The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
closed up like the Duke of Wellington's at the present day. He very
quickly unclosed one of the long-disused windows, and opening it gently,
looked out over the edge of the little crazy balcony into the street.
Something big and black was against his door.
The more Todd bent his gaze upon this object, the more a kind of
undefined terror took possession of him, and the more puzzled he was to
give a name to the dark mass that had been laid upon his threshold.
There was no lamp very near his house, or else, miserable as was the
light from those old oil apologies for illuminators, some few rays might
have fallen upon the dark mass, and told Todd what it was.
But no--all was dark and dubious, and he strained his eyes in vain to
penetrate the mystery.
"I must go down," he said; "I must open the door. Yes, I cannot live and
not know what this is. I must open the door, however reluctantly, and
ascertain precisely. Ah!"
While Todd was talking, and still keeping his eyes fixed upon the
mysterious object at his door, he saw suddenly in the midst of it a
bright luminous spark, as if something connected with it was of a red
heat, and slowly smouldering on fire.
If he was before puzzled to account for the phenomenon of a dark object,
without shape or form, lying propped up against his door, he was now
more than ever confounded, and his imagination started some of the most
improbable conjectures in the world, to account for the appearance.
He thought that it must be some combustible, which, in the course of a
few moments, would go off with a stunning report, and blow his
street-door to atoms; but then again, what could be the object of such a
thing?
The more he considered the affair from above, the more he was puzzled
and terrified; so at last, with a feeling of desperation, he ran down
stairs and began to unfasten the street-door. He did not pause in his
work until he had flung it open, and then the mystery was explained.
A man, half asleep, with a lighted pipe in his mouth, rolled backwards
into the shop; and as he did so, with the dreamy half-consciousness that
he was upon some sort of duty, he said--
"I'll watch him, Mrs. Lovett. He shan't get away without your knowing of
it, ma'am."
Todd understood the man's errand in a moment. Of course he had been
employed to watch him by Mrs. Lovett, who had a slight idea that he
might not be forthcoming for the promised morning settlement. Todd
seized the man by the collar, and dragging him fairly into the shop,
closed the door again.
"Ah!" he said, "a good joke."
"What's a joke, sir?" said the man. "What's a joke? Murder! Where am
I?--where am I? Help!"
"Hush!" said Todd. "Hush! It's of no consequence. I know all about it
man. Mrs. Lovett employed you to watch me. She was a little jealous, but
we have made it all right now, and she asked me, if I saw you, to pay
you and give you a glass of something, beside."
"Did she, sir?"
"To be sure she did; so come in, and you can tell her when you see her
in the morning, that you had of me a glass of as good liquor as could be
found in London. By-the-bye, what am I to pay you?"
"A guinea, sir."
"Exactly. It was a guinea, of course. This way, my friend, this way.
Don't fall over the shaving-chair, I beg of you. You can't hurt it, for
it is a fixture; but you might hurt yourself, and that is of more
importance to you, you know. While we do live in this world, if it be
for ever so short a time, we may as well live comfortably."
Talking away thus all suspicion from the man who was not one of the
brightest of geniuses in the world, Todd led the way to the
parlour--that fatal parlour which had been the last scene of more than
one mortal life.
He closed the door, and then in quite a good-humoured way, he pointed to
the seat, saying--
"Rest yourself, my friend--rest yourself, while I get out the bottle.
And so it is one guinea that I am to give you, eh?"
"Yes, sir; and all I can say is that I am very glad to hear that you and
Mrs. Lovett have made matters all right again. Very glad, indeed, sir, I
may say. In course, I shouldn't have took the liberty of sitting down by
your door, sir, if she had not told me to watch the house and let her
know, if so, be as you come out of it, or if I saw any packages moving.
She didn't say anything to me what it was for; but a guinea is just as
well earned easy as not, you see, sir!"
"Certainly, my friend, certainly. Drink that."
The man tossed off the glass of something that Todd gave him, and then
he licked his lips, as he said--
"What is it, sir? It's strong, but I can't say, for my part, that I like
the flavour of it much."
"Not like it?"
"Not much, sir."
"Why it's a most expensive foreign liquor that is, and by all the best
judges in the kingdom is never found fault with. Very few persons,
indeed, have tasted it; but of those few, not one has come to me to say,
Mr. Todd--"
"Good God!" said the man, as he clasped his head with both of his hands.
"Good God, how strange I feel. I must be going mad!"
"Mad!" cried Todd, as he leant far over the table so as to bring his
face quite close to the man's. "Mad! not at all. What you feel now is
part of your death-pang. You are dying--I have poisoned you. Do you hear
that? You have watched me, and I have in return poisoned you. Do you
understand that?"
The dying man made an ineffectual effort to rise from the chair, but he
could not. With a gasping sob he let his head sink upon his breast--he
was dead!
"They perish," said Todd, "one by one; they who oppose me, perish, and
so shall they all. Ha! so shall they all; and she who set this fool on
to his destruction shall feel, yet, the pang of death, and know that she
owes it to me! Yes, Mrs. Lovett, yes."
