John Stevens' Courtship

The simple cortege made its way down the street. As the mourners entered the hall, no one wondered to see John Stevens assist the foster-mother of the girl as she leaned heavily on his arm. Aunt Clara's face was very pale, for her heart was well-nigh broken; and yet her eyes were lifted and clear while all who glanced at her saint-like, controled face, felt calmed and quieted. Diantha was among the chief mourners, but she was not as tearless and as calm as Aunt Clara; her convulsed face betrayed her mute agony.

The whole awful story had swept from mouth to mouth, and some of the men who sat watching the sad procession file in felt the hot blood of revenge pour from heart to temple, and there were few present who would not gladly have taken up the ghastly burden of swift revenge in behalf of the dead girl.

The coffin was placed upon the table just below the pulpit. Its plain, mountain wood was unrelieved by ornament or trimming. Within, the girl lay, peaceful and silent, her sweet face just touched by the creamy, heavy petals of the sego-lilies which her small hands clasped. Those lilies were like her own life, beautiful and white, yet at the heart just purpled with the shadows.

President Young lastly passed in, and the congregation waited with anxious longing to hear his words upon this unhappy occasion. After a brief hymn, the President arose, and with slow, impressive sentences he pictured the sheltered life of such girls as the one before him. He touched upon the affectionate nature of woman, and told the Elders of Israel that to them in part was due the blame of such awful scenes as this. There was enough of love, plenty of safe, sheltered retreats for all good women in the hearts and homes of the men of Zion. Women should have as ample opportunity to select their partners as men, and if they showed a preference for a good man, why should he not consider her right to claim his affection, as carefully as he would expect her to consider a like claim from him? He spoke in strong, powerful terms of the wickedness of men who cared nothing for the virtue of womankind, and who respected nothing on earth or in heaven.

His words stirred the already excited hearts to a fiery pitch of indignation. As if he saw the unnecessary anger, he said in quiet tones: "It may prove useless to try to keep our girls and boys from running after sin, for if they have not the integrity to stand, they will fall. Now, this young girl has had good teachings, good examples, and she has been surrounded by love and kindness; she has not been neglected. In her weakness she loved too well the admiration of men, and she has herself sought and found her sin and its punishment. We must stand or fall for ourselves, and while we are responsible in a measure for the words we speak and the example we set, yet each must answer for himself or herself at the bar of Justice."

At his words, so solemnly spoken, Diantha felt her very heart stand still.

"Will this fair daughter of Zion never receive salvation?" asked the speaker. "Yes, she certainly will. She will learn her lesson. She will repent of her sin; and after suffering the necessary punishment will be reunited with her parents and friends, and with them share the blessings and privileges of the priesthood. She has already partly paid the penalty of her sin with her life. She will be saved eventually in the Kingdom of Heaven. I do not want the family to grieve too much, for this poor child is far better off than she could possibly be upon earth now; and her last words were words of repentance and affection. Some of these spirits, though weak in the flesh, are very choice and lovely. We love them and mourn deeply if they fall into error or are snatched away by death.

"If this be a grievous sin for a tender and delicate girl, what must be said of men who lead women to destruction? I would say that no pit is deep enough for them. I do not wish to excite any undue rage towards the vile wretch and his paramour whose work this is; for God will avenge the innocent on their enemies. But to you Elders of Israel, I say, beware how you treat the fair daughters of Zion! Man should protect and preserve innocent, pure womanhood. No woman can sin as deeply as a man, for she does not bear the same responsibility. If men expect to stand at the head of their families, let them see to it that they are without sin of speech or action. That which is a sin in a woman, becomes a crime in a man. Teach your sons to protect their virtue as they would their lives, and then there need be no fear of their assailing any woman. God loves these weak ones as well as we do, and He will overrule all things for the best to such as are sinned against and are thereby brought down into sin. Only let the parents so conduct themselves that their children will receive the benefit of their lives of purity and holiness, and all their tears of grief will be turned into joy in the hereafter."

