The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
will not forsake me. I have more of them at home--for I have a home."
"Oh," thought the landlady, "she is raving."
"Bring me my stays," said Mrs. Lovett.
The stays, which, together with the rest of her apparel, now had got
quite dry, was brought to her, and in a little secret pocket in them,
Mrs. Lovett dived with her two fingers, and found a damp five pound
note.
"Take that," she said, "for your trouble. I do not want any change. Only
be so good now as to help me to dress, and tell me what the time is."
"Three o'clock," said the landlady, "and I'm sure you can't think how
pleased I am that you are better. Do you really think you are strong
enough to go home yet?"
"Yes. What I have to do at home will lend me strength, if I wanted it."
Mrs. Lovett was soon dressed, and at her request a coach was sent for;
and in the course of half-an-hour from the time that the landlady had
asked her if she should send for her friends, she, Mrs. Lovett, was
bowling along the dense thoroughfares of the city to her home.
What pen could describe the dark and malignant thoughts that filled her
brain as she proceeded? What language would be strong enough to depict
the storm of passion that raged in the bosom of that imperious woman?
It must suffice, that she made herself a solemn promise of vengeance
against Todd, let the risk or the actual consequences to herself be what
they might. If with perfect safety to herself she could be revenged upon
him--of course she would; but she resolved not to hesitate, even if it
involved a self-sacrifice, so full of the very agony of rage was she.
"He shall hang--he shall hang!"
Such were the words she uttered as the lumbering hackney-coach reached
Fleet Street.
For all she knew to the contrary, Todd might be looking from his door,
for that he had gone home in great triumph at the thought of having got
rid of her she did not doubt; and so as it was just then a great object
with her to keep him in that pleasant delusion, she got quite down among
the straw at the bottom of the hackney-coach.
But she kept her eyes--those bright metallic-looking eyes, which, with a
questionable taste, had been so much admired by the lawyers' clerks of
the Temple and Lincoln's Inn--she kept her eyes just on the edge of the
coach window, so that she might have a passing glance at Todd's shop.
Todd was at the door.
How pleased and self-satisfied he looked! He was rubbing his huge hands
slowly together, and a grim smile was on his horrible features.
Mrs. Lovett clinched her hands until her nails made marks in the palms
of them that did not come out for hours, and in a harsh growling voice,
she said--
"Ah, grin on, grin on, fiend--your hours from now shall be numbered. You
shall hang, hang, and I shall hope to see you in your last agony. If any
bribe can induce the hangman, by some common bungling to protract your
pain, he has but to name his price and he shall have it."
The coach rolled on.
Mrs. Lovett rose up from among the straw with a shudder. The immersion
in the river had not drowned her certainly, but it had done her no good;
and she could not conceal from herself, that a serious illness might
very probably result from her unexpected cold bath.
"Never mind!" she said. "Never mind! What care I so that I complete my
revenge against Todd? If I die after that it will not much matter. I
will have my revenge."
The coach stopped at the corner of Bell-yard.
"That will do," said Mrs. Lovett as she pulled the check-string. "That
will do. I will alight here."
She paid the coachman double the amount of his fare, so he only muttered
a few curses between his teeth, and drove off.
With quite a staggering step, for Mrs. Lovett was anything but well, she
walked to her own shop. The door was closed, and she looked through the
upper half of it which was of glass, just in time to see the highly
trustworthy personage whom she had left in charge of the concern, place
a bottle to her lips, and slowly lift it up.
Mrs. Lovett opened the door, just as the titillating contents of the
bottle were rippling over the palate of the lady, who had had such an
adventure with Todd.
"Wretch!" exclaimed Mrs. Lovett.
Down fell the bottle, and smashed into many fragments on the floor of
the shop. An unmistakable odour of gin filled the air.
"So," cried Mrs. Lovett, "this is the way you employ your time is it,
while I am away?"
"T--T--Todd," stuttered the woman, "T--T--Todd is such a nice man."
"Todd, do you say?"
"Yes--I--I say--T--Todd is a nice man."
"Answer me, wretch, instantly. Has he been here? Speak, or I will shake
your wretched life out of you."
Mrs. Lovett suited the action to the word, and the word to the action,
for she clutched her substitute by the throat, and shook her vehemently.
"D--D--Don't Mrs. L.--I--will--tell all--all. I will indeed."
"Speak then. Has Todd been here?"
"In course, and quite a nice man--I--I may say--quite a gin--I mean a
nice man--a cordial old Tom. No! Cream of the--Todd."
"Wretch!"
Mrs. Lovett paced the shop for a few moments in an agony of rage. Todd
presuming upon her death had actually been there, no doubt upon an
expedition to ransack the place. A touch to the lock of the parlour
door, told her at once that it was open, and from that moment she no
longer could doubt but that the whole house had been subject to the
scrutiny of Sweeney Todd.
"The wretch!" she said. "He thought to find enough no doubt to reward
his pains, but he has been deceived in that hope, I feel well assured.
What I have here, I have too well hidden for any search of a few hours
to find it. If they were to pull the house to pieces, brick by brick and
timber by timber, they might find something to pay them for their
labour."
