Suddenly he heard, or fancied he heard a noise above in the house, like the sudden shutting of a door. "Oh," thought Sir Richard, "all is safe. She is shutting herself in for the night, I suppose. Well, Mrs. Lovett, we will see what we can find in your cupboards."
The little bit of wax light, which Sir Richard had lighted, gave but a weak kind of twilight while he moved about with it in his hand, but when he stuck it on a corner of the mantel-shelf it burnt much clearer, and was sufficient to enable him just to see what he was about. So thoroughly impressed was he with the idea that Mrs. Lovett had retired to rest, that he paid no sort of attention to the house, and may be said, in a manner of speaking, to have negligently shut his ears to all sounds that did not violently attack them. He opened a cupboard, in which were some books, and on the top-shelf, lying in a confused kind of heap, were some watches, and several sets of very rich buckles for shoes. There were, likewise, several snuff-boxes in the lot. Were these little trifles presented to Mrs. Lovett, by Todd, as proofs of the thriving business he was carrying on? Sir Richard put two of the watches in his pocket.
"These may be identified," he said. "And now, if I can but find the door by which she descends to the oven below, I—"
At this moment he was startled by a sudden accession of light in the room. His first idea, and a natural enough one too, was, that the little wax light was playing some vagaries incidental to all lights, and he turned rapidly from the cupboard to look at it. What was his astonishment to see the door that led to the upper part of the house open, and Mrs. Lovett, partially undressed, standing upon the threshold with a chamber-candlestick in her hand in which was a rushlight, the dim and dubious rays from which had produced the extra illumination that had first startled Sir Richard Blunt. No wonder that, with amazement upon his countenance, he now glanced upon this vision, for such it looked like at the moment; and yet he saw that Mrs. Lovett it was to all intents and purposes, and that he was discovered in his exploring expedition in her parlour appeared to be one of those facts it would have required no small share of moral hardihood to dispute. Seeing, however, should not always be believing, despite the venerable saying which asserts as much.
Mrs. Lovett In A State Of Somnambulism.
Mrs. Lovett In A State Of Somnambulism.
"I must apprehend her, now," thought Sir Richard Blunt; "I have no resource but to apprehend her at once."
With this object he was about to dart forward, when something strange about the appearance of Mrs. Lovett arrested his attention, and stayed his progress. He paused and remained leaning partly upon the back of a chair, while she slowly advanced into the room, and then as she came nearer to him he became convinced of what he had begun to suspect, namely—that she was walking in her sleep. There is something awful in this wandering of the mortal frame when its senses seem to be locked up in death. It looks like a resurrection from the grave—as though a corpse was again revisiting
"The glimpses of the pale moon;"
and even Sir Richard Blunt, with all his constitutional and acquired indifference to what would be expected to startle any one else could not help shrinking back a little, and feeling an unusual sort of terror. This transient nervousness of his, though, soon passed away, and then he set himself to watch the actions of Mrs. Lovett with all the keenness of intense interest and vividly awakened curiosity. She did not disappoint him. Moving forward into the room with a slow and stately action, so that the little flame of the rushlight was by no means disturbed, she reached the middle of the parlour and then she paused. She assumed such a natural attitude of listening, that Sir Richard Blunt voluntarily shrunk down behind the chair, for it seemed to him at the moment that she must have heard him. Then, in a low and slightly indistinct tone, she spoke—
"Hush! hush! So still. The poison! Where is the poison?—Will he take it? Ah, that is the question, and yet how clear it is. But he is fiend-like in his suspicions. When will he come?"
She moved on towards the cupboard, in which the decanter of poisoned wine had been placed, and opening it, she felt in vain upon the shelf for it. It was still upon the table, and if anything more than another could have been a convincing proof of the mere mechanical actions of the somnambulist, this fact, that she passed the wine where it was, and only recollected where it had been, would have been amply sufficient. After finding that her search was ineffectual, she turned from the cupboard, and stood for a few moments in silence. Then a horror shook her frame, and she said—
"They must all die. Bandage your eyes, and you will shut out the death shrieks. Yes, that will be something, to get rid of those frightful echoes. Bandage after bandage will, and shall do it."
Sir Richard stood silently watching; but such was the horror of the tones in which she spoke, that even his heart felt cold, as though the blood flowed but sluggishly through its accustomed channels.
"Who," he thought to himself, "for the world's wealth, would have this woman's memory of the past?"
She still held the light, and it appeared to him as though she were about to go into the shop, but she paused before she reached the half-glass door of communication between it and the parlour, and shook like one in an ague.
"Another!—another!" she said. "How strange it is that I always know. The air seems full of floating particles of blood, and they all fall upon me! Off, off. Oh, horror! horror! I choke—I choke. Off, I say. How the hot blood steams up in a sickly vapour. There—there, now! Why does Todd let them shriek in such a fashion?"
She now shook so, that Sir Richard Blunt made sure she would either drop the light she carried, or, at all events, shake it out, but neither of these contingencies took place; and, after a few moments, she got more calm. The violent agitation of her nerves gradually subsided. She spoke horrors, but it was in a different tone; and abandoning, apparently, the intention of going into the shop, she approached a portion of the parlour which had not yet been subjected to the scrutiny of Sir Richard Blunt, although it would not ultimately have escaped him. The appearance of this part of the room was simply that there was there a cupboard, but the back of this seeming cu............