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was withdrawn with a screaming jerk, and a gentleman was stopped in the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

made the door fast by slipping a bolt at the back of it. It was not very

often that immediately after the disposal of a batch of pies any

customers came in, and if they should attempt to do so for the purpose

of purchasing any stale pies, she was by far too intent upon what she

was come about, and considered it by far too important to heed what they

might think or say upon finding the door fast. She then opened the

seeming cupboard in the parlour, which conducted to the strong iron

door, with the small grating at the top of it. She reached that point of

observation with great rapidity, and peered into the cavernous

dungeon-like bakehouse. At first she could see nothing by the uncertain

light that was there, but as her eyes got accustomed to the absence of

daylight, she could just see the figure of the cook sitting upon a

stool, and apparently watching one of the fires.

"It is a long--long time."

"What is a long time?" cried Mrs. Lovett.

The captive cook sprang to his feet in a moment, and in a voice of

alarm, he said--

"Who spoke? Who is that?"

"I," replied Mrs. Lovett. "Do you not know me?"

"Ah," said the cook, directing his eyes to the grating above the door,

"I know you too well. What do you want with me? Have I failed in doing

your bidding here? Have I disappointed you of a single batch of those

execrable pies?"

"Certainly not, but I have come to see--if--if you are quite

comfortable."

"Comfortable! What an insult!"

"Nay, you wrong me."

"That is impossible. This is the commencement only of some new misery.

Speak on, madam. Speak on. I am helpless here, and condemned to suffer."

Notwithstanding these words of the cook there was a certain tone of

hilarity about him, that Mrs. Lovett might well be surprised at, and she

asked herself what does he hope. The fact is that much as he wished

still to enact the character of a man full of despair, the cook could

not get out of his head and heart the promises of Sir Richard

Blunt--promises which still rung in his ears, like a peal of joy bells.

"Come, come," said Mrs. Lovett, "you are getting reconciled to your

fate. Confess as much."

"I reconciled? Never."

"But you are not so unhappy?"

"Worse--worse. This apathetic condition that I am now in, and which to

you may look like the composure of resignation, will end, in all

likelihood, in raging madness."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, madam, I feel already the fire in my brain."

"Be calm."

"Calm--calm! Ha!--ha! Calm. It is all very well for you upon that side

of the iron door to talk of calmness, madam, but upon this side the

words sound strange."

"It will not sound so strange when I tell you that I have absolute

compassion upon you, and that the cause of my present visit was to talk

to you of some means by which the worst portion of your fate here might

be in some measure ameliorated, and your existence rendered tolerable."