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

But as the soft daylight deepened into the dim shadows of evening, she grew more composed, and was better able, with a calmer spirit, to wait the progress of events. "I am alone once more," said Johanna, "in this dreadful place. Again he leaves me with all my dark and terrible thoughts of the fate of him whom I have so fondly loved thronging around my heart; and this night, no doubt, he thinks to kill me! Oh, Mark Ingestrie! if I were only but quite sure that you had gone to that world from whence there is no return, I think I could, with scarce a sigh, let this dreadful man send me after you!" Johanna rested her head upon her hands, and wept bitterly. Suddenly a voice close to her said-- "St. Dunstan." She sprang from the little low seat upon which she was, and, with a cry of alarm, was about to make a rush from the shop, when the intruder caught her by the arm, saying-- "Don't you know me, Johanna?" "Ah, Sir Richard! my dear friend, it is, indeed, you, and I am safe again--I am safe!" "Certainly you are safe; and permit me to say that you have all along been tolerably safe, Johanna. But how very incautious you are. Here I have come into the shop, and actually stood by you for some few moments, you knowing nothing of it! What now if Todd had so come in?" "He would have killed me." "He might have done so. But now all danger is quite over, for you will have protectors at your hand. Do you know where Todd has gone?" "I do not." "Well, it don't matter. Let me look at this largest cupboard. I wonder if it will hold two of my men? Let me see. Oh, yes, easily and comfortably. I will be back in a moment." He went no further than the door, and when he came back, he brought with him Mr. Crotchet and another person, and pointing to the cupboard, he said-- "You will stow yourselves there, if you please, and keep quiet until I call upon you to come out." "I believe you," said Crotchet. "Lord bless you, we shall be snug enough. How is you, Miss O.? I suppose by this time you feels quite at home in your breech--" "Silence!" said Sir Richard. "Go to your duty at once, Crotchet. Miss Oakley is in no humour to attend to you just now." Upon this, Mr. Crotchet and the other man got into the cupboard, and a chair was placed against it; and then Sir Richard said to Johanna-- "I will come in to be shaved when I know that Todd is here, and your trials will soon be over." "To be shaved?--By him?" "Yes. But believe me there is no danger. Any one may come here now to be shaved with perfect safety. I have made such arrangements that Todd cannot take another life." "Thank Heaven!" "Here is a letter from your friend, Miss Wilmot, which I promised her I would deliver to you. Be careful how you let Todd see it. Read it at once, and then you had better destroy it at once. I must go now; but, of course, if you should be in any danger, call upon my men in the cupboard to assist you, and they will do so at once, although it may spoil my plot a little." "Oh! how much I owe you." "Nay, nay, no more upon that head. Farewell now, for a brief space. We shall very soon meet again. Keep a fair and agreeable face to Todd, if you can, for I do not wish, if it can possibly be helped, anything to mar the plot I have got up for his absolute conviction upon abundant testimony." Sir Richard shook hands with Johanna, and then hastily left the shop, for he did not wish just then to be found there by Todd, who might return at any moment. The moment he was gone Johanna eagerly opened the letter that had been brought to her, and found it to contain the following words:-- "MY DEAR JOHANNA,--This is a selfish letter; for as I cannot see you, I think I should go mad if I did not write to you; so I do so for the ease of my own heart and brain. For the love of Heaven, and for the love of all you hold dear in this world, get away from Todd as quickly as you can; and when I see you again, I shall have something to say to you which will give you more pleasure than ever, with my bad advice, I have given you pain. "Sir Richard Blunt has kindly promised to give this to you, and you know that I am--Your ever affectionate ARABELLA." "Yes," said Johanna, when she had finished the epistle. "In truth I know you are ever my affectionate Arabella, and I am most happy in such a friend. But this must not meet Todd's eye. Ah! that footstep, I know it too well. He comes--he comes." She had just hidden the letter, when Sweeney Todd made his appearance. "Anybody been?" he asked. "Yes, one man, but he would not wait." "Ah, wanted to be shaved, I suppose; but no matter--no matter; and I hope you have been quiet, and not been attempting to indulge your curiosity in any way, since I have been gone. Hush! here's somebody coming. Why, it's old Mr. Wrankley, the tobacconist, I declare. Good-day to you, sir--shaved, I suppose? I'm glad you have come, sir, for I have been out till this moment. Hot water, Charley, directly, and hand me that razor." Johanna, in handing Todd the razor, knocked the edge of it against the chair, and it being uncommonly sharp, cut a great slice of the wood off one of the arms of it. "What shameful carelessness," said Todd; "I have half a mind to lay the strop over your back, sir; here you have spoilt a capital razor--not a bit of edge left upon it." "Oh, excuse him, Mr. Todd--excuse him," said the old gentleman; "he's only a little lad, after all. Let me intercede for him." "Very good, sir; if you wish me to look over it, of course I will; and, thank God, we have a stock of razors, of course, always at hand. Is there any news stirring, sir?" "Nothing that I know of, Mr. Todd, except it's the illness of Mr. Cummings, the overseer. They say he got home about twelve to his own house, in Chancery-lane, and ever since then he has been as sick as a dog, and all they can get him to say is, 'Oh, those pies--oh, those pies!'" "Very odd, sir." "Very. I think Mr. Cummings must be touched in the upper story, do you know, Mr. Todd. He's a very respectable man, but, between you and I, was never over bright." "Certainly not, sir--certainly not. But it's a very odd case. What pies can he possibly mean, sir? Did you call when you came from home?" "No. Ha, ha! I can't help laughing; but, ha, ha! I have come away from home on the sly, you see. The fact is, my wife's cousin--hilloa!