"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.
"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.
