mary burton—life’s journey ended: rest at last.
it was about this time that one morning, very early, before i was well up, a young girl came to the house in a great hurry, asking to speak to me without a moment’s delay.
i threw a wrapper round me, and went out at once to see her. she said she came from the house of sister mary burton, and begged me to come directly and see her, for mary had taken poison, and it was thought she was dying.
now, i have been so much engaged of late in telling my own sorrows, that mary burton has quite dropped out of my story. but it must not be supposed that all that time i saw nothing of my poor friend. on the contrary, i had seen her much more frequently of late than i used to when i first came to salt lake city. when i last spoke of her it was when she was about to return to southern utah, where she and her husband then resided. it was evident to me from her conversation, as it must have been to the reader, that her faith in mormonism had even then entirely gone; that she felt her husband’s neglect and unkindness most keenly, and that she had become a miserable, broken-hearted woman. it was very painful to contrast what she now was with what she had been when i first knew her, and then to think what a happy wife and mother she might have been if the spectre of mormonism had not crossed her path.
mary and her husband, elder shrewsbury, left the settlements about a year after the time i last mentioned her, and took up their abode in salt lake city. elder shrewsbury had prospered exceedingly, and when he came to salt lake he brought with him, besides mary, his second wife, ellen, who, as we before noticed, had become very much attached to her. the other three wives and their children were left at the farm in southern utah. he would probably have brought them all with him, had there been in the city a house large enough to hold them all. as it was, he purchased a good lot about half[348] a mile from where we resided, with a comfortable house upon it; and there his first and second wives lived together. this was the man who had solemnly sworn before god, that he would never practise polygamy! but i doubt if elder shrewsbury, with his comfortable house in the city, his farm and lands in the south, his fast increasing property, and his many wives, felt truly the hundredth part of the happiness which he would have experienced in the devotion of one faithful heart, even had it been in the midst of poverty and care. he, however, poor infatuated man, did not think thus; he was actually even now courting a young girl of about seventeen years of age, who the two wives daily expected would be brought home to aid in building up their husband’s “kingdom.” i do not think mary cared much about this. it was the taking of the first plural wife that was her great sorrow. after that, her love for her husband weakened, until it altogether died out, and she did not care how many wives he took.
mary’s high spirit was always urging her into rebellion. in married life both husband and wife give way to each other in a thousand little things, of no consequence in themselves, but quite sufficient, without the presence of love, to sow the seeds of discord. but when love has fled, and the husband looks upon his wife—the companion of his youth, the mother of his children—not as the partner of his whole life and the sharer of all his joys and sorrows, but as a person whose presence is a reproach to him and who is an inconvenience rather than otherwise; and when the wife regards her husband as one whom formerly she loved with true devotion, but who has cruelly broken her heart and trampled upon her feelings, and who is nothing to her now but a tyrant whose very presence is painful to her, can there then be any forbearance, any of those gentle kindnesses, any of those loving forgivenesses, any of those mutual tendernesses and sweet confidences which constitute the charm of married life?
in giving up mormonism, my unhappy friend gave up, as too many have done, faith in all else. she had lived, as she thought, a life of religion; and when she found what a terrible mockery of all that is holy that so-called religion was, she cast it aside, thinking that all religion was vain. she did not see that she would have acted just as wisely in rejecting all food because she chanced to partake of some that was poisoned; she did not see that, although the broken reed on which she rested was unable to yield her any true support, nevertheless the everlasting foundations of eternal truth which god himself[349] has laid can never be removed; and that though creeds and systems may fail and pass away, only to give place to others equally unsatisfactory, yet those divine verities are established for ever, are beyond the reach of earthly vicissitudes, and know nothing of time or change.
utterly miserable and sick at heart, mary cared not whether she lived or died. there was nothing to bind her to life, and beyond the life of this world she was altogether without hope. a more wretched existence it is scarcely possible to imagine.
while they were still in the settlements, she treated the other wives with the greatest contempt, sitting by them at the table or passing them in the house without vouchsafing a look or a word. her husband, as might be expected, avoided her whenever it was possible, and the other wives returned her coldness and disdain, and in turn annoyed her as much as they could when they were not too busy looking after one another. it would be impossible to picture a house more divided against itself than was that of elder shrewsbury.
