Sally could barely stop herself from smiling now. "What do you mean to ask?"
"Maybe I just don't have enough faith, Sister Sally. I'm still afraid. What if you answered no?"
"I'm a good Saint, Charlie. I'd never make a liar out of the Prophet."
Impulsively, Charlie took a step toward her. She stood then, and Charlie could not help but notice how her bodice moved quickly with her breaths. Charlie reached out, and slowly, carefully she walked toward him and rested her hand on his. She was trembling slightly. So was he. It was not her answer that he feared, however. It was his own changeable heart. Only this afternoon he had been annoyed at the way everyone pushed him toward marrying Sally. Now he not only was proposing to her, but also was indecorously glad of it.
And yet he could not doubt his desire for Sally, nor his gladness at the happy way she looked at him. It made him proud to think this woman could want him so. Only a fool would think he had chosen unworthily; nor, he thought proudly, would anyone doubt that she had married well. He smiled at her. "Sister Sally, will you -- "
"Yes," she said.
"Marry me?"
"Not even a breath, the Prophet said." She smiled.
He took her hands in his and kissed them. "I expect I should ask your father," Charlie said.
Mother Clinton spoke from her place at the fire. "I don't think you'll have much trouble there, Charlie. Only a week ago he said, 'I wonder what's taking that boy so damn long.'"
"I had to be sure I could support a family. We'll be married as soon as my factory's built and started running."
Sally looked dismayed. "How long will that be?"
"Depends on how fast I push the men to work."
"Day and night," Sally said. "Build it in a week!"
"Sally!" Mother Clinton said.
Charlie only laughed. "Don't worry, Mother Clinton," he said. "She can't be more eager than I am. We've put this off too long already, haven't we, Sally?"
In answer she clung to him. Yes, he knew how that body felt, pressed against his. Charlie held her shoulders gently -- more passion than that would not look right, not with others looking on. A bit embarrassed, he looked away from Mother Clinton, away from the little boy, toward the door where Harriette watched, watched distantly, as if from the wrong end of the glass; and for the first time she did not seem frightening to Charlie. Rather she looked afraid. It was loneliness she was foreseeing now, and her sister gone. It's you I'm hurting, Charlie thought, watching her. But I don't mean to. I'm just doing the will of God. There's none of us can resist that. Even if I wanted to.
Harriette broke the silence. "Will you stay to supper, Charlie?"
"Oh, Harriette, there's nothing fit to serve company," Mother Clinton said.
"But Charlie isn't company now, is he?" Harriette looked pointedly at Charlie. He understood. Take my sister, Harriette was saying, but take her family, too. Charlie would have the roof fixed. Charlie would see to it there was enough to eat, and warmth enough in the house. Responsibility was not an unwelcome burden. He was a competent man, and would gladly prove it to anyone.
Charlie got home soon after supper, and after letting his mother complain at him for coming home late without sending word, he told his family what had happened that day, from his conversation with Joseph to Sally's saying yes. Mother tried hard not to gloat over what she regarded as a victory. Father had the wisdom to give no further advice about marriage. There was no wine for celebration -- they toasted Charlie with thin tea. "May you have a dozen children," Anna said. "May you never hunger," John said. "May you be glad of Sally every morning, and may she be glad of you every night," said Dinah.
In the quiet light of one steady candle, after John and Anna had gone to bed, Charlie and Dinah talked.
"We'll find our own house now, of course," Dinah said.
"Of course not, said Charlie. "Sally and I will move into a cabin, that's all."
"When your factory's up, we won't want to live here anyway. We can afford it, I think. I'm making some money. And Father has his first commission."
"For a portrait?"
"Hyrum Smith's wife, Mary."
"How much?"
"Enough for a few months' rent on a cabin."
"I won't have you living with dirt floors. I won't have it said that Charlie Kirkham lived in luxury while his family starved."
"We won't starve, Charlie. And this house isn't exactly luxury. Besides, you can't afford to support two houses."
"I can."
Dinah looked at him sharply. "Where do you suddenly come by all this money? A factory, and still enough left over to marry and keep two households'?"
"I'm going to prosper. Sally and I won't marry until the factory's going."
"And if you fail?"
"I won't."
"Failure is not impossible for a Kirkham," Dinah said. "There are precedents."
"I'm not Father."
"But you are Robert?"
"I'm a capitalist, not an engineer. What I'll create is money, not things."
"Soap and candles aren't things?"
"You know what I mean."
"Yes, I do. I believe in you. Why does Mr. Ullery?"
Charlie saw no reason not to tell Dinah how the Prophet had helped him. "Because Brother Joseph does."
At once Dinah became suspicious. "The Prophet arranged your loan?"
"I think so. Don Carlos hinted. Brother Joseph believes in me, too."
