The String of Pearls 78Big Ben Creates a Sensation
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 78
Big Ben Creates a Sensation
PrestEnglish
The cook was so surprised at these words from Mrs. Lovett that for some moments he made no answer to them.
"Pray, speak again," he said at length, when he could find words in which to express himself.
"I repeat," she said, "that I am desirous, as far as lies in my power, to ameliorate your condition, of which you so much complain."
"Indeed!"
"Ah, you are too suspicious."
"Humph! I think, madam, when you come to consider all things, you will hardly think it possible for me to be too suspicious."
"You are wrong again. I dare say now, in your mind, you attribute most of your evils to me."
"Well, madam, candidly speaking, should I be far wrong by so doing?"
"You would be quite wrong. Alas! alas! I--"
"You what, madam? Pray, speak up."
"I am the victim of another. You cannot suppose that, of my own free will, I should shut up in these gloomy places a person of your age, and by no means ill-looking." "I have him there," thought Mrs. Lovett; "what human heart is proof against the seductions of flattery? Oh, I have him there."
The cook was silent for some few moments, and then he said, quite calmly, as though the tribute to his personal appearance had not had the smallest effect--
"Pray go on, madam, I am quite anxious to hear all that you may have to say to me."
This composed manner of meeting her compliments rather discomposed Mrs. Lovett; but after all, she thought--"He is only acting an indifference he is far from feeling." With this impression she resolved to persevere, and she added, in a kind and conciliating tone of voice--
"I grant that circumstances are such that you may well be excused for any amount of doubt that you may feel regarding the honesty of my words and intentions towards you."
"I quite agree with you there, madam," said the cook.
"Then all I have to do is, by deeds, to convince you that I am sincere in my feelings towards you. As I have before said, I am in the power of another, and therefore is it that, contrary to my nature, I may seem to do cruel things at which my heart revolts."
"I cannot conceive anything so distressing," said the cook, "except being the unfortunate victim as I am of such a train of circumstances."
"That is what I am coming to."
"Are you? I wish you were."
There was a tone of irony about the enforced cook which Mrs. Lovett did not at all like; but she had an object to gain, and that was to fully persuade him that the shortest way to his freedom would be to remain profoundly quiet for a day or two, and then she would be able to make her own arrangements and be off without troubling either him or Todd with any news of her departure or her whereabouts.
"You still doubt me," she said. "But listen, and I think you will soon be of opinion that although I have wronged you as yet, I can do something to repair that wrong."
"I am all attention, madam."
"Then, in the first place, you are quite tired of eating pies, and must have some other kind of food."
"You never said a truer thing in all your life, madam."
"That other food, then, I will provide for you. You shall, within an hour from now, have anything to eat or to drink that you may please to name. Speak, what is it to be?"
"Well," he said, "that is kind indeed. But I can do without food further than I have here, for I have hit upon a mode of making cakes that please me. Nevertheless, if you can bring me a bottle of brandy, in order that I may slightly qualify the water that I drink, I shall be obliged to you."
"You shall have it; and now I hope you will be convinced of the sincerity of my desire to be of service to you."
"But my liberty, madam, my liberty. That is the grand thing after all that I must ever pant for."
"True, and that is what you shall have at my hands. In the course of two, or it may be three days, I shall have perfected some arrangements which will enable me to throw open your prison for you, and then--"
"Then what?"
"May I hope that you will not think so harshly of me as you have done?"
"Certainly not."
"Then I shall be repaid for all I do. You must believe me to be the victim of the most cruel circumstances, of which some day you may be informed. At present, to do so, would only be to involve both you and myself in one common destruction."
"Then don't mention it."
"I will not. But beware of one thing."
"What is that?"
"Simply this, that any attempts upon your own part to escape from here previous to the time when I shall have completed my arrangements to set you free, will not only derange all that I am planning for you, but end in your utter destruction; for he who has forced me into my present cruel situation will not for one moment hesitate at the murder of us both; so if you wish to be free in a few days you will try nothing, but if on the contrary you wish to destroy both yourself and me, you will make some attempts to rescue yourself from here."
Mrs. Lovett waited rather anxiously for his answer to this speech.
"I dare say you are right," he said at length.
"You may be assured I am."
"Then I consent."
Mrs. Lovett drew a long breath of relief, as she muttered to herself--
"It will do--I have him in the toils; and come what may, I am free from the torturing thought that he may achieve something that may have the effect of delivering me up to the hands of justice. When I am gone, he may remain where he is, and rot for all I care."--"You have done wisely," she said aloud, "and if anything could more powerfully than another incite me to the greatest exertions to liberate you, it would be the handsome manner in which you have placed confidence in me."
"Oh, don't mention it."
Again there was that tone of sarcasm about the cook's voice, which created a doubt in the mind of Mrs. Lovett if, after all, he was not merely playing with her, and in his heart utterly disregarding all that she said to him. It is quite questionable if this doubt was not in its bitterness worse than the former anxieties that had preyed upon the mind of the lady; but she found she could do nothing to put an end to it, so she merely said--
"Well, I feel much happier now; so I will go at once and get you the brandy that you ask for." "I hope he will drink it freely--it will aid him in drowning reflection."
"Thank you," said the cook, "I shall expect it with impatience." "Confound her, she can't very well put anything queer in the brandy. I will take care to taste a very small portion of it first; for Sir Richard Blunt has cautioned me particularly to be careful of poison."
"I am going," said Mrs. Lovett.
