked things after the bishop, being as it were a very tool under the thumb of the spirit, got a call which took him on some missionary work in England, and she was thrown out of her position.

This is a strange world, and Sylvia soon found that no one else seemed to know anything about the bishop's revelation, and although she had only followed the expressed desire of the Almighty, not one door was open to her. Even in Zion, which, you know, is the antechamber of heaven itself, this is an awful position to be in. Why, not one of the holiest men seemed able to help her, times were very close with them all, and it was not until she found refuge with Grandma, who, if you will believe, was one of the bishop's first wives, did the poor girl find so much as a place to lay her head.

The whole affair might so easily have been hushed up (so many are) had Sylvia had the common decency to accuse some already lost Gentile, instead of insisting that it was the good old bishop who was responsible for her prospective halo of motherhood.

After much discussing of the knotty problem, it was decided to send for the bishop, insisting on his immediate return to Zion.

The bishop returned from the green vineyard of England questioning and indignant.

The good book says that children are a heritage of the Lord, and that man is blessed who has a quiver full. Now, the bishop had so many in his quiver that he was — must be — many times blessed on this account alone.

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In fact, so ardently had he fulfilled this desire of his Master — as expressed to his seer and revelator, Joseph Smith — that he had long lost count of the number, knowing that they were counted to his credit on the great record. So, to be called back from his labors for so trivial a matter as the one in hand, showed him that things had come to a pretty pass in Zion.

Insomuch as the girl had found refuge with three of his former wives, and that to see her he might have to face them, especially Grandma, added insult to the bishop's injury.

He had not seen Grandma for a score of years, and between the two was a trifling matter, still unadjusted, that whenever he was forced to think of it, caused a warm feeling around his collar, most uncomfortable.

But Sylvia, with the lack of consideration for his feelings which she had showed from the very first, had given birth to a child a day before he reached Zion from abroad, and so taking advantage of the way her sex is favored, since the invasion of the godless Gentiles, insisted that she could not go to the bishop and that the bishop must come to her. And there was nothing else for him to do.

Sister Millie and Auntie May both worked in the factory, for a mean pittance of wage and the reward of virtue. Grandma knit countless socks and mittens, this being almost the only remunerative work her rheumatic old hands were capable of doing.

While Grandma knit she thought, and while she thought she often cried. She did to-day, as she sat where she could get the light from the window and rock the little baby in the cradle. The cradle, a clumsy, home-made affair of wood, was the same that had held

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Grandma's brood of children, and Sister Millie's, and Auntie May's, and now this strange, white-faced girl's. The children were all the bishop's, and Grandma had rocked them all, just as she was rocking this, knitting, and sometimes crying, sometimes for the babies and sometimes for the mothers. One can knit and cry so easily.

Sylvia watched the tears rolling down the old woman's wrinkled cheeks with a growing wonder ; it seemed to her that she had all the trouble there was worth crying about, and she wondered that a woman as old as Grandma should care enough about anything to cry about it, that she continued to do so, patiently and helplessly, began to irritate the girl past endurance.

"You don't need to fret none about me," she said ungraciously. "I can stand what I have to without sympathy."

Grandma smiled, and wiped her cheek with the leg of the sock she was knitting. "We can all do that, honey," she said, stooping down and smoothing the covers over the sleeping baby, "we can all bear our own sorrow, but sometimes it seems we cain't another s.

"I hope you wasn't crying for me," a note of appeal thrilling through the bravado of her voice.

"No, not for you," Grandma said, "but for my husband."

The girl raised herself on one thin, sharp elbow. "For that lying old scoundrel ?" she cried.

That is just what she called the bishop, and it cannot be pleaded in extenuation that she was delirious — she

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knew what she said, and Grandma knew what she meant, for she answered quietly: "No, not for the bishop, but for my own husband."

"Your what ?" the girl asked, momentarily interested in other affairs than her own.

"My own husband,'' Grandma repeated musingly. "The man I loved and who loved me. We were married in Missouri, and came here to Salt Lake after we were converted to the faith."

"Did he die ?" the girl asked, as Grandma paused and counted in a half-whisper as she "turned" the heel of the sock.

"I thought he did," she answered, "although they tried to make me think he had deserted me, as though I'd believe that ! But he didn't come home one night to supper, and I could learn nothing for days. I was almost wild when bishop came to see me and said he had had a revelation from God that he was to take me to wife."

"Why, that's just what the old skunk told me," the girl cried excitedly.

Grandma laughed. Her laugh needed no comment.

"I was young, then, full young, and I thought if Ralph was gone I didn't care what became of me ; so, well, he fetched me here to live, with Sister Susie, his first wife, who God, in His mercy, called soon after. One day Elder Rooker's wife came in and she said that Ralph was in town, rampagin' around, looking for me. I jumped up, wild as a deer, yelling at her to know where he was. My heart was almost breaking with love for him, but she and Susie held me down, and she said : ' 'Taint no use to struggle against the church, Lida. My man told me that they had kept him out of

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the way till bishop got you, and if you go to acting up, why they will put him out of the way to stay put. What bishop wants, he gets.' "

The old lady's hands were trembling so that her knitting-needles kept up a little click as they hit against each other. The girl, forgetting her weakness, raised herself again on her elbow.

