The String of Pearls 83Mrs. Lovett Finds That in This World There Is Retribution
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 83
Mrs. Lovett Finds That in This World There Is Retribution
PrestEnglish
"Black?" said Mrs. Lovett.
"Yes, Black."
"Do you think me so--" green, she was going to say, but the accidental conjunction of the colours--brown, black, and green--suddenly struck her as ludicrous, and she altered it to foolish. "Do you think me so foolish as for one moment to credit you?"
"Hark you, Mrs. Lovett," pursued Todd, suddenly assuming quite a different tone. "You have come here full of passion, because you thought I was deceiving you."
"You are."
"Allow me to proceed. It is, I believe, one of the penalties of all associations for--for--why do I hesitate about a word?--guilty purposes that there should be mutual distrust. I tell you again, that if I had not moved the money from Brown, we should have lost it all."
"But why not come to me and get my signature?"
"There--really--was--not--time," said Todd, dropping his words out one by one, with a staccato expression.
"That is too absurd."
Todd shrugged his shoulders, as though he would have said--"Well, if you will have it so, I cannot help it;" and then he said--
"I was in the City. I heard the rumour of the instability of Brown. I flew into a shop. I wrote the order like a flash of lightning. I went to Brown's like an avalanche, and I brought away the money, as if Heaven and earth were coming together."
There was not the ghost of a smile upon Todd's face as he made use of these superlatives. Mrs. Lovett began to be staggered.
"Then you have it here?"
"No, no!"
"You have. Tell me that you have, and that this Mr. Black you mentioned is a mere delusion."
"Black may be no colour, but it is not a delusion."
"You trifle with me. Beware!"
"In a word then, my charming Mrs. Lovett, I dreaded to bring the money here. I thought my house the most unsafe place in the world for it. I and you stand upon the brink of a precipice--a slumbering volcano is beneath our feet. Pshaw! Where is your old acuteness, that you do not see at once how truly foolish it would have been to bring the money here?"
"Juggler! Fiend!"
"Hard words, Mrs. Lovett."
She dashed her hand across her brow, as though by that physical effort she could brush from her intellect the sophistical cobwebs that Todd had endeavoured to move before it, and then she said--
"I know not. I care not. All I ask--all I demand--is my share of the money. Give it to me, and let me go."
"I will."
"When?"
"This day. Stay, the day is fast going, but I will say this night, if you really, in your cool judgment, insist upon it."
"I do. I do!"
"Well, you shall have. This night after business was over and the shop was closed, I intended to have come to you, and fully planned all this that you have unfortunately tortured yourself by finding out. I regret that you think of so quickly leaving the profits of a partnership which, in a short time longer, would have made us rich as monarchs. Of course, if you leave, I am compelled."
"You compelled?"
"Yes. How can I carry on business without you? How could I, without your aid, dispose of the--"
"Hush, hush!"
Mrs. Lovett shuddered.
"As you please," said Todd. "I only say, I regret that a co-partnership that promised such happy results should now be broken up. However, that is a matter for your personal consideration merely. If I had thought of leaving, and being content with what I had already got, of course it would have compelled you to do so. Therefore I cannot complain, although I may regret your excuse of a right of action that equally belonged to me."
"If I only thought you sincere--"
"And why not?"
"If I could only bring myself to believe that the money was once more rightly invested--"
"You shall come with me yourself, if you like, in the morning to Mr. Black the broker in Abchurch Lane, No. 3, and ascertain that all is right. You shall there sign your name in his book, so that he may know it, and then you will be satisfied, I presume?"
"Yes, I should then."
"And this dream of leaving off business would vanish?"
"Perhaps it would. But--but--"
"But what?"
"Why did you say to Brown that our union was to take place?"
"Because it was necessary to say something, to account for the sudden withdrawal of the money; and surely I may be pardoned, charming Mrs. Lovett, for even in imagination dreaming, that so much beauty was mine."
The horrible leer with which Todd looked upon her at this moment made her shudder again; and the expression of palpable hatred and disgust that her countenance wore, added yet another, and not the least considerable, link to the chain of revenge which Todd cherished against her in his cruel and most secret heart. While he was philosophising about guilty associations producing a feeling of mutual distrust, he should have likewise added that they soon produce mutual hatred. For a few moments they looked at each other--that guilty pair--with expressions that sought to read each other's souls; but they were both tolerable adepts in the art of dissimulation. The silence was the most awkward for Todd, so he broke it first by saying--
"You are satisfied, let me hope?"
"I will be."
"You shall be."
"Yes, when I have my money. Henceforward, Todd, we will have much shorter reckonings, so shall we keep much longer friends. If you keep, in some secret place, your half of the proceeds of our--our--"
"Business," said Todd.
Mrs. Lovett made a sort of gulph of the word, but she adopted it.
"If you, I say, keep your half of the proceeds of our business, and I keep mine, I don't see how it is possible for us to quarrel."
"Quite impossible."
