The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
thought that surely there she should find some traces of that lost one
who occupied, since the suspicions of the foul usage he had met with, a
larger place in her affections than before. Feeling how surrounded she
was by friends, probably Johanna was a little more reckless as regarded
the means she adopted of carrying out her intention. The parlour-door
was quite fast; but surely in the shop she thought she might find some
weapon, by the aid of which it could be burst open; and even if Todd
should suddenly return, it was but a rush, and she would reach the
street; and if he intercepted her in that, as God knew he might, she
could take the means of summoning assistance pointed out to her by Sir
Richard Blunt, and cast something through the window into the street.
Full of these thoughts and feelings, then, and only alive to the mad
wish she had of discovering some traces of her lover, Johanna hunted the
shop over for some weapon with which to attack the parlour-door. She
opened a cupboard. A hat fell from within at her feet! One glance at
that hat was sufficient; it was of a peculiar colour--she remembered it.
It was the hat of the man whom she had left being shaved when she was
sent ostensibly to purchase a pie at Mrs. Lovett's, in Bell-yard.
Johanna's hurry was over. A sickening feeling came over her as she asked
herself what was the probable fate of the owner of the hat.
"Another victim!--another victim!" she gasped.
She tottered back overpowered by the thought that there had been a time
when, opening that cupboard door, the carelessly cast-in hat of Mark
Ingestrie would have fallen to her feet, even as did that of the
stranger, who, no doubt, now was numbered with the dead. She sank almost
in a state of fainting into the shaving-chair.
"Oh, yes, yes," she said. "This is horribly, frightfully condusive. My
poor Mark. You have gone before me to that home where alone we may hope
to meet again. Alas! alas! that I should live to feel such a truth."
She burst into tears, and sobbed so bitterly, that any one who had seen
her would have truly thought her heart was breaking in that wild
paroxysm of grief. What a mercy it was that Todd did not come in at such
a moment as that, was it not? The sobs subsided into sighs. The tears no
longer flowed in abundance; and after about five minutes Johanna arose,
tottering and pale. She drenched her eyes and face with cold water,
until the traces of the storm of emotion were no longer visible upon her
face; and then she knelt by the shaving chair, and clasping her hands,
she said--
"Great God, I ask for justice upon the murderer!"
She rose, and felt calmer than before; and then, sitting down by the
little miserable fire, she buried her face in her hands, and tried to
think--to think how she should bring to justice the man who had been the
blight of her young existence--the canker in the rose-bud of her youth.
You would have been shocked if you could just for a moment have looked
into Sweeney Todd's shop, and seen that girl in such an attitude,
without a sigh and without a tear, while all her dearest hopes lay about
her heart in the very chaos of a frightful wreck.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
STARTLING EVENTS.
Business at Mrs. Lovett's was brisk. During the whole of that day--that
most eventful day upon which the fair Johanna Oakley had gone upon her
desperate errand to Sweeney Todd's--the shop in Bell Yard had been
besieged by customers. Truly it was a pity to give up such an excellent
business. The tills groaned with money, and Mrs. Lovett's smiles and
pies never appeared so perfect as upon that day. At about half-past
twelve o'clock, when the Lord Chancellor suddenly got up from his chair,
in the great hall of Lincoln's Inn, and put on his furry-looking hat,
and when the curtain which shuts in his lordship from invidious blasts
was withdrawn with a screaming jerk, and a gentleman was stopped in the
middle of an argument, what a rush of lawyer's clerks there was to the
pie-shop in Bell Yard. Then was it that the anxious solicitor's fag, who
must know something, and have some brains, smiled at the prospect of the
luxurious repast he was about to have, and jingled the twopence he had
kept in a side pocket for only one pie, and grudged it not out of his
hard-earned pittance. Then was it that the bloated barrister's clerk,
who had grown shining and obese upon fares, and who is not required to
know anything but the complete art of insolence to his brothers, nor to
have any more brains than will suffice him to make up his book in the
long vacation, smacks his lips at the thought of Lovett's pies, and
sends the expectant boy of the chamber--the snob of a snob--for three
twopennies. Lean and hungry-looking young men start into Bell Yard from
the Strand, producing crumbled pieces of paper, bag their twopenny, and
retire to eat it in some corner of the old Temple. All is bustle--all is
animation, and the side counter--that one, you know, which ran parallel
to the window--was lined by clerks, who sat eating and driving their
heels against the boarding, and joking, and laughing "Ha! ha!" how they
did laugh! And then what stories they told of their "Governors;" and how
such an one was going out of practice; and how such another one was a
screw, and so on, to the great delight of the mere boys, who hoped one
day to wear their hair long and grey, and to dress in an outrageous
caricature of the mode! As the machine that let down at the back of the
counter, to bring up the pies, went down for the one o'clock batch, it
was noticed that Mrs. Lovett looked a little anxious. The fact was, that
the cook had been so prompt upon that day in his movements, that she
began to think there must be, as folks say, "Something in it," and she
was beginning to terrify herself with the idea that he had some scheme
of redemption for himself in view, that might most unseasonably develope
itself before the customers.
