“I can’t work hard and—I’m not—pretty any longer—why do you want to marry me?”
Her question made him the more embarrassed of the two, and she saw as much, but she could not tell why it was.
“Why,” he stammered, “why,—you see—but never mind. I must hurry on now. In about two weeks—“ And he put the spurs so viciously to his horse that he was nearly unseated by the startled animal’s leap.
Off on the open road again he thought it out. Marriage had not been in his mind when he spoke to the woman. He had meant only to give her a home. But to her the idea had come naturally from his words, and he began to see that it was, indeed, not an unnatural thing to do. He dwelt long on this new idea, picturing at intervals the woman’s lack of any charm or beauty, her painful emaciation, her weakness.
Passing through another village later in the day, he saw the youth who had been so unfortunate as to love this girl in defiance of his Bishop. Unmolested for the time, the imbecile would go briskly a few steps and then pause with an important air of the deepest concern, as if he were engaged on an errand of grave moment. He was thinly clad and shivering in the chill of the late October afternoon.
Again, still later in the day, he overtook and passed the gaunt, gray woman who forever sought her husband. She was smiling as he passed her. Then his mind was made up.
As he entered Brigham’s office in Salt Lake City some days later, there passed out by the same door a woman whom he seemed dimly to remember. The left half of her face was disfigured by a huge flaming scar, and he saw that she had but one hand.
“Who was that woman?” he asked Brigham, after they had chatted a little of other matters.
“That’s poor Christina Lund. You ought to remember her. She was in your hand-cart party. She’s having a pretty hard time of it. You see, she froze off one hand, so now she can’t work much, and then she froze her face, so she ain’t much for looks any longer—in fact, I wouldn’t say Christina was much to start with, judging from the half of her face that’s still good—and so, of course, she hasn’t been able to marry. The Church helps her a little now and then, but what troubles her most is that she’ll lose her glory if she ain’t married. You see, she ain’t a worker and she ain’t handsome, so who’s going to have her sealed to him?”
“I remember her now. She pushed the cart with her father in it from the Platte crossing, at Fort Laramie, clear over to Echo Cañon, when all the fingers of one hand came off on the bar of the cart one afternoon; and then her hand had to be amputated. Brother Brigham, she shouldn’t be cheated of her place in the Kingdom.”