Seated in safety beside her, Susannah could indulge the pent-up indignation of her outraged spirit in silent musings upon Smith's degradation and, the certain downfall of all righteousness under the new tyranny. And yet—and yet—the shock of the last few days, forcibly as it vibrated through all her nature, could not eradicate the sympathy of years—the memories of Hiram and Kirtland, Haun's Mill and the desperate winter's march. Justice, her old friend, now her inquisitor, said sternly, "It was in these scenes in which some lost life and some reason that these men lost their moral standards." But her heart cried, "Now that I am insulted, I cannot forgive."
The words of the Governor's wife, cheerful, continuous, and not without diverting sparkle, were an unspeakable rest to Susannah, weary above all things of herself. Whether because of a strong undercurrent of tactful kindness, or in mere garrulity, the good lady's talk for some time flowed on concerning all things small, and nothing great, like the lapping of the river against the vessel's bows.
But at last her companion's situation grew upon her; she enlarged more than once upon her surprise at Susannah's advent, and her feelings of extreme relief that she was safely there.
"What a mercy!" she sighed comfortably. "Such awful people! Why, I hear that when any child among them is weak or deformed they just murder it."
Like one who is enraged with his own kin but cannot hear them falsely accused, Susannah contradicted this statement.
"It is perfectly true," the Governor's wife declared. "I have heard it several times. How long have you been at Nauvoo?"
"Three weeks."
"And in that time they offered to kill you! Well, I assure you if you had been a sickly child they wouldn't have let you live three days. And they say that that monster they call the prophet has at least a dozen wives."
"Oh, no."
"Ten or eleven, at any rate."