Dinah could not help but wonder if it was faith that prompted Joseph or if he was, in the only way possible to him, courting her. See what advantages come to your family when you are bound to the Prophet. It made her angry to think that he thought her such a whore. Then she caught herself, and reminded herself that it was also quite possible that Brother Joseph believed in Charlie. How arrogant was she, to think that she was the only person in her family that the Prophet might love?
And then she was ashamed at how she trembled at the thought that Joseph loved her.
"What's wrong?" Charlie asked.
Dinah shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "Finish your factory quickly, Charlie, and get that woman indoors. She's the wife you need. You're good enough for each other -- that's a rare thing."
With that, Charlie thought he understood. Of course Dinah was upset. Charlie's marriage was a reminder of Matthew, and, worse, of Val and Honor. "How can I be glad, when you're suffering, and I can do nothing to relieve you?"
Dinah laughed and patted Charlie's hand. It was an old woman's gesture, and her voice was not young when she spoke. "Rejoice again and again, and I'll be gladder for you than you are for yourself."
With that she left her sewing and went off to bed. Charlie sat there after she left, thinking of how poor Dinah never deserved anything but happiness, and now, with neither husband nor children, with no possibility of marrying again while Matthew lived, now happiness seemed completely out of reach for her.
Feeling, as he had all day, that God was especially close to him now, Charlie generously put in a good word for Dinah in his prayers. Lord, I pray you, remove all the obstacles that bar her now from happiness, It's time that things went right with her, if goodness is to be rewarded at all in this world. Dinah is still young, could still bear children and make a home if only she were free to marry.
And suddenly Charlie wondered if in fact Dinah had fallen in love with someone. That would explain her virulence when she commanded him to marry. It would explain why she seemed so upset when Charlie was marrying, and marrying exactly as she had advised. Dinah was still young. She was beautiful and good. It would be surprising if some man had not desired her, surprising if she did not respond. And yet, because of Matthew, she was forever barred from the very happiness that Charlie would achieve. It made her tragic, made their lives seem poetry to him, like star-crossed lovers in a play of Shakespeare's, the brother marrying in bliss, the sister grieving in her solitude.
Of course he knew it was probably nonsense. It didn't take an unrequited love t
o explain odd behavior in women. Yet he was so pleased with the poetry of it that for days, whenever he saw his sister in a group that included men, he watched, he studied the way she was with them and they with her, hoping to notice some man who seemed unusually eager, around whom Dinah was particularly shy. But there was no such man. Indeed, she was rarely around men at all. Just as she had done in Manchester, she ministered among the women, until Charlie was sure that he had fooled himself, and she had no thought of love at all.
30
Dinah Kirkham Nauvoo, 1841
"And of course you'll come with your father when I sit for him," Mary Smith said, and though Dinah tried to resist, she could not, in the end, refuse. So here she sat in the home of the Prophet's brother, reading the Book of Mormon to the Prophet's sister-in-law as she sat rigidly in the light slanting through the south-facing parlor window.
"You needn't sit quite so still," John said.
"I wouldn't want you to spoil it," Mary answered.
"It would take more than you twitching now and then to cause me to get you wrong on the canvas. Besides, If I have to listen to one more 'And it came to pass' I'm going to burn that book."
"Brother Kirkham," Mary said, looking shocked. "That's the Book of Mormon!"
"That's it!" John cried. "At last, you have an expression on your face!"
Mary turned to Dinah in surprise. "Didn't I have an expression before?"
"Like a stump," Dinah said, and the women laughed.
John was delighted. "You're good for something after all, Dinah. Keep her laughing and she won't look like a corpse in the painting."
So Dinah set aside the book and talked. She did not know Mary well. The hierarchy of women in Nauvoo paralleled the hierarchy of the men; the wives of the Prophet and his counselors were at the pinnacle of society. To such women one did not speak until invited, and Mary simply had not made that invitation until now. Not because Mary was snobbish, Dinah realized, but because she honestly did not know her own social dominance. "I wish you had come before," Mary said when they had talked for more than an hour, almost forgetting Dinah's father was even there. "I had heard so much about you from Vilate and Emma and -- oh, everyone."
"Nauvoo must be desperately short of things to talk about."
"Some of the women call you a prophetess."
"I'm nothing of the kind."
"And Vilate calls you a true Saint."
That opinion did mean something to Dinah, though she knew how little she deserved it. "Vilate is too generous."
"As a matter of fact, Vilate has a way of saying exactly what she thinks. If she says you're a Saint, it's pretty likely to be the truth. She's a hard one to fool."
"I know," Dinah said. But I am fooling you all. The Prophet wants me in his bed; I have rejected him; and none of you knows a thing.
"Not like Brother Joseph." And Mary smiled.
Dinah almost lost her composure. But it was just coincidence, she realized. All conversations in Nauvoo turned to the Prophet sooner or later. Besides, Dinah told herself, she had done nothing to be ashamed of.
