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!"
John drew her closer to his side, with his encircling arm, and looking down into her eyes, he said:
"Dear girl, I have been courting you in spirit all my life. Let me have my own way now, will you not?"
His tone was so gentle, so tender, that she answered softly, yet still half-mischievously:
"Well, Aunt Clara, I guess we will have to let him have his way. He is so big that he could crush us both if we didn't please him."
Aunt Clara's eyes were moist with tears, as she watched them. She rejoiced in their love, and she was content that she had helped a little. But as they started out of the door to leave her, and Diantha came back to kiss her once more in token of love and gratitude, Aunt Clara's heart flew back to their lost Ellie, and all the sad, miserable story. She went to the door and watched them go out of the gate, Diantha still full of bubbling mischief, with her quick, pretty gestures of teasing indifference as she refused even to take John's arm in the bright moonlight – it all brought back her Ellie's love for this same good man, and she turned back into her room with sobs in her throat; and then she knelt in silent prayer for these two who had gone out from her home to their blessed future.
As Diantha Winthrop herself knelt that night in her evening prayer, she poured out the wealth of her young heart in gratitude to God who had so magnified her life and its mission. After her prayer, she sat at her window and thought back on all the past, and she wondered anew that she could ever have called her lover cold, reserved or silent. His every look was pregnant with thought, and his presence was full of unspoken meanings. She could see how in her ignorant, thoughtless girlhood she could not appreciate him, as she could not appreciate the deep throbbing poems in the Bible until life opened them and sorrow put into her hand the secret key to their mysteries.
She had grown up to John now, and she wondered how it was that she could ever have permitted ordinary men to come near her. He was a king! Proud, intelligent, pure! With the wide-open eyes of experience, she recognized his matchless manhood and bowed down in mighty prayer that she might prove worthy of his love.
XL
JOHN BUILDS A HOME
That was a busy month, and everybody in the neighborhood insisted on doing something for the coming wedding.
John bought a lot not far from Aunt Clara's home, and although it had only one log room on it for a house, he soon had a large front room added to it, and he put up a small lean-to for kindlings and wood. He did not propose, he said to himself, that his wife should have an unnecessary step to walk, and with that same thought, he dug a new well close to the kitchen door.
He put a good paling fence in front of the house, and promised himself that he would very soon replace the brush fence on the south side of the lot with a new one, to match the front.
How many times he peeped into the large front room, with its new, white pine floor, and its huge fire-place, and wondered how he could wait until the days were gone and Dian was there to fill every nook and corner with radiance. He wished he had time to pull down the old part and put up an adobe room, but that must needs wait for the future. He planted, with patient care, several vines around the front "door stoop," for he knew Dian loved flowers and green things. And with what infinite pleasure at the last, he watched the putting down of carpets, bright new rag ones, that Dian and her sister-in-law and other friends had been busy getting made for the happy time of her wedding day. She and Aunt Clara came a day or so before the wedding and cleaned everything to spotless whiteness.
In the window Dian hung simple, unbleached muslin curtains with crocheted edge, which she had spent many days in bleaching. But they still retained enough of the original creamy tint to soften the plastered walls of shining white. Under one window Dian set a small pine table, painted red in imitation of mahogany, which held her three only books, one her Bible, a beloved Book of Mormon, and a prized copy of Shakespeare, which had in some way come into her possession. Under the other window was a square box, which John had fitted with hinges and a good lid, and Dian had stuffed the lid top with wool and then covered it with a pretty piece of cotton print and had hung a valence of the print around under the lid. This made a comfortable seat, and that was necessary, as chairs were rare and expensive. Inside the box-seat she had folded her modest store of linen.
Over the huge fireplace John had put a low, broad mantle, and Dian set upon the shelf her precious clock, which was one of the few things owned by her mother that she now possessed. On each side of the clock were two brass candlesticks polished like gold, and filled with tall, yellow tallow candles. Most precious of all prized treasures, John had bought the small melodeon from Bishop Winthrop, who was now in possession of a new organ for his music-loving family. John loved the dear old melodeon, out of whose slender case his beloved young wife would weave great color waves of sound and harmony; while to him alone she would now sing "Kathleen, mavourneen, the day dawn is breaking!" Ah, how he loved music and beauty and love! No one but God knew how he loved them!
A few chairs, the old-fashioned bed in the corner, a box which they called a trunk, and which had also an edged cover of white to hide its plain look, and the modest room was furnished. John had filled in the fire-place with spicy evergreens from the canyons, and he had searched the hills for the last columbines, which stood on the mantle shelf, their creamy whiteness falling into the bright color tone of the pretty room.
As John stood within its sacred precincts the night before he was to be married, he thought how the glorious presence of his beautiful wife would make it a haven of rest and happiness. He walked into the neat kitchen, and noted how carefully Dian had arranged their scanty, pioneer store of dishes, three plates, three cups and saucers, three bowls and a vegetable dish – all these had been placed up in brave show against the board he had nailed at the back of the shelves. The small cook-stove, called a "step stove," he was especially proud of, for it was a great luxury in those days. It shone with a brilliant lustre, and the few pots and pans belonging to it were hung upon the wall behind the stove with housewifely precision. He bent his face over the flowers in the kitchen windows, and whispered to himself that the delicate pinks were like Dian's cheeks, and their perfume was her breath.
As he finished his survey, he turned into the front room, and kneeling down, he offered, for the last time, his lonely evening prayer. He prayed that God would make him gentle, and worthy of such happiness, while he asked earnestly for the strength to love his religion well enough to put God first, and wife and home after. But even as he prayed, the voice of inspiration whispered in his soul, that wife and home, if rightly understood, are religion, and God was pleased with the man who could be worthy of them.