He closed his arms over his breast, and looked at the body for some
moments in silence; and then, with a sneer upon his lips, he added--
"No, Mrs. Lovett, you did not show your judgment in this matter. Had you
wished to watch me, you should have done it yourself, and not employed
this poor weak wretch who has paid the price of his folly. Go--go!"
He struck the chair from under the dead man with his foot, and the
corpse that had partially been supported by it and the table, fell to
the floor. Another kick sent it under the large table, and then, as
another of Todd's victims had once done, it disappeared.
"To-morrow night, by this time," said Todd, musingly, "where shall I
be!"
CHAPTER LXXXIX.
MR. OAKLEY IS IN DESPAIR AT THE LOSS OF JOHANNA.
The anxiety of poor Mr. Oakley increased each moment as he and the
preacher neared the house of Arabella Wilmot's friends. We regret to say
that Mr. Lupin did enjoy the mental agony of the father; but it was in
his nature so to do, and we must take poor humanity as we find it.
It must be recollected that Mr. Lupin had, through Johanna, suffered
great malefactions. The treatment he had received at the hands of Big
Ben, although most richly deserved, had been on account of Johanna, and
as regarded the old spectacle-maker himself, he had always occupied an
antagonistic position as regarded Mr. Lupin.
No wonder then, we say, that human nature, particularly in its
evangelical variety, was not proof against the fascination of a little
revenge. Now, Mr. Lupin felt so sure that he had made no mistake, but
that it was no other than the fair Johanna whom he had seen in what he
called the unseemly apparel, that he did not feel inclined to draw back
for a moment in the matter. Curiosity, as well as a natural (to him)
feeling of malignity, urged him to stick by the father in order that he
might know the result of inquiries that he, Lupin, had no opportunity or
excuse for making, but which Mr. Oakley might institute with the most
perfect and unquestionable profundity.
As we have before had occasion to remark, the distance between Oakley's
shop and the residence of the friends of Arabella was but short, so
that, at the speed which the excited feelings of the fond father induced
him to adopt, he soon stood upon the threshold of the residence, beneath
the roof of which he hoped, notwithstanding the news so confidently
brought by Lupin, to find his much-loved, idolized child.
"You shall see," he said to Lupin, catching his breath as he spoke; "you
shall see how very wrong you are."
"Humph!" said Lupin.
"You shall see," continued poor Oakley, still dallying with the knocker;
"you shall see what an error you have made, and how impossible it is
that my child--my good and kind Johanna--could be the person you saw in
Fleet-street."
"Ah!" said Lupin.
Mr. Oakley knocked at the door, and, as one of the family had seen him
through the blinds of the parlour-window, he was at once admitted, and
kindly received by those who knew him and his worth well. He asked, in
an odd gasping manner, that Mr. Lupin might have permission to come in,
which was readily granted; and with a solemn air, shaking his head at
the vanities he saw in the shape of some profane statuary in the hall,
the preacher followed Oakley to the dining-room.
It was an aunt of Arabella's to whom they were introduced, and, with a
smile, she said--
"Really, Mr. Oakley, a visit from you is such a rarity that we ought not
to know how to make enough of you when you do come. Why, it must have
been Christmas twelvemonths since you were last beneath this roof. Don't
you remember when your dear, good, pretty Johanna won all hearts?"
"Yes, yes," said Oakley, glancing triumphantly at Lupin. "My dear child,
whom all the world loves--God bless her!--She is pure, and good, and
faultless as an angel."
"That, Mr. Oakley," said the lady, "I believe she is. We are as fond of
her here, and always as glad to see her, as though she belonged to us.
Indeed, we quite envy you such a treasure as she is."
Tears gushed into the grateful father's eyes, as he heard his child--his
own Johanna--she who reigned all alone in his heart, and yet filled it
so completely--so spoken of. How glad he was that there was some one
besides himself present to hear all that, although that one was an
enemy! With what a triumphant glance he looked around him.
"Humph!" said Lupin.
That humph recalled Oakley to the business of his visit, and yet how hot
and parched his lips got, when he would have framed the all-important
question, "Is my child here?"--and how he shook, and gasped for breath a
moment before he could speak.
At length, he found courage--_not_ to ask if Johanna was there. No--no.
He felt that he dared not doubt that. It would have been madness to
doubt it, sheer insanity. So he put the question indirectly, and he
contrived to say--
"I hope the two girls are quite well, quite--quite--well."
"Two girls!" said the aunt. "Two girls!"
"Yes," gasped Oakley. "Johanna and Arabella, you know--your Arabella,
and my Johanna--my child."
"You ought to know, Mr. Oakley, considering that they are at your house,
you know. I hope that neither of them have been at all indisposed?
Surely that is not the case, and this is not your strange way of
breaking it to us, Mr. Oakley?"
The bereaved father--yes, at that moment he felt that he was a bereaved
father--clutched the arms of the chair upon which he sat, and his face
turned of a ghastly paleness. He made an inarticulate effort to speak,
but could only produce a strange gurgling noise.
"Gracious Heavens! he is ill," cried Arabella's aunt.
"No, madam," said Lupin. "He is only convinced."
"Convinced of what?"
"Of what he himself will tell you, madam."
"Help! help!" cried Oakley. "Help! My child--my Johanna--my beautiful
child. Mercy--help. Give her to my arms again. Oh, no--no--no, she could