Be so good, reader, as to picture to yourself the look of Mrs. Lovett. We feel that one brief moment of imagination will do more to enable you to feel and to see with
"Your mind's eye"
her aspect, than as if we were to try a paragraph upon the subject. How that he! he! he! of Mr. Brown's rung in her ears. It was at any time almost enough to provoke a saint, and we need not say that this time of all others was not one at which Mrs. Lovett's feelings were attuned to gentleness and patience. Besides, she certainly was no saint. A rather heavy inkstand stood upon the table between Mrs. Lovett and the stock-broker. The next moment it narrowly escaped his head, leaving in its progress over his frontispiece a long streak of ink down his visage.
"Wretch!" said Mrs. Lovett. "It is not true."
"Murder!" cried Mr. Brown.
Mrs. Lovett covered her face with both her hands for a moment, as though, to enable her to think clearly, it were necessary to shut out the external world; and then starting up, she advanced to the door of the room.
"Murder!" said the stock-broker again.
"Silence!"
"A constable."
"If you dare to say one word of this interview, I will return, and tear you limb from limb."
Mrs. Lovett opened the door of the private room with such a vengeance that the nose of the clerk, who had been listening upon the other side, was seriously damaged thereby. He started back with a howl of pain.
"Fool!" said Mrs. Lovett, as she passed him, and that was all she condescended to say to him;--not by any means an agreeable reminiscence of his last words with a lady to a gentleman who prided himself upon his looks--rather!
Mrs. Lovett reached the street, and walked for some distance as though street it was not. She was only roused to a sense of the world in which she was, by hearing the sound of a voice calling--
"Mum--mum! Here yer is--mum--mum! woo!"
She turned and saw the coach in which she had come to the stock-broker.
"Going back, mum?" said the man.
"Yes, yes."
She stepped into the vehicle, looking more like an animated statue than aught human. The man stood touching what was once the brim of a hat, as he said--
"Where to, mum?"
Mrs. Lovett looked at him with an air of such abstraction that it was quite clear she did not see him, but she heard the question, that came to her like an echo in the air.
"Where to, mum?"
"To Fleet-street!"
Wheeze--creak--wheeze--creak--sway--sway, and the coach moved on again. Mrs. Lovett sunk down among the straw with which the lower part of the vehicle was plentifully strewed; and then, with her head resting upon the seat, her throbbing temples clasped in her hands, she tried to think. Yes--she called upon all that calmness--that decision--that talent or tact, call it which you will that had saved her for so long, not to desert her now in this hour of her dire extremity. She called upon everything for aid but upon Heaven! and then, to ease her mind, she cursed a little. Somebody says--
"Swearing when the passions are at war,
And light the chambers of the brain with angers flash.
Has an effect quite moral--a kind of safety valve,
Sparing what might be a tremendous crash!"
and so Mrs. Lovett got cooler, but not a whit the less determined, as the crazy vehicle conveyed her to Fleet-street. She fully intended now to measure conclusions with Todd. The distance was so short that even a hackney-coach performed it with tolerable promptitude. Mrs. Lovett did not wish to alight exactly at the door of Todd's shop; so she was rather glad upon finding the coach stop at the corner of Fleet-street by the old Market, and the driver demanded what number?
"This will do."
She was in the street in another minute. It took a minute to get out of a hackney-coach. It was like watching the moment to spring from a boat to the shore in a heavy surf. And yet, oh much vilified old hackney-coach! how much superior wert thou to thy bastard son, the present odious rattling, bumping, angular, bone-dislocating, horrid cab! The driver received about double his fare, and a cab-man of the present day would have gathered a mob by his vociferations, and blackguarded you into a shop, if you had treated him in such a way. Nothing less than three times what he's entitled to ever lights up the smallest spark of civility in the soul of a modern cab-driver, but the old hackney-coach-man was always content with double; so upon this occasion Mrs. Lovett got a "thank ye, mum;" and a long straw that had taken an affection for the skirt of her dress was arrested by jarvey and restored to the coach again.
Mrs. Lovett walked to all appearance composedly up Fleet-street. Alas! in this world who can trust to appearances? She had time, before reaching the shop of Sweeney Todd, to arrange slightly what she should say to that worthy. Of course, he could know nothing of her visit to the City--of her interview with Mr. Brown, and she need not blurt that out too soon. She would argue with him a little, and then she would be down upon him with the knowledge of his knavery and treachery. She reached the shop. No wonder she paused there a moment or two to draw breath. You would have done the same; and after all, Mrs. Lovett was mortal. But she did not hesitate for long. The threshold was crossed--the handle of the door was in her hand--it was turned, and she stood in Todd's shop. Todd was looking at something in a bottle, which he was holding up to the light; and Mrs. Lovett saw, too, that a pretty genteel-looking lad was poking about the fire, as if to rouse it.
"Ah, Mrs. Lovett!" said Todd, "how do you do? Some more of that fine grease for the hair, I suppose, madam?" Todd winked towards the lad (our dear friend Johanna), as though he would have said--"Don't appear to know me too well before this boy. Be careful, if you please."
"I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd."
"Oh, certainly, madam. Pray walk in--this way, if you please, madam--to my humble bachelor-parlour, madam. It is not fit exactly to ask a lady into; but we poor miserable single men, you know, madam, can only do the best we can. Ha! ha! This way."
"No."
"Eh? Not come in?"
"No. I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd; but I will say it here."
