Saints (18 page)

Dinah noticed how determinedly Charlie still called him “Mr. Hulme,” as if to draw more clearly the line between him and Robert, who always called his partner Peter, even to his face, something not a banker or solicitor in Manchester would dare to do. It was a point of honor with Charlie not to presume on his brother’s intimacy with a man who once had known Charlie better than Robert. Just another wall between Robert and Charlie.

“Oh,” Charlie said. “I didn’t mean to be dismal. I brought you this.” He handed her a package wrapped in plain paper, but with a short poem on the outside. “For your birthday.”

Dinah looked at him in surprise. “My birthday?”

“It’s not till tomorrow, I know—this is only April third, but I wasn’t sure I’d see you tomorrow. It’s a book.”

“I would never have guessed.”

They both laughed. Charlie always gave her a book.

Val ran into the room, calling loudly, “Charlie! Uncle Charlie!” Charlie lifted the boy to his shoulders, laughing, then as quickly set him down again to dance around him, occasionally clutching at Charlie’s knees.

“Hush, Val,” Dinah said.

“He’s all right. Open the package.”

“But this verse on the outside—who wrote it?”

“Do you like it?”

She knew then that he had written it himself. “It’s lovely. Would you read it to me?”

“If you like,” he said. He was carrying off quite well the pretense that it was by someone else.

“It’s lovely,” Dinah said, remembering well the rainy night when she found a younger, smaller Charlie shivering in the rain beside the piles.

“It’s not the best of verses,” Charlie said. “It has six beats to the line, and the rhymes slant too much, and the meter’s far from right.”

“You read it beautifully.”

“I hoped you’d like it.”

On impulse she reached out to him. Charlie embraced her. She was surprised at how tall he was, and how thin compared to her more massive yet shorter husband. She realized that she had not held him so since—since Old Hulme’s death? Or had she even embraced him then? Sweet Charlie, who would turn seventeen this year, each birthday making him less of a prodigy in his bookkeeping duties. You’re in a prison, too, aren’t you, Charlie? It’s time for your next step, time to rise, as your brother rose. And you could do it, just by asking Robert to support you as you study law or go to the university—you could do it, except that how can you ask Robert to believe in your dream, when you didn’t believe in his? So you write a poem on the paper that will be torn off when the gift is opened, creating yourself in words that are bound to be torn and burned.

“Good God,” said Matthew’s shocked voice from the door.

Startled, Charlie and Dinah turned around. Matthew was leaning, stricken, against the doorjamb, his face red. It took an instant for him to recognize Charlie.

“Oh. Oh, it’s you. Gave me a start.”

Immediately Matthew pretended that it had been nothing, that he hadn’t been surprised at all. But Dinah and Charlie both knew exactly what he had thought, coming into his own home and seeing Dinah and a young man locked in an embrace. Dinah felt an unaccountable rage. How dare he even suppose such a thing! How dare he immediately
assume
her unfaithfulness. But because he said nothing, she could say nothing. “Welcome home, Matt,” Dinah said. “Thank you for this new cottage. It’s beautiful.”

“Daddy’s home!” Val yelled as he launched himself at his father.

“No more than you deserve,” Matt said, picking up his son.

“I like it,” Charlie said. “Nicer to think of you in this place than shut away in the dismal old place.”

Matt still had suspicion just under the surface. “The old place wasn’t so bad.”

“But six rooms, I mean,” Charlie said, refusing to quarrel. “Why, you’ll be like small shot in a bucket!”

“That we will,” Matthew said. “Will you stay for supper?”

“No, thanks,” Charlie said. “I should get home.”

“Yes,” Dinah said. “Mother asked me to hurry you home if you happened to stop by here. Matthew! Look at this package Charlie brought me. A birthday gift.”

Matthew looked worried. “But Robert said your birthday was tomorrow.”

“Oh, it is,” Charlie said. “I’m early.”

But all Dinah heard was that Matthew still had to be reminded of her birthday.

“You haven’t opened it,” Matthew pointed out.

“Tomorrow,” Dinah said. “There’s a poem on the outside that I want to keep and copy down. It’s by a new poet whose work hasn’t been much published yet.”

Charlie grinned. “I can’t fool you, can I?”

Of course Matt didn’t understand. “Why would you want to fool her about a poet?”

“It’s just a silly joke,” Dinah reassured him. “Good-night, Charlie.”

Charlie said his good-byes and left. Matt carried Val into the kitchen. “But Daddy, we’re eating in
there
,” Val protested.

