The String of Pearls 108Mr. Lupin Has a Singular Interview with Mrs. Oakley
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 108
Mr. Lupin Has a Singular Interview with Mrs. Oakley
PrestEnglish
Amid all the exciting circumstances that it has been our duty to relate--amid the turmoil of events consequent upon the wild villainy of Todd, and the urgent attempts of Mrs. Lovett to get her accounts audited--we have very much lost sight of Mrs. Oakley.
Perhaps the reader has not been altogether unwilling to lose sight of a lady who, we will admit, was not calculated to make great advances in his esteem.
But yet one thing must be recollected, and that is that Mrs. Oakley is Johanna's mother! That we opine is a fact which she should be given some degree of attention for; and insomuch as the bright eyes of the fair and noble-minded Johanna might be dimmed by an additional tear if anything very serious was to become of Mrs. Oakley, we will go a little out of our way just now to see what that deluded parson-ridden woman is about.
The outgoings and the incomings of Mrs. Oakley for a long time past had been so various and discursive, that the poor spectacle-maker had long since left off considering that he had anything in the shape of a domestic establishment. Certainly, Johanna was always at hand, until lately, to attend to her father's comforts--but the wife never. There was either a prayer-meeting, or a love-feast, or some congregation or another assembled to hear or to see Mr. Lupin; so that if the wife and the mother went to such places to learn her duties, it was pretty evident that the lesson occupied the whole of her time.
But still at times she did come home. At odd seasons she was to be found groaning and snuffling at the fireside in the little dark parlour at the back of the shop; but now for some few days she had totally disappeared.
Mr. Oakley was alone.
Up a dingy court in the City, not a hundred miles from the dingy purlieus of Monkwell Street, there was a dingy conventicle, upon the front of which the word "Ebenezer" announced its character, or its would-be character. The upper part of this chapel was converted into a dwelling-place, and there luxuriated Mr. Lupin.
The flock (geese, of course!) of the reverend gent rented the edifice, so that there he was rent free, and there he was in the habit of inviting to tea such of the females of his congregation who either had money of their own, or whose husbands had tills easily accessible, or pockets into which the wife's hand could be dipped at discretion; and dipped it generally was at in-discretion;--for folks, whether they be wives or not, when they can dip into other folks' pockets, do not always know how much to take just and no more.
Now Mr. Lupin had established a Three-days-two-hours and-general-subscription-saving grace-prayer, which consisted of praying every two hours for three days and three nights, and at each prayer making an offering in hard cash for the use of the church and the gospel, he (Mr. Lupin) being both the church and the gospel.
Alas! what will not human folly in the name of religion stoop to! There were women--mothers of families, who came to Mr. Lupin's house above the chapel with what plunder they could get together, and there actually stand the three days and three nights, the reverend gent making it is duty to keep them awake at the end of every two hours at least, as he pretended to pray, and sending them away completely placid, but with the comfortable conviction, as they themselves expressed it, that their "souls were saved alive."
Mrs. Oakley was one of these dupes.
Now, although these proceedings were very profitable to Mr. Lupin, he found that it was very irksome to get up himself in the middle of the night to awaken the sinners to prayer, so he used to introduce brandy-and-water after he had pretty well tired out his devotee, and ascertained the amount of money he was likely to get, and in the confusion of mind consequent upon that gentle stimulant, the time went on very glibly.
"Sister Oakley," said Lupin, on the evening of the first day of Mrs. Oakley's residence beneath his highly-spiritual roof. "Sister Oakley, truly you will be a great brand snatched from the burning--How much money have you got?"
"Alas!" said Mrs. Oakley, "business must be bad, for I only found in the till three pounds eleven-and-sixpence."
Mr. Lupin groaned.
"But I will from time to time take what I can, and let you have it, for the welfare of one's precious soul is above all price."
"Truly, Sister Oakley, it is, and you may as well give me the small instalment now if it shall seem right unto thee, sister. I thank you in the name of the Lord! Humph--only three pounds eleven-and-sixpence. Well, well, we shall do better another time, perhaps, sister. Rest in peace, and I will from time to time come in and awaken thee to prayer. Truly and verily I have a hard time of it always."
It was on the second night that fatigue had had a great effect upon Mrs. Oakley, and upon the reverend gent likewise that he brought her a tumbler of hot brandy-and-water, saying as he placed it by her--
"Truly I have had a dream, and the Lord told me to give you this. I pray you take it, Mrs. O., and may it put you in mind of the glory of the world that is to come--Amen!"
Mr. Lupin retired, and as the stimulant was not at all an ungrateful thing to Mrs. Oakley, she was about to raise it to her lips, when a stunning knock at the chapel door made her give such a start, that she dropped glass, and spirit, and spoon to the ground. No doubt, a repetition of the knock at the moment, prevented Lupin from hearing the crash, which the fall in spirits produced. Mrs. Oakley heard him open the window of his room, and in a voice of stifled anger cry--
"Who is there? Who is there?"
"It's me, Groggs, and you know it," said a female voice. "Come down and open the door, or I will rouse the whole neighbourhood."
"Come, you be off. I have some one here."
"What, another idiot? Ho!--ho!--ho! Why, Groggs, they will find you out some day, and limb you. If they only knew that you were Groggs the returned transport, how they would mob you to be sure. But I have come for money, old fellow, and I will have it. I ain't drunk, but I have had enough--just enough, mark me old boy, and you know what I am capable of when that's the case. I am your wife and you know it. Ho! ho!"