--I think you have cut me." "No, no--we can't cut anybody for three-halfpence, sir. I think I will just give you another lather, sir, before I polish you off. And so you have the pearls with you; well, how odd things come round, to be sure." "What do you mean?" "This shaving-brush is just in a good state now. Always as a shaving-brush is on the point of wearing out, it's the best. Charley, you will go at once to Mr. Cummings, and ask if he is any better; you need not hurry, that's a good lad. I am not at all angry with you now. And so, sir, they think at home that you have gone after some business over the water, do they, and have not the least idea that you have come to be shaved? There, be off, Charley--shut the door, that's a good lad, bless you." * * * * * When Johanna came back, the tobacconist was gone. "Well," said Sweeney Todd, as he sharpened a razor very leisurely, "how is Mr. Cummings?" "I found out his house, sir, with some difficulty, and they say he is better having gone to sleep." "Oh, very good! I am going to look over some accounts in the parlour, so don't choose to be disturbed, you understand; and for the next ten minutes, if anybody comes, you will say I am out." Sweeney Todd walked quite coolly into the parlour, and Johanna heard him lock the door on the inside; a strange, undefined sensation of terror crept over her, she knew not why, and she shuddered, as she looked around her. The cupboard door was not close shut, and she knew not what prompted her to approach and peep in. On the first shelf was the hat of the tobacconist: it was rather a remarkable one, and recognised in a moment. "What has happened? Good God! what can have happened?" thought Johanna, as she staggered back, until she reached the shaving-chair, into which she cast herself for support. Her eyes fell upon the arm which she had taken such a shaving off with the razor, but all was perfectly whole and correct; there was not the least mark of the cut that so recently had been given to it; and lost in wonder, Johanna, for more than a minute, continued looking for the mark of the injury she knew could not have been, by any possibility, effaced. And yet she found it not, although there was the chair, just as usual, with its wide spreading arms and its worn, tarnished paint and gilding. No wonder that Johanna rubbed her eyes, and asked herself if she were really awake? What could account for such a phenomenon? The chair was a fixture too, and the others in the shop were of a widely different make and construction, so it could not have been changed. "Alas! alas!" mourned Johanna, "my mind is full of horrible surmises, and yet I can form no rational conjecture. I suspect everything, and know nothing. What can I do? What ought I to do, to relieve myself from this state of horrible suspense? Am I really in a place where, by some frightful ingenuity, murder has become bold and familiar, or can it be all a delusion?" She covered her face with her hands for a time, and when she uncovered them, she saw that Sweeney Todd was staring at her with looks of suspicion from the inner room. The necessity of instantly acting her part came over Johanna, and she gave a loud scream. "What the devil is all this about?" said Todd, advancing with a sinister expression. "What's the meaning of it? I suspect--" "Yes, sir," said Johanna, "and so do I; I must to-morrow have it out." "Have what out?" "My tooth, sir--it's been aching for some hours; did you ever have the toothache? If you did, you can feel for me, and not wonder that I lean my head upon my hands and groan." Todd looked about half satisfied at this excuse of Johanna's, and for a few moments as he looked at her, she thought that after all she should have to call upon her friends in the cupboard to save her from the danger that his eyes, in their flashing ghastliness, threatened. Another moment, and her lips would have parted with the shrill cry of "Murder!" upon them, and then Heaven only knows what might have been the result; but he turned suddenly, and went into the parlour, muttering to himself-- "It is not worth while now, and this night ends it all--yes, this night ends it all." He slammed the door violently behind him, and Johanna was relieved from the horror which his gaze had awakened, in her heart. She stood still, but gradually she recovered her former calmness--if calmness it could at all be called, seeing that it was only a stiller species of agitation. But she now began to recall the words of Sir Richard Blunt to the effect that measures had been taken that no more murders could be committed by Todd, and she began to feel comforted. "There is something that I do not know yet," she said; "Sir Richard should have told me how there could be no more murders done here, and then I should not have suffered what I did, and what I still suffer with the thought that almost before my eyes a fellow creature has been hurried into eternity; and yet I ought to have faith, and in defiance of all the seeming evidences of a horrible deed about me, I ought, I suppose, to believe that it has been prevented in some most strange and miraculous way." The more Johanna thought over this promise of Sir Richard Blunt's the