FARMER BLOW'S WHITE-TAILED PONY.
Lionel Verner was just in that frame of mind which struggles to be
carried out of itself. No matter whether by pleasure or pain, so that it
be not that particular pain from which it would fain escape, the mind
seeks yearningly to forget itself, to be lifted out anywhere, or by any
means, from its trouble. Conscience was doing heavy work with Lionel. He
had destroyed his own happiness--that was nothing; he could battle it
out, and nobody be the wiser or the worse, save himself; but he had
blighted Lucy's. _There_ was the sting that tortured him. A man of
sensitively refined organisation, keenly alive to the feelings of
others--full of repentant consciousness when wrong was worked through
him, he would have given his whole future life and all its benefits, to
undo the work of the last few months. Either that he had never met Lucy,
or that he had not married Sibylla. _Which_ of those two events he would
have preferred to recall, he did not trust himself to think; whatever
may have been his faults, he had, until now, believed himself to be a
man of honour. It was too late. Give what he would, strive as he would,
repent as he would, the ill could neither be undone nor mitigated; it
was one of those unhappy things for which there is no redress; they must
be borne, as they best can, in patience and silence.
With these thoughts and feelings full upon him, little wonder was there
that Lionel Verner, some two hours after quitting Lucy, should turn into
Peckaby's shop. Mrs. Peckaby was seated back from the open door, crying,
and moaning, and swaying herself about, apparently in terrible pain,
physical or mental. Lionel remembered the story of the white donkey, and
he stepped in to question her; anything for a minute's divertisement;
anything to drown the care that was racking him. There was a subject on
which he wished to speak to Roy, and that took him down Clay Lane.
"What's the matter, Mrs. Peckaby?"
Mrs. Peckaby rose from her chair, curtseyed, and sat down again. But for
the state of tribulation she was in, she would have remained standing.
"Oh, sir, I have had a upset," she sobbed. "I see the white tail of a
pony a-going by, and I thought it might be some'at else. It did give me
a turn!"
"What did you think it might be?"
"I thought it might be the tail of a different sort of animal. I be
a-going a far journey, sir, and I thought it was, may be, the quadruple
come to fetch me. I'm a-going to New Jerusalem on a white donkey."
"So I hear," said Lionel, suppressing a smile, in spite of his heavy
heart. "Do you go all the way on the white donkey, Mrs. Peckaby?"
"Sir, that's a matter that's hid from me," answered Mrs. Peckaby. "The
gentleman that was sent back to me by Brother Jarrum, hadn't had
particulars revealed to him. There's difficulties in the way of a animal
on four legs which can't swim, doing it all, that I don't pretend to
explain away. I'm content, when the hour comes, sir, to start, and
trust. Peckaby, he's awful sinful, sir. Only last evening, when I was
saying the quadruple might have mirac'lous parts give to it, like
Balum's had in the Bible, Peckaby he jeered, and said he'd like to see
Balum's or any other quadruple, set off to swim to America--that he'd
find the bottom afore he found the land. I wonder the kitchen ceiling
don't drop down upon his head! For myself, sir, I'm rejoiced to trust,
as I says; and as soon as the white donkey do come, I shall mount him
without fear."
"What do you expect to find at New Jerusalem?" asked Lionel.
"I could sooner tell you, sir, what I don't expect; it 'ud take up less
time. There's a'most everything good at New Jerusalem that the world
contains--Verner's Pride's a poor place to it, sir--saving your presence
for saying so. I could have sat and listened to Brother Jarrum in this
here shop for ever, sir, if it hadn't been that the longing was upon me
to get there. In this part o' the world we women be poor, cast down,
half-famished, miserable slaves; but in New Jerusalem we are the wives
of saints, well cared for, and clothed and fed, happy as the day's long,
and our own parlours to ourselves, and nobody to interrupt us. Yes,
Peckaby, I'm a-telling his honour, Mr. Verner, what's a-waiting for me
at New Jerusalem! And the sooner I'm on my road to it, the better."
The conclusion was addressed to Peckaby himself. Peckaby had just come
in from the forge, grimed and dirty. He touched his hair to Lionel, an
amused expression playing on his face. In point of fact, this New
Jerusalem vision was affording the utmost merriment to Peckaby and a few
more husbands. Peckaby had come home to his tea, which meal it was the
custom of Deerham to enjoy about three o'clock. He saw no signs of its
being in readiness; and, but for the presence of Mr. Verner, might
probably have expressed his opinion demonstratively upon the point.
Peckaby, of late, appeared to have changed his nature and disposition.
From being a timid man, living under wife-thraldom, he had come to
exercise thraldom over her. How far Mrs. Peckaby's state of low spirits,
into which she was generally sunk, may have explained this, nobody knew.
"I have had a turn, Peckaby. I caught sight of a white tail a-going by,
and I thought it might be the quadruple a-coming for me. I was shook, I
can tell you. 'Twas more nor an hour ago, and I've been able to do
nothing since, but sit here and weep; I couldn't redd up after that."
"Warn't it the quadrepid?" asked Peckaby in a mocking tone.
"No, it weren't," she moaned. "It were nothing but that white pony of
Farmer Blow's."
"Him, was it," said Peckaby, with affected scorn. "He is in the forge
now, he is; a-having his shoes changed, and his tail trimmed."
"I'd give a shilling to anybody as 'ud cut his tail off;" angrily
rejoined Mrs. Peckaby. "A-deceiving of me, and turning my inside all of
a quake! Oh, I wish it 'ud come! The white donkey as is to bear me to
New Jerusalem!"