"Now he's generous to a fault. If he were the only one who spoke well of you, I'd pay no attention."
So Joseph was speaking of her -- at least to his family. A suspicion entered Dinah's mind. "It wasn't the Prophet who recommended my father to you, was it?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. How did you know?"
A loan for her brother; a commission for her father, It couldn't be coincidence. It angered her that he would use his influence as Prophet to try to get a woman in his debt. But I don't mind, thought Dinah. It will also make it easier to despise him and keep from desiring him. Not that I need help for that, of course.
"What's wrong?" Mary asked.
"Wrong?"
"You're so quiet," Mary said.
John chuckled. "Dinah's had silent spells since she was a baby. Back then they could last for weeks."
"I was only wondering," said Dinah, "how the Prophet could recommend my father when he's never seen his work."
To Dinah's annoyance, John answered. "John Bennett recommended me. He said he would, when I met him in Springfield."
"That's right," said Mary. "Joseph said as much. Hyrum was asking if he knew a painter, and Joseph said -- "
At that moment Hyrum Smith leaned into the room. "Good afternoon," he said.
"Oh, Hyrum, you're home!" cried Mary.
But he only had eyes for the painting. "May I see?"
Dinah watched him as he examined the canvas. He wasn't so tall as his brother, nor so open-faced; he was quiet, his face more serious than Joseph's. The Prophet's older brother, and yet willingly in his service. Dinah marveled at that -- she tried to imagine Robert serving Charlie that way, and almost laughed aloud at the thought. Hyrum was either a weakling or something quite remarkable, to bear taking a place below a brother he once thought of as a child.
"It's very rough, of course," John explained. "It takes shape gradually."
"Oh, I know," Hyrum said. "But you've caught her all the same."
"Has he?" Mary asked from the window. "And welcome home, my love."
"Me?" Hyrum asked. "Were you referring to me?"
"Oh, no," said Mary. "I didn't mean to call you that. The secret's out. Now all the world shall know I love my husband."
"No one heard but these two. If we kill them immediately -- or just cut their tongues out -- "
"Oh, Hyrum, now you're getting gruesome." Mary studied the painting. "It doesn't look like me at all. Just a spot like a crushed bug for my face."
"I thought that was the best part," Hyrum said. Dinah was unnerved by the way he and Mary bantered. Mary was cheerful enough, but Hyrum never so much as tried not to smile -- from his face and voice you'd never know he was anything but sincere. "You're treading on my foot, Mary."
"And I will, until you tell me how you think this 'captures' me."
"Torture me all you like. I'll still tell you. It's just the way he has you standing, and the way your hand is held, up like that -- you do that when you laugh."
"I do?"
"He noticed it, that's all. It'll make me glad whenever I see that painting." To John he said, "You're as good as I had hoped."
During the conversation, John had gathered up his materials and set them aside, affecting unconcern with the conversation. "Tomorrow?" he said now. "The same time?"
"The house is going to fall to ruin if I lose so many hours a day," Mary said.
"I'll divorce you if it does." Hyrum said. And then he caught Mary by both hands and looked into her eyes. "Mary Fielding, now that you're rid of that monstrous husband of yours, will you marry me?"
"Do you smoke or spit?"
"I'll give it up for you."
"Then I'll go get the children from Vilate's. Brother Kirkham, will you walk me to Vilate Kimball's house on your way home?"
"Of course we will," Dinah said.
Hyrum and Mary were both silent a moment, and glanced at each other before Hyrum spoke. "I had hoped to have a chance to talk to you alone for a moment, Sister Dinah," Hyrum said.
It all came clear now. Mary's insistence that Dinah come along for the sitting had been Hyrum's idea, or rather Joseph's. Well, I'll not be strung like a puppet. "I wish I could, but I must get home, actually," Dinah said. "I've taken as much time from my work as I can.
"Joseph wanted me to talk to you about the school," Hyrum said.
"Tell Brother Joseph that I've decided not to be a schoolteacher."
"Oh, no!" Mary said. "And there are a dozen of us who've been counting on it! Imagine, a woman who can read and write, making over shirts while our children wallow in ignorance! You can't be so heartless as to refuse us."
"I'm no scholar," Dinah said, flustered.
"Talk to Hyrum, please, Dinah," Mary said. The woman was so genuine; it annoyed Dinah how Joseph was manipulating the friendship of women to bend Dinah to obedience, even in as small a matter as meeting with Hyrum.
"Wh
at's this about a school?" John asked.
"Brother Joseph wants me to teach. He thinks I'm much cleverer than I am."
"I just want a chance to explain some things to you," Hyrum said. Dinah looked him in the eye. He knows, yes, there's no doubt of it, he knows what Joseph wants from me. "Just thirty minutes, Sister Dinah, and you'll at least know what it is you're turning down."
"I already know what I'm turning down, thank you," Dinah said.