"Ah, Mrs. Lovett," said one young gent, while the gravy ran down the
sides of his mouth from the pie he was consuming. "You don't seem at all
yourself to-day. Indeed you don't."
"Who do I seem, then?"
"Ha! ha! Upon my life that's good!" roared another.
A small amount of wit did for Lovett's pie shop. It was like the House
of Commons in that particular, and "loud laughter" was sure to welcome
the smallest joke. Mrs. Lovett's eyes were bent upon the abyss, down
which the trap had descended but a moment before.
"Ain't they a-coming, mum?" said one.
"Oh, don't I sniff 'em," said another, working his nose like an
ex-chancellor. "Don't I sniff 'em."
"De--licious!" cried another.
A feeling of relief was visible upon the face of Mrs. Lovett as the trap
slowly ascended, bringing with it the one o'clock batch, in all their
steaming glory. The whole shop was in a moment filled with the fresh
appetite-giving aroma of those bubbling hot pies; and as the French
newspapers say, when a member of the extreme right, or half way to the
left, or two degrees from the centre, swerves, there was "a sensation."
Five minutes--only five minutes--and the whole batch was cleared off,
not one was left!
"Another batch of one hundred, gentlemen, at two," said Mrs. Lovett,
with a bland look.
"At two, mum?" cried a customer. "Why, what's to become of the half-past
one batch?"
"We are rather short of--of meat," said Mrs. Lovett, with one of her
strange metallic smiles.
"The devil you are! Ain't there butchers enough?"
"Oh, dear, yes; but we could not get such meat as we put in our pies, at
the butcher's."
"You kill your own, mum, then, I suppose?"
"We do," replied Mrs. Lovett, with another smile, more metallic than the
former.
"And where is your farm, mum?"
"Really, sir, you want to know too much. I appeal to those gentlemen if
any of them know where my farm is."
"No--no. D--n it, no, nor don't care," said all the lawyer's clerks.
"Don't know anything about it."
"And don't care," said another. "Sufficient for the day is the pie
thereof."
"Very good--Ha! ha!--Very good."
The crowd gradually dispersed. Mrs. Lovett put a placard in the window,
announcing--
"A hot batch at two o'clock."
She then closed the shop door, and retired to the parlour. She cast
herself upon a sofa, and hiding the light from her eyes with one of her
arms, she gave herself up to thought. Yes, that bold bad woman was
beginning to have her moments of thought, during which it appeared to be
as though a thousand mocking fiends were thronging around her. No holy
thoughts or impulses crossed her mind. Solitude, that best of company to
the good and just, was to her peopled with countless horrors; and yet
there must have been a time when that woman was pure, and her soul
spotless--a time when it was free from
"The black engraved spots"
which now deformed it. And yet who, to look upon her now, could fancy
that she was ever other than what she seemed? Who could bring themselves
to think that she had not been placed at once by the arch-fiend as she
was upon the beautiful world, to make in the small circle around her a
pestilence, a blight, and a desolation? There are persons in the world
that it would be the greatest violence to our feelings ever to attempt
to picture to our imaginations as children; and as such, surely were
Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Was she ever some gentle little girl,
fondly clinging to a mother's arms? Was he ever a smiling infant, with
pretty dimples? Was there at his or her birth much joy? Did a mother's
tears ever fall upon his or her cheek, in sweet gratitude to God for
such a glorious gift? No--no. We cannot--we will not believe that such
persons as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett ever came into this world
otherwise than ready-made man and woman! Any other belief, concerning
such fiends in human shape is too repugnant. But we are forgetting that
Mrs. Lovett is upon the sofa all this while, and that her metallic smile
has quite vanished, giving way to such a look of utter abandonment of
spirit, that you would have shuddered to have cast but one glance upon
her. She could bear the quietude of the attitude she had assumed but for
a very short time, and then she sprang to her feet.
"Yes," she said, "it must, and it shall come to an end!"
She stood for some few moments trembling, as though the dim echo of that
word end, as she had jerked it forth, had awakened in her mind a world
of horrifying thoughts. Again she sank upon the couch, and speaking in a
low, plaintive voice, she said--
"Yes. I have need of the waters of oblivion, one draught of which shuts
out for ever all memory of the past. Oh, that I had but a cup of such
nectar at my lips!"
Not a doubt of it, Mrs. Lovett. It is the memory of the wicked that
constitutes that retribution, which is assuredly to be found in this
world as day follows night.
"I--I must have this," she muttered. "Let Todd be dead or alive, I must
have it. I am going mad--I feel certain. That I am going mad, and the
only way to save myself, is to flee. I must collect as much money as I
can and then flee far away. If I cannot quite obliterate the past from
my memory, I can at least leave it as it is, and add nothing to it. Yes,
that man may live. He seems to bear a charmed life. But I must flee."
She rested her head upon her hands, and in a softer voice, said--
"Let me think--let me think of the means, now that I have yet a little
time. What do I dread most? The man below? Yes. He is at work for his
deliverance. I feel that he is, and if he succeed before I flee from
here, all is lost--all is lost! I must speak to him."
Filled with this idea, and with an unknown dread of what the
discontented cook might do, Mrs. Lovett stepped into the shop first, and