_How the Red Came Back to the Blood to be a Snare_
The watchful eyes of the Bishop had seen truly. Not only was the red
coming back to the blood of Martha, but the fair flesh to her meagre
frame, the spring of youth to her step and living fire to her voice and
the glance of her eyes. Her husband was pleased. He had made a new
creature of the poor, worn wreck found by the wayside, weak, emaciated,
reeling under her burden. He rejoiced to know he had done a true
service. He was glad, moreover, to know that she made an admirable
mother to the little woman-child. Prudence, indeed, had brought them
closer to each other, slowly, subtly, in little ways to disarm the most
timid caution.
And this mothering and fathering of little Prudence was a work by no
means colourless or uneventful. The child had displayed a grievous
capacity for remaining unimpressed by even the best-weighed opinions of
her protector. She was also appallingly fluent in and partial to the
idioms and metaphors of revealed religion,--a circumstance that would
not infrequently cause the sensitive to shudder.
Thus, when she chose to call her largest and least sightly doll the Holy
Ghost, the ingenuity of those about her was taxed to rebuke her in ways
that would be effective without being harsh. It was felt, too, that her
offence had been but slightly mitigated when she called the same doll,
thereafter, "Thou son of perdition and shedder of innocent blood." Not
until this disfigured effigy became Bishop Wright, and the remaining
dolls his more or less disobedient wives, was it felt that she had
approached even remotely the plausible and the decorous.
A glance at some of the verses she was from time to time constrained to
learn will perhaps indicate the line of her transgressions, and yet
avert a disclosure of details that were often tragic. She was taught
these verses from a little old book bound in the gaudiest of Dutch gilt
paper, as if to relieve the ever-present severity of the text and the
distressing scenes portrayed in the illustrating copperplates. For
example, on a morning when there had been hasty words at breakfast,
arising from circumstances immaterial to this narrative, she might be
made to learn:--
"That I did not see Frances just now I am glad,
For Winifred says she looked sullen and sad.
When I ask her the reason, I know very well
That Frances will blush the true reason to tell.
"And I never again shall expect to hear said
That she pouts at her milk with a toast of white bread,
When both are as good as can possibly be--
Though Betsey, for breakfast, perhaps may have tea."
With no sort of propriety could be set down in printed words the
occurrence that led to her reciting twenty times, somewhat defiantly in
the beginning, but at last with the accents and expression of
countenance proper to remorse, the following verses:--
"Who was it that I lately heard
Repeating an improper word?
I do not like to tell her name
Because she is so much to blame."
Indeed, she came to thunder the final verse with excellent gestures of
condemnatory rage:--
"Go, naughty child! and hide your face,
I grieve to see you in disgrace;
Go! you have forfeited to-day
All right at trap and ball to play."
Nor is it necessary to go back of the very significant lines themselves
to explain the circumstance of her having the following for a half-day's
burden:--
"Jack Parker was a cruel boy,
For mischief was his sole employ;
And much it grieved his friends to find
His thoughts so wickedly inclined.
"But all such boys unless they mend
May come to an unhappy end,
Like Jack, who got a fractured skull
Whilst bellowing at a furious bull."
Nor is there sufficient reason to say why she was often counselled to
regard as her model:--
"Miss Lydia Banks, though very young,
Will never do what's rude or wrong;
When spoken to she always tries
To give the most polite replies."
And painful, indeed, would it be to relate the events of one sad day
which culminated in her declaiming at night, with far more than
perfunctory warmth, and in a voice scarce dry of tears:--
"Miss Lucy Wright, though not so tall,
Was just the age of Sophy Ball;
But I have always understood
Miss Sophy was not half so good;
For as they both had faded teeth,
Their teacher sent for Doctor Heath.
"But Sophy made a dreadful rout
And would not have hers taken out;
While Lucy Wright endured the pain,
Nor did she ever once complain.
Her teeth returned quite sound and white,
While Sophy's ached both day and night."
Yet her days were by no means all of reproof nor was her reproof ever
harsher than the more or less pointed selections from the moral verses
could inflict. Under the watchful care of Martha she flourished and was
happy, her mother in little, a laughing whirlwind of tender flesh,
tireless feet, dancing eyes, hair of sunlight that was darkening as she
grew older, and a mind that seemed to him she called father a miracle of
unfoldment. It was a mind not so quickly receptive as he could have
wished to the learning he tried patiently to impart; he wondered,
indeed, if she were not unduly frivolous even for a child of six; for
she would refuse to study unless she could have the doll she called
Bishop Wright with her and pretend that she taught the lesson to him,
finding him always stupid and loth to learn. He hoped for better things
from her mind as she aged, watching anxiously for the buddings of reason
and religion, praying daily that she should be increased in wisdom as in
stature. He had become so used to the look of her mother in her face
that it now and then gave him an instant of unspeakable joy. But the
sound of his own voice calling her "Prudence" would shock him from this
as with an icy blast of truth.
