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

half-glass door at a spot where he knew the blind did not prevent him, could just see Johanna thus sitting. "Humph!" he said. "The boy is quiet enough, and probably, after all, may suspect nothing; although I don't at all like his manner at times; yet it is safer to kill him before I go. It is absolute security. He shall help me to arrange everything to set the house on fire, and then when I have completed all my arrangements, it will be easy to knock him on the head." With this he opened the door. Johanna started. "Well," said Todd, "well, any one been?" "Only a man to be shaved, sir. I told him you would be home soon, but he could not wait, so he left." "Let him leave and get shaved at the devil!" said Todd. "You are sure no one has been here peeping and prying, and asking questions which you would be quite delighted to answer, eh?" "Peeping and prying, sir?" "Yes, peeping and prying. You know the meaning of that. Don't put on a look of surprise at me. It won't do. I known what you boys are. Curse you all! Yes, I know what you are." Johanna made no answer. Todd took off his hat, and shook the rain from it violently. Then in a voice that made Johanna start again, he cried-- "Light the lamp, idiot!" It was quite clear that the occurrences at the colonel's had not improved Todd's temper at all, and that upon very little pretext for it, he would have committed some act of violence, of which Johanna might be the victim. Anything short of that she could endure, but she had made up her mind that if even he so much as laid his hand upon her, her power of further patience would be gone, and she would be compelled to adopt the means of summoning aid which had been pointed out to her by Sir Richard Blunt--namely, by casting something through the window into the street. She lit the shop-lamp as quickly as she could. "A lazy life you lead," said Todd. "A lazy life, indeed. Well, well," he added, softening his tone, "it don't matter--I shall polish you off for all that, Charley. What a pretty boy you are." "Sir?" "I say what a pretty boy you are. Why, you must have been your mamma's pet, that you must. I was. Ha! ha! Look at me, now. I was fondled and kissed once, and called a pretty boy. Ha!" Johanna shuddered. "Yes," added Todd, as he wiped himself down with a soiled towel, "yes, my mother used to make quite a pet of me. I often used to wish I was strong enough to throttle her! Ha! ha! That I did!" "Throttle her, sir?" "Yes," added Todd, fiercely. "What the devil did she bring me into the world for her own gratifications, unless she had plenty of money to give me that I might enjoy myself in it?" "I don't know, sir." "You don't know? Who the devil supposed you did know? Answer me that, you imp! Well, well, Charley, you and I won't quarrel about such matters. Come, my boy, I want you to be of use to me to-night." "To-night, sir?" "Yes, to-night. Is it broad daylight? Is the sun shining? Is there no such thing as night, under cover of which black deeds are done? Curse you! why do you ask if to-night is the time for action?" "I will do your bidding, sir." "Yes; and--Ah! who is this?" "Is this here keg of turpentine for you?" said a man, with it upon his shoulder. "Mr. Todd's this is, ain't it?" "Yes--yes. Put it down, my good fellow. You ought to have something to drink." "Thank you kindly, sir." "But you must pay for it yourself. There is a public-house opposite." The man went away swearing; and scarcely had he crossed the threshold, when a letter was brought by a lad, and handed to Todd. Before he could ask any questions, the lad was gone. Todd held the letter in his hand, and glared at the direction. It was to him, sure enough, and written in a very clerk-like hand, too. Before he could open it, some one hit the door a blow upon the outside, and it swung open. "Is this Todd's, the barber?" "Yes," said Johanna. "Then give him that letter, little chap, will you?" "Stop!" cried Todd. "Stop. Where do you come from, and who are you? Stop, you rascal. Will you stop? Confound you, I wish I had a razor at your throat." CHAPTER LXXXVI. TODD RECEIVES TWO EXTRAORDINARY LETTERS, AND ACTS UPON THEM. Todd looked the picture of amazement. "Two letters!" he muttered, "two letters to me, who seldom receive any? To me who have no acquaintances--no relations? Bah! It must be some mistake, or perhaps, after all, some infernal nonsense about the parish." He tore open the last received one, and read as follows:-- "Colonel Jeffery informs Sweeney Todd that, although from a variety of reasons he may not think proper to prosecute him for his recent outrage at his house, he will, upon a repetition of such conduct, at once hand him over to the police." Todd's countenance, during the perusal of this brief note, betrayed a variety of emotions; and when he had concluded it, he let it drop from his hands, and knitting his brows, he muttered-- "What does this mean?" That there was--that there must be something much more than met the eye in this boasted clemency of the colonel towards him, he felt quite convinced; but what it was, he was puzzled to think for a time. At length, brightening up, he said-- "Yes, I have it. It is Tobias--it is Tobias. He cannot rid himself from the idea that I have some mysterious power of injuring his mother; and perhaps, after all, he may have made no disclosures to the colonel injurious to me." Comforted by this wide supposition, Todd picked up the letter again, and put it in his pocket carefully. "It is as well," he said, "for I shall not now be hurried. No, I shall not be at all hurried now, which I might have been.