Chapter 21

Palmyra: October 1830

The new school term started, but Georgie’s baby had not arrived. Nathan went back to the classroom; but, of course, Georgie could no longer teach.

“They will not allow it,” she fumed. “I feel fine, and I am as capable as ever. What do men think pregnant mothers do about teaching their children when they find themselves in this state?”

Little Emmeline must have heard and taken pity upon her mother, for she arrived the next day—pink and dewy, with a head of light hair that curled at the ears, and eyes as black as small stones washed in the streambed.

We were all thrilled. “Laurie shall keep order,” I announced, “over this gaggle of girls we are raising up to step into our shoes! Already we have May, Phoebe’s Esther, now sweet Emmeline.”

I wished I had not said it. I felt instantly miserable. Which ones were lacking in this assemblage? Josie and I! It frightened me a little. Both my sister and I must have daughters to replace ourselves, as the others had done. The next generation must not be allowed to flower and bloom without our being represented, having some part in it all!

Josephine was changing, but not necessarily for the better. She seemed at loose ends, like a ship cut from its moorings, with no energy, no impetus, nowhere to go. Far be it from me to have dreamed that I would ever prefer her tempestuous, ofttimes unthoughtful selfishness over this growing state. But I did, and I worried about her more and more every day.

I was not the only one, though I did not know it. There came one particularly nasty day when Josie felt so sorry for herself that no one could rouse her. She stalked about the house, shouting exaggerated complaints, blaming everything from her husband and the weather to fate and God. She refused to eat the evening meal with Alexander and Randolph.

“Neither of you would miss me,” she whined, “if I were not here. You have provided Randolph here with a home, and he has provided you with someone to care for and train up to be just like you!”

As Randolph told it, he took one look at Alexander’s face and something within him took over, something he could not control. He pushed his chair back and grabbed Josie by the wrist. “You are coming with me,” he said. “I want you to see what I came from—what you would be sending me back to!”

Alexander made no move to stop him. Randolph took the light buggy Josephine used to go calling and drove it through the streets of Palmyra like a madman, Josie clinging to the seat, her unkempt hair streaming.

He drove down past the locks to where the land settled, sunless and rank. Here some of the canal boys had cleared a section in the mud flats and erected temporary shelters, little more than shacks, colorless and sagging. Some sat outside now, in the sick glow of twilight, cooking scraps over low fires, shivering in the thin shirts through which their bony shoulder blades poked.

“These are hovels!” Josie shrieked. “Disease-ridden hovels! Why are you bringing me here?”

“Disease-ridden, true. Disease and despair, madam. That is what you find here. The creatures you see before you are orphans, picked up at the docks by the canal bosses and hired out like slaves. They own no property, possess no rights, are shown little kindness. If their bodies are drenched by the cold rain that seeps through their poor clothing, they still must work on. They catch a few hours’ sleep between shifts, cook their food only after the horses and mules for which they are responsible have been cared for and fed. Many have died of consumption or pneumonia, or—”

“Why do they stay? Why do they endure it?”

“What choice have they, Josie? A few bold ones run off. But there is nowhere for them to go to, so they end up begging on the streets of the city—or worse.”

“I do not wish to hear more, or see more. Cannot something be done for them?”

Randolph ignored her and stooped down beside one boy who looked no older than eleven or twelve. “What’s your name, lad?”

“Daniel, sir.”

“I’m not a ‘sir,’ Danny. I used to work here myself.”

“Ah, but you’ve got somewhere to go, don’t you—somewhere besides this. Look at you now.” The boy’s eyes traveled to the pretty young lady. Randolph chuckled under his breath.

“This feisty creature has nothing to do with me.” He glanced at Josie and winked slyly. “And if she did—I’d have no notion in the world what to do with her!”

Danny laughed with him, surprised to see the young lady join with them.

“You are too clever for your own good, Randolph,” Josie said. “What is your last name, boy?”