Diantha felt the whole weight of this terrible lesson pressing upon her own sad heart, and it nearly crushed her with a double burden of grief. She wondered how she could ever for one moment have looked lightly upon her past actions and words, wherein she had said and thought it no wrong to turn away from the Gospel and marry out of the Church. She asked herself bitterly whether a part of Ellen's guilt did not lie at her own door, for had she not given some measure of idle encouragement to this same soldier, and had she not said many foolish things and thought many vain, silly thoughts? She felt how inadequate were the theories of the world regarding love and its proper place in our lives, and she saw how foolish ideals and romantic poems and plays had rendered her conception of love fevered and unreal. She saw, while sitting near the dead body of her friend with its pitiful lesson, that love – that is, the romantic, unreasoning passion which is so often called love – is nothing but a base counterfeit. She felt that if love ruled the world, it must be the love of God and that love which is founded on respect and built in unselfishness. She could see that abase, vile passion which has for its only object the gratification of bodily desire, was a thing to fear and shun.

Diantha had filled the cold, lifeless hands of her dear friend with the sego-lilies, wreathing them about the neck, thus to hide the story told by the bandaged throat; but she saw how useless in eternity would be the least attempt to hide away the sins and shame of mankind.

"Oh, that I could tear away the lilies, and show to every girl in Zion the awful consequences of disobedience and vanity," she thought, as the strong, vivid words of President Young showed her the darkness of the abyss into which her own eyes had for one moment looked with fascinated gaze.

"Oh, that I could set this poor, desecrated body before every young woman in Israel, and let it preach its own heartrending sermon! And I, too, am I not saved as by fire? Oh, my gracious Father, forgive me and let a lifetime of repentance and faithfulness prove to Thee how humble and how dependent I am!" So prayed Diantha, as the benediction was being pronounced by the Bishop in charge. While the pale sego-lilies, with their purple stains, drooped and died on the breast of the dead girl!

XXXIX

THE WOOING O'T

Three years is but a fleeting season to the mature, and is as a day to the aged; but to youth three years stretch out with apparent never-ending length. Three years of rapid history had been written in Utah since that vivid day in the tops of the mountains when A. O. Smoot, Porter Rockwell and Judson Stoddard had brought to the happy camp the terrible news of the coming of Johnston's army. Three years! Camp Floyd with its surging life, its frequent deaths, and its story of blunder and pathos had passed into history. The site where it once stood now lay desolate and burning beneath the hot summer sun. Weeds covered the rude foundations of the adobe and tented homes, and only the lonely prairie dog frequented the once busy streets. The soldiers had departed to the East, secession having already begun to rear its horrid shape, and only for the rich stores of a hundred rare comforts which they had sold in their hurried departure for less than a song, would anyone remember their unhappy visit.

Two years of peace and plenty had built up the village of the Great Salt Lake into a modest inland city. The trees along the sidewalks were heavy now with July verdure. The busy hum of industry throbbed in even beats along the city's arteries. The blacksmith whistled at his forge. The well-bucket creaked merrily in its frequent passage to the cool waters beneath, and the children sang as they went to and fro to school, or lingered in the shade of the cottonwood trees. It was the evening before the Fourth of July, 1860, and the hands of maid and matron were busy in swift preparation for such a celebration of local peace and prosperity as had not been theirs for years.

"Have you noticed what a change there is in Dian, the last year?" said Rachel Winthrop to Aunt Clara, as the two stood ironing in Aunt Clara's cosy kitchen.

"How changed?" asked Aunt Clara.

"Oh, she's so much softer and sweeter to everybody, and she is really making herself the friend of every poor girl in the ward. Why, I told her brother the other day that Diantha looked like another girl; she is so changed. She wants to do so much for me, and she is so good to the children, and you know that is unlike what she used to be. She was not unkind, only indifferent. She didn't show me much friendship, even if I was her sister-in-law, for I think she thought herself a little better and smarter than I. But she is mighty good to me now, and I love her a thousand times better for it, although I always loved her and was proud of her."

