_Wherein Peter Veriquear makes love to Miss Sowersoft, and becomes
involved in trouble.--Mr. Palethorpe's reconciliation with his
mistress._
In pursuance of a design which Colin had secretly formed, involving a
journey to Sherwood forest, and the surprise of Jerry Clink's retreat,
for the carrying off of James Woodruff, he one afternoon might have
been seen wending his way towards his old quarters in Bethnal Green.
The co-operation of some one, a perfect stranger to Jerry, and in whose
sense and integrity entire confidence could be placed, was imperatively
required in its successful execution; and, in lack of a better man for
the business, Colin selected his old employer, Mr. Peter Veriquear,
provided that gentleman's known indifference towards other people's
business could by any possibility be overcome.
On arriving at his domicile, Colin found that Peter was from home,
having taken advantage of a fine day to convey his small family in the
cradle-coach to a favourite suburban retreat, for the enjoyment of tea
and toping, not far from the tower at Canonbury.
In this, and innumerable similar places about the environs of the
metropolis, it is that, on fine warm summer afternoons and evenings,
especially on Sundays, the shop-tired and _counter-sunk_ inhabitants of
the respectable working classes assemble, ostensibly for the purpose of
imbibing what by common courtesy is dignified with the title of fresh
air, though in reality with equally as settled an intention of mixing
the said fresh air with bottled stout, three X ales, and a pipe or two
of bird's-eye. Here you may see the young lover anxiously endeavouring
to “insinivate” himself into the good graces of his sweetheart, by
evincing the most striking solicitude that she should soak up repeated
bird-sips of his cold “blue-ruin.” You may observe them--true lovers
of twilight--getting into the veriest back corner of arbour or bower,
telling in security the almost silent tale, that no ear may hear but
theirs. Here, also, is seen the young husband, with his wife following
behind him, a “pledge” of affection toddling by his side, and perhaps
a “duplicate” hugged preciously up in his arms; while the empty-headed
spark, who lives in seeing and being seen, the gross and sensual
guzzler of heavy wet, and the old quiet smoker, whom nothing can move or
elevate, make up this motley assembly. Pots and glasses appear on every
side, and busy waiters running in all directions across the grass, with
tray, or lantern, or glowing piece of live touchwood, to light the pipes
of the company.
As our hero entered the tavern and teagardens in question, he passed
beneath a low and long colonnade of a somewhat humble description, the
top of which was formed by the projection of the second story of the
building. Several miniature conveyances for the small aristocracy of
the baby generation stood about, and amongst them that identical one
on which Colin had himself once exercised his abilities, as previously
described.
To the left hand lay a wide lawn, on which some score or two of
youngsters were disporting themselves in the twilight, while the
“parents and guardians,” as the newspapers say, of these small gentry
were lolling at their ease in certain cots, or arbours, made waterproof
with pitch, which bounded the sides of the green.
In one of these Colin soon found the individual of whom he was in
search. Having communicated to Peter some general idea that his
assistance was required in a very important enterprise.
“True,” replied Veriquear, “it may be of great consequence to you; but
that, you know, is your own affair. It is no business of mine.”
“But you will be well rewarded by Mr. Woodruff afterwards, I doubt not,”
replied Colin.
“Do you think so? Oh, then, in that case, it begins to look more like my
own affair than I thought it was. Yes, yes; good pay, you know, always
makes a thing a man's business directly.”
And hereupon the matter was discussed at leisure, and in a manner which
clearly proved that, upon sufficient reason given, Peter could take
quite as much interest in other people's business as ever he had taken
in his own.
While Colin thus sat in discourse with his old employer, his attention
had several times been partially attracted by a voice in the next
adjoining arbour, but which now elevated itself to a distinctly audible
pitch in the expression of the following sentiment:--
“Upon my word, those little dears are delightful to look on! The
satisfaction of having children to bring up--ay, dear!--the pleasure
and delight, Mr. Palethorpe, of leading them as it were by the nose,
symbolically speaking:--oh! the delight of it must be--must be--I hardly
know what to call it--but something which, in an unmarried state, the
imagination can scarcely attempt to soar up to. And then their
tiny voices--some ill-tempered people may call it squealing if they
please--but to a father's ears, I should think, it must be welcome night
and day,--that is, if he has the common feelings of a father about him.
It is really astonishing how happy some people might be, if they did but
take something of a determination at some time or other of their
lives to adopt some course with respect to somebody or other, which
might--what shall I say?--might--might--however, I mean, which might
lead to something final and decisive.”