"The devils," she screamed, "I'd— I'd "

"No, you wouldn't," Grandma interrupted her. The baby cried, and she put her knitting down on the window-sill, and, stooping over, picked it up in her mothering old arms, soothing it with little mouthing coos. "You couldn't 'a' done more than I could," she went on. "I got down on my knees and begged the bishop, prayed him to let me go, but he said if I didn't submit to the will of God that they would take Ralph and — and cut off his ears, and — oh, pitying God ! I can't tell the horrible threats that he made, until I — why, I had to submit. I couldn't do anything else. My only comfort was that I was saving Ralph suffering, and that some day, maybe near, maybe far, that God would bring the light. My mother used to say that 'the Lord wouldn't let that goat's tail grow too long, or it would switch its own eyes out.' But it has been long, very long."

"What has?"

"The day of His judgment," she answered softly.

"Sometimes I have thought that those awful monsters that are described in Revelations, in the Bible, describes some of the men who used to run things in our church."

The baby began to cry again, and Grandma carried it out in the "lean-to," where a concoction, intended

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for its delectation, was brewing on the back of the stove. As she moved about the girl heard her singing in a sweet old quaver :

"Oh, that we in the day of His coming may say, I have fought my way through, I have finished The work Thou didst set me to do."

"Grandma, Grandma, come quick," called the girl excitedly. "The bishop is just turning in at the door."

The bishop carried his three-score years almost jauntily. He was upright, vigorous, and well dressed. His aura exuded a state of comfortable well being, despite the fact that, for the moment, he looked somewhat flustered. He was flanked on one side by a tall, spare man, who wore a gray beard for a shirt-front and used it for a cuspidor, and on the other by a nervous little man with a red mustache.

Grandma opened the door. The bishop hardly knew her, such a change had the last few years made in her. She looked a woman old in body and broken in spirit. The bishop's momentary scrutiny of her sad old face reassured him; he felt that, after all, he had little to fear from her. As for the girl on the bed — that might take a few greenbacks, but here experience gave him confidence. Of course, he owed it to the fair name of the church to induce her to shift the responsibility of paternity to some Gentile — that was always a success — and, as for squaring himself with the church, well, the bishop knew what he knew.

He found the girl stubborn past all belief. Each generation of women grew worse and harder to control.

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The bishop had really a bad half-hour. The presence of Grandma irritated him dreadfully, too, not that she said anything, but she was there, and, as he knew, it is much harder to control a woman if one of her own sex is present, and Grandma's presence was menacing. He actually sweated before she said a word, and after; well, he got so hot he almost suffocated ; but he had to listen.

The old lady spoke so quietly that any one in the next room would have thought that she was discussing the weather, but she wasn't; she had gone back a quarter of a century, and was reminding the bishop of certain matters that he had quite concluded to forget. It was bad enough to listen himself, but to see the expressions on the faces of the other listeners was maddening. He felt forced to interpose. "Come, come, Lida," he said, " a jealous woman's tongue is best silent. Supposing you do know some — er — mistakes I have made long ago, w^hat are you to pass judgment? A body would think you was Christ Himself."

"Christ's mother was a woman," Grandma answered quietly, "and I ain't figured out yet how God would 'a' sent a Savior to the world if there hadn't been a woman to bear Him. Women has rights, if your church did try to take them away. The reason I have for telling these things before Brother Smith and Brother Baldwin and this last victim of your low lies, is that I want witnesses on both sides : your side and mine."

The bishop's lips were white. "Witnesses ?" he whispered.

"Witnesses," Grandma repeated. "I been gathering

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evidence against you for a long time, and this last," she motioned toward the bed, "was all I needed. The prosecuting attorney has evidence enough against you to hang you or send you up for State's keep for the rest of your wicked life."

The bishop was plainly terrified. He looked around as if for a means of escape, and, seeing none, dropped on his shaking knees before the old woman and begged, with tears, for mercy. She shifted the baby from one shoulder to the other, and looked down on him calmly. "Do you mind the time I was on my knees to you?" she asked. He nodded miserably.

"Give me back my young husband, and my own life, and I'll let you go free."

He mumbled despairingly, again his shifting eye sought the doorway.

"You can't get out that way," the old lady said. "There are detectives watching every move you make. Get up off of your knees, you old coward." A sudden sharp change in her voice. "I ain't going to have you hung or your ears cut off or your eyes poked out — as you deserve ! I'll leave your eternal judgment to the Master. But you are never going to set foot in the meeting-house again; you are going to resign from all your business, and I am going to pay men with your money, to watch every move you make.