"I don't find Diantha is changed," answered Aunt Clara's gentle voice. "Don't you think that it is only that some of her latent powers and gifts are beginning to be developed? And then she has always been a reserved young lady, and while never uncivil or haughty, she is undemonstrative, and as young people are, concerned only with life as it affected her."

"Ah, Aunt Clara, you are always thinking the best of everybody. You never can see any fault in any one."

"Maybe I see the fault, but I see so much of the virtue mixed up with it that it quite obscures the small defect. I often think the latent possibilities, if once they are waked up in any soul, will lead us to eternal perfection. It is only that some natures are never awakened; but they go on and on, asleep in their inner souls, and only the body is awake and alive."

"Well, I have proved that God will help even the weakest of us to improve and get strong, if we will continually seek Him for help and light. Of course, any one as strong as Diantha will naturally be mighty good or pretty mean."

"Well, to me Diantha has always been one of the sweetest, strongest, and purest of girls. She is somewhat impulsive, but she has such admirable control of herself, people call it common-sense, that she rarely does anything silly or even unwise. And whoever saw her mean or small? She has had and still has faults, but they are like her own self, never small or spiteful. She loves deeply when she does love. Out of the fires of affliction, poor, proud motherless Diantha is rising to a higher, purer and more consecrated life. The death of Ellen has taught her to conform her life more to the standards of Christ and less to the promptings of a self-centered heart. She will make a grand woman, and a noble wife and mother."

"I don't know about the wife and mother. She is twenty-four now, and she has refused at least a dozen good, true men. I think she is going to be an old maid."

"Not she! She is waiting for a man as great, as noble and as pure-minded as herself. A great many men, as well as a great many women, are virtuous in action because they fear society or God's punishment. But Dian is pure in every thought and every act. Nothing low or vile could so much as reach her outer personality. She is well-educated and as intelligent as a girl of her age could well be. Why should she not demand that same exalted standard in her husband?"

"Oh, well, I guess she will go through the woods and pick up with a crooked stick at last, as mother used to tell us girls. Lots of our finest girls marry men who, while good enough, are inferior to themselves. I often wonder what they do it for?"

"God has some life lesson for them to learn. The Bishop says that's the way Nature evens up things. What you say is true oftentimes, but I am not going to have it so of our Dian. The voice of the Spirit has manifested to me many times that she will have a man as great and as gifted as herself."

"Say, talking of Dian's beaus, they say John Stevens will be home sometime this week from his mission to Europe. He has been away ever since Ellen's death. I thought at one time he liked our Dian, but I guess it was Ellen. He has taken her death very much to heart."

"John can love more than once, if he finds the right kind of a woman. He has a soul as big as all eternity. But he grieves as deeply as he loves."

Aunt Clara was not surprised, therefore, several evenings after this conversation, to see John Stevens step under her doorway; his tall head reaching nearly to her doorpost.

"I knew you would come to see me first thing, John, and I am glad you did. It does me so much good to see you." And she greeted him warmly.

John sat down, his eyes somewhat weary with long nights of wakefulness, for he was captain of the company of emigrants, and his limbs were worn with much travel across the seas and plains.

"I knew you would have some fried cakes and milk for me when I did come, Aunt Clara. I wonder if I came for fried cakes?" and he laughed in his low, soft undertone, as he held up one of the nutty brown, crisp cakes to admire its homely charm before he tested it further.

"You have come, John, to tell me all about your mission, and I want you to tell me something more. Rachel Winthrop was in here this afternoon, and we got to talking about our poor Ellen. She made a remark about your grieving over Ellen, and it struck me, too, that you have been grieving these two long years. I don't want you to do that, for Ellie is all right now, she has paid the penalty with her life. Now, John, that you are home, you must find some good girl, and marry and settle down. You must be nearing thirty, and it is very unusual for our young men to live so long single."

John had pushed away his plate, and left all its homely charm, for Aunt Clara's words had choked him with crowding memories. He sat still for some time, with his head in his hands. Aunt Clara watched him as she rocked back and forth, and wondered if she had for once been at fault. After a time, however, he raised his head and said, with an effort at lightness:

"I am not much of a fellow, Aunt Clara. Sometimes I do feel a bit lonely, and although I have enjoyed my mission, the thought of my homecoming has been a lonely one, except for you, Aunt Clara."

