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.

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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.