He began to strop a razor diligently, and to try its edge across his thumb nail. Mrs. Lovett's passion--that overwhelming passion which had induced her to enter Todd's shop, and defy him to a species of single combat of wits--had in a great measure subsided, giving place to a calmer and more reflective feeling. One of the results of that feeling was a self-question to the effect of, "What will be the result of an open quarrel with Todd?" Mrs. Lovett shook a little at the answer she felt forced to give herself to this question. That answer was continued in two words--mutual destruction! Yes, that would be the consequence.
"Todd," she said in a softened tone, "if I had forged your name, and gone to the city and possessed myself of all the money, what would you have thought? Tell me that."
"Just what you thought--that it was the most scandalous breach of faith that could possibly be; but an explanation ought to put that right."
"It has."
"Then you are satisfied?"
"I am. At what time shall we go together, to-morrow morning, to Mr. Black's in Abchurch Lane?"
"Name your own time," said Todd with the most assumed air in the world. "Black lives at Ballam Hill, and don't get to business until ten; but any time after that will do."
"I will come here at ten, then."
"So be it. Ah, Mrs. Lovett, how charming it is to be able to explain away these little difficulties of sentiment. Never trust to appearances. How very deceitful they are apt to be."
There was an air of candour about Todd, that might have deceived the devil himself. Notwithstanding all his hideous ugliness--notwithstanding his voice was of the lowest order, and notwithstanding that frightful laugh, and that obliquity of vision that seemed peculiar to himself in its terrible malignancy, there was a plausibility about his manner, when he pleased, that was truly astonishing. Even Mrs. Lovett, with all her knowledge of the man, felt that it was a hard struggle to disbelieve his representations. What must it have been to those who knew him not?
"No," said Mrs. Lovett, "it don't do to trust to appearances."
She still held the iron in her hand.
"Nor," added Todd, giving the razor he had been putting an edge to, a flourish, "nor will it do to listen always to the dictates of compassion; for if we did, what miseries might we inflict upon ourselves. Now, here is a cure in point."
"Where?"
"I allude to this little affair between us. If you had flown to Bow-street, and there, to spite me, made a full disclosure of certain little facts, why, the result would have been that we might both have slept in Newgate to-night."
"Yes, yes."
"And then there would have been no recal. You could not have freed us by telling the police that you had made a mistake. Then the gallows would have risen up in our dreams."
"Horrible!"
"And it being easily discovered that it was no love of public justice or feeling of remorse, that induced you to the betrayal, they would have shown you no mercy, but you would have swung from the halter amid the shouts and execrations of--"
"No, no!"
"I say yes."
"No more of this--no more of this. Can you bear to paint such a picture--does it not seem to you as though you stood upon that scaffold, and heard those shouts? Oh, horror, horror!"
"You don't like the picture?"
"No, no!"
"Ha! ha! Well, Mrs. Lovett, you and I had far better be friends than foes; and above all, you ought by this time to feel that you could trust me. The very fact that to all the world else I am false, ought to prove to you that to you I am true. No human being can exist purely isolated, and I am not an exception."
"Say no more--say no more. We will meet to-morrow."
"To-morrow be it, then."
"At ten."
"At ten be it, and then we will go to Black. Come now, since all this is settled, take a glass of wine to our--"
"No, no. Not that. I--I am not very well, A throbbing head-ache--a--a. That is, no!"
"As you please--as you please. By-the-by, did Black give me a receipt, or did he say it was not usual? Stay a moment, I will look in my secretaire. Sit down a moment in the shaving chair; I will be with you again directly."
"We will settle that to-morrow," said Mrs. Lovett; "I feel convinced that Black did not give you a receipt. Good-day."
She left the shop, unceremoniously carrying the iron with her. Todd breathed more freely when Mrs. Lovett was gone. He gave one of his horrible laughs as he watched her through the opening in his window.
"Ha! ha! Curses on her; but I will have her life first, ere she sees one guinea of my hoard!"
He saw Charley Green crossing the road.
"Ah, the boy comes back. 'Tis well. I don't know how or why it is, but the sight of that boy makes me uneasy. I think it will be better to cut his throat and have done with him. I--"
Todd was suddenly silent. He saw two women pass, and as they did so, one pointed to his shop and said something to the other, who lifted up her hands as though in pious horror. One of these women was Mrs. Ragg, poor Tobias's mother. The other was a stranger to Todd, but she looked like what Mrs. Ragg had been, namely, a laundress in the temple.
"Curses," he muttered.
Johanna entered the shop. Todd caught up his hat.
"Charley?"
"Yes, sir."
"I shall be gone five minutes. Be vigilant. If any one should come, you can say I have stepped a few doors off to trim Mr. Pentwheezle's whiskers."
"Yes, sir."
Todd darted from the shop. Mrs. Ragg and her friend were in that deep and earnest course that is a foe to rapid locomotion, so they had not got many yards from Todd's door. He was rarely seen, however, for either to--
"Paint a moral or adorn a tale"
Mrs. Ragg turned suddenly and pointed to the shop, and then both the ladies lifted up their hands as though in horror, after which they resumed their deep and all-absorbing discourse as before. Todd followed them closely, and yet with abundance of caution.