"Well, of course you are lonesome, John, and that's why I want you, now that you are home from your mission, to get married, and have some comfort in life."

His head was drooped again, between his hands, and he said slowly:

"Aunt Clara, I have been a selfish one-idea fellow in my life. I deserve all your reproach and my own loneliness."

"Now, John, I want you to tell me just what you mean. You have something in your mind which needs airing. What is it?"

"I mean that from my earliest youth I have loved, with all the strength of my heart, a girl who never has and never will, I fear, care anything for me. For some years I felt that I could win her, through prayer and faith, and I hoped and was happy. But I did not succeed. I have tried to hide my feelings, though, and I don't think anyone has suspected me, unless it was the girl herself, occasionally."

"John, there is a belongingness in love as in life. We are not married by chance. I firmly believe that each has made covenant with his mate in the life before this. If that girl belongs to you, you will get her. If not, you don't want her. Who is it?"

"It is Dian."

He spoke with an effort, as if it were painful thus to speak her name.

"Oh!" Aunt Clara was not much surprised.

"What about Ellie?" she asked.

"I loved Ellen, but it was not as I love Dian. Maybe I have so set my heart all my life upon getting Dian that I did not give myself a chance to see other girls. Aunt Clara, forget that I have ever said what I am about to say; but I had a feeling that Ellen liked me. And I have felt all the remorse natural that I did not save her while I could."

"We can always see where we could do better, even in small things. But no one need destroy all hopes of eternity because love is not returned or because a loved one dies. This love plays such mischief, when it is not understood and governed!"

"Just so. I have failed to conquer my love, and it leaves me sore with defeat."

"Why should you conquer your love? Have you ever asked Dian to have you? Diantha is a noble girl; she is always so strong, so sweet, and so good."

"Don't I know it?" almost groaned John, as he pressed his hands across his eyes.

"Look here, John, I don't believe for one moment that God would let as prayerful a man as you waste years of your life upon a useless love. How do you know that Dian does not love you as well as you love her? Oh, mated love is such blissful, such divine joy!"

John shook his head, slowly.

"I don't want to think, John Stevens, that you are a coward. Go to that girl, and tell her what you feel, and trust God for the result. See here: You go into the front room, and I will bring Diantha over in two minutes. I will tell her you are in there, and if she wants to see you she will go in of her own accord. If she does not want to see you she can easily refuse to go in, and then I hope you will give her up and put your mind off the subject at once and forever."

Aunt Clara slipped out as she said the last words, and John waited for some time in moody, unhopeful silence, until he heard the two voices as they came into the yard. He sprang up, and put himself into the dark front room, its shadows only lifted here and there by the moonlight through the window casing.

Through the open door he saw Dian come in, her face aglow with a merry smile with which she listened to Aunt Clara's soft tones. Her white teeth gleamed like even pearls, and her red lips parted over them in the well-remembered bewitching ripples of laughter. Her bright eyes were wide and uplifted with clearest radiance. His eager eyes noted the gleam of her yellow hair, parted above the wide, white brows, and then lingered on the rich rose upon her cheek, and lighted upon the full, round chin, which he said to himself was like a cleft rose bud. The tender white throat rose up from her proud shoulders with a wondrous grace, and her soft and rounded arms were white under the soft muslin sleeve. She stood a moment unconscious of any gaze or presence, other than Aunt Clara's, and he wondered with a silent agony what expression would sweep over her expressive face when Aunt Clara made her disclosure.

"Diantha, John Stevens came home today."

The cheeks were drained of all their beautiful color, but the girl's voice was steady as she said simply, "Did he?"

"Yes; and he has been here to see me."

"Oh!"

John did not see the tense clasp of the fingers, he saw only the calm quiet of her face. Was it the quiet of displeasure?

He felt guilty, thus to watch her unconscious betrayal of self, but he told himself savagely that a man has a right to see the face of his executioner.

