By this time she perceived that his companions were looking at her with ill-concealed curiosity and excitement, which proved to her that she was a marked woman. Her bosom dilated with a wilder anger as she looked at Smith expectantly; he returned the gaze sheepishly, as if dazzled by the audacity of her command. His face after last night's passion had an exhausted look like that of a man recovering from an illness.
"You also owe me money," she proclaimed clearly. "Your wife borrowed all that I had of the money I earned by my school. When you have brought the chaise you can give me the money."
One of the elders, a sleek man, thinking the prophet at a loss, now made a wily comment. "Has Sister Halsey paid anything for living in the House this month back?"
At the insinuation that her money might be justly kept in payment of this debt if she spurned the Church's hospitality, Susannah's heart sank. She admitted its justice. It was part of her character to admit all possible claim against her.
The sleek elder, following his advantage, spoke again. "The money given for tuition was given because of the ordinance of the prophet, and should in any case hardly belong to this lady if she is apostate."
Smith had the tact to see his opportunity, and, moreover, it hurt him sharply, hurt him far more than it hurt Susannah, to hear her right to the privileges of the place called in question, to hear the opprobrious term "apostate" cast at her. There were unbelievers in his community with whose hypocrisy or apostasy he could trifle, but he still had his faith and his inner circle of affections. Susannah, standing friendless and penniless, appealed to all that was sacred in the memory of early days, while her beauty, her courage, her unbounded wrath, stimulated his love of power. He spoke to the sleek elder in what was commonly called the prophet's "awful voice," rising, his blue eyes becoming black in their authoritative flash.
"Our sister Susannah Halsey, because of faithfulness when the Church was yet poor and unknown, and because of the faithfulness of her husband, who wears the martyr's crown—our sister Susannah Halsey, I say, is welcome to the hospitality of the Nauvoo House as long as she has remained and shall remain; and the money which has been given to her for the school shall be returned to her, and more shall be added to it, for she laboured faithfully."
He had left behind his moment of sheepish distress; with the return of his formal phrases he assumed full prophetical state and escorted Susannah out of the office with a manner of pompous deference. When they two stood alone together Susannah was aware that, although circumstances had not altered in the slightest, although she had just as much reason for extreme anger as a minute before, yet she could not summon the same haughty air of command.
"Will you get me the chaise and the money and let me go?"
"But in Carthage," he asked kindly, "who will attend to your wants there and protect you? I guess, sister, you haven't much notion how difficult a lady like yourself travelling alone might find it to get along. It isn't among the Gentiles as with the Saints, where brotherly-kindness is the rule. I guess you'd better go back to your room and think it over a day or two longer," he said soothingly. "I'd be very glad to take you and Emma out for a ride this afternoon if you'd be willing to go—"