From the Relief Society Magazine, July 1966 –

A Bag of Gold

By Hazel K. Todd

Faith, fair as the flowers of her pioneer valley, tripped with singing footsteps home, along the winding path to Grandma Leth’s. The wild roses that had squatted at the side of the trail in a tangled bramble all sixteen of her eighteen years, tonight held out perfume-laden branches to her. The brook that had tumbled over the moss-slick pebbles since she could remember, now crooned soft love syllables as it slipped under the willow bridge. Even Herod, the pithy old owl, that she had named long ago, winked at her knowingly from his scraggly Cottonwood tree. She fancied she heard him whisper in his cracked voice, “I know why you are so happy. Faith. It is because Joel asked you to marry him, and you are in love.”

Herod didn’t say also, “Grandma Leth will not be happy with you, because Joel has no bag of the gold she has been waiting for all these eighteen years. He is a pioneer boy, and if you marry him you will have to work and dig and slave, just as all the people of the valley have done since Brigham Young sent them to settle here.”

Faith shut her ears so Herod could not say those words to her.

“I will not tell Grandma,” she said to herself, “but when Joel comes tomorrow. Grandma will see that he is big and strong and fine. And she will forget about the money.”

But she didn’t know that Grandma Leth had not lived for more than seventy years without learning special things. She knew the shortness in her breath meant there was not much time left, and she knew the light of fulfillment in a girl’s eyes when love had touched her.

So Faith stood at the door of the cabin and gazed out into the bright morning. “Grandma,” she said with her hands behind her against the mud-chinked wall, “the roses along the path were gay last night. I think they have never smelled so sweet.”

Grandma laid down the reed basket she was weaving to sell at the little store.

Grandma was old and wrinkled and her back was bent from long years of toil. Her hands were hard and twisted into the shape of the reed braids they had woven. But there was a light in her eyes which told there was still youth in her heart, like the brightness of hope or the fire of determination.

“Faith,” she said, “what are you waiting for?”

Faith dropped her eyes to the pattern on the hard dirt floor. “I thought. Grandma, that maybe today the one with the bag of money would come up the path and carry me away.”

Grandma Leth looked at Faith, from her flaxen hair to her bare,
brown feet, as if she had never seen anyone half so lovely before.

“Have you seen such a one?” she asked.

Faith went to her, slowly, with faltering steps. “Grandma,” she said, “why must the one for me have a bag of money? I have strong hands and I can work. You have taught me to work.”

“It is Joel,” Grandma said then, and Faith was sure it must be disappointment she heard in her voice. “It is Joel, and he has nothing to give you.”

Faith knelt on the dirt floor before her grandparent. “Oh, yes. Grandma, he has much to give. He has given me his love. And I would rather have it than all the bags of gold in the world.”

“Love! What is that?” Grandma snorted. “It is a silly thing! It cannot bring the things we have waited for these many years!”

Faith laid her fair head in Grandma’s lap and wept tears of anguish.

What Faith couldn’t see, was that Grandma’s eyes, too, were wet. But she swept the tears away with her gnarled old hand.

“Come, child, we have things to do.”

Faith rose disconsolately to her slender height. “What things, Grandma?” she asked. But there was no heart in her voice.

“We have waited too long,” Grandma said. “We will go and find him.”

Faith gazed at the old lady. All her life but two years when she was too little to know, she had lived in the valley. Once long ago, before her grandmother joined the Church she had lived in an eastern city. And Faith’s own mother whom Faith couldn’t remember, had lived in that same city in a wealthy home. And her mother had married Grandma Leth’s son so that her own people had disowned her because of their religion. They had come across the plains when Faith was a tiny baby. And President Brigham Young had called them, with others, to settle the valley. But her father had been shot with an arrow by an Indian. And her grandfather had died of a fever. And her mother, who, somehow Faith knew, was homesick and sad, had died also. And they were all three buried under the great cottonwood tree beyond the creek, with the other dead of the valley. Never in Faith’s own life had they been beyond the ridge of rugged mountains that encircled their valley. Where, in this faraway place could they find a man with a bag of gold! From the shelf over the bed Grandma took the box that held the shoes that had belonged to Faith’s mother. Faith watched while Grandma lifted them from the yellowed paper wrapping. They were high laced shoes, with shiny tips on the toes that Grandma had kept shiny from the soot of the kettle that hung in the fireplace. Faith had never seen the people of the valley wear such shoes.

“Here,” Grandma said, ”you cannot go to find the rich one with no shoes.” Always before Grandma had said, “Your feet are lovely. They need no shoes.”

Wonderingly, Faith put the shoes on and laced the long laces.

