The String of Pearls 130Mrs. Lovett Sees Some Twilight Spectres in Her Cell
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 130
Mrs. Lovett Sees Some Twilight Spectres in Her Cell
PrestEnglish
After she had sat for some time in this state of feeling, and just before the darkness got so apparent that but little could be seen of the few articles that the place contained, she heard the door open.
A flash of light came into the place.
"Who is that?" she cried.
"Oh, you needn't think as it's robbers--it's only me," said a voice. "You are quite safe here, ma'am. That's one good of being in the stone jug: you needn't be afraid of thieves breaking into your place."
She saw that it was the turnkey whose duty it was to keep watch in the passage outside her cell.
"What do you want here?" she said, "Cannot I have the poor privilege of being left alone?"
"Oh, yes, only it's your rations' time, and here's your boiled rice and water, and here's your loaf, mum. In course, that ain't exactly the sort of thing you have been accustomed to; but it's all the county allows--only between you and me and the post, Mrs. Lovett, as they say you have got a pretty heavy purse, you can have just what you like."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, in a moderate way you know. You have only to pay, and you can have anything."
"Then even Newgate is like the rest of the world. Money rules even here, does it?"
"Why, in a manner of speaking, a guinea is worth twenty-one shillings here, just the same as it is outside, ma'am."
"Then how much will purchase my liberty?"
The turnkey shook his head.
"There, ma'am, you ask for an article that I don't deal in. My shop don't keep such a thing as liberty. What I mean is, that you may have just what you like to eat and drink."
"Very well. In the morning you can bring me what I order."
"Oh, yes--yes."
"I will pay handsomely for what I do order, for I have, as you say, a heavy purse. Much heavier, indeed it is, than any of you imagine, my friends."
"Your humble servant, ma'am. I only wish Newgate was full of such as you."
"Ah, I hear a footstep. Who is it that is about to intrude upon me to-night?"
"It's the chaplain."
"The chaplain? I thought he understood that I declined his visits completely."
"Why, you see, ma'am, so you did, but it's his duty to go the round of all the cells before the prison shuts up for the night, so he will come, you see; and if I might advise you, ma'am, I should say be civil to him whatever you may think, for he can do you an ill turn if he likes in his report. He has more underhanded sort of power than you are aware of, Mrs. Lovett; so you had better, as I say, be civil to him, and keep your thoughts to yourself. Where's the odds, you know, ma'am?"
"I am much obliged to you for this advice, and I will pay you for it. There is a couple of guineas for you as a slight remembrance of me, and let others say what they will, you at least will not accuse me of ingratitude for any benefit conferred upon me."
"That I won't, ma'am; but here he comes. Mum is the word about what I have said, or else my place would not be worth much, I can tell you."
"Depend upon me."
The turnkey, with a great show of respect, backed out of the cell as the chaplain entered it.
"Well, Mrs. Lovett," said the pious individual, "I hope to find you in a better frame of mind than upon my last visit to you."
"Sir," said Mrs. Lovett, "if you will come to me at your own hour in the morning, I shall then present myself to you in a different manner, and I shall no longer object to anything you may be pleased to say to me."
"What a blessed conversion. Really, now, this is very satisfactory indeed. Mrs. Lovett, of course you are a very great sinner, but if you attend to me, I can warrant your being received in the other world by ten thousand angels."
"I thank you, sir. Half the number would be quite sufficient, I feel assured, for my poor deserts."
"Oh no, ten thousand--ten thousand. Not one less than that number. But if you have any doubts about the reality of flames everlasting, I shall have great satisfaction in removing them, by holding your hand for a few moments in the flame of this candle."
"You are very kind," said Mrs. Lovett, "but I shall be quite as well convinced if you hold yours, as I shall then I hope see the agony depicted in your countenance."
"Humph!--ah! No, I would rather not exactly. But quite rejoicing that you are in so very pious a frame of mind, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock."
"That will do very well," said Mrs. Lovett.
The chaplain, thinking he had made quite a wonderful convert in Mrs. Lovett, and with serious thoughts of getting somebody to write a tract for him on the subject, left the cell, little suspecting how he was to be duped.
"Well, you did gammon him," said the turnkey, "I will say that for you."
"Can you not leave me a light?"
"Agin the rules. Can't do it; but I'll wait till you have put the mattress to rights, if you like."
"Oh, no. It will do very well. Good night."
"Good night, Ma'am Lovett, and thank you for me. They may say what they likes about you, but I will stick up for you, so far that you are liberal with your tin, and that's a very good thing indeed. I ain't quite sure that it isn't everything, as this here world goes."
The door of the cell was closed, and the last rays of the turnkey's candle disappeared. Mrs. Lovett was alone again in her dreary cell.
