CHAPTER LXXII.

ANOTHER VICTIM.

Johanna started.

"St. Dunstan's," said the stranger.

"What?" said Todd.

"St. Dunstan's last Sunday, I don't think was so highly-scented with the

flavour of the grave as usual."

"Oh," said Todd.

Johanna trembled, for certainly Todd looked suspicious, and yet what

could he have seen? Literally nothing, for he was so situated that the

slight action of the stranger, in putting the slip of paper into her

jacket-pocket, must have escaped him with all his watchfulness. She

gathered courage. Todd glanced at her, saying--

"What is the matter, Charley? you don't look well at all, my lad."

"I am not very well, sir."

"How sorry I am; I think, do you know, Charley,"--Todd was lathering the

man's face as he spoke--"that one of Mrs. Lovett's hot pies would be the

thing for you."

"Very likely, sir."

"Then, I think I can manage now to spare you."

As he said this, Todd bent an eagle glance upon the gentleman who had

ordered the wig, and it seemed as if he doled out his words to Johanna

with a kind of reference to the movements of that personage. The

gentleman had found a hat-brush, and was carefully rubbing up his hat.

"I do hope," he said, "that the wig will be as natural as possible."

"Depend upon it, sir," said Todd. "I'll warrant if you look in here, and

try it on some day when there's no one here but you and I to set you

against it, you will never complain of it."

"No doubt. Good morning."

Todd made his best bow, accompanied by the flourish of his razor, that

made the man who was being shaved shrink again, as the reflected light

from its highly-polished blade flashed again in his eyes.

"Now, Charley, I think you may go for your pie," added Todd, "and don't

hurry, for if anything is wrong with your stomach, that will only make

it worse, you know."

"You are a good master to the lad," said the man who was lathered ready

for shaving.

"I hope so, sir," said Todd. "With the help of Providence we all ought

to do our best in this world, and yet what a deal of wickedness and

suffering there is in it too."

"Ah, there is."

"I am sure, sir, it makes my heart bleed sometimes to think of the

amount of suffering that only twenty-four hours of this sad work-a-day

world sees. But I was always of a tender and sympathetic turn from my

cradle--yes from my cradle."

Todd made here one of his specially horrible grimaces, which the man

happened to see in a glass opposite to him, the reflective focus of

which Todd had not calculated upon; and then as the sympathetic barber

stropped his razor, the man looked at him as though he would have

speculated upon how could such an article looked in a cradle.

"Now, sir, a little to this side. Are you going, Charley?"

"Yes, sir."

"That will do, sir. I'll polish you off very shortly, indeed, sir. Are

you going, Charley?"

Johanna darted from the shop, and the moment she got clear of it, she by

natural impulse drew the little slip of paper from her pocket, and read

upon it--

"Miss O. do not if you can help it leave any one alone in Todd's shop,

as circumstances may prevent us from always following his customers in;

but if you should be forced to leave while any one is there, knock at

No. 133 Fleet Street. This is from your friend R. B."

"133?" said Johanna, as she glanced around her, "133? Ah, it is close at

hand. Here--here."

The number was only a short distance from Todd's, and Johanna was making

her way to it, when some one stopped her.

"From Todd's," said a voice.

"Yes--yes. A man is there."

"Alone?"

"Yes, and--"

Before she could say another word the stranger darted from her, and made

his way into Todd's shop. Johanna paused, and shrinking into a doorway,

stood trembling like an aspen leaf.

"Oh, Heaven!" she ejaculated, "into what a sea of troubles have I

plunged. Murder and I will become familiar, and I shall learn to breathe

an atmosphere of blood. Oh, horror! horror! horror!"

The crowd in that dense thoroughfare passed on, and no one took heed of

the seeming boy, as he wept and sobbed in that doorway. Some had no time

to waste upon the sorrows of other people;--some buttoned up their

pockets as though they feared that the tears that stood upon that pale

face were but the preludes to some pecuniary demand;--others again

passed on rapidly, for they were so comfortable and cosy that they

really could not have their feelings lacerated by any tale of misery,

not they. And so Johanna wept alone.

Ding dong! ding dong!

What is that? Oh, St. Dunstan's chimes. How long has she been from the

shop? Shall she return to it, or fly at once and seek for refuge from

all the sorrows and from all the horrors that surround her, in the arms

of her father?

"Direct me, oh God!" she cried.

Some one suddenly clasps her arm.

"Johanna! Johanna!"

It was Arabella Wilmot.

[Illustration: Johanna Disguised As A Boy, Is Found Weeping By Arabella,

Near St. Dunstan's.]