And now Mrs. Lovett gave a sidelong glance at the seeming boy, as much as to say--
"You can easily send him away if you don't want him to listen to our discourse."
Todd saw the glance; and the diabolical look that he sent to Mrs. Lovett in return would indeed have appalled any one of less nerve than she was possessed of. But she had come to that place wound up firmly to a resolution, and she would not shrink. Todd had no resource.
"Charley," he said, "you can go and take a little turn--here is a penny to spend; get yourself something in the market. But be sure you are back within half an hour, for we shall have some customers, no doubt."
"Yes, sir."
Johanna did not exactly know whether to think that Mrs. Lovett came in anger or friendship; but, at all events, she felt that it would be hazardous to remain after so marked a dismissal from Todd, although she would gladly have heard what the subject of the conversation between those two was to be. Neither Mrs. Lovett nor Todd now spoke until Johanna had fairly gone and closed the door after her. Then Todd, as he folded his arms, and looked Mrs. Lovett fully in the face, said--
"Well?"
"The time has come."
"What time?"
"For the end of our partnership--the dissolution of our agreement. I will go on no further. You can do as you please; but I am content."
"Humph!" said Todd.
"After much thought, I have come to this conclusion, Todd. Of course, let me be where I may, the secret of our road to fortune remains hidden here (she struck her breast as she spoke). All I want is my half of the proceeds, and then we part, I hope, for ever."
"Humph!" said Todd.
"And--and the sooner we can forget, if that be possible, the past, the better it will be for us both--only tell me where you purpose going, and I will take care to avoid you."
"Humph!"
Passion was boiling in the heart of Mrs. Lovett; and that was just what Todd wanted; for well he knew that something had gone amiss, and that as long as Mrs. Lovett could keep herself calm and reasonable, he should stand but a poor chance of finding out what it was, unless she chose, as part of her arrangement, to tell it; but if he could but rouse her passion, he should know all. Therefore was it that he kept on replying to what she said with that cold insulting sort of "humph!"
"Man, do you hear me?"
"Humph!"
"You villain!"
"Humph!"
Mrs. Lovett took from a side-table an iron, which, in the mystery of hair-dressing, was used for some purpose, and in a cool, calm voice, she said--
"If you do not answer me as you ought, I will throw this through your window, into the street; and the first person who comes in, in consequence, I will ask to seize Todd, the murderer! and offer myself as evidence of his numerous atrocities--contrite evidence--myself repenting of my share in them, and relying upon the mercy of the crown, which, in recompense for my denouncing you may graciously pardon me."
"And so it has come to this?" said Todd.
"You see and hear that it has."
It was rather a curious coincidence, that Mrs. Lovett had threatened Todd that she would awaken public attention to his shop by the same means that Sir Richard Blunt had recommended to Johanna to use in case of any emergency--namely, throwing something through the window into the street. If Mrs. Lovett had been goaded by Todd to throw the iron through a pane of his glass, the officers of Sir Richard would quickly have made their appearance to hear her denunciation of the barber. Unhappy woman! If she had but known what the future had in store for her, that act which she threatened Todd with, and which to her imagination seemed such a piece of pure desperation, would have been the most prudent thing she could have done. But it was not to be! There was a few moments silence now between them. It was broken by Todd.
"Are you mad?" he said.
"No."
"Then, what, in the name of all that is devilish, has got possession of you?"
"I have told you my determination. Give me twenty thousand pounds--you may profit by the odd sum--give me that amount, and I will go in peace. You know I am entitled to more; but there is no occasion for us to reckon closely. Give me the sum I seek, and you will see me no more.
"You take me by surprise. Just step into the parlour, and--"
"No--no."
"Why not? Do you suspect--"
"I suspect nothing; but I am sure of much. Now, for me to set foot within your parlour would be tantamount to the commission of suicide, and I am not yet come to that--you understand me?"
Todd understood her. His hand strayed to a razor that lay partially open close to him. Mrs. Lovett raised the iron.
"Beware!" she said.
Todd shrunk back.
"Pho! pho! this is child's play," he said. "You and I, Mrs. Lovett, ought to be above all this--far above it. You want your half of the proceeds of our joint business, and I must confess, at the moment, that the demand rather staggered and distressed me; but the more I think of it, the more reasonable it appears."
"Very well. Give it to me, then."
"Why, really now, my dear Mrs. Lovett, you quite forget that all our joint savings are in the hands of Mr. Brown."
Todd glared at her as though he would read her very soul. She felt that he more than suspected she knew all, and she adopted at once the bold policy of avowing it.
"I do not forget anything that it is essential should be remembered," she said; "and among other things, I know that, by forging my name, you have withdrawn the whole of the money from the hands of Brown. It is not worth our while to dispute concerning your motives for such an act. Let it suffice that I know it, and that I am here to demand my due."
"Ha! ha!"
"You laugh?"
"I do, indeed. Why, really now--ha! ha!--this is good; and so it is this withdrawal of the money from Brown that has made all this riot in your brain? Why, I withdrew it from him simply because I had certain secret information that his affairs were not in the best order; and from a fear, grounded upon that information, that he might be tempted to put his hand into our purse, if he found nothing in his own."
"Well, well; it matters not what were your reasons. Give me my half. It will be then out of your custody, and you will have no anxiety concerning it, while I can have no suspicions."
"In a moment--"
"You will?"
"If I had it here; but I have re-invested the whole, you see, and cannot get it at a moment's notice. I have moved it from the hands of Brown to those of Black."
