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

She found it proceeded from the fruiterer's daughter, who had behaved so kindly to her. Johanna burst into tears. "What has happened?--what has happened?" cried the young girl. "Nothing, now," said Johanna. "But I cannot keep up longer than when I am in that shop. As soon as I am fairly out of the presence of that dreadful man, I feel ready to faint." "Be of good cheer," said a deep-toned voice. She looked up, and saw Sir Richard Blunt. "You here, sir?" "Yes, Johanna. I have been now for some time watching Todd's shop from our friend's first-floor window. I saw you dart across the road, and for the moment feared something had gone wrong. Did Todd get two letters?" "He did." "They will, I hope, keep him quiet until another night. Dare you go back again, Johanna, to that place?" "Yes, if it be necessary; but he has told me to sleep out, and the gust of pleasure I felt at the permission, almost, I fear, betrayed me." "He came to the door and looked furiously after you, but he did not see which way you had come. You were over here like a flash of light." "He would have had me back again, then?--What could that be for?" "At all events, you shall not go until the morning, and not then, unless after a night's rest here, you feel that you can do so with a good heart." "Oh yes, I will fulfil my mission." "Todd is putting up his shutters," said the fruiterer, as he came in from his front shop. "Ah, then the secret is out," said Sir Richard Blunt. "That is what he wanted you back for, Johanna. He had forgotten at the moment all about the shutters you may depend. I am glad he spared you the trouble, at any rate. I do not like you to perform any service for such a rank villain as he is." "It would not have been for him, sir." "For who, then?" "For the dead. I feel that I am bound to bring to justice the murderer of Mark Ingestrie. When I was here last, sir, you strove to comfort me, by making me feel a sort of hope that he was not dead, but I cannot think that--I would that I could, but indeed I cannot, sir." "Do not be too sure, Johanna." "Nay, look at that." She laid before the magistrate the sleeve of the jacket that she had found at Todd's, and which fancy, for she certainly had no proof that way tending, told her had belonged to Mark Ingestrie. "What is this?" "Look at it, sir. My heart tells me it was his!" "And so you suppose there was never but one sailor's jacket with ivory buttons on the wrist in the world, and never any one who wore one, but Mark Ingestrie?" "Nay, the place in which it was found brings conviction." "Not at all. Do you forget there was such a person as Thornhill in the world, Johanna?" "No; but why will every one persist in fancying Thornhill and Ingestrie to be two persons, when I am convinced they were but one? Let who will identify this as part of Thornhill's apparel, and I will weep for Mark." "I cannot just now shake this supposition." "You never will." "If I live I will, Johanna, I give you my word for so much. Pray who is the best to judge of such things? You, a young girl who have seen little or nothing of the world, and whose natural apprehension is rendered obscure by the conflict of your affections, or I whose business it is to come to an accurate conclusion of such matters? I repeat my conviction, that Thornhill was not Mark Ingestrie." "Oh, if I could think so!" "You will." "You have no doubt, sir, but Thornhill perished by the hand of Todd?" "None whatever." Johanna looked deeply affected. "Come," added Sir Richard, "you want both rest and refreshment, and you can have both here at this house. To-morrow I hope will end all your trials, my dear girl, and I shall live, I trust, to see you smile as you ought to smile, and to be as happy as only a very dim recollection of the past will make you." "Ah, no--never happy." "You must love some one. You must recover, and in the cares and joys of a new existence, you must only look back upon what has passed, as though you pondered upon the phantasma of some fearful dream; and when you see all around you smiling--" "It will be cruel for them to smile, sir; and it is now cruel of you to speak to me of loving another, when you know my affections are with Ingestrie, in that world to which he has gone before me, but to which I look forward to as the place of our happy meeting, where we shall part again no more." "Well, I thought I could find you a lover that would be to your mind when all these affairs were over." "Sir?" "Nay, be not offended. You know I am your sincere friend." "I know you are, and that is what makes it so grievous to me to hear you talk in such a strain, sir." "Then I will say no more." "I thank you, Sir Richard; and I will forget what you have said, because I will recollect nothing from you, or committed with you, but kindness and consideration." Sir Richard smiled slightly for a moment, as he turned aside and spoke to his friend the fruiterer for some minutes in a low tone. The young girl who had before behaved with such kindness to Johanna, took her by the hand, and led her up-stairs. "Come," she said, "you shall tell me all you have suffered opposite since we parted last, and I will speak to you of him whom you love." "You are too good to me." While all this was going on so close to him, Todd, with many oaths and execrations, was putting up his own shutters, which he did with a violence that nearly knocked the front of the window in. When he had finished, he walked into his house, and closing the door, he said, in a low tone-- "I must make up my mind what to say to Mrs. Lovett in the morning. I am afraid she will be hard to pacify." At this moment a man peered out from the inn gateway opposite, and said to himself-- "Now