CHAPTER LV.

MRS. LOVETT'S WALK.

Suddenly he heard, or fancied he heard a noise above in the house, like

the sudden shutting of a door.

"Oh," thought Sir Richard, "all is safe. She is shutting herself in for

the night, I suppose. Well, Mrs. Lovett, we will see what we can find in

your cupboards."

The little bit of wax light, which Sir Richard had lighted, gave but a

weak kind of twilight while he moved about with it in his hand, but when

he stuck it on a corner of the mantel-shelf it burnt much clearer, and

was sufficient to enable him just to see what he was about. So

thoroughly impressed was he with the idea that Mrs. Lovett had retired

to rest, that he paid no sort of attention to the house, and may be

said, in a manner of speaking, to have negligently shut his ears to all

sounds that did not violently attack them. He opened a cupboard, in

which were some books, and on the top-shelf, lying in a confused kind of

heap, were some watches, and several sets of very rich buckles for

shoes. There were, likewise, several snuff-boxes in the lot. Were these

little trifles presented to Mrs. Lovett, by Todd, as proofs of the

thriving business he was carrying on? Sir Richard put two of the watches

in his pocket.

"These may be identified," he said. "And now, if I can but find the door

by which she descends to the oven below, I--"

At this moment he was startled by a sudden accession of light in the

room. His first idea, and a natural enough one too, was, that the little

wax light was playing some vagaries incidental to all lights, and he

turned rapidly from the cupboard to look at it. What was his

astonishment to see the door that led to the upper part of the house

open, and Mrs. Lovett, partially undressed, standing upon the threshold

with a chamber-candlestick in her hand in which was a rushlight, the dim

and dubious rays from which had produced the extra illumination that had

first startled Sir Richard Blunt. No wonder that, with amazement upon

his countenance, he now glanced upon this vision, for such it looked

like at the moment; and yet he saw that Mrs. Lovett it was to all

intents and purposes, and that he was discovered in his exploring

expedition in her parlour appeared to be one of those facts it would

have required no small share of moral hardihood to dispute. Seeing,

however, should not always be believing, despite the venerable saying

which asserts as much.

[Illustration: Mrs. Lovett In A State Of Somnambulism.]

"I must apprehend her, now," thought Sir Richard Blunt; "I have no

resource but to apprehend her at once."

With this object he was about to dart forward, when something strange

about the appearance of Mrs. Lovett arrested his attention, and stayed

his progress. He paused and remained leaning partly upon the back of a

chair, while she slowly advanced into the room, and then as she came

nearer to him he became convinced of what he had begun to suspect,

namely--that she was walking in her sleep. There is something awful in

this wandering of the mortal frame when its senses seem to be locked up

in death. It looks like a resurrection from the grave--as though a

corpse was again revisiting

"The glimpses of the pale moon;"

and even Sir Richard Blunt, with all his constitutional and acquired

indifference to what would be expected to startle any one else could not

help shrinking back a little, and feeling an unusual sort of terror.

This transient nervousness of his, though, soon passed away, and then he

set himself to watch the actions of Mrs. Lovett with all the keenness of

intense interest and vividly awakened curiosity. She did not disappoint

him. Moving forward into the room with a slow and stately action, so

that the little flame of the rushlight was by no means disturbed, she

reached the middle of the parlour and then she paused. She assumed such

a natural attitude of listening, that Sir Richard Blunt voluntarily

shrunk down behind the chair, for it seemed to him at the moment that

she must have heard him. Then, in a low and slightly indistinct tone,

she spoke--

"Hush! hush! So still. The poison! Where is the poison?--Will he take

it? Ah, that is the question, and yet how clear it is. But he is

fiend-like in his suspicions. When will he come?"

She moved on towards the cupboard, in which the decanter of poisoned

wine had been placed, and opening it, she felt in vain upon the shelf

for it. It was still upon the table, and if anything more than another

could have been a convincing proof of the mere mechanical actions of the

somnambulist, this fact, that she passed the wine where it was, and only

recollected where it had been, would have been amply sufficient. After

finding that her search was ineffectual, she turned from the cupboard,

and stood for a few moments in silence. Then a horror shook her frame,

and she said--

"They must all die. Bandage your eyes, and you will shut out the death

shrieks. Yes, that will be something, to get rid of those frightful

echoes. Bandage after bandage will, and shall do it."

Sir Richard stood silently watching; but such was the horror of the

tones in which she spoke, that even his heart felt cold, as though the

blood flowed but sluggishly through its accustomed channels.

"Who," he thought to himself, "for the world's wealth, would have this

woman's memory of the past?"

She still held the light, and it appeared to him as though she were

about to go into the shop, but she paused before she reached the

half-glass door of communication between it and the parlour, and shook

like one in an ague.

"Another!--another!" she said. "How strange it is that I always know.

The air seems full of floating particles of blood, and they all fall

upon me! Off, off. Oh, horror! horror! I choke--I choke. Off, I say. How

the hot blood steams up in a sickly vapour. There--there, now! Why does

Todd let them shriek in such a fashion?"

She now shook so, that Sir Richard Blunt made sure she would either drop

the light she carried, or, at all events, shake it out, but neither of

these contingencies took place; and, after a few moments, she got more

calm. The violent agitation of her nerves gradually subsided. She spoke

horrors, but it was in a different tone; and abandoning, apparently, the

intention of going into the shop, she approached a portion of the

parlour which had not yet been subjected to the scrutiny of Sir Richard

Blunt, although it would not ultimately have escaped him. The appearance

of this part of the room was simply that there was there a cupboard, but

the back of this seeming cupboard formed, in reality, the door that led

down the flight of stairs to the other strong iron door that effectually

shut in the captive cook to his duties among the ovens. This was just

the place that Sir Richard Blunt wanted to find out; and here we may as

well state, that Sir Richard had an erroneous, but very natural idea,

under the circumstances, that the cook or cooks were accomplices of Mrs.

