two conductors were muffled up, as befitted the inclemency of the night, something like their voices appeared to have been. Mrs. Peckaby was not in her sober senses, sufficiently to ask whether they were brothers from New Jerusalem, or whether the style of costume they favoured might be the prevailing mode in that fashionable city: if so, it was decidedly more useful than elegant, consisting apparently of hop-sacks, doubled over the head and over the back.
“Ready, missus?”
“I be quite ready,” she answered, in a tremble of delight. “There ain’t no saddle!” she called out, as the donkey was trotted forward.
“You won’t want a saddle: these New Jerusalem animals bain’t like ordinary uns. Jump on him, missus.”
Mrs. Peckaby was so exceedingly tall that she had not far to jump. She took her seat sideways, settled her gown, and laid hold of the bridle, which one of the men put into her hands. He turned round the donkey, and set it going with a smack; the other helped by crying “Gee-ho!”
Up Clay Lane she proceeded in triumph. The skies were dark, and the rain came soaking down; but Mrs. Peckaby’s heart was too warm to dwell on any temporary inconvenience. If a thought crossed her mind that the beauty of the pink ribbons might be marred by the storm, so as somewhat to dim the glory of her entrance to the city and introduction to the saints, she drove it away again. Trouble had no admission in her present frame of mind. The gentlemen in the hop-sacks continued to attend her; the one leading the donkey, the other walking behind and cheering the animal on with periodical gee-hos.
“I suppose as it’s a long way, sir?” asked Mrs. Peckaby, breaking the silence, and addressing the conductor.
“Middlin’,” replied he.
“And how do we get over the sea, please sir?” asked she again.
“The woyage is pervided for, missus,” was the short and satisfactory response. “Brother Jarrum took care of that when he sent us.”
Her heart went into a glow at the name. And them envious disbelievers in Deerham had cast all sorts of disparaging accusations to the Brother, openly expressing their opinion that he had gone off purposely without her, and that she’d never hear of him again!
Arrived at the top of Clay Lane, the road was crossed, and the donkey was led down a turning towards the lands of Sir Rufus Hautley. It may have occurred to Mrs. Peckaby to wonder that the highway was not taken, instead of an unfrequented by-path that only led to fields and a wood; but, if so, she said nothing. Had the white donkey taken her to a gravel-pit, and pitched headlong in with her, she would have deemed, in her blind faith, that it was the right road to New Jerusalem.
A long way it was, over those wet fields. If the brothers and the donkey partook of the saintly nature of the inhabitants of the Salt Lake City, possibly they did not find it a weary one. Mrs. Peckaby certainly did not. She was rapt in a glowing vision of the honours and delights that would welcome her at her journey’s end;—so rapt, that she and the donkey had been for some little time in one of the narrow paths of the wood before she missed her two conductors.
It caused Mrs. Peckaby to pull the bridle, and cry “Wo-ho!” to the donkey. She had an idea that they might have struck into the wrong path, for this one appeared to be getting narrower and narrower. The wood was intersected with paths, but only a few of them led right through it. She pulled up, and turned her head the way she had come, but was unable to distinguish anything, save that she was in the heart of the wood.
“Be you behind, gentlemen?” she called out.
There was no reply. Mrs. Peckaby waited a bit, thinking they might have lagged unwittingly, and then called out again, with the like result.
“It’s very curious!” thought Mrs. Peckaby.
She was certainly in a dilemma. Without her conductors, she knew no more how to get to New Jerusalem than she did how to get to the new moon. She might find her way through the wood, by one path or another, but, once on the other side, she had no idea which road to turn the donkey to—north, south, east, or west. She thought she would go back and look after them.
But there was some difficulty in doing this. The path had grown so narrow chat the donkey could not easily be turned. She slipped off him, tied the bridle to a tree, and ran back as fast as the obscurity of the path allowed her, calling out to the gentlemen.
The more she ran and the more she called, the less did there appear to be anybody to respond to it. Utterly at a nonplus, she at length returned to the donkey—that is, to the spot, so far as she could judge, where she had left it. But the donkey was gone.
Was Mrs. Peckaby awake, or asleep? Was the past blissful dream—when she was being borne in triumph to New Jerusalem—only an imaginary one? Was her present predicament real? Which was imagination, and which was real? For the last hour she had been enjoying the realisation of all her hopes; now, she seemed no nearer their fruition than she had been a year ago. The white donkey was gone, the conducting Brothers were gone, and she was alone in the middle of a wood, two miles from home, on a wet night. Mrs. Peckaby had heard of enchantments, and began to think she must have been subjected to something of the sort.
She rubbed her eyes; she pinched her arms. Was she in her senses or not? Sure never was such a situation heard of! The cup of hope presented palpably to her lips, only to vanish again—she could not tell how—and leave no sign. A very disagreeable doubt—not yet a suspicion—began to dawn over Mrs. Peckaby. Had she been made the subject of a practical joke?
She might have flung the doubt from her, but for a distant sound that came faintly on her ears—the sound of covert laughter. Her doubt turned to conviction; her face became hot; her heart, but for the anger at it, would have grown sick with the disappointment. Her conductors and the donkey were retreating, having played their joke out! Two certainties forced themselves upon her mind.