"You are going to provide for Millie, and May, and their children, and for this girl here, and you are going to acknowledge that you are the father of this child."

The bishop wrung his hands. "It will ruin me," he whined.

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"The church will excommunicate you — I'll see to that," went on the stern old voice. " 'Tain't that you mustn't commit adultery, but that you mustn't be found out at it. You've been found out."

The bishop sat down weakly and wiped his eyes. He looked piteously from one to the other. "Ain't you got any mercy?" he begged. "Ill make amends. I'll give half my money, only don't, for God's sake, disgrace me publicly."

"I'm doing what I be for God's sake," Grandma said inexorably, with a tightening of her shrunken lips. "The general public won't know much of this. I ain't no publicity expert, and as long as you walk the road I've set out for you, not so many outside of the church will know that you have got your come-up-ence at last. But don't forget for a minute that the law men are watching you. You can go now ; a man will call at your office for the money we want to start on."

The bishop leaned heavily on the arms of his counselors as he walked out of the rickety old gate. He knew he must do just as the old woman said ; he dare not do otherwise. He felt old, and broken, and friendless. The day of his judgment had come.

III. The Thread Of Scarlet

Religion had been Jane's watchword. One of her earliest recollections was a shuddering watchfulness of the sky, which, the elder said, was one day to "roll up like a scroll," disclosing — Jane would close her lightfringed lids over her big eyes, in sudden terror of what it might disclose, of mystery, and awfulness, and dread.

The wicked were to be burned as chaff; and the wicked were those who gave heed to other than spiritual matters. Wicked, indeed, was the child who looked covetously at the jar of striped peppermints on the shelf at the corner store, or who dreamed of a bow of blue ribbons tied to her scanty braid. A lack of spirituality alone could account for such licentiousness, and the only hope lay in added prayer and seeking after righteousness.

Jane never knew which she would rather believe, like her mother, that the wicked were to be burned as chaff ; or, like her father, that they were to stay forever and ever in a lake of fire. There were disadvantages in either. Then, too, she never knew which day was more to be dreaded, the day when she went to meeting with her mother and looked at all of the other mothers and daughters clad in soberest drab, with never a bow or a gleaming brooch ; or the day she went to town with her father, where she was sure to see, and be sorely

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tempted by, a fluttering streamer on some hat, a colored bow of ribbon on some braid, or distractingly pretty "edging" on some small petticoat or "panties," at which Jane would gaze with fascinated eye and almost decide on the lake of fire.

Her mother got weary of "watching," and it was not long after they had lain her down to wait, near the sacred Mount Olivet, that her father, too, went seeking light in the outer darkness, leaving Jane alone, with the Rocky Mountain farm and a little hoard of money ; also with portions of the Bible memorized so that she could say them backward.

Jane was twenty-five, and had been an old maid fifteen years, when she got a letter from her cousin, Sarah Bartlett, in New Orleans. This, in itself, was an event, but its contents were a dispensation. Sarah belonged to that portion of her father's family, who, according to her mother, had little wheat among them all, that in the last appraisement they would all go as chaff, pure and simple. Pushing a hand-cart across the desert, in search of the long-lost garden, had not made Jane's mother broad in her views ; but after her death, Jane's father had spoken of them with a yearning affection ; so, although Jane knew they were chaff, still, the kindly tone in the letter appealed to her, and brought a warm little glow to her heart that grew warmer each time she read it over. This was so often that she was ready for bed that night before she remembered that she had not even opened the Deseret News or read a word in the Book of Mormon. Thus had Sarah's influence begun.

Sarah had written inviting, almost insisting, on 29

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Jane paying her a visit. She could not leave, as she would like to do, to visit her cousin, Jane, on account of being tied down by her business. She kept a millinery and ladies' furnishing shop, she explained, and did a very comfortable business. Her parents had died and her brothers and sisters had moved away, and she was lonely for some of her own kin. A letter from their cousin, Melissy Fairview, had told her that Jane was unmarried and alone, so she wrote at once to ask her to come to New Orleans and stay as long as she could with her affectionate cousin, Sarah Bartlett. Jane went. Sarah was not better prepared for Jane than was Jane for Sarah. But Sarah had hopes and Jane fears, in the first hour of their meeting. Sarah had not been a woman's furnisher for upward of twenty years without having gained an optimistic knowledge of aids to nature, and her mind immediately leaped to certain shelves and boxes in her shop with reference to Jane. Jane had not had the sin of worldliness poured over and jammed down and heaped up in her consciousness for a quarter of a century, not to recognize in Sarah the very personification of sin ; in her voluminous draperies, her velvet hat, with its long plume, well-gloved hands, her lace-trimmed handkerchief, which, as she held it daintily to her carefully powdered nose, smelled plainly of "scent." Jane felt the same fascination for Sarah's fineness that she had years ago when she had looked with lustful eyes at the bows of pink ribbon on the braids of the worldly — felt and knew she must watch and pray, lest a love of carnal things grow up in her heart.