Matt laughed. “I’m too used to being poor and eating in the kitchen.” When they were all seated at the table, the food ready to eat, Matt decided to make a show out of it. He insisted on walking around the table and kissing Dinah, then shaking Val’s hand and welcoming them to their new home. Then he actually said grace. It so startled Dinah that she nearly laughed during the prayer. Matt was so solemn that she could hardly contain herself. It would be more appropriate, wouldn’t it, to offer grace to Robert than to God? But she didn’t say it, and Matt didn’t notice her near laughter, so all was well.

Matt watched her undress Val and prepare him for sleep, talking constantly about progress on the new locomotive, which was going to be the wonder of the decade. At one point, though, he spoke to Dinah about herself. “You work too hard, Dinah.”

“Do I?”

“You look weary. Too thin. In six months, if all goes well, I can get you a servant to do this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“You know. Bathing the children, cleaning house, cooking.”

“I don’t want a servant,” Dinah said.

“Of course you do,” Matt said. “Don’t worry, I won’t hire one until we can really afford it.”

“I say that I’d rather take care of the house myself.”

“Not another word, Dinah. I know you feel it’s your place to care for me, but Robert says that with servants a woman can finally come into her own. More time for you to read, that sort of thing. You forget, we’re going to be rich, and rich people have servants.”

“I know,” Dinah said. They heard Val say his night prayer and then went together to the bedroom they shared. In the crib in a corner of the room Honor was breathing with a soft snore. Dinah stood a moment by the garderobe, watching her husband undress. She thought of what her mother had said, and wondered if that, too, was indeed part of her duty, to not only give him her body, but pretend that she wanted him to have it. As he shed his clothing, revealing his white and softening body, she realized how pitifully small were his demands of her, really. She had heard of worse husbands than hers. He was kind enough, and rarely angry, and though she worked hard to keep house, there were times when he might have complained and didn’t. He deserved well from her.

She crossed the room to him and reached him just as he turned around to take his nightshirt from where it was folded on the bed. Wordlessly she embraced him, pressing her hands against his naked back. He murmured a slight exclamation of surprise, and another when she kissed him.

“What is this?” he asked.

This is all sham, she wanted to say. This is a woman doing her duty as she has been taught to do it. But what she really said was, “Thank you for our house.”

He grinned. “You like it
that
much? I’ll get you a new house every week.”

“This one will do.” She smiled at him. He smiled back. Why don’t I like him more? It’s my failing, my weakness. He’s a good man, and I should love him with all my heart. I
do
love him, she told herself as he roughly undressed her and hurriedly took her on the bed. Instead of being more affectionate this time, the very fact that she had initiated it made him more eager, less considerate than ever, so that for the first time since she had healed from Honor’s birth it hurt her, and she moaned in pain. Of course, he took the sound as ecstasy and worked all the harder at it, hurting her even more. She bit her lip and was still.

Suddenly Honor started crying in the corner. It was time for her to nurse again. “Let her cry,” Matthew said. Instead, Dinah gripped his buttocks, knowing that when she did that he would finish immediately. He swore softly in frustration, then rolled off her. She got up and took the baby from the crib. Honor hunted eagerly for the nipple, then fastened on and drank greedily. Dinah returned to the bed, where Matt was lying naked, watching her.

“Would you turn down the covers, Matt?”

He got up wordlessly and pulled down the featherbeds. She sat on the edge of the bed and slipped her feet down under the covers. Matt also crawled into bed as she leaned against the headboard, nursing the baby. Matt slid close to her, and began stroking her breast near the baby’s lips. It was annoying. She wanted him to leave her alone as she nursed the baby.

“Let’s move the damned crib into another room,” Matt said.

“I have to hear her when she cries.”

“Sometimes I’d rather you didn’t hear her.” Matt meant it to sound clever, but to Dinah it only sounded crude. She endured his probing, tickling finger for a while longer, then pried Honor’s lips away with her finger. Honor immediately protested sleepily, but Dinah only turned her around and lay beside her on the bed, facing away from Matthew. Then Honor began suckling on the other side, content again, dozing again. Matt stroked her arm and her hip for a few moments, but when she didn’t respond he tired of it and finally left her alone.

“Damned inconsiderate greedy baby,” Matt muttered.

Suddenly Dinah felt terribly ashamed. He had only meant to be tender. Was it his fault that he never thought to be gentle with her until he was satisfied? And he blamed it on the baby, when it was all her, when she was the one who turned him away. This is what Mother meant when she said it was my fault. I’m cold to him, and turn him away, not his body but his heart. Perhaps he even loves me. I think he really loves me. I should rejoice at that, and yet it feels like just another bar in my cell, another manacle that ties me to the walls of my gaol.