“Sartinly, meesis,” replied the individual thus addressed, “I don't
dispoot all that; only, when a man has a good appetite hisself, and can
eat most of what's put before him, it seems natteral enough that his
children would go and do the same; and that would take a little more
mainteaning than some of us can exactly afford. I can't see myself how
_we_ could go all that length, with a proper eye to our own old age.”
“Ah!” replied the lady, “there it is! I really think there is not a
grain of filial feeling left in any farmer in Yorkshire.”
“I'm sure, meesis,” rejoined Palethorpe, “you 'll not accuse me of
wanting in filly-al feeling, when you know there isn't a single filly
nor colt neither on the whole farm as I haven't showed the--”
“I don't mean that!” exclaimed the lady; “you don't understand me. But I
can only say it for myself, that it would be no great trouble to me,
not a bit of it, to sink the whole of myself in the endeavour to raise
a prodigy of children, that should prove a complete honour to any
farm-yard in the riding. The pretty dears! how I should spoil them out
of kindness!--yes, that I should--I know I should. Ugh! I could squeeze
their little hearts to pieces, I could!”
This rhapsody left Colin no longer in the dark. Mr. Palethorpe was again
in London, accompanied by the loving and amiable Miss Sowersoft.
A capital idea at this moment struck Colin's mind. Mr. Peter Veriquear
was already well acquainted with the story of Palethorpe's previous
visit to town, and had applauded Colin for the part he had then taken in
punishing that poor booby as he deserved. He therefore now only required
to be informed that both Palethorpe and his mistress were in the next
box, in order, as Colin hoped, to be induced to join him in an innocent
trick upon the worthy couple. His proposition was simply this,--that
Peter should quietly walk into their arbour, sit down next to Miss
Sower-soft, call for drink, as though he had just arrived, and then
proceed, according to the best of his ability, in making love to that
lady, no less to her own eventual disappointment, than to the annoyance
and mortification of the redoubtable Samuel. Veriquear laughed at the
notion, but objected that to make love to a lady in that manner could
not possibly be any business of his, seeing, in the first place, that
he had no desire; in the second, that he was married; and in the third,
that possibly he might after all come off the worst for it.
“Besides,” he added, “what will Mrs. Veriquear say if she should happen
to catch me, for I expect her up to tea here very soon; and if she
_should_ come before the joke is completed, I am afraid she would turn
it into a regular Whitechapel tragedy.”
“Oh, never heed that!” replied Colin. “I 'll be bound to see you safe,
and all right. Go in directly, and do it before the chance be lost.
Here, waiter!” and he whispered to him to carry a bottle of stout into
the next box for his friend, without delay.
In a few minutes more Peter Veriquear was sitting beside Miss Sowersoft,
while Colin peeped through a nick in the boards which divided the two
boxes, and with high glee observed all that passed.
“A fine evening this, ma'am,” said Peter.
“Delightful evening, indeed, sir!” echoed Miss Sowersoft.
“Yees, it 's pleasant,” added Palethorpe, who remembered his former
exploits, and began to fear a thief; at the same time that he thought it
the most advisable course at present to speak civilly to him.
“Admirable places these,” continued Peter, “for the enjoyment of the
working-people, who are confined in shops and warehouses from week's end
to week's end.”
“They are, indeed,” said Miss Sowersoft.
“I should think so,” added Palethorpe.
“And, really,” continued the lady, “I had not the most remote conception
that such places existed. It is positively like a private gentleman's
private grounds.”
“Uncommon like,” repeated Palethorpe. “Then you are strangers here,
ma'am?” asked Peter.
“Quite so, sir!” answered the lady. “We have only been up a few days.”
“I ar'n't a stranger, though,” protested Palethorpe; “I've bin afore,
and know what's what as well as most folks. He'd be a sharper chap than
somebody that I see to drop on us.” Miss Sowersoft here gave Palethorpe
a nudge with her foot, and squeezed her brows and mouth up at him into
a very severe expression of reprehension. At the same time Colin poked
a sharp toothpick between the boards against which his back leaned, and
inserted it about the tenth of an inch deep into Pale-thorpe. The varlet
jumped, as, thinking he had hitched upon a nail; and, having looked
under him without finding anything, sat down again a little farther off.