“I haven’t got one, far as I know, ma’am. It’s just Daniel to the bosses and Dan to the lads.”

“How should I find you again—if I’d a mind to?”

Daniel raised large questioning eyes to the young gentleman, dressed in the rough, honest clothes of a workingman. “I be always here on my off shifts, never anywhere else.”

Randolph stood, removed his warm jacket, and draped it across the thin shoulders, glancing toward Josie again for his cue. But for the moment she had forgotten both of them and was looking all round. When he reached for her hand to lead her back over the morass, there were tears in her eyes. She brushed them away with an impatient hand. When they reached the carriage he lifted her up, then took his seat beside her.

“I lived like that, not much better, for longer than I want to remember.”

“Why?” She was angry. “Like the boy said, you had a choice.”

“Less than you would suppose. It became a matter of pride with me. My father is a cold man, and as hard a taskmaster as any here. I convinced myself that this was freedom—that the hardening I got was good for me. I wanted to be any way but the way my father was.”

“Out of one trap into another,” Josie mused. “Weren’t you ever afraid?”

“Most of the time. I would not want to tell you how many times I cried myself to sleep on my hard bed of a night.”

They fell into silence and rode the remainder of the distance home that way. When they entered the house Alexander asked no questions, Randolph excused himself to go to his own quarters, and Josie paced the floor, back and forth, back and forth, long into the night.

The following morning Randolph told Alexander all that had happened. A fortunate decision. For that evening, over dinner, Josie announced her plan.

“How many can we take,” she asked her husband, “and provide work for? We can train them for something other than that terrible slavery.” She leaned forward, excitement glazing her eyes and adding a hue to the chalky white of her cheeks. “There are nooks and crannies here and there in the mill house and barns. They do not need much space, Alex, to call their own.”

“But they will need clothing and good hot food.”

“Surely, we can provide them. Surely the work they return us will compensate us for that.”

“What of education, Josephine? These boys are ignorant and unschooled, with no manners whatsoever—little savages, in some ways, Josie.”

“Oh, Alexander, I’ve already thought of that! I shall set up a school after hours. I know Georgie would help me instruct them, for she is no longer allowed to teach in the city schools. Think how good she would be.”

Josie was biting her nails now and fidgeting in her excitement. “We could offer incentives—extra pay for attendance at classes—a bonus of some sort for those who do well.”

I wish I would have been there. I suppose the relief in the room was palpable. The relief and the amazement. With an apologetic glance in Randolph’s direction, Josie said softly, “Until we have children of our own, it is a way of helping someone’s child, of doing some little good.”

Alexander would have agreed without half the persuasion she exerted, but this brought him nearly to tears. For a blissful hour the three sat round the table planning; bandying ideas and hopes back and forth.

“How many to start with, Alex?” Josie asked.

“Three,” Alexander replied thoughtfully. “We can always go for more—but I should hate to ever have to take even one back.”

“Will you go, Randolph?” she asked. “Pick out three of the best for us. I’m sure you’ll be able to judge.” She laid her fingers against his arm, as if to detain him. “Make certain that one of them is Danny. That is all I ask.”

Near the end of September the Mormons held another conference session in Fayette. It was reported that there had been some thirty-five new converts since their meeting two months before. Nathan and Georgie were in attendance. Afterward they arranged a place and time a few days later for them to be baptized.

“Will you come?” Georgie asked me.

I stared back at her stupidly. “I do not know if I dare.”

She kissed me quickly. “You are right. It is of no great matter.” But the “no great matter” weighed heavily on my mind. I found a little present I could give her to mark the occasion, and Phoebe did the same. Tillie seemed unable to understand or join in with us.

“You celebrate what she is doing? I am afraid for her. I see more than you see.”

And to our woe, to our everlasting horror, Tillie proved right.

Who discovered, and how, that the couple had decided to join Joseph Smith’s new religion? As soon as the school board found out, Nathan was informed that his services in the community were no longer considered desirable.