when the two wives, ellen and mary, lived together with their husband in salt lake city, mary of course had no opportunity of showing her hatred and contempt for the polygamic wives. but towards her husband she evinced a cold disdain, as if he were now nothing at all to her—as if her very heart itself had been withered. for ellen, who, since elder shrewsbury had taken his other wives, had clung to her with a child-like affection, and to her own little girl alone, she showed that deep and constant love which she had once lavished upon such an unworthy object.
she used to come to me and tell me all her griefs; and in a passion of rage and tears she would hurl defiance at mormonism and curse bitterly the system that had wrecked her life. then i would soothe her, and speak calmly to her, and try to place matters in their best light; and she would sit and listen in a painful state of apathy, as if she cared for none of these things. presently she would rise and go, and then, perhaps, i would not see her for weeks together, unless i chanced to call upon her at her own house. sometimes, for days and even weeks at a time, she would shut herself up in her room and refuse to see her husband or any one else, except her little girl, who slept in the same room with her, and who at such times used to bring in what food they wanted; for in these melancholy fits she would not even let the servants come near her.
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there was a little table near the window, and from the casement of the window could be seen in the far distance the lofty ranges of the wahsatch mountains. and sitting at that table, gazing from that window, with her cheek resting upon her hand, mary would watch the whole day long, as if entranced in some ecstatic vision. her little girl—a child of winning ways, bashful to an extreme and very pretty, but, though so young, with a look of wistful sadness upon her childish face—had become accustomed to her mother’s ways; and when one of these long spells of melancholy came upon her, she would either steal out quietly and wander away for a long walk all by herself—for she never played with the other children in her father’s house—or else, as was more frequently the case, she would sit down on the ground near her mother and silently amuse herself with a book or some childish toy.
to my mind there was something inexpressibly painful in all this. when mary did not come to see me, i would call round at her husband’s house, and try to draw her out from her melancholy seclusion. it was very seldom that i saw elder shrewsbury, and i cannot say that i wished to do so. he had, as his wife told me, undergone a complete change since i knew him in england. the open look, the upright bearing, the earnestness of speech, which then characterized him, were now gone for ever. he was still a handsome man, rather portly, and evidently well to do in the world; but there were lines about his eyes which ought not to have been seen in the face of a man of his years; and his lips, without uttering a word, told their own story.
heartbroken and wretched, weary of life, and yet with no hopeful assurance of life beyond the grave, poor mary lived on year after year, while those who seemed to dance in the very sunshine of existence were cut off like the summer flowers in the harvest-field. lately, however, i thought i saw symptoms of a change. i noticed that she was perceptibly growing thinner and thinner; her eye seemed brighter, and there was always a flush upon her cheek, which would have been beautiful had it not been for the seal of melancholy which was stamped upon every feature. but the brightness of the eye, and the flush upon the cheek, were not symbols of health, but the imprint of the finger of death.
she did not know this. though she longed to die, she little thought that death was so near her. sometimes she would talk almost happily of the old by-gone days; then she would sit brooding over her griefs; and then again she[351] would talk anxiously about the future of her little daughter. i had seen other wives as wretched as poor mary was—ay, more so, for they had abject, grinding poverty superadded to all their woes; but, more than for any other i felt for my poor friend, and exerted myself to the uttermost to comfort her. in this i had been to a certain extent successful. she would appear for a time a little more cheerful, but it was not long before she relapsed into her habitual melancholy way.
that which troubled me most of late, in my intercourse with mary, was the fact that she was always talking about death. this certainly was no matter of surprise to me, but it was very painful. over and over again she would discuss the question whether, under any circumstances, suicide could be justified, and whether if any one, in absolute despair, were to take away their own life, god would ever pardon them.
i would never enter into such subjects as these, for i considered that such conversation showed a morbid condition of mind, and could not possibly be of any good to either of us, and would only suggest harmful thoughts. but again and again mary reverted to the subject, and i really at last began to grow quite anxious about her.
it was not, therefore, with surprise that i received the summons that morning. i did not wait to ask any questions about the poisoning, but hastened to the bedside of my unfortunate friend, trusting that i might yet be in time to render some assistance.
i found her lying on the bed, partly dressed, and, as it seemed to me at first, asleep. there was, at the bedside, and bending over her, the second wife, who was in as much trouble as if the sufferer had been her own sister. the poor girl had been weeping, and was evidently very much distressed. there was also present in the room another sister, whom i recognized as a friend of mary’s. the little daughter of the unfortunate woman was there as well. one person, whom every one would naturally have expected to see at the bedside of a dying wife under such circumstances, was conspicuous by his absence—i mean, of course, elder shrewsbury himself.
i sat down on the bed, beside poor mary, and took her hand in mine. it was cold but damp, and her breathing was somewhat heavy. she was still unconscious. i asked the pretty pale-faced girl—the second wife—who was bending over her, how it had all happened, and whether they had had a doctor.