The darkness now was very intense, indeed: for during the few minutes that she had been conversing with the chaplain, the twilight had almost faded away, dropping quite into night, so that not an object was visible in the cell. She heard the turnkey's footsteps die away in the distance, and then indeed she felt truly alone.
"And I shall not see the sunlight of another day," she said. "My pilgrimage is over."
She pronounced these words with a shudder, for even she could not at such a moment feel quite at ease. She held in her hands the means of death, and yet she hesitated--not that she had the remotest intention of foregoing her fixed resolve; but feeling that at any moment she had it in her power now to carry it out, she lingered there upon the shores of life.
"And it has come to this," she said. "After all my scheming--after all my resolves, it has come to suicide in a felon's cell. Well, I played a daring game, and for heavy stakes, and I have lost, that is all."
She covered her eyes with her hands for several minutes, and slowly rocked to and fro.
Who shall say what thoughts crossed that bold bad woman's soul at that time? Who shall say that in those few moments her memory did not fly back to some period when she was innocent and happy?--for even Mrs. Lovett must have been innocent and happy once; and the thought that such had been her blessed state, compared to what it was now, was enough to drive her mad--quite mad.
When she withdrew her hands from before her eyes she uttered a cry of terror. Memory had conjured up the forms of departed spirits to her; and now so strong had become the impression upon her mind in that hour of agony, that she thought she saw them in her cell.
"Oh, mercy--mercy!" she said. "Why should I be tortured thus? Why should I suffer such horrors? Why do you glare at me with such fiery eyes for, horrible spectres!"
She covered up her eyes again; but then a still more terrible supposition took possession of her, for instead of fancying that the spectres were in the darkness of the cell at some distance from her, she thought that they all came crowding up to within an inch of her face, gibing and mocking.
"Off--off!" she cried, as she suddenly stretched out her arm. "Do not drive me quite mad."
Her eyes glared in the darkness like those of some wild animal. They looked phosphorescent, and for some time such was the agony and the thraldom of her feelings, that she quite forgot she had the means of death in her hands.
She began to question the spirits that fancy presented in the darkness as thronging her cell.
"Who are you?" she said. "I know you not. I did not kill you! Why do you glare at me? And you, with your face matted with blood, I did not kill you. Who are you, too, with those mangled limbs? I killed none of you. Go to Sweeney Todd--go to Sweeney Todd!"
She kept her hands stretched out before her, and she fancied that it was only by such an action that she kept them from touching her very face. Then she dropped upon her knees, and in the same wild half-screaming voice she spoke again, crying--
"Away with you all! Todd it was that killed you--not I. He would have killed me, too. Do you hear, that he tried to kill me? but he could not. What boy are you? Oh, I know you now. He sent you to the madhouse. You are George Allan. Well, I did not kill you. I see that there is blood upon you! But why do you all come to me and leave Todd's cell tenantless, except by himself? for you cannot be here and there both! Away, I say! Away to him! Do not come here to torture me!"
Tap--tap--tap came a sound on the door of the cell.
"Hush!" she said. "Hush!"
"What's the matter?" said the turnkey.
"Nothing--nothing."
"But I heard you calling out about something."
"It is nothing, my friend. All is right. I was only--only praying."
"Humph!" said the turnkey. "If you were, it is something rather new, I reckon. She can't do any mischief, that's one comfort; and many of the worst ones as comes here don't pass very nice, cosy, comfortable nights. They fancies they sees all sorts of things, they does. Poor devils! I never seed nothing worse than myself or my wife in all my time, and I don't think I ever shall."
Mrs. Lovett did not now utter one word until she was sure the turnkey was out of hearing. That slight interruption had recalled her to herself, and done much to banish from her disturbed imagination all those fancied monsters of the brain which had disturbed her.
"Why did I yield even for a moment," she said, "to such a load of superstition? I thought that even at such a moment as this I should be free from such terrors. How I should have smiled in derision of any one else who had been weak enough to give way to them--and yet how real they looked. How very unlike the mere creations of a disturbed brain. Could they be real? Is it possible?"
Mrs. Lovett shook a little as she asked herself these questions, and it was only at such a moment that she could or was at all likely to ask them, for our readers may well believe that such a woman could have had no sort of belief in a providence, or she never, with her active intellect, could have fallen into the mistake of supposing that she was compassing happiness by committing crime.
For awhile now the doubt that she had suggested to herself shook her very much. It was the very first time in all her wicked life that anything like a perception of a future state had crossed her mind; and each minute how fearfully to her the possibility, and then the probability, that there really was another world than this, began now to grow upon her.
That thought was more full of agony than the appearance of the spectres had been to her--those spectres which were only called into existence by her own consciousness of overpowering guilt and deep iniquity.
"I am going now," she said. "I am going. World that I hate, and all upon thee, farewell!"
She broke the tin case containing the poison, and applying one of the broken ends to her lips, she swallowed two drops of the deadly liquid, and fell dead upon the floor of her cell.
