I sat awhile stunned. The doctor’s marriages, I remembered to have heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my distress. But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark land; the thought of escape, of any equal marriage, was already enough to revive in me some dawn of hope; and in what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.

He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have looked for. ‘You shall see,’ he cried; ‘you shall judge for yourself.’ And hurrying to the next room he returned with a small portrait somewhat coarsely done in oils. It showed a man in the dress of nearly forty years before, young indeed, but still recognisable to be the doctor. ‘Do you like it?’ he asked. ‘That is myself when I was young. My—my boy will be like that, like but nobler; with such health as angels might condescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath, of commanding mind. That should be a man, I think; that should be one among ten thousand. A man like that—one to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the force, the dignity of age—one to fill all the parts and faculties, one to be man’s epitome—say, will that not satisfy the needs of an ambitious girl? Say, is not that enough?’ And as he held the picture close before my eyes, his hands shook.

I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was transpierced with this display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the words, the most insolent revolt surged through my arteries. I held him in horror, him, his portrait, and his son; and had there been any choice but death or a Mormon marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.

‘It is well,’ he replied, ‘and I had rightly counted on your spirit. Eat, then, for you have far to go.’ So saying, he set meat before me; and while I was endeavouring to obey, he left the room and returned with an armful of coarse raiment. ‘There,’ said he, ‘is your disguise. I leave you to your toilet.’

The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of fifteen; and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered my movements. But what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem of their origin and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged. I had scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, opened a back window, helped me out into the narrow space between the house and the overhanging bluffs, and showed me a ladder of iron footholds mortised in the rock. ‘Mount,’ he said, ‘swiftly. When you are at the summit, walk, so far as you are able, in the shadow of the smoke. The smoke will bring you, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down, and 

 Prev. P 37/173 next