“We have a certain standard to maintain,” it was soberly explained to him. “You are no longer considered fit, Mr. Hopkins, to influence the young people of this community. We must ask you forthwith to resign.”

Georgie took the announcement sanguinely. “There are other villages, other positions—even other kinds of work we can do.”

We have each other, was their attitude, and now this adorable baby. What more could we ask?

Three days following Nathan’s peremptory dismissal he and Georgie joined the other Saints, as they call themselves, at a special service along the banks of the Susquehanna River and were baptized into Joseph Smith’s Church of Christ. I was not there to see, or to feel, what Georgie tried to describe for me. I do know the sense of cleanliness and wholeness she emanated; an expression in her eyes that was not excitement, or even pleasure, but what the scriptures call joy. For a moment, for a brief moment, I envied her, and wondered if I might be missing something terribly important that she understood and had grasped.

Two nights later, in the dark hours approaching midnight, men rode up to their house—rode in quiet and dead earnest. Two carried firebrands, which they threw in the window. One tossed a rock to which was attached the following message:

Leave for your own good. Heathens. Betrayers.
You no longer have place here.

The words were handwritten. Georgie recognized the cramped, closely curled handwriting she had seen so often on the bills and invoices of her father’s dry goods store. She sat down in the middle of the wreckage and wept like a child.

She was lucky to be able to do so. How long would it have taken the two to awaken—if they’d have awakened at all? It happened, oddly enough, that Tillie’s Peter was spending time with a sick friend at a house nearby and thought he saw smoke from one of the windows—stuck his head out and smelled it!—and ran, with his companion, to put out the flames. Did Providence provide him? Was their deliverance due to fate, or to the hand of God? I know what Georgie believed, with no doubt in her mind whatsoever. But I was not able to be so sure.

As far as the fire was concerned, the damage did not go beyond the front room, but smoke filled and blackened the house. When I thought of the baby! Poor Peter took them to Tillie’s house when it was over, for she had room in plenty. But her husband heard the commotion and turned them away.

“It may as well be said now,” he announced grandly, in the presence of all of them, “that I desire this friendship to end. Georgeanna’s involvement with the Mormonites has severed all decent relationships.”

Georgie, still in tears over her own father’s cruelty, could be crushed no further. They were brought to my house and slept in my kitchen that first night. They were all for cleaning the house out the following morning, but we advised against that.

“Do not play into their hands, do not incite them further,” we kept urging.

“Let us try Alexander’s,” I suggested. Peter, Georgie’s brother Jack, the little family, and myself all rode out together. When Josephine heard the news she took over at once.

“I need Georgie for my school,” she reminded her husband. “We must figure out something. I never dreamed it would come to this!”

At length it was agreed by all that Georgie and Emmeline should take up quarters in the main house, where they could be easily accommodated, while Nathan would scour the adjoining communities in hopes of finding some sort of work. How she hated being parted from him! I had never seen Georgie morose, really miserable, before in her life. It distressed me. Her misery seemed to sap my energy. I felt deflated and weak. Though I had another reason—a reason I had not yet told anyone, even Eugene: I was with child.

I had waited long enough to have absolutely no doubt of it before even allowing myself to believe it could be true! Now I hung back. It would seem cruel to chirp out good news when all about me were struggling. And Josie! I would do anything to avoid diverting Josephine now! She had thrown herself heart and soul into the reclamation of her orphans—even spending part of each day, for two weeks, at Phoebe’s house learning the fine points of seamstressing. Her boys would dress properly and be able to hold their own around town. Once Georgie was installed she lost no time clearing a room for a schoolhouse, fitting it out with old desks, old McGuffey readers she bullied the school board into giving her, slates, inkwells and lined tablets for the boys to fill in practicing their letters.

