Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/723

. 20, 1862.] One, that Peckaby and his friends had planned it: she felt sure now that the biggest of the “Brothers” had been nobody but Chuff, the blacksmith; the other certainty was, that she should never be sent for to New Jerusalem in any other way. Why it should have been, Mrs. Peckaby could not have told, then or afterwards; but the positive conviction that Brother Jarrum had been false, that the story of sending for her on a white donkey had only been invented to keep her quiet, fixed itself in her mind in that moment in the lonely wood. She sunk down amidst the trees and sobbed bitterly.

But all the tears combined, that the world ever shed, could not bring her nearer to New Jerusalem, or make her present situation better. After awhile she had the sense to remember that. She rose from the ground, turned her gown up over her shoulders, found her way out of the wood, and set off on her walk back again in a very humble frame of mind, arriving home as the clock was striking two.

She could make nobody hear. She knocked at the door, she knocked at the window, gently at first, then louder; she called and called, but there came no answer. Some of the neighbours, aroused by the unwonted disturbance, came peeping at their windows. At length Peckaby opened his; thrusting his head out at the very casement from which Mrs. Peckaby had beheld the deceitful vision earlier in the night.

“Who’s there?” called out Peckaby.

“It’s me, Peckaby,” was the answer, delivered in a forlorn tone. “Come down and open the door.”

“Who’s ‘me’?” asked Peckaby.

“It’s me,” repeated Mrs. Peckaby, looking up. And, what with her height and the low casement, their faces were really not many inches apart; but yet Peckaby appeared not to know her.

“You be off, will you!” retorted he. “A pretty thing, if tramps be to come to decent folks’s doors and knock ’em up like this. Who’s door did you take it for?”

“It’s me!” screamed Mrs. Peckaby. “Don’t you know me? Come and undo the door, and let me come in. I be sopping.”

“Know you! How should I know you? Who be you?”

“Good heavens, Peckaby! you must know me. Ain’t I your wife?”

“My wife! Not a bit on’t. You needn’t come here with that gammon, missis, whoever you be. My wife’s gone off to New Jerusalem on a white donkey.”

He slammed-to the casement. Mrs. Peckaby, what with the rain, and what with the disappointment, burst into tears. In the same moment, sundry other casements opened, and all the heads in the vicinity—including the blacksmith, Chuff’s, and Mrs. Chuff’s—were thrust out to condole with their neighbour, Mrs. Peckaby.

“Had she been and come back a’ready?” “Did she get tired of the saints so soon as this—or did they get tired of her?” “What sort of a city was it?” “Which was most plentiful—geese or sage?” “How many wives, besides herself, had the gentleman that she chose?” “Who took care of the babies?” “Did they have many public dances?” “Was veils for the bonnets plentiful?” “Was it a paradise—or warn’t it?” And “How was Brother Jarrum?”

Amongst the many questions asked, those came prominently tingling on the ears of the unhappy Mrs. Peckaby. Too completely prostrate with events, to retort, she suddenly let drop her gown, that she had kept so carefully turned, and clapped both her hands upon her face. Then came a real, genuine question from the next door casement—Mrs. Green’s.

“Ain’t that your plum-coloured gownd? What’s come to it?”

Mrs. Peckaby, somewhat aroused, looked at the gown in haste. What had come to it? Patches of dead-white, looking not unlike paint, covered it about on all sides, especially behind. The shawl had caught some white, too, and the green leather gloves looked inside as though they had had a coat of whitewash put on them. Her beautiful gownd! laid by so long!—what on earth had ruined it like that?

Chuff, the blacksmith, gave a great grin from his window. “Sure that there donkey never was painted down white!” quoth he.

That it had been painted down white, and with exceedingly wet paint too, there could be little doubt. Some poor donkey, humble in its coat of grey, converted into a fine white animal for the occasion, by Peckaby and Chuff and their cronies. Mrs. Peckaby shrieked and sobbed with mortification, and drummed frantically on her house door. A chorus of laughter echoed from all sides, and Peckaby’s casement flew open again. “Will you stop that there knocking, then!” roared Peckaby. “Disturbing a man’s night’s rest.”

“I will come in then, Peckaby,” she stormed, plucking up a little spirit in her desperation. “I be your wife, you know I be, and I will come in.”

“My good woman, what’s took you?” cried Peckaby, in a tone of compassionating suavity. “You ain’t no wife of mine. My wife’s miles on her road by this time. She’s off to New Jerusalem on a white donkey.”

A new actor came up to the scene. No other than Jan Verner. Jan had been sitting up with some poor patient, and was now going home. To describe his surprise when he saw the windows alive with nightcapped heads, and Mrs. Peckaby in her dripping discomfort, in her paint, in her state altogether, outward and inward, would be a long task. Peckaby himself undertook the explanation, in which he was aided by Chuff; and Jan sat himself down on the public pump, and laughed till he was hoarse. “Come, Peckaby, you’ll let her in,” cried he, before he went away.

“Let her in!” echoed Peckaby. “That would be a go, that would! What ’ud the saints say? They’d be for prosecuting of her for bigamy. If she’s gone over to them, sir, she can’t belong legal to me.”

Jan laughed so that he had to hold his sides,