In the mean time Peter looked very graciously at the lady, who seemed by
no means displeased with his attentions, and continued a conversation,
in which he prognosticated how many marvellous sights she would see
in London, and how much she would be delighted before her return:
concluding with an obscure hint that it would give him much pleasure,
should he at any time chance to meet with her again, to point out the
objects best worthy a stranger's attention. Miss Sowersoft smirked
benignantly, and glanced at Palethorpe with an expression which seemed
to say that “somebody might now see that everybody did not think so
little of somebody else, as some people were apt to imagine,” while
Palethorpe himself grew paler, and verily began to think that his
“meesis” was going to be taken, without farther ceremony, altogether out
of his hands. He fidgeted about on his seat, as though bent on polishing
his breeches, like a tabletop; while another poke of the toothpick,
twice as deep as before, made him fairly cry out, and curse the joiner
who had put up, the benches without knocking his nails down.
Encouraged by his success, Peter so far increased his attentions as at
length fairly to arouse: the jealousy of Mr. Palethorpe, who resented
the insult thus put upon him by declaring that as that lady was keeping
company with himself, nobody else should speak to her so long as he was
by, or else his name was not Palethorpe. To which valiant speech Miss
Sowersoft herself replied by informing, her farming-man that he was
one of those kind of people who seemed as if they could neither make up
their own minds to come to a decisive point themselves, nor endure to
see anybody else do the same. A sentiment which Mr. Veriquear rendered
still more strikingly illustrative by declaring that the gentleman who
sat opposite him was like one of those ill-tempered curs, that turn up
their own noses at a bone, but grumble and snarl at every other dog that
attempts to touch it.
[Illustration: 051]
Finding even his own “meesis” against him, Palethorpe's mettle began to
rise, and he demanded to know whether Mr. Veriquear meant to call him a
cur? To which Veriquear replied, that he would look still more like
one if he went upon all-fours. Hereupon Mr. Palethorpe challenged his
antagonist to a boxing-match upon the green, swearing that he would lick
him as clean as ever any man was licked in this world, or be d----d
for his trouble. Peter ridiculed this threat, and begged the courageous
gentleman who made it to recollect that he was not now in Yorkshire;
informing him still further that if he did not take particular care,
he would lay himself under the unpleasant necessity of making another
appearance at the police-office, as he had done upon a former occasion.
Mr. Palethorpe turned pale on hearing this; while Miss Sowersoft seemed
literally astounded, as she demanded in a shrill and faint, but
earnest voice, whether he (Mr. Veriquear) _knew_ Mr. Palethorpe and his
calamity.
“Everybody in London knows him,” replied Veriquear; “and I can assure
you, ma'am, that it is no credit to any respectable female to be seen
with a man who has rendered himself so disgracefully notorious.”
Afraid that she had committed herself in the eyes of all the people of
the metropolis, Miss Sowersoft looked upon the unlucky Palethorpe at
the moment almost with horror; at the same time unconsciously and
instinctively she clung for support to the strange hand of that poor
man's supposed rival. At this interesting and peculiarly striking part
of the scene, Mrs. Peter Veriquear (directed by Master William, whom she
had picked up on the lawn) bounced suddenly into the box.
Colin, whose business it was to have prevented this surprise by keeping
a good look-out for the arrival of the last-named lady, had been so
deeply engaged in spying through a little round hole, which he had made
by pushing a knot out of one of the boards, and had found himself
so mightily entertained with the scene before him, that the sudden
apparition-like appearance of Mrs. Veriquear almost confounded him; and
especially when, in the next moment, he beheld that lady, who instantly
detected her husband's situation, dart like a fury at Miss Sowersoft,
whom she concluded had seduced him, and pommel away with her fists as
might some belated baker, who has the largest amount of dough to
knead up within the least possible given space of time. Palethorpe and
Veriquear were instantly up in arms--the latter endeavouring to restrain
his wife, and the former, with a degree of chivalrous feeling entirely
peculiar to himself, striking her with brutal force upon the head and
face; while Master William Veriquear, seeing the imminent danger of his
worthy parents, struck up a solo in the highest possible key, upon the
natural pipes with which he was provided for such occasions.
No sooner did Colin perceive the dastardly conduct of Palethorpe, than
he forsook his situation at the peep-hole, and hurrying to the
spot, laid his old foe, the farming-man, flat upon the floor with a
well-directed blow of the fist. The latter looked up from his inglorious
situation; and if ever man felt convinced that he was haunted by an evil
genius, Mr. Palethorpe felt so on this occasion, and that _his_ evil
genius was embodied in the form of Colin Clink.
A regular mêlée now ensued, during which Mrs. Veriquear's cap was sent
flying into the air, like a boy's balloon. The back of the arbour was
driven out, and Mr. Veriquear, locked in the arms of Miss Sowersoft,
fell through the opening into that beautiful and refreshing piece
of water which has its local habitation opposite the west side of
Canon-bury Tower.