This was a boon for poor Georgie as well. Action. Nothing works better against lethargy and heartache. Under her tutelage the three young boys bloomed. Fresh air and physical labor that was demanding but not grueling; good food; hours of careful recreation; and sleep in decent beds with blankets to cover them. They almost believed they had died and gone to heaven; I think they would have walked to the ends of the earth for Josephine!

“We can take more,” Josie kept urging Alexander. But he refused to allow her to hurry him. Randolph, as gently as he could, sided with her husband. “All in good time,” he encouraged her. “All in good time.”

I did tell Eugene about the baby. I could no longer contain myself. I nearly laughed trying to get the words out; it seemed silly, like a fairy tale I was making up for both our sakes. He did not think it a fairy tale, but a miracle. He knelt on the braided rug beside me and put his head in my lap.

“At last,” he murmured. “It has been a long wait, Esther, long for both of us. Are you as happy as I am?”

“Oh yes!” I twisted his fine curls around the tip of my little finger and kissed the nape of his neck.

“Even though you are discontent with me?”

My heart skipped a beat. What had he said to me? “I am not ‘discontent’ with you.”

“Yes you are, Esther. And perhaps with good reason.” He lifted his head and sat up on his knees, so his face was nearly level with mine. “I have not meant to be harsh, I have not . . . intended . . .” He sighed. “It is so hard to put my feelings into words.”

“I understand. It’s all right.”

We sat together for a long time, and although nothing further was spoken, I felt the distance between us had closed somehow. He seemed once again my husband, and I his wife. I felt a tenderness toward him, a tenderness I remembered from a long time ago, and was amazed how something so precious could become tarnished, pushed into a dark corner and forgotten, as if of no great significance at all.

Strange, strange things happen that keep life full of interest and wonder!

One day a gale blew in from the north, such a tempest as October had not seen during my lifetime. When the storm struck, my little brother was playing with his toy horses and wagons—small wooden figures Father carved for him—in one of the ditches that line some of our wheat fields. Here he had constructed elaborate twisting roads, with hills and valleys, with little stick bridges crossing make-believe rivers. Father was working nearby, but he had just taken the mule over to the adjoining field, which was still in pasture, to let him graze for an hour while he and Jonathan sat in the shade of the plane trees and ate their noon meal together.

The sky emptied rain and wind and lightning all together. By the time he reached Jonathan the ditches were flowing with water, mud, and debris. The first impact must have knocked the boy over, or at least made him lose his footing. He had struck his forehead on some sharp object and, as he fell, his foot had caught in the twistings of an old root, and held fast. Father extricated him at once and carried him to the house, but they could not shake him into consciousness. The bump on his head was swelling; one whole side of his face had turned black and blue.

My mother screamed and lunged for the child when she saw him. Father had to hold her back forcibly, bully her into coming to fetch me and the doctor, while he cleaned the mud and blood from his son, and watched over him.

I am amazed she did as he bid her. Perhaps she was, indeed, afraid to be left alone with him, horrified and helpless. I agreed to go in search of Doctor Ensworth, while she turned back at once to the farm. When we arrived, there had been no change. Jonathan’s head had swollen considerably, so that the discolored portion looked frightening, even grotesque. Mother sat slumped by the side of the bed, weeping piteously. The three of us together were not sufficient to drag her away.

“You’ll do him no good with that sound,” the old doctor told her harshly. “If you love him truly, Rachel, then for pity’s sake grieve in silence! He may very well be able to hear you, though he cannot respond. And you will terrify his senses, I tell you.”

She put her hand to her mouth and pressed hard, willing her terror to turn inward. I turned away from the sight.

“Will you stay with her, Esther?”

“You know I won’t leave her.”

“Don’t overdo, though. I do not want that.” The doctor patted my head, as though I were a child still. The gesture brought tears to my eyes. He was the only person, besides Eugene, who knew of my secret, this lovely secret I carried inside.

He walked to the farthest reaches of the kitchen with me and my father. He was not hopeful about the boy. “His fever is high. There is most likely swelling on the brain, as well as this contusion on the outside. If I knew more—if I could see inside that little head.”