When the children of Amalon came to play with her, the little Nephis,
Moronis, Lehis, and Juabs, he saw she was a creature apart from them, of
another fashion of mind and body. He saw, too, that with some native
intuition she seemed to divine this, and to assume command even of those
older than herself. Thus Wish Wright and his brother, Welcome, both her
seniors by several years, were her awe-bound slaves; and the twin
daughters of Zebedee Bloom obeyed her least whim without question, even
when it involved them in situations more or less delicate. With her
quick ear for rhythm she had been at once impressed by their
names--impressed to a degree that savoured of fascination. She would
seat the two before her, range the other children beside them, and then
lead the chorus in a spirited chant of these names:--
"Isa Vinda Exene Bloom!
Ella Minda Almarine Bloom!"
repeating this a long time until they were all breathless, and the
solemn twins themselves were looking embarrassed and rather foolishly
pleased.
As he observed her day by day in her joyous growth, it was inevitable
that he came more and more to observe the woman who was caring for her,
and it was thus on one night in late summer that he awoke to an awful
truth,--a truth that brought back the words of the woman's former
husband with a new meaning.
He had heard Prudence say to her, "You are a pretty mamma," and suddenly
there came rushing upon him the sum of all the impressions his eyes had
taken of her since that day when the Bishop had spoken. He trembled and
became weak under the assault, feeling that in some insidious way his
strength had been undermined. He went out into the early evening to be
alone, but she, presently, having put the child to bed, came and stood
near, silently in the doorway.
He looked and saw she was indeed made new, restored to the lustre and
fulness of her young womanhood. He remembered then that she had long
been silent when he came near her, plainly conscious of his presence but
with an apparent constraint, with something almost tentative in her
manner. With her return to health and comeliness there had come back to
her a thousand little graces of dress and manner and speech. She drew
him, with his starved love of beauty and his need of companionship; drew
him with a mighty power, and he knew it at last. He remembered how he
had felt and faintly thrilled under a certain soft suppression in her
tones when she had spoken to him of late; this had drawn him, and the
new light in her eyes and her whole freshened womanhood, even before he
knew it. Now that he did know it he felt himself shaken and all but
lost; clutching weakly at some support that threatened every moment to
give way.
And she was his wife, his who had starved year after year for the light
touch of a woman's hand and the tones of her voice that should be for
him alone. He knew now that he had ached and sickened in his yearning
for this, and she stood there for him in the soft night. He knew she was
waiting, and he knew he desired above all things else to go to her; that
the comfort of her, his to take, would give him new life, new desires,
new powers; that with her he would revive as she had done. He waited
long, indulging freely in hesitation, bathing his wearied soul in her
nearness--yielding in fancy.
Then he walked off into the night, down through the village, past the
light of open doors, and through the voices that sounded from them, out
on to the bare bench of the mountain--his old refuge in
temptation--where he could be safe from submitting to what his soul had
forbidden. He had meant to take up a cross, but before his very eyes it
had changed to be a snare set for him by the Devil.
He stayed late on the ground in the darkness, winning the battle for
himself over and over, decisively, he thought, at the last. But when he
went home she was there in the doorway to meet him, still silent, but
with eyes that told more than he dared to hear. He thought she had in
some way divined his struggle, and was waiting to strengthen the odds
against him, with her face in the light of a candle she held above her
head.
He went by her without speaking, afraid of his weakness, and rushed to
his little cell-like room to fight the battle over. As a last source of
strength he took from its hiding-place the little Bible. And as it fell
open naturally at the blood-washed page a new thing came, a new torture.
No sooner had his eyes fallen on the stain than it seemed to him to cry
out of itself, so that he started back from it. He shut the book and the
cries were stilled; he opened it and again he heard them--far, loud
cries and low groans close to his ear; then long piercing screams
stifled suddenly too low, horrible gurglings. And before him came the
inscrutable face with the deep gray eyes and the shining lips, lifting,
with love in the eyes, above a gashed throat.
He closed the book and fell weakly to his knees to pray brokenly, and
almost despairingly: "Help me to keep down this self within me; let it
ask for nothing; fan the fires until they consume it! _Bow me, bend me,
break me, burn me out--burn me out_!"
In the morning, when he said, "Martha, the harvest is over now, and I
want you to go north with me," she prepared to obey without question.
He talked freely to her on the way, though it is probable that he left
in her mind little more than dark confusion, beyond the one clear fact
of his wish. As to this, she knew she must have no desire but to comply.
Reaching Salt Lake City, they went at once to Brigham's office. When
they came out they came possessed of a document in duplicate, reciting
that they both did "covenant, promise, and agree to dissolve all the
relations which have hitherto existed between us as husband and wife,
and to keep ourselves separate and apart from each other from this time
forth."
This was the simple divorce which Brigham was good enough to grant to
such of the Saints as found themselves unhappily married, and wished it.
As Joel Rae handed the Prophet the fee of ten dollars, which it was his
custom to charge for the service, Brigham made some timely remarks. He
said he feared that Martha had been perverse and rebellious; that her
first husband had found her so; and that it was doubtless for the good
of all that her second had taken the resolution to divorce her. He was
afraid that Brother Joel was an inferior judge of women; but he had
surely shown himself to be generous in the provision he was making for
the support of this contumacious wife.
They parted outside the door of the little office, and he kissed her for
the first time since they had been married--on the forehead.