The sudden appearance of several policemen amongst the combatants put an
end to the sport. Colin and Palethorpe were seized, and attempted to be
hurried off; but as neither had any very particular reason for desiring
a situation in the watch-house, followed by an appearance before the
magistrates, they contrived so far to accommodate matters with the
guardians of the public peace as to be allowed to go at liberty, and
each his several way.
Colin's first step was to see to the safety of his friend, Veriquear. He
and Miss Sower-soft had already been fished out of the pond without
rod, line, or net, by the surrounding spectators, and now stood upon the
bank, like a triton and a mermaid just emerged from their palaces under
the flood. The latter-named of the two was conveyed into the tavern,
and put to bed, while the former was induced, at the representations of
Colin, to walk rapidly home with the enraged Mrs. Veriquear on his
arm. Colin himself undertaking the charge of the young Veriquears, and
drawing them down in the basket-coach at some short distance behind.
Peter Veriquear naturally enough employed the whole time occupied in
their journey home by explaining to his spouse the origin, decline,
and fall, of the history of this adventure. A statement which Colin
afterwards so far corroborated as to leave Mrs. Veriquear entirely
convinced, not only of her husband's innocence of any criminal
intention, but satisfied that a capital practical joke had been played
upon two individuals most richly deserving of it.
As to the unexpected appearance of the worthy couple in town within
so comparatively short a time of Mr. Palethorpe's former inglorious
expedition, it is to be accounted for upon the same principle as are
many other matters of equal importance: that is, according to a certain
principle of curiosity, which is supposed to exist pretty largely
in every human breast, but especially in the bosoms of the fair. And
although, strictly speaking, Miss Sowersoft could not be termed one of
the fair either in her complexion or her dealings, yet she so far came
under that category touching the article of curiosity, that I much doubt
whether Dame Nature ever was blessed with another daughter in whom this
virtue shone more conspicuously.
During the first day or two after her discovery of Palethorpe's frail
and erring nature, she betook herself, as far as the duties of the farm
would allow, to the silence and solitude of her own bed-chamber; where,
in all human probability, she wept over the depravity of human nature,
and scattered the flowers of a gloomy imagination about the corpse
of all her blighted hopes. Several times was she seen with a white
handkerchief applied to her eyes. For some weeks Mr. Palethorpe lived
as though he lived not. To her, at least, he was dead: she saw him not,
heard him not, knew him not. When he spoke his voice passed her by like
the wind: when he whistled she heeded it no more than the whistling of
a keyhole; when he laughed,--if ever he ventured to laugh,--she heard
no mirth in the sound: when he cried,--if ever he did cry, which I very
much doubt,--she participated not in his sorrows: and when, as very
often happened, he sat still, and did nothing at all, then--then only,
did he come up to her ideas of him, and appear (if such a thing can
be conceived by the ingenious reader) an embodied nonentity. Meantime
Palethorpe ate and drank at random, and unheeded. A feeling of
desperation seemed to govern all his herbivorous and carnivorous
propensities. While Miss Sowersoft pined, Palethorpe evidently grew
fatter; while she stalked like a ghost, he grew redder and more robust.
The contrast, at length, became unendurable; and from mere envy and
spite she at last began to speak to him again.
From a sullen and sulky exchange of words, this happy pair at length
proceeded to a certain reluctant but animated discourse, in which
explanation, reproaches, and deprecation, were abundantly resorted
to. She accused; he apologized and regretted, and then, at length, she
forgave; and Mr. Palethorpe once more had the satisfaction of finding
himself restored to tolerable favour.
I have said that Miss Sowersoft's curiosity was extreme. When Palethorpe
detailed to her all the wonders of his expedition, her propensity could
not be restrained. She, too, must see London. Besides, to tell the
truth, her reconcilement sat but awkwardly upon even her own shoulders
at first; and, like an ill-fitted saddle on a steed, only galled the
creature it was intended to relieve. She secretly thought a journey
abroad in Palethorpe's company could not fail mightily to facilitate her
plan of achieving his final conquest, for, in spite of all errors, she
felt that his name must some day become her own, or she should die.
Accordingly, the pleasure-tour to town was at last agreed upon, and
hence their appearance again at the time and place in question.
Returning to Colin, it may now be stated, that before he took his
departure from Mr. Veriquear's that evening, a plan was arranged between
himself and Peter for carrying his first and most important design into
immediate execution.