It was then I realized my brother might die! I realized it, but like some far, distant fact that cannot possibly have relevance for us. My mind thought, in the same cool, detached manner: If Jonathan dies, my mother will die with him. Or else go mad.

The doctor gave us instructions. I let my father do the listening. I could not pull my mind back from this fog.

It is a long night. Father brings in the rocker and places it as close to the bed as possible. Mother sits, her eyes fixed on the distorted face. She eats nothing. She says nothing. She sits with her hands in her lap and stares.

A little past midnight I get her to take a few sips of the tea I have brewed for her. I do not know what she sees, what she is aware of. I see the feeble flame of my brother’s spirit flicker and wane. I see something gentle and other-worldly flit across his features—and am reminded of that other night, in this very room, years ago, when the same things happened with another child, fighting desperately for his chance at life. When the strange colorless light remains, when it settles over his frozen features, then he will die.

I doze. I slip in and out of a troubled slumber, starting at noises, aware that my feet are cold and my neck is cramped. Almost imperceptibly dawn has poured her glow into the darkness; these first gray filterings of light assure me that morning is on her way.

He may not make it through the night. I must tell you—Had Doctor Ensworth said that?

I think my mother is sleeping, staring straight ahead, with her eyes open. I cannot sit still another minute. I rise and slip out into the chilly duskiness of daybreak, so that the fresh air might clear my head. A few stars, faint and lusterless, cling to the pearly curtain that stretches over the earth. I am so weary! I am so frightened! In my heart, for the first time in a long time, I start to pray.

I do not see him at first, this man who is walking toward me, cutting through fields, with his trousers soaked halfway to his knees. I look up because I sense him—something about his presence. He pauses. He has come quite near. His eyes are more gentle than the dawn that is breaking, and as flooded with light.

“What is the matter, Esther? How can I help you?” Why does his voice, offering assistance, give me a sensation of hope, and of peace?

“What are you doing here, Joseph—at this hour?”

A sad smile, a smile as old as the earth, touches his face for a moment. “I am eluding those who would seek me, who would take pleasure in harming me.”

Yes. And not only you, I think.

“Your friends suffer for the truth’s sake, and they suffer gladly,” he says. How does he know what I am thinking? “They will fare well, Esther. Do not worry about them. They will raise a good family, in a home far finer than they have ever hoped for.” He is smiling still. “But I am here to help you and your little brother.”

“You have heard, then.” A shudder passes through my body. “My brother is dying,” I say.

“Would you like me to go in to him, to administer a blessing to heal him?”

“My mother would never permit it.”

“Then let us pray together out here.”

He kneels beside me in the rough grass. He calls upon God as I have never imagined. He calls upon Him in power, yet speaks to Him as a child speaks to a tender, loving parent whom he adores. His words are more than my mind can contain and remember. They pass into my spirit like light. I have no doubt of their power to lift and to heal.

“Your brother will live. He will recover and live a long, useful life, Esther.”

Joseph rises and brushes the pieces of grass and loose dirt from his knees. “Good-bye, Esther. God bless you.” He begins to walk away from me. I have not even thanked him—thanked him!

I hurry back inside. Fear and pain settle over me like a fog as soon as I enter the house. As I approach the sickroom I hear a sound. It is my father weeping. “Your brother is gone, Esther!” he chokes, groping for my hand.

“No, he is alive, Father,” I hear myself saying. “He is alive.”

How can he believe me? He bends over the small, limp body. Jonathan stirs. His fingers move across the surface of the coverlet. He opens his eyes.

My mother moans. Thank heaven she does not scream at him! I turn to her—I have never looked upon anything so beautiful as the expression I see in her eyes.

Morning trembles against the cold glass of the little window above our heads. I stand and pull back the curtains to let the warm light come in. In the distance I see a tall solitary figure walking across the fields. The sun plays about his head like a benediction as the sunrise, in all her glory, floods over the earth.