"Johanna--dear, dear Johanna, you are safe--quite safe. Come home

now--oh, come--oh, come--come."

"You here, Arabella?"

"Yes, I am mad--mad!--at least, I was going mad, Johanna; in my agony to

know what had become of you, and notwithstanding I have told Sir Richard

Blunt, I had no faith in the love and the courage of any one but myself.

I was coming to Todd's."

"To Todd's?"

"Yes, dear, to Todd's. I could no longer exist unless I saw with my own

eyes that you were safe."

"What a fatal step that might have been."

"It might. Perhaps it would; but God, in his goodness, has again, my

dear Johanna, averted it by enabling me to meet you here. Come home

now--come at once."

"Yes, I--I think--"

"Come--come;--you have done already much. Let, for the future, your

feelings be, that for Mark Ingestrie you have adventured what not one

girl in a million would adventure."

At this mention of the name of Mark Ingestrie, a sharp cry of mental

agony burst from the lips of Johanna.

"Oh, I thank you, Arabella."

"Thank me?"

"Yes, you have recalled me to myself. You have, by the mention of that

name, recalled me to my duty, from which I was shrinking and falling

away. You have told me in the most eloquent language that could be used

that as yet I have done nothing for him who is, dead or alive, my

heart's best treasure."

"Oh, Johanna, you will kill me."

"No, Arabella--no. Good bye. Go home, love--go home, and--and pray for

me--pray for me!"

"Johanna, for mercy's sake! what are you about to do? Speak to me. Do

not look upon me in that way. What are you about to to do, Johanna?"

"Go to the shop."

"To Todds?"

"Yes. It is my place--I am in search of Mark Ingestrie. If he be living,

it is I who must clear that man who is suspected of his murder. If he be

no more, it is I, who weak and fragile as I am, must drag him to

justice."

"No--no--no."

"I say yes. Do not stay me if you love me."

Arabella clasped the arm of Johanna, but with a strength that only the

immense amount of mental excitement she was suffering from could have

given her. Johanna freed herself from the hold of her friend, and

dashing from the doorway, was in another moment lost to the sight of

Arabella in the barber's shop.

"What now?" cried Todd, fiercely, as Johanna bounded into the shop so

hurriedly.

"Nothing, sir--only the dog."

"Bolt the door--bolt the door."

"Yes, sir."

Todd wiped his brow.

"That infernal dog," he muttered, "will be the death of me yet; and so,

Charley, the malignant beast flew at you, did he? the savage will attack

you, will he?"

"Yes, sir, so it seems."

"We will kill it. I should like to cut its throat. It would be a

pleasure, Charley. How strange that strong poisons have no effect upon

that dog. Curses on it!"

"Indeed, sir."

"None whatever. It is very odd."

Todd remained in a musing attitude for some time, and then suddenly

starting, he said--

"Charley, if that man come again after his wig, get him into talk, will

you, and learn all you can about him. I have to go a little way into the

city just now, and shall speedily return. I hoped you liked the pie?"

"Pie, sir?"

"Yes, Lovett's pie."

"Oh, yes--delicious."

"Ha! ha! he! he! ho!"

Drawing on a pair of huge worsted gloves, Todd walked out of the shop

without saying another word. The moment he was gone, Johanna passed both

her hands upon her breast, as if to stay the wild beating of her heart,

as she whispered to herself--

"Alone--alone once more."

It was well that she had only whispered that much, for in the next

moment Todd gently put his head into the shop. She started.

"Oh, sir--oh, sir, you frightened me."

"Beware!" was all he said. "Beware!"

The frightful head, more terrifying to Johanna than would have been the

fabled Medusa's, was withdrawn again, and this time Johanna resolved to

be certain that he was gone before she gave the smallest outbreak to her

feelings, or permitted herself to glance around her in any way that

could be construed into prying curiosity. She made a feint of clearing

up the place a little, and, with a broom that had about six hairs only

left in it, she swept the hobs of the little miserable grate in which a

fire was kept for the shaving-water. This occupied some little time; but

still not feeling sure that Todd was really gone, she then went to the

door, and looked right and left. He was not to be seen; and so, when she

went back, she bolted the shop-door upon the inside again, and really

felt that she was alone once more in that dreadful place. That poor

Johanna was now in a great state of mental excitement is not a matter of

surprise, for the events that had recently taken place were decidedly of

a character to produce such a mental condition. The interview with

Arabella had, no doubt, materially aided in such an effect. With

trembling eagerness she now began again to look about her, and her great

aim was by some means to get into the parlour, for if anywhere, she

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.