Lovett in her nefarious transactions. Had he been at all aware of the

real state of affairs below, our friend, who had become so thoroughly

disgusted with the pies, would not have been left for so long in so

precarious a situation. Mrs. Lovett paused, after opening the lock of

the cupboard, and in a strange, sepulchral sort of voice, she said--

"Has he done it?"

"Done what?" Sir Richard would fain have asked; but, although he had

heard that people, when walking in their sleep, will answer questions

put to them under such circumstances, he was doubtful of the fact, and

by no means wished to break the trance of Mrs. Lovett.

"Has he done it?" she again repeated. "Is he no more? How many does it

make? One--two--three--four--five--six--seven. Yes, seven, it must be

the seventh, and I have heard all. Hush! hush! Todd--Todd--Todd, I say.

Are you dead? No--no. He would not drink the wine. The devil, his

master, whispered to him that it had in it the potent drug that would

send his spirits howling to its Maker, and he would not drink. God! he

would not drink! No--no--no!"

She pronounced these words in such a tone of agony, that her awakening

from the strange sleep she was in, seemed to be a natural event from

such a strong emotion, but it did not take place. No doubt Mrs. Lovett

had been long habituated to these nocturnal rambles. She now began

slowly and carefully the descent of the stairs leading to the oven; but

she had not got many paces, when a current of air from below, and which,

no doubt, came through the small grating in the iron door, extinguished

her light. This circumstance, however, appeared to be perfectly

unnoticed by her, and she proceeded in the profound darkness with the

same ease as though she had had a light. Sir Richard would have followed

her as he was, but in the dark he did not feel sufficient confidence in

her as a guide to do so; and with as noiseless a tread as possible, he

went back, and fetched from the chimney-piece shelf his own little wax

light, which was still burning, and carefully guarding its flame from a

similar catastrophe to what had happened to Mrs. Lovett's light, he

descended the staircase, slowly and cautiously, after her. She went with

great deliberation, and it was not until being rather surprised at the

total absence of sound from her tread, that upon looking down to her

feet, he found that they were bare. After this, he could have no doubt

but that, almost immediately upon her lying down in bed, this

somnambulistic trance had come over her, and she had risen to creep

below, and go through the singular scene we are describing. Step by step

they both descended, until Mrs. Lovett came to the iron door. She did

not attempt to open it. If she had, Heaven only knows what might have

resulted from the desperate risk the captive cook might have made to

escape. But even in the madness of Mrs. Lovett--for a sort of madness

the scene she was enacting might be called--there was a kind of method,

and she had no idea of opening the iron door that shut the cook from the

upper world. Pausing, then, at the door leading to the ovens, she, with

as much facility as though she had had broad daylight to do it in,

unfastened the small square wicket in the top part of the window. A dull

reddish glare of light came through it from the furnaces, which night

nor day were extinguished.

"Hist! hist!" said Mrs. Lovett.

"Who speaks?" said a dull hollow voice, which sounded as if coming from

the tomb. "Who speaks to me?"

Mrs. Lovett shut the small wicket in a moment.

"He has not done it, yet," she said. "He has not done it

yet. No--no--no. But blood will flow--yes. It must be so.

One--two--three--four--five--six--seven. The seventh, and not the last.

Horrible! horrible!--most horrible! If, now, I could forget--"

She began rapidly to ascend the stairs, so that Sir Richard Blunt had to

take two at a step, and once three, in order to be up before her, and

even then she reached the parlour so close upon him, that it was a

wonder she did not touch him; but he succeeded in evading her by a

hair's breadth, and then she stood profoundly still for a few moments

with her hands clasped. This quiescent state, however, did not last

long, for suddenly, with eagerness, she leaned forward, and spoke again.

"No suspicion!" she said; "all is well!--Dear me, heap up thousands

more. Oh, Todd, have we not enough?--There, clean up that blood!--Here

is a cloth!--Stop it up--don't you see where it is running to, like a

live thing?--He is not dead yet.--How clumsy.--Another blow with the

hammer!--There--there--on the forehead!--What a crash!--Did the bone go

that time?--Why the eyes have started out!--Horror! horror!--Oh, God,

no--no--no--I cannot come here again.--Oh, God!--Oh, God!"

She sunk down upon the floor in a huddled up mass, and Sir Richard

Blunt, who could not forbear shuddering at the last words that had come

from her lips now he thought that her trance was over, rapidly

approaching her, said--

"Wretched woman, your career is over."

She suddenly rose, and with the same stately movement as before, she

made her way from the parlour by the door leading to the staircase.

During all the strange scenes she had gone through, she had not

abandoned the light, and although the air in the narrow passage of the

staircase had extinguished it, she still continued to carry it with the

same care as though it lit her on her way. Seeing that she still walked

in that strange and hideous sleep, the magistrate let her pass him, nor

did he make any attempt to follow her.

"Be it so," he said. "Let her awaken once again in the fancied security

of her guilt. The doom of the murderess is hanging over her, and she

shall not escape. But there is time yet."

He watched her until, by the turn of the stairs, she disappeared from

his sight, and then he sat down to think. And there, for a brief space,

we leave Sir Richard, while we take a peep at Tobias.