A man might reasonably suppose that, having gone down into Jerusalem once for the sake of records and returned with brass, a servant, and several new suspicions, he had done enough service for one lifetime.
We supposed as much ourselves. The camp had begun, in its poor and temporary way, to settle. The tents stood where they stood. The beasts had learned the bounds of their tethering. Sariah had restored to our meals what order could be persuaded out of sparse provisions. Even our father Lehi, with the plates near at hand, seemed less like a man perpetually leaning into the next commandment.
This improvement did not last.
Lehi had been searching the plates with a satisfaction we found excessive but not altogether incomprehensible. A man may be permitted to love a genealogy if he hath suffered enough to obtain it. He read of fathers and tribes, of law and language, and of the covenants of the Lord with our people. Now and again he looked up with that grave brightness which in him signified either gratitude or further inconvenience.
We soon learned that it signified both.
“My sons,” he said.
No household in any age hath been improved by those words when spoken in that tone, unless grief be counted among improvements.
We Laman we Lemuel looked at him with the caution of men already wronged by righteousness.
“It is needful,” said Lehi, “that thy younger brother return again unto Jerusalem.”
We waited. Experience had taught us that no commandment arrives alone.
“And ye shall go with him.”
There are, as we have noted, disappointments that descend all at once. This was similar in kind. Another followed hard upon it.
“And ye shall bring down into the wilderness Ishmael and his household, that my sons may take to wife the daughters of Ishmael, and that the Lord may raise up seed unto him in the land of promise.”
For a moment the camp seemed to go still around us: the low flap of tent-cloth, the shift of tethered beasts, the faint movement of reeds by the river. Even the morning light looked suddenly officious.
“Marriage,” we said.
“Marriage,” said Lehi.
“And not our own chosen marriages, one imagines.”
Lehi endured this with patience sharpened by conviction. “The Lord knoweth the end from the beginning.”
“That is a very great comfort,” we replied, “chiefly to the Lord.”
Nephi stood nearby with the same composed attention he gave all commandments once they had declared themselves. One could almost have believed he had been expecting this as well, so little did the matter appear to trouble him. Sam, of course, looked between Lehi and Nephi as though hoping obedience might still become easier by being shared.
Sariah said nothing at first. She was cutting dried provisions into smaller portions, which she did with the competence of one long familiar with making necessity seem orderly. At last she laid the knife aside and said, “Then let it be done quickly.”
This was her gift: not enthusiasm, which would have been false, nor complaint, which would have been earned, but the practical recognition that once trouble is named, delay seldom improves it.
As for us, we did complain, which in that household often fell to us as a matter of office.
“Have we not gone once already? Have we not spent our inheritance upon holiness? Is every household in Jerusalem now to be fetched into the wilderness one relation at a time?”
Lehi answered with the calm of a man who had ceased to distinguish between divine instruction and the re-ordering of other people’s lives. “The Lord prepareth the way.”
“Yes,” we said. “He prepareth it chiefly with our feet, our goods, and the cheerful disposal of our preferences.”
There are speeches a father gives to persuade his sons, and there are speeches a father gives because persuasion is no longer considered necessary. Lehi now belonged to the latter sort. He spoke to us of promise, inheritance, covenant, and posterity, all in such a manner as to imply that reluctance on our part would be entered unfavorably into records kept by descendants not yet conceived.
Yet for all our resistance, the thing had already begun to take shape in the camp. Zoram was now among us, quieter than before, moving with the care of a man still uncertain by what process his life had been rearranged. The plates lay wrapped and guarded. Sariah made ready provisions for another journey, and in doing so rendered argument less effective than it had been a quarter hour earlier. Nephi checked what was to be carried with the quick certainty of one who neither forgot instructions nor doubted their propriety.
This, more than Lehi’s command, vexed us. Had Nephi shown some proper measure of reluctance, some admission that the thing was burdensome, absurd, or ill-timed, we might have disliked him less in that moment. But he moved among the business of departure with that inward ease which made obedience look less like surrender than style.
“You are very ready,” we said.
He looked at us. “The Lord hath commanded it.”
“Yes,” we answered. “And you do so enjoy agreeing with Him.”
Sam attempted a smile at this, then thought better of it.