Dab came the knocker again upon the chapel door.
"Do you want to be my ruin?" said Lupin. "Stay a moment and I will throw you out five shillings; but if you make any noise you shall not have one farthing from me."
"Shall I not? Ha!--ha! Shall I not? Five shillings indeed!"
The lady upon this, feeling no doubt that both her wants and his powers of persuasion were made very light of, commenced such a tremendous knocking at the door, that the terrified Lupin at once descended to let her in, uttering such terrible curses as he went that Mrs. Oakley was petrified with dismay.
Foolish woman! Did she expect that her idol would turn out to be anything but a common brazen image?
In the course of a few moments she heard the couple coming up stairs again, and when they reached the top, she heard Lupin say, "Confound you, you always will come with your infernal demands at the very worst and most awkward times and seasons to me. Did you not take ten pounds some time ago, and promise to come near me no more?"
"Ha!--ha! Yes, I did. But I am here again you see. You thought I would drink myself to death with that amount of money, and that you would get rid of me, but it did me good. Ho!--ho!--ho! The good stuff did me good."
"You are a fool," said Lupin. "I tell you, woman, you will be my ruin, my absolute ruin; and then where will your supplies come from I should like to know? Why I have an idiot only in the next room, of whom I hope to make a good thing; and if you had only come in five minutes sooner you would have been heard by her, and I should have been done up here."
"And why don't she hear you now? Have you cut her throat like you did the woman's by Wapping?"
"Hush!--hush! you devil! Why do you allude to that?"
"Because I like, my beauty. Because I know you did it. And whenever I do mention it, the gallows shines out in your face as plain--ay, as plain as this hand; and I like to see you quake and change colour, and be ready almost to fall down with your fears. Ho!--ho! I like that. Yes, it's as good to me as a drop of drink, that it is."
"I only wish your throat was cut, that is all."
"I know you do. But you won't try that on upon me. No--no. You won't try that on. Look at this, my beauty. Do you think I would step into a place of yours without something in the shape of a friend with me? Oh--no--no--"
The lady exhibited the handle and point of the blade of a knife, as she spoke, at which Mr. Lupin staggered back, and then in a faltering voice he said--
"I will go and see how my portion has worked with the idiot I mentioned. I gave her a good dose of laudanum in a glass of brandy and water."
It may be imagined with what feelings Mrs. Oakley heard this interesting little dialogue. It may be imagined, if she had at the bottom of her heart any lingering feelings of right or wrong, how they were likely to be roused up by all this--how her thoughts were likely to fly back to the house she had made wretched, and virtually deserted for so long a period of time. And now what was to become of her? Had she not heard Lupin denounced by one who knew him well as a murderer--an allegation which he had not even in the faintest manner denied?
Mrs. Oakley went down upon her knees in earnest, and wringing her hands, she cried--
"God save me for my poor husband and my child's sake!"
We will suppose that if any appeals at all reach Heaven, that this was one of those that would be sure to get there. Hastily pushing aside with her hands the fragments of the broken glass, Mrs. Oakley flung herself upon the floor, at the moment that Lupin with a light in his hand entered the room.
"Hilloa!" he said.
All was still. Mrs. Oakley did not move hand nor foot. She scarcely dared to breathe, for she felt that upon his belief that she had swallowed the narcotic her life rested. When he saw her lying upon the floor, he gave a short laugh, as he said--
"I thought she could not resist the brandy and water. The laudanum has done its work quickly indeed. It's well that it has, for if it had not-- Well, well! If I only now had the courage to take a knife to my wife, and get rid of her once and for all, I should do well. Sister Oakley, you will not awaken for many hours, and when you do, you will be by far too much confused to know if you have said all your prayers or not. I shall make a fortune out of these women."
Mrs. Oakley felt upon the point of fainting, and if he had but touched her, she was certain that she must have gone off; but he felt so satisfied with the powerful dose of laudanum that he had given her in the brandy and water, that he did not think it worth while in any way further to interfere with her.
"Old and ugly too!" he muttered, as he left the room.
Perhaps these last words cut Mrs. Oakley to the soul more quickly than all he had previously said. If she was not from that moment cured of what might in her case be called Lupinism, it was a very odd thing indeed.
The Rev. gent had been gone more than ten minutes before Mrs. Oakley gathered courage to look up, and to listen to what was taking place in the next room. Then she found that Lupin was speaking. She was still too much overcome by terror to rise, but she managed to crawl along the floor, until she reached the wall between the two rooms.
It was a flimsy wall that, composed only of canvas, for the rooms above the chapel had been got up in a very extemporaneous kind of way.
Nothing could take place in the way of conversation in the next room, that might be distinctly enough heard in the one that Mrs. Oakley was in. As we have said, Lupin was speaking. Mrs. Oakley placed her ear close to the canvas, and heard every word that he uttered.
"Listen to reason," he said, "listen to reason, Jane. Of course, I will give you as much money as I can. I do not attempt to deny your claim upon me, and what is to hinder us working together, and making a good thing of it? Ah, if I could only persuade you to be a religious woman."
"Gammon!" said Jane.
"I know that very well," said Lupin. "That's the very thing. I know it is gammon as well as you do. What's that?"
Mrs. Oakley had made a slight noise in the next room.
