Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/417

 . 4, 1862.] Jan could scarcely keep from exploding into laughter. Part of Deerham gone off to join the Mormons!

“Is it a fact?” cried he.

“It is a fact that they are gone,” replied Mrs. Baynton. “She has been out several times in an evening to hear that Brother Jarrum, and had got infected with the Mormon doctrine. In spite of what I or Flore could say, she would go to listen to the man, and she grew to believe the foolish things he uttered. And you can’t give me Dr. West’s address?”

“No, I can’t,” replied Jan. “And I see no good that it would be to you, if I could. He could not get to Liverpool in time, from wherever he may be, if the flight is to take place in a day or two.”

“Perhaps not,” sighed Mrs. Baynton. “I was unwilling to come, but it seemed like a forlorn hope.”

She let down her old crape veil as she went out at the door; and Jan, all curious for particulars, went abroad to see what he could learn.

About fifteen had gone off, not including children. Grind’s lot, as it was called, meaning Grind, his wife, and their young ones; Davies had gone, Mary Green had gone, Nancy from Verner’s Pride had gone, and sundry others whom it is not necessary to enumerate. It was said that Dinah Roy made preparations to go, but her heart failed her at the last. Other accounts ran that she did start, but was summarily brought up by the appearance of her husband, who went after her. At his sight she turned without a word, and walked home again, meekly submitting to the correction he saw fit to inflict. Jan did not believe this. His private opinion was, that had Dinah Roy started, her husband would have deemed it a red-letter day, and never have sought to bring her back more.

Last, but not least, Mrs. Peckaby had not gone. No: for Brother Jarrum had stolen a march upon her. What his motive, in doing this might be, was best known to himself. Of all the converts, none had been so eager for the emigration, so fondly anticipative of the promised delights, as Susan Peckaby; and she had made her own private arrangements to steal off secretly, leaving her unbelieving husband to his solitary fate. As it turned out, however, she was herself left: the happy company stole off, and abandoned her.

Brother Jarrum so contrived it, that the night fixed for the exodus was kept secret from Mrs. Peckaby. She did not know that he had even gone out of the house, until she got up in the morning and found him absent. Brother Jarrum’s personal luggage was not of an extensive character. It was contained in a blue bag, and this bag was likewise missing. Not, even then, did a shadow of the cruel treachery played her, darken the spirit of Mrs. Peckaby. Her faith in Brother Jarrum was of an unlimited extent: she would as soon have thought of deceiving her own self, as that he could deceive. The rumour that the migration had taken place, the company off, awoke her from her happy security to a state of raving torture. Peckaby dodged out of her way, afraid. There is no knowing but Peckaby himself may have been the stumbling block in the mind of Brother Jarrum. A man so dead against the Latter Day Saints as Peckaby had shown himself, might be a difficult customer to deal with. He might be capable of following them and upsetting the minds of all the Deerham converts, did his wife start with them for New Jerusalem.

All this information was gathered by Jan. Jan had heard nothing for many a day that so tickled his fancy. He bent his steps to Peckaby’s, and went in. Jan, you know, was troubled neither with pride nor ceremony: nobody less so in all Deerham. Where inclination took him, there went Jan.

Peckaby, all black, with a bar of iron in his hand, a leather apron on, and a broad grin upon his countenance, was coming out of the door as Jan entered. The affair seemed to tickle Peckaby’s fancy as much as it tickled Jan’s. He touched his hair. “Please, sir, couldn’t you give her a dose of jalap, or something comforting o’ that sort, to bring her to?” asked he, pointing with his thumb indoors, as he stamped across the road to the forge.

Mrs. Peckaby had calmed down from the rampant state to one of prostration. She sat in her kitchen behind the shop, nursing her knees, and moaning. Mrs. Duff, who, by Jan’s help, had survived the threatened death from “cholic,” and was herself again, stood near the sufferer, in company with one or two more cronies. All the particulars, Susan Peckaby’s contemplated journey, with the deceitful trick played her, had got wind; and the Deerham ladies were in consequence flocking in.

“You didn’t mean going, did you?” began Jan.

“Not mean going!” sobbed Susan Peckaby, rocking herself to and fro. “I did mean going, sir, and I’m not ashamed on it. If folks is in the luck to be offered a chance of Paradise, I dun know many as ud say they wouldn’t catch at it.”

“Paradise, was it?” said Jan. “What was it chiefly to consist of?”

“Of everything,” moaned Susan Peckaby. “There isn’t a thing you could wish for under the sun, but what’s to be had in plenty in New Jerusalem. Dinners and teas, and your own cows, and big houses and parlours, and gardens loaded with fruit, and garden stuff as decays for want o’ cutting, and veils when you go out, and evening dances, like the grand folks here has, and new caps perpetual! And I have lost it! They be gone and have left me!—oh, o-o-o-h!”

“And husbands, besides; one for everybody!” spoke up a girl. “You forgot that, Mrs. Peckaby.”

“Husbands besides,” acquiesced Susan Peckaby, aroused from her moaning. “Every woman’s sure to be chose by a saint as soon as she gets out. There’s not such a thing as a old maid there, and there needn’t be no widders.”

Mrs. Duff turned up her nose, speaking wrathfully at the girl.

“If they call husbands their paradise, keep me away from ’em, say I. You girls be like young bears—all your troubles have got to come. You just try a husband, Bess Dawson; whether he’s a