Now Grandma took the brown clay pot that held the pieces of money from the basket sales over many years. She dumped its contents onto the bed and began heaping it into piles, counting each shiny piece. Faith gazed in astonishment at the money now being scooped into the old brown bag.

Then, in the comer, from the old trunk that had been carried across the plains, came the silky dress and the velvet cape. Grandma pulled the cape around her shoulders and held out to Faith the elegant dress she had never been allowed to touch.

“Your mother’s,” she said.

Faith followed with a sinking heart, out the door and down the winding path. When Joel came they would be gone and the love she had so newly found would be lost.

And then she saw him coming up the path, his long sinewy legs striding across the worn footprints, his shoulders straight and strong in the bright sunshine.

“Where are you going?” he asked, with his eyes drinking in the loveliness of her.

Faith dropped her eyes to the path, for she could not bear to see his face when Grandma told him.

“If someone had twenty bags of gold, he could not hold so much love for Faith as I,” he said. “I am strong and willing to work.”

But Grandma was pulling her down the path and she could not wait.

She turned and watched him standing there by the rosebushes, and she wished there was no gold in all the world.

“I will be waiting for you,” he called. “Every day I will be waiting here in the path.”

“Where, Grandma, will we find the one with the bag of gold?” Faith asked obediently, for her grandmother was all she had, and she had given her everything she had known.

“We will go to your mother’s people,” she said. “The years will have worn away the bitterness.”

Faith looked at her Grandmother wonderingly. Her mother’s people were never mentioned to her. She knew very little of them. “But it is so far,” she said, knowing only that it was in some far-off city across the weary plains, so remote to her as to be impenetrable.

“There are ways now, if you have money,” Grandma said. Her hands touched the lumps in the brown bag, “Ways for those going east, those who do not wish to stay in the valleys of the mountains.”

“But, Grandma, truly you have never been sorry you came to the mountains. You have always said the mountains were an emblem of our religion — everlasting.”

”Hush, child,” Grandma said tersely. ”There were promises made. …”

“What promises?” Faith asked.

But the sharp determined clicking of Grandma’s walking stick on the rocks of the trail were her only answer. Faith followed obediently, oblivious of the slick moss of the rocks or the sweet perfumery of the roses.

She awakened to her new surroundings with a quick sharp pang of uneasiness she had never before known. The tiny window in the cabin where the sun rays splashed onto her patchwork quilt, had suddenly grown to a wide, deep window covered with heavy draperies of unknown richness. Her eyes traveled from the curtained window that hid the sunshine up the flowered wallpaper and across the room to the walnut dresser and washstand with its big white pitcher and bowl. And then she remembered.

She remembered, vividly, last night coming with her grandma in the coach with the fine horses, to the strange tall house in the city. She remembered being ushered into the great house by a man whom the woman afterward called Jones. She remembered standing before the tall, sedate lady, who, her grandma said was the mother of that far-away misty mother whom she had never known.

“This forsaken creature, Ruth’s child!” the new grandmother had said, eyeing her critically.

Faith had suddenly clung to Grandma Leth and said, “Please, Grandma, let’s go home!”

But Grandma Leth had pushed her forward, and the strange grandmother had laid her hand falteringly on her shoulder and looked earnestly into her face. And, suddenly, there had been tears in her eyes that she had wiped away with a lace handkerchief.

Then there had been sharp words and questions and answers, explanations and crying and tense pauses. Grandma Leth had explained that Faith’s mother was dead and buried back in the valley under the cottonwood tree, and that her father was dead there, too; that she still believed in her strange religion which she had taught to Faith. Grandma Leth held Faith’s hand and said, “She is Ruth’s child. Ruth could never quite give up all this.” Her eyes swept over the luxurious room, “She didn’t want to come back. But she couldn’t give it up. I promised her I would bring Faith here before she married. I have taught her that the one she marries must have a bag of gold, so there will be no regrets, no sadness, no undecided questions.”

The tall grandmother pulled herself up regally and gazed at Grandma Leth with a strange excitement. “You have been wise,” she said. Then her eyes grew suddenly bright. “I will take her away from you.” She came a step closer, and it seemed she looked scornfully at the withered frame of old Grandma Leth. “For I have a bag of gold, you know.”

So Grandma Leth had gone away. Faith had run to her and clung to her, but Grandma had loosened her hands with her own twisted fingers, and turned away.

“But, Grandma,” Faith wept, “when will I see you again?”

Grandma’s old eyes were full of fire. “When you are sure of the bag of gold,” she said. The sagging shoulders straightened in the velvet cape, and Grandma Leth melted away into the frightening mist of strangeness.

