The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.

is a matter for your personal consideration merely. If I had thought of leaving, and being content with what I had already got, of course it would have compelled you to do so. Therefore I cannot complain, although I may regret your excuse of a right of action that equally belonged to me." "If I only thought you sincere--" "And why not?" "If I could only bring myself to believe that the money was once more rightly invested--" "You shall come with me yourself, if you like, in the morning to Mr. Black the broker in Abchurch Lane, No. 3, and ascertain that all is right. You shall there sign your name in his book, so that he may know it, and then you will be satisfied, I presume?" "Yes, I should then." "And this dream of leaving off business would vanish?" "Perhaps it would. But--but--" "But what?" "Why did you say to Brown that our union was to take place?" "Because it was necessary to say something, to account for the sudden withdrawal of the money; and surely I may be pardoned, charming Mrs. Lovett, for even in imagination dreaming, that so much beauty was mine." The horrible leer with which Todd looked upon her at this moment made her shudder again; and the expression of palpable hatred and disgust that her countenance wore, added yet another, and not the least considerable, link to the chain of revenge which Todd cherished against her in his cruel and most secret heart. While he was philosophising about guilty associations producing a feeling of mutual distrust, he should have likewise added that they soon produce mutual hatred. For a few moments they looked at each other--that guilty pair--with expressions that sought to read each other's souls; but they were both tolerable adepts in the art of dissimulation. The silence was the most awkward for Todd, so he broke it first by saying-- "You are satisfied, let me hope?" "I will be." "You shall be." "Yes, when I have my money. Henceforward, Todd, we will have much shorter reckonings, so shall we keep much longer friends. If you keep, in some secret place, your half of the proceeds of our--our--" "Business," said Todd. Mrs. Lovett made a sort of gulph of the word, but she adopted it. "If you, I say, keep your half of the proceeds of our business, and I keep mine, I don't see how it is possible for us to quarrel." "Quite impossible." He began to strop a razor diligently, and to try its edge across his thumb nail. Mrs. Lovett's passion--that overwhelming passion which had induced her to enter Todd's shop, and defy him to a species of single combat of wits--had in a great measure subsided, giving place to a calmer and more reflective feeling. One of the results of that feeling was a self-question to the effect of, "What will be the result of an open quarrel with Todd?" Mrs. Lovett shook a little at the answer she felt forced to give herself to this question. That answer was continued in two words--mutual destruction! Yes, that would be the consequence. "Todd," she said in a softened tone, "if I had forged your name, and gone to the city and possessed myself of all the money, what would you have thought? Tell me that." "Just what you thought--that it was the most scandalous breach of faith that could possibly be; but an explanation ought to put that right." "It has." "Then you are satisfied?" "I am. At what time shall we go together, to-morrow morning, to Mr. Black's in Abchurch Lane?" "Name your own time," said Todd with the most assumed air in the world. "Black lives at Ballam Hill, and don't get to business until ten; but any time after that will do." "I will come here at ten, then." "So be it. Ah, Mrs. Lovett, how charming it is to be able to explain away these little difficulties of sentiment. Never trust to appearances. How very deceitful they are apt to be." There was an air of candour about Todd, that might have deceived the devil himself. Notwithstanding all his hideous ugliness--notwithstanding his voice was of the lowest order, and notwithstanding that frightful laugh, and that obliquity of vision that seemed peculiar to himself in its terrible malignancy, there was a plausibility about his manner, when he pleased, that was truly astonishing. Even Mrs. Lovett, with all her knowledge of the man, felt that it was a hard struggle to disbelieve his representations. What must it have been to those who knew him not? "No," said Mrs. Lovett, "it don't do to trust to appearances." She still held the iron in her hand. "Nor," added Todd, giving the razor he had been putting an edge to, a flourish, "nor will it do to listen always to the dictates of compassion; for if we did, what miseries might we inflict upon ourselves. Now, here is a cure in point." "Where?" "I allude to this little affair between us. If you had flown to Bow-street, and there, to spite me, made a full disclosure of certain little facts, why, the result would have been that we might both have slept in Newgate to-night." "Yes, yes." "And then there would have been no recal. You could not have freed us by telling the police that you had made a mistake. Then the gallows would have risen up in our dreams." "Horrible!" "And it being easily discovered that it was no love of public justice or feeling of remorse, that induced you to the betrayal, they would have shown you no mercy, but you would have swung from the halter amid the shouts and execrations of--" "No, no!" "I say yes." "No more of this--no more of this. Can you bear to paint such a picture--does it not seem to you as though you stood upon that scaffold, and heard those shouts? Oh, horror, horror!" "You don't like the picture?" "No, no!" "Ha! ha! Well, Mrs. Lovett, you and I had far better be friends than foes; and above all, you ought by this time to feel that you could