"John would like to see you, Dian." Aunt Clara waited a moment, then she said quietly: "He is in the front room. If you would like to see him, go in there and have a talk with him."

The girl stood a moment, with her tightly clasped hands, and her hesitation seemed like a year of suspense to the heart watching her from the other room, and then, with a little, half-troubled smile upon her lips at Aunt Clara, the girl glided into the other room, and, sheltered as well as blinded by its partial shadows, she closed the door behind her. She was so near the man that her muslin sleeve rested upon his arm.

He felt suffocated with that blissful touch, and he stood, silent, wordless, as if deprived of the powers of speech. She, too, felt his nearness, although she could see nothing, and she stood uncertain which way to go. Then she threw up her hand as if to shield herself, and she touched his cold cheek, and felt the silken mustache beneath her fingers. He snatched her hand and held it to his lips, its warmth and purity stilling, for a moment, the trembling of his soul. At last he took it away, and putting it upon his face, rested his cheek within its sweet cup, as if thus all sorrow were done forever. She stood silent, waiting, and as voiceless as himself.

This unbroken, sweet encouragement was almost more than he could bear; he was so unprepared for it, and it had all come so suddenly. After a moment, he reached out, and finding her so near, he laid his arm about her waist, and as she said nothing, he drew her to him with a close, tender embrace, and laying his own face down upon the soft hair, he held her to his throbbing heart in speechless bliss.

Neither knew how long they stood thus, so perfect was their peace. At last, he drew her face up to him, and whispered in her ear so close that his breath stirred all the tiny curls around her neck:

"Is it love, dear, or sympathy?"

For answer, she laughed softly, and putting her arms around his neck of her own accord, she murmured:

"It is my love, my life, John."

Words were too weak; he drew her face upon his shoulder, and in the shadowy silence, he put his big, rough hand under her rounded chin, and thus drawing up her mouth to his own bent lips, he told her with that long, wordless caress all the pent-up story of his life and its passion. He drew her to the casement, and in the flood of moonlight pouring in, he stood away for a moment and looked at her with his hungry eyes, as if he must make sure if she were real. He gloried in her beauty, for he loved all things beautiful and perfect of their kind; and he noted each gracious charm of face and form as he pinioned her arms down that he might hold her from fleeing away from his loving possession.

"So strong, so sweet, so pure," he murmured under his breath; "and all mine, mine for time and the long eternity!"

She laughed again, a little, happy, yet modest laugh, as she saw the gleam of adoration which lit her lover's eyes as he gazed down upon her in the moonlight, and then she struggled to free herself, as she remonstrated softly:

"You are not to hold me at arm's length, sir."

For answer, he caught her to him, and with his lips upon hers, he vowed to hold her in his heart of hearts forever and forever.

Presently, after what seemed to them a few moments of silence and sweet peace, Diantha lifted her head from his breast, and said:

"Come, John, Aunt Clara will wonder at our being in here without alight. Come, let us go out and thank her."

"Wait one moment, my girl." But she insisted, and together they opened the door, and stood with modest assertion of their love before their dearest friend.

John held his arm around the girl, as if fearing she might change her mind when once in the light, and observed by other eyes.

"This John of mine is a queer John, Aunt Clara," said Diantha, merrily, her breath quick with the joy of her expressed ownership in the big fellow beside her; "he seems to think, because I am glad to see him, that he can domineer over me, and he has kept me in there nearly half an hour, simply to tell him that I am glad he has got home."

"Half an hour?" asked Aunt Clara, dryly; "you two have shut yourselves up in there for over two hours. It's after ten o'clock."

"Why, John Stevens, I am ashamed of you," said the girl, with sparkling eyes and soft laughter.

"A man has a right to say how-do-you-do to his wife, hasn't he?" he said, gravely.

"Oh, John, how could you?" breathed the girl; "how dare you speak so? You haven't asked me yet."

"We will be married, Aunt Clara, and, please God, one month from today."

"Oh, you John! What impudence! Aunt Clara, did you ever see anything like it? Here he has never courted me one bit in his life, and never even asked me to marry him, and now he takes the law into his own hands in that way!"