Honor slept again. Dinah carried her to the crib and laid her gently in it. The baby muttered something deep and unintelligible and then returned to contemplative sucking on her hand. Dinah went to the garderobe and took a nightgown from it, pulled it over her head. Relieved to be covered and protected again, she returned to her bed. Matthew was already sleeping, but when the bed moved with her coming, he stirred and reached out to her.

“Love you,” he murmured. His hand lazily caught her wrist and held it tight, pulled it toward himself, tucked her hand under his body as if it were a treasure he was guarding against thieves. She looked at his face in repose and felt an infinite pity for him. She kissed his cheek, then lay down to begin an uncomfortable hour of sleeplessness before he finally released her hand. Even then she could feel his grip on her as she dozed in that near-sleep that fills the nights of mothers until the last of their children leave home. Twice in the night Honor cried out, and once Val, and each time Dinah arose like a spirit and, without quite waking, cared for their needs and returned to bed. Once in the night Matt, too, cried out, and she whispered to him and soothed him back to sleep before he was ever quite awake. My children, all of my children, you are why I am alive, the only purpose left to me.

And, to her surprise, tonight at least that purpose seemed enough. It was the work of God she did, caring for these mindless creatures until they were old enough to go away and take care of themselves. Then she would be free. Surely then they would set her free. “Ma ma ma ma ma,” Honor called sleepily in the night. Let me sleep, Dinah whispered. The voice fell still, but Dinah heard the sound ringing in her ears as she drifted back into sleep. That is my name now, and all the rest of my life, my name till death do us part, till only death do us part. God help me, I wish I knew whether or not I’m glad of it.

One of the most annoying things about Mormons, right from the start, was that they didn’t subscribe to that gentleman’s agreement among the Christian churches that said it was all right to compete with each other for the souls of the unbaptized heathen, but not at all acceptable to raid each other’s congregation for members. And it was downright offensive to insist on
baptizing
those stolen converts. Why, that was a slap in the face to say that even their baptism wasn’t good enough for the Mormon God.

Of course, Mormons were far from being the only group breaking that unspoken code. What made the Mormons conspicuous was the sheer number of their missionaries. Every reasonably faithful Mormon man could expect to be ordained to some office of the priesthood before he was quite dry from his baptism. Then, without any preparation beyond a few sermons, and without any text other than a few tracts and the Book of Mormon, the new convert was frequently called upon to leave his family and go out preaching the gospel, as best he could, to whomever would listen.

The result was a lot of desperately eager missionaries, preaching while the first excitement of conversion was still on them.

Even more remarkable than the audacity of the attempt is the fact that it worked. Why didn’t these new, inexperienced converts get
discouraged
with the arguments and snubbings and occasional mobbings and tar-and-featherings that were their almost certain lot? Why didn’t they get sick of traveling with no money, sleeping in beds and eating good meals only when people were charitable, and sleeping in the open and eating nothing at all when people were close-fisted? Why didn’t they just quit?

Some of them did, of course, and never quite came back to the Church from their missions. Most held firm, however. There’s something in human nature that says that if someone is going to abuse me for being a Mormon, I’m damn well going to be Mormon till the day I die.

And they never lacked for an audience. In an age before television and movies, when books weren’t cheap and radios couldn’t be switched on for background music, the latest Mormon missionaries were an interesting diversion, and a good argument about religion was better than sitting on the stoop watching the dogs mate.

The gentleman’s agreement among the Christian churches had been a survival mechanism. It ended the terrible wars that had periodically ravaged Europe and the Middle East; it brought peace at the price of a loss of fervency.

The Mormons were proof enough that the religious peace was fragile. When the agreement was breached, the religious wars and murders began again at once. In the land where religious freedom was supposedly the cornerstone of the Constitution, the Mormons found themselves on the receiving end of the American version of pogroms and crusades. Informal mobs gathered on the spur of the moment to burn out the local Mormons; when the Mormons were too much for the mobs to handle, they were likely to be joined by official state and federal troops, called out because the Mormons, by preaching and living their religion, had become an intolerable threat to their neighbors.

So Mormon blood was spilled in many states, and Mormon graves dotted the landscape of Missouri…

And still the missionaries left their wives and children and crossed mountain, desert, and ocean to take their message to anyone who would hear it.

What was the message that they were beaten or killed for, the message that so many thousands believed and followed to Zion? Simply this: God had spoken again to man, after centuries of silence, and his word was alive again in the world.

Of course it annoyed the Christians. They had finally got their speechless God under control. How dare these uneducated bumpkins rouse him up again, to undo all their comfortable theology?

—O. Kirkham, Salt Lake City, 1981