trust me. The very fact that to all the world else I am false, ought to prove to you that to you I am true. No human being can exist purely isolated, and I am not an exception." "Say no more--say no more. We will meet to-morrow." "To-morrow be it, then." "At ten." "At ten be it, and then we will go to Black. Come now, since all this is settled, take a glass of wine to our--" "No, no. Not that. I--I am not very well, A throbbing head-ache--a--a. That is, no!" "As you please--as you please. By-the-by, did Black give me a receipt, or did he say it was not usual? Stay a moment, I will look in my secretaire. Sit down a moment in the shaving chair; I will be with you again directly." "We will settle that to-morrow," said Mrs. Lovett; "I feel convinced that Black did not give you a receipt. Good-day." She left the shop, unceremoniously carrying the iron with her. Todd breathed more freely when Mrs. Lovett was gone. He gave one of his horrible laughs as he watched her through the opening in his window. "Ha! ha! Curses on her; but I will have her life first, ere she sees one guinea of my hoard!" He saw Charley Green crossing the road. "Ah, the boy comes back. 'Tis well. I don't know how or why it is, but the sight of that boy makes me uneasy. I think it will be better to cut his throat and have done with him. I--" Todd was suddenly silent. He saw two women pass, and as they did so, one pointed to his shop and said something to the other, who lifted up her hands as though in pious horror. One of these women was Mrs. Ragg, poor Tobias's mother. The other was a stranger to Todd, but she looked like what Mrs. Ragg had been, namely, a laundress in the temple. "Curses," he muttered. Johanna entered the shop. Todd caught up his hat. "Charley?" "Yes, sir." "I shall be gone five minutes. Be vigilant. If any one should come, you can say I have stepped a few doors off to trim Mr. Pentwheezle's whiskers." "Yes, sir." Todd darted from the shop. Mrs. Ragg and her friend were in that deep and earnest course that is a foe to rapid locomotion, so they had not got many yards from Todd's door. He was rarely seen, however, for either to-- "Paint a moral or adorn a tale" Mrs. Ragg turned suddenly and pointed to the shop, and then both the ladies lifted up their hands as though in horror, after which they resumed their deep and all-absorbing discourse as before. Todd followed them closely, and yet with abundance of caution. CHAPTER LXXX. TODD TAKES A JOURNEY TO THE TEMPLE. The two females took their way to the Temple. Todd had been quite right in his conjectures. The friend of Mrs. Ragg was one of the old compatriots of the laundress tribe; and that good lady herself, although, while there was no temptation to do otherwise, she had kept well the secret of her son's residence at Colonel Jeffery's, broke down like a frail and weak vessel as she was with the weight of the secret the moment she got into a gossip with an old friend. Now Mrs. Ragg had only come into that neighbourhood upon some little errand of her own, and with a positive promise of returning to the colonel's house as soon as possible. She would have kept this promise, but that amid the purlieus of Fetter-lane she encountered Martha Jones her old acquaintance. One word begot another, and at last as they walked up Fleet-street, Mrs. Ragg could not help, with many head-shakings and muttered interjectional phrases, letting Martha Jones know that she had a secret. Nay, as she passed Todd's shop, she could not help intimating that she fully believed certain persons, not a hundred miles off, who might be barbers or who might not, would some day come to a bad end in front of Newgate, in the Old Bailey. It was at this insinuation that Martha Jones lifted up her hands, and Mrs. Ragg lifted up hers in sympathy. Todd had seen this action upon the part of the ladies. To overhear what they were saying was to Todd a great object. That it in some measure concerned him he could not for a moment doubt, since the head-shaking and hand-uplifting reference that had been made to his shop by them both as they passed, could not mean anything else. And so, as we have said, he followed them cautiously, dodging behind bulky passengers, so that they should not see him by any sudden glance backwards. One corpulent old lady served him for a shield half up Fleet Street, until, indeed, she turned into a religious bookseller's shop, and left him nothing but thin passengers to interfere between him and the possibility of observation. But Mrs. Ragg and her friend Martha Jones were much too fully engaged to look behind them. In due course, they arrived opposite to the Temple; and then, after much flurrying, in consequence of real and supposed danger from the passing vehicles, they got across the way. They at once dived into the recesses of the legally-learned Temple. Todd dashed after them. "Now, my dear Mrs. Ragg," said Martha Jones, "you must not say No. It's got a beautiful head upon it, and will do you good." "No--no. Really." "Like cream." "But, really, I--I--" "Come, come, it ain't often you is in the Temple, and I knew very well he don't miss a bottle now and then; and 'twix you and me and the pump, I think we has as much a right to that beautiful bottled ale as Mr. Juggas has, for I'd take my bible oath, he don't mean to pay for it, Mrs. Ragg." "You don't say so?" "Yes, I does, Mrs. Ragg. Oh, he's a bad 'un, he is. Ah, Mrs. Ragg, you don't know, nor nobody else, what takes place in his chambers of a night." "Is it possible?" "Yes. I often say to myself what universal profundity he must be possessed with, for he was once intended, he says, for the church, and I heard him say he'd have stuck to it like bricks, if he could have heard of any church that was intended for him." "Shocking!"