The lady with the partiality for gin, now seemed to be lapsing into a
state of somnolency, but Mrs. Lovett gave her rather a rough shake.
"Tell me," she said, "when did this man come, and what did he say to
you?"
"Gin!"
"I ask you what Todd said to you?"
"Oh, yes. I--really--fine times. Old Tom Todd--cream of the Todd."
It was quite clear that she was too far gone in drunkenness for anything
distinct or to be relied upon to be got from her, and the only thing
Mrs. Lovett had to do, was to consider what to do with her. If she threw
her out of the shop into the court, the probability was, that a crowd
would collect round her, and that was just what Mrs. Lovett did not
want. Indeed, for all she, Mrs. Lovett knew, the drunken woman might
stagger round to Todd's, and let him know what of all things, she wished
to keep secret from him, namely, that she had returned.
Mrs. Lovett had not yet formed her plans, and certainly until she had
done so, she did not want any premature knowledge of her rescue from
drowning to reach the ears of Todd.
But what to do with the drunken woman was the question. Mrs. Lovett had
to think a little over that. At length, however, she made up her mind,
and approaching the lady who had such a partiality for Old Tom, she
said--
"Did you ever taste my cordial spirit, that I have up stairs in my
bedroom?"
"Eh?"
"Come, I will give you a bottle of it, if you will walk up stairs. Only
try."
By the assistance of Mrs. Lovett, the gin heroine rose and tottered to
the staircase; Mrs. Lovett pushed her on, and stair by stair she managed
to mount to the first floor. It was by far too great a job to get her
any further, so opening the door of the back-room, Mrs. Lovett pushed
her in with violence, and slammed the door upon her.
"Lie there and rot," she said, "so that you are out of my way. Lie there
and rot, idiot."
Without then pausing to cast another thought or look at her victim, Mrs.
Lovett walked down the staircase again to the shop.
When there, she felt a kind of faintness come over her, and she was
compelled to sit down for a few minutes to recover herself.
"How much I have to think of," she said, when she had a little
recovered. "How much I have to think of, and how little a time in which
to think. Something must be done before midnight. Todd will fly if I do
not do something."
A racking pain in her head, compelled her to rest it upon her hands.
"If I thought," she said, "that I should get very ill--if I thought that
there was any chance that I should die, I would go at once to the police
office and denounce him. But no--'tis only a passing pang, and I shall
soon be better--shall soon be myself again."
She did not speak now for some few moments, and during that time she
rocked to and fro, for the pain in her head was excessive. It did not
last, however, but gradually went off, leaving only a sensation of
dulness behind it, with some amount of confusion.
Then Mrs. Lovett, as well as she was able, set about thinking calmly and
dispassionately, as she hoped, about the best means of satisfying her
revenge against Todd. That that revenge should be complete and ample,
she was resolved.
Gradually she began to work out a plan of operations, and as she did so,
her eyes brightened, and something of her old expression of bold
confidence came back to her.
She rose and paced the shop.
"Yes, the villain shall die," she said, "by the hands of the
executioner--I swear it! And he shall know, too, that it is I who have
doomed him to such a death. He shall feel that, had he kept faith with
we all would have been well; but now he shall hang--hang!--and I shall
look on and see his torments!"
CHAPTER CIX.
JOHANNA HAS PLENTY OF COMPANY AT TODD'S.
We return to Johanna, whom for a few hours, owing to the pressure of
other circumstances, we have been compelled, with all manner of
reluctance, to neglect.
Recent events, although they had by no manner of means tended to
decrease the just confidence which Johanna had in her own safety, had
yet much agitated her; and she at times feared that she should not be
able to carry on the farce of composure before Todd much longer.
"Charley, my dear boy," said Todd, "you are a very good lad, indeed, and
I like you."
"I am very glad to hear you say so, sir--very glad."
"That is right; but when I say I like any one, I do not confine myself
to that mere expression of liking, and there an end. Of course, as a
religious man, I love my enemies, and feel myself bound to do so--eh,
Charley?"
"Of course, sir."
Poor Johanna had no resource but to seem to be deceived by this most
disgusting hypocrisy.
"But although," continued Todd, waving a razor in the air; "although I
may love my enemies, I need not to go out of my way, you know, Charley,
to do good things to them as I would to my friends; but you I will do
all I can for; and as it may very materially help you to get an honest
independence in the course of a little time, I will manage to
accommodate you with sleeping here to-night and all nights henceforth."
"How kind of you, sir!"
"I am glad you appreciate it, Charley; and I feel quite sure that your
slumber will be most profound."
Todd, upon this, made one of his diabolical faces, and then, taking his
hat, he marched out, merely adding as he crossed the threshold of the
door--
"I shall not be long gone, Charley."
The day was on the decline, and a strong impression came over Johanna's
mind that something in particular would happen before it wholly passed
away into darkness. She almost trembled to think what that something
could be, and that she might be compelled to be a witness to violence,
from which her gentle spirit revolted; and had it not been that she had
determined nothing should stop her from investigating the fate of poor
Mark Ingestrie, she could even then have rushed into the street in
despair.