"Don't you wish her joy of her journey, sir?" cried the man
respectfully, a twinkle in his eye, while she rocked herself too and
fro. "She have got a bran new gownd laid up in a old apron upstairs,
ready for the start. She, and a lot more to help her, set on and made it
in a afternoon, for fear the white donkey should arrive immediate. I
asks her, sir, how much back the gownd'll have left in him, by the time
she have rode from here to New Jerusalem."
"Peckaby, you are a mocker!" interposed his lady, greatly exasperated.
"Remember the forty-two as was eat up by bears when they mocked at
Elisher!"
"Mrs. Peckaby," said Lionel, keeping his countenance, "don't you think
you would have made more sure of the benefits of the New Jerusalem, had
you started with the rest, instead of depending upon the arrival of the
white donkey?"
"They started without her, sir," cried the man, laughing from ear to
ear. "They give her the slip, while she were a-bed and asleep."
"It were revealed to Brother Jarrum so to do, sir," she cried eagerly.
"Don't listen to _him_. Brother Jarrum as much meant me to go, sir, and
I as much thought to go, as I mean to go to my bed this night--always
supposing the white donkey don't come," she broke off in a different
voice.
"Why did you not go, then?" demanded Lionel.
"I'll tell you about it, sir. Me and Brother Jarrum was on the best of
terms--which it's a real gentleman he was, and never said a word nor
gave a look as could offend me. I didn't know the night fixed for the
start; and Brother Jarrum didn't know it; in spite of Peckaby's
insinuations. On that last night, which it was Tuesday, not a soul came
near the place but that pale lady where Dr. West attended. She stopped a
minute or two, and then Brother Jarrum goes out, and says he might be
away all the evening. Well, he was; but he came in again; I can be on my
oath he did; and I give him his candle and wished him a good-night.
After that, sir, I never heard nothing till I got up in the morning. The
first thing I see was his door wide open, and the bed not slept in. And
the next thing I heard was, that the start had took place; they
a-walking to Heartburg, and taking the train there. You might just have
knocked me down with a puff of wind."
"Such a howling and screeching followed on, sir," put in Peckaby. "I
were at the forge, and it reached all the way to our ears, over there.
Chuff, he thought as the place had took fire and the missis was
a-burning."
"But it didn't last; it didn't last," repeated Mrs. Peckaby. "Thanks
be offered up for it, it didn't last, or I should ha' been in my
coffin afore the day were out! A gentleman came to me: a Brother
he were, sent express by Brother Jarrum; and had walked afoot all
the way from Heartburg. It had been revealed to Brother Jarrum, he
said, that they were to start that partic'lar night, and that I was
to be left behind special. A higher mission was--What was the word?
resigned?--no--reserved--reserved for me, and I was to be conveyed
special on a quadruple, which was a white donkey. I be to keep myself
in readiness, sir, always a-looking out for the quadruple's coming and
stopping afore the door."
Lionel leaned against the counter, and went into a burst of laughter.
The woman told it so quaintly, with such perfect good faith in the
advent of the white donkey! She did not much like the mirth. As to that
infidel Peckaby, he indulged in sundry mocking doubts, which were, to
say the least of them, very mortifying to a believer.
"What's your opinion, sir?" she suddenly asked of Lionel.
"Well," said Lionel, "my opinion--as you wish for it--Would incline to
the suspicion that your friend, Brother Jarrum, deceived you. That he
invented the fable of the white donkey to keep you quiet while he and
the rest got clear off."
Mrs. Peckaby Went into a storm of shrieking sobs. "It couldn't be! it
couldn't be! Oh, sir, you be as cruel as the rest! Why should Brother
Jarrum take the others, and not take me?"
"That is Brother Jarrum's affair," replied Lionel. "I only say it looks
like it."
"I telled Brother Jarrum, the very day afore the start took place, that
if he took off _my_ wife, I'd follor him on and beat every bone to smash
as he'd got in his body," interposed Peckaby, glancing at Lionel with a
knowing smile. "I did, sir. Her was out"--jerking his black thumb at his
wife--"and I caught Brother Jarrum in his own room and shut the door on
us both, and there I telled him. He knew I meant it, too, and he didn't
like the look of a iron bar I happened to have in my hand. I saw that.
Other wives' husbands might do as they liked; but I warn't a-going to
have mine deluded off by them Latter Day Saints. Were I wrong, sir?"
"I do not think you were," answered Lionel.
"I'd Latter Day 'em! and saint 'em too, if I had my will!" continued
wrathful Peckaby. "Arch-deceiving villuns!"
"Well, good-day, Mrs. Peckaby," said Lionel, moving to the door. "I
would not spend too much time were I you, looking out for the white
donkey."
"It'll come! it'll come!" retorted Mrs. Peckaby, in an ecstasy of joy,
removing her hands from her ears, where she had clapped them during
Peckaby's heretical speech. "I am proud, sir, to know as it'll come, in
spite of opinions contrairey and Peckaby's wickedness; and I'm proud to
be always a-looking out for it."
"This is never it, is it, drawing up to the door now?" cried Lionel,
with gravity.
Something undoubtedly was curveting and prancing before the door;
something with a white flowing tail. Mrs. Peckaby caught one glimpse,
and bounded from her seat, her chest panting, her nostrils working. The
signs betrayed how implicit was the woman's belief; how entirely it had
taken hold of her.
Alas! for Mrs. Peckaby. Alas! for her disappointment. It was nothing but
that deceiving animal again, Farmer Blow's white pony. Apparently the
pony had been so comfortable in the forge, that he did not care to leave
it. He was dodging about and backing, wholly refusing to go forward, and
setting at defiance a boy who was striving to lead him onwards. Mrs.
Peckaby sat down and burst into tears.