To return to Mr. Palethorpe. He had not yet seen even a tithe of his troubles. The sequel of this last adventure proved richer than all the rest. Between two and three o'clock in the afternoon of the following day he crept very stealthily into the parlour of his inn, as “down in the mouth” as a beaten dog. He called for writing materials, and addressed a strange scrawl to the Commercial Bank in Leeds, where it was known he had deposited about three hundred pounds. He afterwards retired to his bed-room, from which in a short time he issued with a bundle in his hand; and, after making certain confidential inquiries of the shoe-black, walked forth in the direction of Rosemary Lane. It seems pretty certain that John Boots directed him thither as one of the most eligible places in the City for the disposal of all sorts of worn-out or superfluous wearing-apparel, and one to which poor gentlemen in difficulties not unfrequently resorted. However that may be, the fact itself is positive, that on the evening of the second Saturday after his arrival, Mr. Palethorpe was seen in a very dejected mood, pacing along Rosemary Lane, towards Cable Street, with a bundle tied up in a blue and white cotton handkerchief, under his arm.
As his eyes wandered from one side of the street to the other, he observed, idling at doors, or along the footway, a generation of low, dark men, who, by the peculiar cut of their countenances might readily have been mistaken—especially by lamplight—for lineal and legitimate descendants of the old race of Grecian satyrs. Inhabiting places in which no other description of person could breathe, and carrying on their congenial trades in “Clo'—old clo'!” these people, with their families, live and thrive on the filth of all the other parts of the unapproachable city. Nothing comes amiss to them: the oldest garment has some profit in it, and the merest shred its fractional value. Their delight seems to be in a life amidst black bags, and the rags of every other portion of the great community; while the aspect of the region they inhabit—as if to keep all the rest from being put out of countenance—is desolate, dark, slimy, and enveloped in an atmosphere of eternal smoke. The very air seems pregnant with melancholy reminiscences of the faded glory of by-gone men, women, and times. The tarnished embroidery, the sooty red suits, the flabby old silks, the vamped-up hessians, what spectres do they not evoke as they dangle (ghostly mementos of departed greatness) beside the never-washed windows; or flap like an old arras, with every gust of wind against the besmeared and noxious walls! Where, perhaps, the legs of some gallant captain once found a local habitation, there the dirty Israelite now passing along feels ambitious to encase his own. The handkerchief of a bishop invites a “shopb'y's” nose; the last rejected beaver of the Lord Mayor awaits the acceptance of some rascally cranium, which the Lord Mayor would give half his dignity to “nab,” and “pop in quod.” Even some vanished great one's walking-stick, now sticks in the black corner of the Jew's shop, waiting to be once again shaken by the handle, even though it be but during a brief proud hour on Sunday, by the lad who yesterday hawked cedar pencils through the streets at a halfpenny a piece.
“Buy, sir?—buy?—buy?” Mr. Pale-thorpe replied in the negative to a man who thus addressed him, but volunteered to sell. He produced the contents of his handkerchief; and before ten minutes, more had elapsed his best blue coat with gilt buttons, and a second pair of corduroys, became the property of the Jew, at one-third less than their value. The reason of this strange proceeding was that during the preceding night's glorification the Yorkshireman had,—in some way totally incomprehensible to himself,—been eased of absolutely every farthing he possessed. He had, therefore, no alternative but to raise a little ready cash upon his clothes, until he could receive from the bank in Leeds, where he had deposited his scrapings, enough to set himself straight again and pay his passage home.
Several times had the sun rolled over the head of this side of the world after the scene above-described, when, one rainy evening, about dusk, as Miss Sowersoft was casting a weary and longing eye across the soddened fields which lay between Snitterton Lodge and the high road, to her inexpressible pleasure she beheld the well-known figure of Mr. Palethorpe making its way towards the house.
“Well, here you are again!” she exclaimed, as he flung down his top-coat, and demanded a jack to get his boots off. “How have you gone on? I see you hav'n't brought him with you, at all events.”
Although Miss Sowersoft had made an inquiry the moment Mr. Palethorpe entered the house, she now refused to hear him talk until he had satisfied his appetite. This achievement occupied, of course, considerable time. He then, in the midst of an open-mouthed and anxious rural audience, consisting of every individual, man, maid, and boy, upon the farm, related—not his own adventures, but the imaginary adventures of some person very closely resembling himself, who never lived, and whose peregrinations had only existed in the very little world of his own brain.
His expedition had been most successful; for, although he had not exactly succeeded in discovering Colin's retreat,—a mishap attributable to the enormous extent of London, and not to his own want of sagacity,—yet he had astonished the natives there by such specimens of country talent as they were very little prepared for. He pulled out a new watch. “Look there,” said he. “I got that through parting with the old 'un, and a better than that niver went on wheels. I bought some handkerchers for about half-price, and see'd more of Lunnun in ten days than many folks that have been agate there all their lives.”
“Then you went 'top o' th' Moniment?” demanded old George.
“To be sure I did!” exclaimed Palethorpe, “and St. Paul's Cathedral as well.”
“I hope you did not get dropped on, anyhow,” remarked Miss Sowersoft, inquiringly; for she really burned to know whether any of the fears she had expressed at his setting out had been realised.