Thus saying, she kissed me, laughed with the ghost of her former merry ways when I first knew her, and said good-bye. I watched her till she was lost to sight, and then I closed the door, saying to myself, with a sigh, “Ah, me! can this be the Mary that I once knew?”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HOW MARRIAGES ARE MADE IN UTAH—A NEW WIFE FOUND FOR MY HUSBAND.
Not long after this, I was enabled to visit my Swiss friend, Madame Bailiff. Ever since her husband had called upon me in Salt Lake City, I had watched anxiously for an opportunity of seeing her, for I felt much interested in learning how time had passed with her since we parted in Geneva.
I found her in a little log-cabin of two rooms, with bare walls, bare floor, and miserably furnished; and in this wretched abode poverty and polygamy had wrecked the life of my poor friend, whom I had known under such different circumstances. Here, together with their five children, lived also the second wife, with her two children. It was with difficulty that I could recognize in the poor, careworn, broken-spirited, and ill-clad woman who stood before me, the once gay, light-hearted, happy, and elegantly-dressed lady whom I had known in Switzerland. Mormonism had in her case utterly blighted her existence. It seemed to me hardly possible that so great a change should have been wrought in her in such a few years as had elapsed since last I saw her. What suffering she must have endured, I thought, what mental agony, what physical pain, to write those wrinkled lines of care upon her once handsome face; and, ah! what a pang I felt at the remembrance that I myself had been instrumental in leading her into Mormonism and Polygamy. Self-reproach I did not feel, but sorrow I did. I had thought to lead her into the way of holiness and heavenly peace by winning her to the religion of the Saints, but that which I in my enthusiasm had believed would be the greatest blessing which one poor mortal could communicate to another, had turned to a curse, and, instead of the happy wife and mother which she once had been, she had become a victim to that faith which in its very existence is an insult to womanhood.
In temper and disposition she was, however, just the same; her affectionate nature was unchanged. No doubt she read in my features the painful surprise which I experienced in witnessing her altered circumstances; but she met me with not a single word of reproach for my being the cause of her leaving her own dear country. I should not have blamed her had she hated me, though she knew, of course, that I had wronged her innocently.
She told me of the difficulties which they had had to contend with after their arrival in Utah, and how they had been compelled to part with almost everything they had, in order to provide bread for their children. When they left London, they took with them several handsome carpets, china, glass, and a large quantity of silver ware, besides bedding and clothing of every description; for they were well-to-do in the world, and had quite enough for themselves, after they had liberally assisted the poorer Saints to emigrate. Upon their arrival in Utah, the husband—good man that he was—was willing to come down to the level of his brethren and go to farming among them. A brother who knew him in his own country, and imagined, I suppose, that he could afford to lose, sold him a farm that he himself had become disgusted with, though, of course, he did not say so; and when my inexperienced friend, Monsieur Bailiff, found that nothing could be done with it, he supposed that the land was good enough, but that he himself was not competent to work it. No one ventured to hint that he had been cheated, as it was one of the Church authorities who had sold him the land. After spending upon it all that he possessed, he was finally compelled to abandon it. They were now very much straitened in circumstances, and my poor friend told me that she had frequently been compelled—as they were entirely destitute of money—to take a silver spoon or fork to the butcher’s market to trade with, and there they drove a hard bargain with her, and she obtained next to nothing in exchange for her silver. Her crystal and plate now grace the table of a certain rich man in Utah. Every article they possessed went in this way at a most ruinous sacrifice, until nothing remained; and then the husband was forced to engage in manual labour, while the poor wife employed herself in whatever feminine work she could obtain; they receiving in return just what people chose to pay them. In the midst of their troubles the husband was “counselled” to take another wife.
“But why did he not refuse to do so?” I asked.
“If you had been here during the Reformation, you would not ask me such a question as that. Sister Stenhouse, you ought to thank God that you were not here then. There were shocking things done at that time, and the men were all crazy about marrying. They married every woman who was single, and even little girls who had scarcely reached their teens; it was a time of terror, and no one dared to rebel.”