Then, as Faith remembered, she looked up at the silk ruffled canopy over her bed. She slid her hand hesitatingly along the satiny quilt, and touched with awe the great fluffy pillow. Presently she slid her legs carefully over the edge of the high bed onto the soft carpet. Gone were her mother’s shoes and silky dress. But there were strange new clothes. She cried silently inside as she fitted the new things to her slender body.

Then the new grandmother was sitting in the ruffled pink chair and talking softly and brightly. “This was your mother’s room, Faith,” she said, her eyes seeming to miss no tiny spot of Faith. “She grew up from a little girl here until — until she went away and left me for a boy with a new and hated religion.”

Faith listened dutifully while all inside her ached with homesickness.

“It can be your room now,” the grandmother said, leaning forward breathlessly. “All the things you want can be yours.”

And Faith knew not what to say, so she said nothing.

There were beautiful dresses, hats and shoes, umbrellas and fans. There were parties and operas and theaters. There were cousins and aunts and uncles and new friends. And there was a handsome boy named James. Grandma brought his family for dinner one day when Faith had learned more about the new life. They were rich and influential and very proper folks, the father, his wife, a sister, and James. She liked James. He had a quick, gay smile, and he could laugh at her strange mannerisms and her country ways.

After dinner the two walked slowly all about the garden. When they came to the bench under the chestnut tree, he sat down and pulled her down beside him.

“Do you have a bag of gold?” she asked seriously.

He looked at her quizzically and laughed. “You are a mercenary little thing,” he said, and pinched the end of her nose playfully. But more seriously, he added, “I guess you could say I have a bag of gold for the right person.”

After that James came to the house often. And Faith smiled at him brightly, for he was entertaining, and she liked him. And her grandmother smiled, too, assuredly. There were theaters and dances and rides in coaches in the park. Once James asked her to dance in the place where they were dining. She was filled with homesickness, floating with him over the floor.

“Where,” he asked, looking at her keenly, “in your Indian country, did you learn to dance like that?”

“With Joel at all the Church dances,” she said.

“Who is Joel?” he asked with quick interest.

“He is the one who has no bag of gold,” she said, looking away from him, for there were tears in her eyes.

He was quiet after that. They danced silently around the floor. He stopped by the big window filled with starry sky. He held her hand quietly and a smile ever so slight touched his lips, as he looked into her solemn face. “I think,” he said, “you found your bag of gold long before I found you.”

But her thoughts were too far away to understand what he was saying.

And then, when she had said good night and found her grandmother waiting for her, she suddenly remembered his words and she stopped to wonder at them.

“My dear,” her grandmother said, coming to meet her, “you look lovely. Did James say something especially nice tonight?”

Her grandmother’s eyes were bright with anticipation, and she put her arm affectionately around Faith’s shoulder.

Faith looked questioningly into her grandmother’s glad face. “He said,” she answered thoughtfully, “he said I had already found the bag of gold before he found me.”

“Before he found you?” Her grandmother’s voice trailed off into silence. She stood silent a time, and then she said, with over-gaiety in her voice, as if to assure herself, “But you are happy here. Faith. You do like James, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, yes, Grandmother. Only ”

“Only what?” The grandmother stood waiting as if she had always known since Faith had come to her, that it must end this way, but she must still cling to hope.

“Only — I — I — I want to go home.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“I want my Grandma Leth. I want the little church house and the saints of the valley, and the meadow grass, and the graves under the Cottonwood tree. I want my cabin with the dirt floor and the mud-chinked walls. And I want. …” She lowered her eyes to hide the tears. “I want Joel, who has no bag of gold, but who is willing to work and love and worship with me.”

She stood crying softly while her tall grandmother slowly but steadily came forward and put her arms around her lovingly. “Yes, my darling,” she said. She stepped to the door and called Jones. For a time she talked to him. And then she came back to Faith. “Your grandma will be here soon,” she said.

“But where. . . .?”

“She has been waiting,” she said simply.

A soft sigh like a whisper came from her lips. “You will leave me just as your mother left me. Only you will go with my blessing, just as your mother should have gone. Perhaps, then, she would not have been uncertain.”

She turned to the window and pulled aside the curtain and stared into the starry night.

“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully, “perhaps there could be a bag of gold for me out there, too, in your valley.”

Faith turned to the grandmother, then, with new recognition shining in her eyes. “Oh, yes. Grandmother. Now I know why Grandma Leth brought me here. It was so I would know for sure. Don’t you see? Joel is waiting there on the path with my bag of gold. The valley is filled with gold — enough for all!”