"Good-bye, madam; I only hope you will be able to carry your benevolent intentions into effect--and," added the cook to himself, "that I may some fine morning have the pleasure of seeing you hanged."
"Farewell," said Mrs. Lovett; and she, too, had her aside as she ascended the stairs, for she muttered--"If I were only a little better assured than I am that you meditated something dangerous, I would steal upon you while you slept, and with a knife soon put an end to all trouble regarding you."
Now, it happened that when Mrs. Lovett reached her shop, she saw three people outside the window. The actions of these people attracted her observation. One was a big stout man, of such a size as was rarely seen in the streets of London. The other was a young girl, nicely attired, but with a look of great grief and agitation upon her countenance. The third person of the group was a gentlemanly-looking man, attired in a great coat which was buttoned up to his chin. The big stout man was making a kind of movement towards the door of the pie-shop, and the gentleman with the great-coat was holding up his hand and shaking his head, as though forbidding him. The big stout man then looked angry; and then Mrs. Lovett saw the young girl cling to him, and heard her say--
"Oh, no--no; I said I wanted nothing.--Come away."
Then the gentleman with the great-coat pulled his collar down a little; upon which the young girl sprang towards him, and, clasping his arm, cried in tones of intense interest--
"Ah, sir, is it indeed you? Tell me is she saved--oh, is she saved?"
"She will be," was the reply of the gentleman in the great-coat. "Come away."
The big stout man appeared to be getting rather furious at the idea of the gentleman with the great-coat dictating what he and the young girl should do; but she by a few words pacified him; and then, as if they were the best friends in the world, they all walked away towards the Strand, conversing very seriously and rapidly.
"What does this mean?" said Mrs. Lovett.
Terror overspread her countenance. Oh, conscience! conscience! how truly dost thou make
"Cowards of us all!"
What could compensate Mrs. Lovett for the abject terrors that came over her now? What could recompense her for the pang that shot across her heart, at the thought that something was amiss in the fine-drawn web of subtlety that she and Sweeney Todd had drawn? Alas! was the money in the Bank of England, upon which she expected to enjoy herself in a foreign land, now any set-off against that shuddering agony of soul with which she said to herself--
"Is all discovered?"
Her strength forsook her. She quite forgot all about the cook, and the brandy she had promised him--she forgot even how necessary it was, in case any one should come, for her to keep up the appearance of composure; and tottering into the back-parlour, she sunk upon her knees on the floor, and shook as though the spirit of twenty agues possessed her. So it will be seen that Todd was not quite alone in his sufferings from those compunctious visitations, which we have seen at times come over him in his shop. But we will leave Mrs. Lovett to her reflections, hoping that even she may be made a little wiser and a little better by those soft
"Whisperings of awakened sense;"
and that she may find some one among the invisible hosts of spirits of another world who may whisper to her--
"Repent! repent!--it is not yet too late."
Let us look at those three persons whose mysterious conduct at the shop windows had, like a match applied to gunpowder, at once awakened a fever in the breast of Mrs. Lovett, which she was scarcely aware slumbered there. These folks made their way, then, into Fleet Street; and as the reader has probably guessed already who they are, we may as well make a merit of saying that the big one was our old friend Ben, the beef-eater--the gentlemanly-looking man was Sir Richard Blunt, and the young lady was no other than Arabella Wilmot. Poor Arabella! Of all the personages concerned in our dramatis personæ, we have no hesitation in saying that your sufferings are the greatest. From the moment that Johanna had started upon that desperate expedition to Sweeney Todd's, peace left the bosom of her young friend. We have already traced the progress of Arabella to Sir Richard Blunt's office, and we have seen what was the result of that decidedly judicious movement; but notwithstanding she was assured over and over again subsequently by Sir Richard that Johanna was now well protected, she could not bring herself to think so, or to leave the street. It was by her lingering about in this way that she became in the company of our friend Ben. The fact was, that the kind of statement or confession that Johanna had made to Ben on that occasion of his visit to her father's house, when she found herself alone with him in the parlour, had made such an impression upon the poor fellow, that he described it himself in the most forcible possible language, by saying--
"It interferes with my meals."
Now, everything that had such an effect as that, must to Ben be a matter for the most serious consideration indeed. He accordingly, finding that
"The peace of the Tower was fled,"
so far as he was concerned, had come into the City upon a sort of voyage of discovery, to see how matters were going on. As he was proceeding along Fleet Street, he chanced to cast his eyes into the entrance of a court, nearly opposite Sweeney Todd's, and there he saw a female form crouching. There was something about this female form which Ben thought was familiar to him, and upon a close look, he felt certain it was Johanna's friend, Arabella Wilmot. Full of surprise at finding her there, Ben paused, and stared at her so long, that she at last looked at him, and recognising him, immediately flew to his side, and grasping his arm, cried--
"Oh, pity me, Mr. Ben. Pity me!"
"Hold!" said Ben, who was not, as the reader is aware, the fastest thinker in the world. "Hold. Easy does it."
Ben tried to look very wise then.
"Oh, you will hate me, Ben."
"Eh?"
"I say you will hate me, Ben, when you know all."
Ben shook his head.
"Shan't do any such thing," he said. "Lord bless your pretty eyes, I hate you? I couldn't."
"But--but--"
"Come, come," added Ben, "just take your little bit of an arm under mine. Easy does it, you know. Always think of that, if anything goes amiss. Easy does it; and then you will find things come right in the long run. You may take my word for it."
