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Show 338 WESTERN WILDS. est utterance seemed fresh and piquant. They did not know it, but they were getting weary of " Tabernacle talk." The strain they had lived under had worn great grooves in their natures, almost without their knowledge. The " wives" were not the fresh and guileless English girls of four years before. Little by little they had learned to shut up their souls, to hide their inmost nature from others, even from themselves. That extreme reticence which polygamy engenders had become a habit; a habit carried into all the concerns of life, even where it was unnecessary. They were transformed, without knowing it, from individuals into parts of a great machine ; and though they some-times felt a strange pain and longing, they scarce knew why, and would have insisted with vehemence that they were happy in their present relations. To them, this pale Gentile, who had seen life from the other side, as it were, and now talked in such a pleasant, grateful way of his past and hope for the future, brought a strange pleasure that had in it a touch of pain. On Manson their kindness had a great effect. Mormonism he knew only from the current talk at Camp Floyd a view altogether presumed and one- sided ; but were not these people humane and gentle ? were they not of his own race and color? And could that be entirely bad which produced such good results? And so, though not a word was said on either side about religion, while the light utterances of the Gentile implanted skepticism in the minds of the Saints, the simple kindness of the Saints had almost converted the Gentile. But none of these things touched Elwood Briarly. Four years in polygamy had seared the delicate tendrils of his English heart; he was, in his fanaticism, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; and to him this stranger was only to be aided in his distress, because he bore the human form, but quietly gotten rid of as soon as possible. And yet there lingered one element of his best days ; he loved his little Marian, though he had given her two step- mothers, and brief as had been that meeting in Iowa, he still felt the kindness of the boy, and as far as might be with a Gentile, wished him well. Convalescence in the stimulating air of Utah was rapid, and in due time Willie Manson was able to seek employment with a Gentile merchant in the city, and there he remained two years. His little English friend still re-tained his friendship, and in that desultory way, in which alone asso-ciation between the two classes could then take place in Utah, he occasionally visited and kept up his acquaintance with the Briarlys. Thus matters went on till the spring of 1862. But what strange transformation was this which the little English |
