I met at Castle Gardens many whom I had known in the old country; but it was one particular face which I was anxious to see. A man wrapped in a thick great coat, and with a fur cap upon his head, brushed against me; and before I had time to raise my eyes, my hand was grasped in his, and I heard Mary’s husband say, “Oh Sister Stenhouse, I’m so glad to see you; I knew we should meet you in New York. Come and see Mary. She’s my Mary now!”
I went with Elder Shrewsbury and I saw Mary. But oh, how greatly was she changed! When I returned from our Swiss mission and saw her after an interval of several years, I was, of course, struck with the alteration which had then transformed her from a pretty little fairy-like girl into a decorous young lady contemplating matrimony; but although I had now been absent from England only a few months, I observed a much more striking alteration in her than on the previous occasion. It was not now, I thought, so much an outward and personal change, as a new development of her inner consciousness—her soul itself. Her form was as graceful, and her eyes as bright as ever; but from those eyes there now shone forth another light than that which I had thought so charming in the by-gone time.
Her affection for me was as warm and demonstrative as when we first met. She recognized me in a moment, before her husband had time to say a word; and, throwing both her arms round me, she kissed me again and again with all the effusion of her childish days. Taking my hand she led me gently into a quiet corner and seated me beside her on a big trunk, and then she began to talk. It was the same soft sweet voice again, which used to be so dear to me when I was left all alone in Southampton, soon after my marriage, while my husband was on mission in Italy.
She told me all the story of her courtship—all, and much more, than she had told me in her letter. But it was when she came to speak of her marriage, of her husband, and especially of their pilgrimage to Utah, that I observed more especially the change which had taken place in her. She was no longer the light-hearted girl, half-doubting her strange religion, and rejecting it altogether when it did not coincide with her own ideas and wishes. No: Elder Shrewsbury—had he been ten times a Mormon Elder—could not have wished for a more obedient, a more earnest, I might say, a more fanatical believer than was now to be found in his young and beautiful wife. Her eyes really glowed with enthusiasm as she spoke of “the work of the Lord” and of “gathering to Zion;” and her voice, though soft and sweet as ever, had in it, now and then, a tinge of sternness which told of a determination and spirit which the casual observer would never have suspected.
I expressed some surprise that she and her husband, not being without funds, should have gone with the Hand-Cart Company when they might have waited and have gone with so much more comfort with one of the independent companies.
“Why, Sister Stenhouse,” she said, “we have done it as a matter of faith. Certainly we could have afforded to go in any way we chose, but my husband said we ought to be an example to the poorer saints; so we gave away nearly all our money to help the emigration fund, and then we came, just as you see us, along with the rest.”
“But the danger and discomfort is so great,” I suggested. “Surely the Lord does not want us to sacrifice ourselves when no one is benefitted by it?”
“Not a bit,” said she; “there’s no danger, Sister Stenhouse, and if there were it would only please me all the more. As for discomfort, why we should have had that any way, and we both glory in making sacrifices. Besides which, we have been told by the Apostle that this will be the most pleasant and successful journey across the Plains that has ever been made.”