begins my watch. I dare say now Mrs. Lovett has some particular reason for watching this barber, though she did not tell me. However, a guinea for one night's work is not bad pay." CHAPTER LXXXVII. MR. LUPIN MEDDLES WITH OTHER FOLKS' AFFAIRS. "Brother Oakley, is sister Oakley within?" This rather cool speech--cool considering all the circumstances--was uttered by no other than the Reverend Mr. Lupin to Mr. Oakley, who was working in his shop on the morning after Johanna had gone upon her perilous enterprise to Todd's. Mr. Oakley looked up with surprise upon his features. "What?" he said. "Is sister Oakley within, brother?" "Don't call me brother, you canting hypocrite. How do you make out any such relationship, I should like to know?" "Are we not all brothers in the Lord?" "Pho! Go along." "Nay, brother Oakley, my coming to you upon this day hath, in good truth, a meaning." As he said these words, the countenance of the pious man had upon it a malignant expression, and there was a twinkle about his eyes, which said as plainly as possible, "And that meaning is mischief!" Old Oakley looked at him for some few seconds, and then he said-- "Hark you, Mr. Lupin, you have already meddled too much in my affairs, and I desire now that you will be so good as to leave them alone." "Humph! brother Oakley, what I have to say, concerns thee to hear, but I would rather say it to thy wife, who is a sister in the faith, and assuredly one of the elect, than I would say it to you, who will assuredly go to a warm place below for your want of faith; so I say again, is sister Oakley within?" "If you mean my wife," replied the old spectacle-maker, "I am sorry to say that nobody knows less of her going out and coming home than I do." "Truly, she frequents the Tabernacle of the Lord, called Ebenezer, where we all put up a hearty and moving prayer for you." "Nobody asks you. I believe you are a set of rascals." "How pleasant this is." "What is pleasant?" "To be nailed. How charming it is for the friends of Satan to call the Saints hard names. Brother Oakley, you are lost, indeed." "If you call me brother again, you shall be lost, Mr. Lupin. I tell you once for all, I don't know anything of my wife's going out or coming home, and I don't want to see you in my shop any more. If it were not for one person in this world, and that one an angel, if ever one lived upon the earth, I should not care how soon my head was laid low." "Humph! brother Oakley! Humph!" Oakley caught up a file to throw at the head of the hypocrite, but there was such an expression of triumph upon his face, that the heart of the old spectacle-maker sunk within him as he thought to himself, "This man brings ill news, or he would never look as he does." The file dropped from his hands, and pushing his spectacles up to the top of his head, he glared at Lupin as he said-- "Speak--speak! What have you to say?" "Humph!" "Speak man, if you be a man!" "Humph, brother Oakley; you have a daughter--Johanna?" "Yes, yes!" cried old Oakley. "My heart told me that it was of my child this wretch came to speak. Tell me all instantly. Speak--what of my dear Johanna? I will wrest the truth from you. Has anything happened--is she well? Speak--speak!" Mr. Oakley sprang upon the preacher, and seizing him by the throat, forced him back until he fell upon an old chest in the shop that was full of tools and the lid of which giving way with Lupin's weight and the sudden concussion with which he came upon it, precipitated him into the box among a number of pointed implements, the effect of which may be better imagined than described, as the newspapers say. "Murder! murder!" screamed the preacher. "Now you rascal!" cried old Oakley. "Say what you have got to say, and at once, too." "Murder!" again gasped Lupin. "Brother Oakley, spare my life." "I will not spare it if you are not quite explicit as regards what you have hinted of my child. Speak at once. Tell me what you have to say?" "Let me get up. Oh, be merciful, and let me get up." "No. You can stay very well where you are. Be quiet and speak freely, in which case no harm will come to you." "Did you say, be quiet, brother Oakley? Truly you would be anything but quiet in my situation. What induces you to keep all your tools in this chest with the points uppermost?" "You are trying to prevaricate now," said Oakley, suddenly snatching from the wall of his shop an antique sword, that had hung there as a sort of ornament, not entirely inconsistent with his trade. "You are trying to prevaricate with me now, and I must and will have your life. Prepare for the worst. You have now aroused feelings that cannot be so easily quelled again. Your last hour has come!" The sight of the sword awakened the most lively feelings of terror in the mind of the preacher. He gave a howl of dismay, and made the most frantic efforts to get up out of the tool-chest; but that was no easy matter, particularly as old Oakley flourished the antique sword in dangerous proximity to his nose. At length, lifting up his hands in the most supplicating manner, he cried-- "Mercy--mercy, and I will tell." "Go on, then. Quick." "Yes--yes. Oh, dear! Yes. I was sojourning in this ungodly city, and taking my way, deep in thought, upon the wickedness of the world, the greater portion of the inhabitants of which will assuredly go down below, where there is howling and--" "You rascal, I'll make you howl if you do not come to the point quickly." A flourish of the sword, so close to the face of Mr. Lupin that he really believed for the moment it had taken the end of his nose off, admonished him that the patience of Mr. Oakley was nearly exhausted, and in a whining tone, he added-- "Truly, I was in the street called Fleet-street; when as I was crossing