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“oh, yes,” she said, sobbing all the time; “we sent for the doctor, and he has only just gone. he said he had done all he could, and that we could let her sleep on now.”
she then told me what had taken place. it appeared that the night before elder shrewsbury had gone up into mary’s room to speak to her about some matter of importance. although living in the same house, she had not seen him for several weeks, and the mere fact of being in his presence agitated her. he told her he had come to talk about her child—little mary, called mary after her mother. for some reason or other, which nobody then seemed to understand, elder shrewsbury had taken a fancy that the child should be separated from her mother; he wanted to send her to stay with his other family in the settlements, and it was for this purpose he came to see mary that night. it certainly did seem the refinement of cruelty to separate the child from her poor mother, who would thus have become, as one might say, doubly widowed; and i am strongly inclined to question whether elder shrewsbury’s motives were of the purest kind. it is, however, only just to state that subsequently, when speaking to a friend about the matter, he said that he had long noticed in his wife what he considered were incipient symptoms of madness, and he thought that his duty towards the child imperatively demanded that he should immediately take her away from her mother. he added—as was indeed true—that his other wives in the south would have taken the greatest care of her.
mary was furious when the proposal was made to her. she bitterly upbraided her husband for all his cruelty and neglect; she cursed him for his perfidy, and she avowed that nothing but death should separate her from her little girl.
elder shrewsbury trembled at the anger of his poor forsaken wife, and he crept out of her room and downstairs. but mary could not be appeased. she went to the room of the second wife—the only creature in the house, besides her little girl, with whom she sometimes condescended to hold intercourse—and there she acted in a very wild and extravagant way. it was with great difficulty that she was at last persuaded to lie down and take a little rest. she would not go to her own room; so ellen—the second wife—persuaded her to remain with her all the night. she lay down, but did not sleep. she muttered strange things, and by-and-by sat up in the bed and spoke as if people were present whom she had known years and years ago. ellen was frightened; but out[353] of love to mary, and not wishing that others should see her in that crazy condition, she did not call for help, thinking that presently she would fall asleep, and in the morning all would be right. but the long night passed away, and just before daybreak ellen fell into a sort of fitful slumber. it would seem that just then poor mary discovered for the first time that she was not sleeping in her own room, and that her little daughter was not with her. distracted as her mind was, she probably thought that they had stolen the child away, and went in search of her.
she found her way to her own room, and then what happened no one, of course, could tell. she must have seen that her child was safe; and it is not unlikely that, reassured on that point, she felt that she needed rest, and thought that it would be best to take some sedative to produce the sleep which she believed would restore her to herself again. she had in her room a little leather medicine-chest—a very useful article for any one travelling, or to keep in the house—and to that she must have had resort. certain it is, that when, an hour later, ellen awoke and went to see what had become of her husband’s first wife, she found the little medicine-chest open upon the bureau, mary lying upon the bed, apparently asleep, and a faint sickly smell, which one better versed in such things would have known was the smell of opium, pervading the whole room.
ellen began to scream and call for help, and one of the women about the house, who was up at that early hour, came to see what was the matter. she, upon hearing what ellen said, rushed downstairs shrieking for assistance. fortunately for every one, elder shrewsbury, who had just risen, was standing in the hall-way below. he took hold of the noisy woman and asked her what was the matter; and after hearing all she had to say he sent her to attend to her domestic duties, with a strict injunction to say nothing to a living soul about what she had seen or heard.
elder shrewsbury then went up to mary’s room, and there he learned that all that the silly woman had just said to him was quite true. he, however, betrayed no emotion. very calmly he put the stopper back into the laudanum bottle, then looked at his watch and hesitated, all the while that pale-faced ellen was looking anxiously at him, wanting to know what she could do. after a few moments of indecision, elder shrewsbury turned to ellen and said, “yes; go for the doctor.”