--Charley." "Yes, sir." "Trim the lamp." Johanna did so; and while the process was going on, Todd opened the other letter, it was as follows:-- "Sir,--We beg to inform you that our Hamburgh vessel in which you have done us the favour to take passage, will not sail until to-morrow night at four, God willing, and that consequently there will be no occasion for your coming on board earlier.--We are, sir, "Your obedient servants, "BROWN, BUGGINS, MUGGS, AND SCREAMER." "To Mr. S. Todd." Todd ground his teeth together in a horrible manner. He dashed the letter to the floor, and stamped upon it. "Curse Brown and Buggins!" he cried. "I only wish I could dash out Muggs and Screamer's brains with Brown and Buggins's skulls. Confound them and their ships. May they all go to the bottom when I am out of them, and be smashed and d--d!" Johanna was amazed at this sudden torrent of wrath. She could not imagine what had produced it, for Todd had read the letter in a muttering tone, that effectually prevented her from hearing any of it. Suddenly he rose and rushed into the back room, and bolted the door upon himself. He went to think what was best to be done. When he was alone he read both the letters again, and then he burst out into such a torrent of wrath against the ship-owners, that it was a mercy Johanna's ears were spared the dreadful words that came from his lips. Suddenly he saw a postscript at the foot of the ship-owner's letter, which he had at first overlooked. "P. S.--The ship is removed to Crimmins's Wharf, but will be at her old moorings at time mentioned above." "D--n Crimmins and his wharf, too!" cried Todd. He flung himself into a chair, and sat for a time profoundly still. During that period he tried to make up his mind as to what it would be best for him, under the circumstances, to do. Many plans floated through his imagination. He could not for a long time bring himself to believe that the letter of the colonel's was anything but a feint to throw him off his guard in some way. At length he got into a calmer frame of mind. "Shall I leave at once, or stay till to-morrow night, that is the question?" He argued this with himself, pro and con. If he left he would have to secret himself somewhere all the following day, and the fact of his having left would make an active search, safe to be instituted for him, which would possibly be successful. Besides, how was he to conveniently set fire to his house, unless he was off on the moment that the flames burst forth? Then if he stayed he had Mrs. Lovett to encounter, but that was all; and surely he could put her off for a few hours? Surely she, of all people in the world, was not to run to a police-office and destroy both him and herself, just because she did not get some money at ten o'clock that he had promised to hand to her. "She shall be put off," he said, suddenly, "and I will stay over to-morrow. I am safer here than anywhere else, of that I feel assured. If there are any suspicious whisperings about me at all, they will grow to loud clamours the moment I am gone, and then they may reach the ears of these ship-owners, and they may say at once, 'Why we have such a man with a passage taken in one of our Hamburgh ships.' Let them say that when the ship is some twenty hours gone with me on board, and I don't care; but with me on land, and the ship only to sail, instead of having actually sailed, it is quite a different matter." He rose from his seat. His mind was made up. He had not quite decided what he should say to Mrs. Lovett, but he had decided upon staying. "Charley will live another day," he muttered; "but to-morrow night he dies, and his body will be consumed with this house, and, I hope, a good part of Fleet-street. It will not be prudent to get him to assist now in disposing the combustibles to fire the house. He might speak of it before to-morrow night." Todd came out into the shop. "Charley, my boy!" How kindly he spoke! "I am here, sir." "You must not mind what I say when I am vexed. Many things happen to put me out of the way. Sometimes people that I have done I don't know how much for, turn out to be very ungrateful, and then I get chafed, you see, Charley." "Yes, sir, no doubt." "But, after I have retired to the parlour and prayed a little, my mind soon recovers its usual religious tone, and its wonted serenity; and for the sake of the Almighty, who, you know, is good to us all, Charley, I forgive all that is done to me, and pray for the wicked." Johanna shuddered. This hypocrisy sounded awful to her. "Never go to rest, Charley, without saying your prayers. There's threepence for you. You can get yourself a bed in the neighbourhood for that amount somewhere, I daresay. I am very sorry I cannot accommodate you here, Charley. Now go away, and let me have you here by seven in the morning; and mind, above all things, cultivate a religious spirit, and do unto your neighbours as you would that your neighbours should do unto you." Johanna could not reply. "Here is a tract that you can read before you go to sleep, if they allow you a candle, when you get a-bed. It is entitled 'Groans of Grace, or the Sinner Sifted,' a most godly production, from a pious bookseller in Paternoster-row, Charley." "Yes," Johanna just managed to say. "Now you may go." She darted from the shop. "Hilloa! hilloa! Stop--stop, Charley! Stop--stop, will you? Confound you, stop! The infernal shutters are not up. Do you hear? I forgot them." Todd rushed to his door. He looked right and left, and over the way, and, in fact, everywhere, but no Charley was to be seen. The fact is, that Johanna, the moment she felt herself released from the shop, had darted over the way, and into the fruiterers, where she had found so friendly a welcome before, and all this was done in such a moment, that she was housed before Todd could get his shop-door open. "Welcome!" said a voice.