“I was inquiring of Jan, whether you would not want him to give up his profession. He was half offended with me for suggesting it.”
“If Jan could ever be the one to lead an idle, useless life, I think half my love for him would die out,” was her warm answer. “It was Jan’s practical industry, his way of always doing the right in straightforward simplicity, that I believe first won me to like him. This world was made to work in, and the next for rest—as I look upon it, Lionel. I shall be prouder of being Jan Verner the surgeon’s wife, than I should be had I married a duke’s eldest son.”
“He is to take his degree, he says.”
“I believe so: but he will practice generally all the same—just as he does now. Not that I care that he should become Dr. Verner: it is papa.”
“If he—Why who can they be?”
Lionel Verner’s interrupted sentence and his question of surprise were caused by the appearance of some singular-looking forms who were stealing into the grounds. Poor, stooping, miserable, travel-soiled objects, looking fit for nothing but the tramp-house. A murmur of astonishment burst from all present when they were recognised. It was Grind’s lot. Grind and his family, who had gone off with the Mormons, returning now in humility, like dogs with burnt tails.
“Why, Grind, can it be you?” exclaimed Lionel, gazing with pity at the man’s despairing aspect.
He, poor meek Grind, not less meek and civil than of yore, sat down upon a bench and burst into tears. They gathered round him in crowds, while he told his tale. How they had, after innumerable hardships on the road, too long to recite then, after losing some of their party by death, two of his children being amongst them—how they had at length reached the Salt Lake City, so gloriously depicted by Brother Jarrum. And what did they find? Instead of an abode of peace and plenty, of luxury, of immunity from work, they found misery and discomfort. Things were strange to them, and they were strange in turn. He’d describe it all another time, he said; but it was quite enough to tell them what it was, by saying that he resolved to come away if possible, and face the hardships of the way, though it was only to die in the old land, than he’d stop in it. Brother Jarrum was a awful impostor, so to have led ’em away!
“Wasn’t there no saints?” breathlessly asked Susan Peckaby, who had elbowed herself to the front.
“Saints!” echoed Grind. “Yes, they be saints! A iniketous, bad doing, sensitive lot. I’d starve on a crust here, sooner nor I’d stop among ’em. Villains!”
Poor Grind probably substituted the word “sensitive” for another, in his narrow acquaintance with the English language. Susan Peckaby seemed to resent this new view of things. She was habited in the very plum-coloured gown which had been prepared for the start, the white paint having been got out of it by some mysterious process, perhaps by the turpentine suggested by Chuff. It looked tumbled and crinkled, the beauty altogether gone out of it. Her husband, Peckaby, stood behind, grinning.
“Villains, them saints was, was they?”
“They was villains,” emphatically answered Grind.
“And the saintesses?” continued Peckaby. “What of them?”
“The less said about ’em the better, them saintesses,” responded Grind. “We should give ’em another name over here, we should. I had to leave my eldest girl behind me,” he added, lifting his face in a pitying appeal to Mr. Verner’s. “She warn’t but fifteen, and one of them men took her, and she’s his thirteenth wife.”
“I say, Grind,” put in the sharp voice of Mrs. Duff, “what’s become of Nancy, as lived up here?”
“She died on the road,” he answered. “She married Brother Jarrum in New York—”
“Married Brother Jarrum in New York!” interrupted Polly Dawson, tartly. “You are asleep, Grind. It was Mary Green as married him. Leastways, news that she did come back to us here.”
“He married ’em both,” answered Grind. “The consekence of which was, that the two took to quarrelling perpetual. It was nothing but snarling and fighting everlasting. Nancy again Mary, and Mary again her. We hadn’t nothing else with ’em all the way to the Salt Lake city, and Nancy, she got ill. Some said ’twas pining; some said ’twas a in’ard complaint as took her; some said ’twas the hardships killed her: the cold, and the fatigue, and the bad food, and starvation. Any how, Nancy died.”
“And what become of Mary?” rather more meekly inquired Mrs. Peckaby.
“She’s Jarrum’s wife still. He have got about six of ’em, he have. They be saints, they be!”
“They bain’t as bad off as the saintesses,” interrupted Mrs. Grind. “They has their own way, the saints, and the saintesses don’t. Regular cowed down the saintesses be; they daredn’t say as their right hand’s their own. That poor sick lady as went with us, Miss Kitty Bayntun,—and none on us thought she’d live to get there, but she did, and one of the saints chose her. She come to us just afore we got away, and she said she wanted to write a letter to her mother to tell her how unhappy she was, fit to die with it. But she knowed the letter could never be got to her in England, cause letters ain’t allowed to leave the city, and she must stop in misery for her life, she said; for she couldn’t never undertake the journey back again, even if she could get clear away; it would kill her. But she’d like her mother to know how them Mormons deceived with their tales, and what sort of a place New Jerusalem was.”
Grind turned again to Lionel.
“It is just blasphemy, sir, for them to say what they do: calling it the holy city, and the New Jerusalem. Couldn’t they be stopped at it, and from deluding poor ignorant people here with their tales?”
“The only way of stopping it is for people to
