Some of the Elders, finding that they might not marry plural wives before they reached Utah, have bound the girls by solemn vows and covenants to marry them when they arrived in Salt Lake Valley; and the poor girls, believing that, because these men were Missionaries, all they said and did must be right, have often—in fact, in almost every instance—to their own great injury, kept their “covenants” and married the men to whom they were vowed. I have known personally and intimately several women who have in this way ruined their prospects and blighted the hopes of their whole lives, and sadder stories than theirs could not be told.
My husband had again left Salt Lake City, and had gone to “the States,” as we then called “going East;” for it was such a long journey that we felt ourselves altogether out of the pale of civilization. I felt, therefore, comparatively free; for I could now, whenever I desired to do so, walk out, or visit a friend, without the constant dread of meeting him and his wife. It always humiliated me to see them together, although I believed that it was perfectly right that my husband should show attentions to his other wife. It was not now jealousy that I felt—the day of jealous feeling was long past. I felt disgusted, and I was humbled at the sight of them. At one time, for nearly six months, I remained at home, never going further than my own garden, simply for the reason that I feared to meet her in the presence of any of my friends—particularly any of my Gentile friends; or worse still, with him.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
“OUR” HUSBAND’S FIANCÉE—A SECOND WIFE’S SORROWS—STEPS TOWARDS APOSTASY.
At one time I had almost begun to think that my husband had seen enough of the discomforts and heartlessness of polygamic life, and that his eyes were looking back wishfully to the time when, as the old Scotch ballad says:
“One loving heart was all his own,
But there as king he reign’d supreme.”
My faith in my own acuteness and perception was, however, very considerably shaken when one day he told me that he thought it was about time for him to think of taking another wife. I suppose he expected that I should express some astonishment or offer objections, for he proceeded to give me excellent reasons for what he was about to do. His greatly improved circumstances; his desire to sustain his brethren; and, above all, the necessity that he should “build up a kingdom!”
There was no gainsaying all this. The Lord had certainly very greatly blessed him in basket and in store; it was, moreover, praiseworthy in him to wish to sustain his brethren; and nobody could deny that he ought to have a “kingdom!” To crown all, the young lady whom he proposed to honour this time could not possibly be objected to by any loyal Saint, for she was of the seed royal of the modern Israel—a daughter of the high-priestly house of Brigham Young!