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ellen flew upon her mission.
meanwhile, elder shrewsbury looked towards the bed where poor mary lay—mary, for whose love he had perjured his soul—mary who never would have been his had he not given that sacred promise, the breaking of which made him an outlaw from heaven and a thing to be despised of men. he looked for one single moment at his poor wife as she lay there, and then he turned upon his heel and went out of the room. for the wealth of all the world i would not feel as that man felt, if the thoughts which then crowded upon his brain were what, for the sake of our common humanity, i trust they were. the remembrance of the life which his folly or fanaticism—it matters little which—had blasted; the thought of that solemn vow which he had taken to love her only and for ever; the sight of that dear one to whom he had once plighted his troth, now desolate, forsaken, almost maniac in her wretchedness. oh god! what a curse was there for any man’s soul to bear!
the physician, when he came, administered an emetic and made them walk the patient about the room. ellen and the friend of mary who was present volunteered for this service. they supported her, one on each side, and paced her round and round the room, thus compelling her to exertion; and from time to time they made her swallow doses of strong coffee, in which a little brandy had been mixed. when, at length, signs of returning consciousness were apparent, the physician left, promising to call again in the course of the morning.
it was then that some one present thought of sending for me, and i arrived not long after the physician had gone. i was the only person, outside the family, beside the friend whom i have mentioned, who knew of anything that had taken place—so careful were they that the matter should not get abroad; and i should certainly not have been summoned had it not been for the close intimacy which existed between mary and myself, which made us more like sisters than friends. the reader must not, however, suppose that in relating this i am even now betraying a trust; for my friends in utah know as well as i do that so many unhappy wives have in their desperation been driven to attempt self-destruction, that having no clue in the name, which solely out of love for my poor friend, i have all through this narrative given her, they will not know who to fix upon as the person to whom i allude.[3][355] there is, however, one still living—he will know—let his own conscience be his accuser.
in about half an hour’s time, mary began to recognize those who were around her, but she did not seem disposed to speak. she opened her eyes and looked dreamily at me for a long time, but the slight pressure of my hand was her only recognition of my presence. i bent down over her and whispered a few assuring words in her ear, and for a moment a faint, weary smile lighted up her thin, pale face. it was not like the sweet smiles of the by-gone days which used to suffuse her whole countenance with sunshine—it was but the very ghost of a smile. presently she sank into a gentle slumber; but i still sat by her on the bed, holding her hand in mine, and i remained there for two or three hours. then, after seeing that everything was at hand which she could possibly want if she awoke, and assured by ellen that she would not leave her until she was able to sit up, i left for my own home.
at the bottom of the stairs, in the hall-way, i was confronted by elder shrewsbury himself. this surprised me, as hitherto he had most sedulously avoided coming in contact with me. he gave me one searching glance, as if to read my thoughts, and then said: “sister stenhouse, this is a most unhappy affair, but say nothing about it—no good can come of talking of such matters.”
i assured him that for mary’s sake—not for his—i would not speak of what had transpired; but when he held out his hand for me to shake, i affected not to see it, but wished him good-morning, and left the house.
for some time she said nothing to me about the sad event which had so greatly troubled us, and when at length she hesitatingly alluded to it, i was much relieved to find that the taking of the deadly drug was on her part wholly accidental. it was as i from the first suspected—for i knew and loved my dear friend too well to wrong her even by a thought. cruelly as she had suffered, wretched and miserable as she was, bitterly as she felt, the instincts of her heart were too true and her nature too noble to allow of her seeking oblivion from her troubles in voluntary and premeditated death, as i have known was the case with many wretched mormon wives. she had only thought to take an opiate to soothe the feverish excitement[356] which had almost bereft her of reason, and, in the weak and enfeebled condition in which she was, the draught had been too powerful for her. guiltless as she was, she dreaded that others might impute wrong motives to her in what she had done; and even to me she spoke of her sickness painfully and with hesitation.
after this, i called day after day upon my poor friend, until she was sufficiently recovered to walk about and even to get out of doors a little. the story of the unhappy attempt which she was supposed to have made upon her life, by some means, however, got rumoured abroad, and she heard of it. she said nothing at the time, but i believe it preyed upon her mind. weak and failing in health, as she long had been, the shock which her system had received was too much for her, and it was evident to every one who saw her that her earthly trials would soon be ended. she sank gradually, and life ebbed from her gently and without pain. a few days before she died, she sent for me, and i spent several hours with her. i might say that they were happy hours; for the near prospect of death seemed to have dispelled all those gloomy fears of the future life which had for so many years troubled her soul; and she now looked forward with peaceful resignation to her approaching change. death came at last to her when she was sleeping, and she passed away tranquilly and without a sigh. i almost rejoiced when i heard that at last her weary journey was over, and she was at rest. i loved her with the fondest affection, and shall never think of her without bitter feelings towards that unholy system which brought her to an untimely grave.
