We return to Johanna Oakley. "What is the meaning of all this?" said Sweeney Todd, as he sat in his shop about the hour of twelve on the morning following that upon which Johanna Oakley and her friend Arabella had concerted so romantic a plan of operations regarding him. "What is the meaning of all this? Am I going mad?"
Now Todd's question was no doubt a result of some peculiar sensations that had come over him; but, propounded as it was to silence and to vacancy, it of course got no answer. A cold perspiration had suddenly broke out upon his brow, and, for the space of about ten minutes, he was subject to one of those strange foreshadowings of coming ills to him, which of late had begun to make his waking hours anything but joyous, and his dreams hideous.
"What can it mean?" he said. "What can it mean?"
He wiped his face with a miserable looking handkerchief, and then, with a deep sigh, he said—
"It is that fiend in the shape of a woman!"
No doubt he meant his dear friend, Mrs. Lovett. Alas! what a thorn she was in the side of Sweeney Todd. How poor a thing, by way of recompense for the dark and terrible suspicions he had of her, was his heaped up wealth? Todd—yes, Sweeney Todd, who had waded knee-deep—knee-deep do we say?—lip-deep in blood for gold, had begun to find that there was something more precious still which he had bartered for it—peace! That peace of mind—that sweet serenity of soul, which, like the love of God, is beautiful, and yet passeth understanding. Yes, Todd was beginning to find out that he had bartered the jewel for the setting! What a common mistake. Does not all the world do it? They do; but the difference between Todd and common people merely was that he played the game with high stakes.
"Yes," added Todd, after a pause, "curses on her, it is that fiend in the shape of a woman, who
'Cows my better part of man,'
and she or I must fall. That is settled; yes—she or I. There was a time when I used to say she and I could not live in the same country; but now I feel that we cannot both live in the same world. She must go—she must lapse into the sleep of death."
Todd rose, and stalked to and fro in his shop. He felt as if something was going to happen: that undefinable fidgetty feeling which will attack all persons at times, came over him, and yet it was not a feeling of deep apprehension that was at his heart.
"Oh," he muttered, "it is the recollection of that dreadful woman—that fiend, who, with a seeming prescience, knows when there is poison in her glass, and baffles me. It is the dim and shadowy thought of what I must do with her that shatters me. If poison will not do the deed, steel or a bullet must. Ah!"
Some one was trying the handle of the shop door, and so timidly was it tried, that Todd stood still to listen, without saying "Come in," or otherwise encouraging the visitor.
"Who is it?" he gasped.
Still the handle of the door-lock only shook. To be sure, it was a difficult door to open to all who did not know it well. Todd had taken care of that, for if there was anything more than another which such a man as he might be fairly enough presumed to dislike, it would be to be glided in upon by the sudden opening of an easy-going door.
"Come in," he now cried.
The person without was evidently anxious to obey the invitation, and a more strenuous effort was made to unfasten the door. It yielded at length. A young and pretty looking lad, apparently of about thirteen or fourteen years of age, stood upon the threshold. He and Sweeney Todd looked at each other in silence for a few moments. If a painter or a sculptor could have caught them as they stood, and transferred them to canvas or to marble, he might have called them an idea of Guilt and Innocence. There was Todd, with evil passions and wickedness written upon every feature of his face. There was the boy, with the rosy gentleness and innocence of Heaven upon his brow. God made both these creatures! It was Todd who broke the silence. A gathering flush was upon the face of the boy, and he could not speak.
"What do you want?" said Todd.
He rattled his chair as he spoke, as though he would have said, "It is not to be shaved." The boy was too much engaged with his own thoughts to pay much attention to Todd's pantomime. He evidently, though, wished to say something, which he could not command breath to give utterance to. Like the "Amen" of Macbeth, something he would fain have uttered, seemed to stick in his throat.
"What is it?" again demanded Todd, eagerly.
This roused the boy. The boy, do we say. Ah, our readers have already recognised in that boy the beautiful and enthusiastic Johanna Oakley.
"There is a bill in your window—"
Johanna Applies To Todd To Become His Errand Boy.
Johanna Applies To Todd To Become His Errand Boy.
"A what?"
Todd had forgotten the announcement regarding the youth he wanted, with a taste for piety.
"A bill. You want a boy, sir."
"Oh," said Todd, as the object of the visit at once thus became clear and apparent to him. "Oh, that's it."
"Yes, sir."
Todd held up his hand to his eyes, as though he were shading them from sunlight, as he gazed upon Johanna, and then, in an abrupt tone of voice, he said—
"You won't do."
"Thank you, sir."
She moved towards the door. Her hand touched the handle. It was not fast. The door opened. Another moment, and she would have been gone.
"Stop!" cried Todd.
She returned at once.
"You don't look like a lad in want of a situation. Your clothes are good—your whole appearance is that of a young gentleman. What do you mean by coming here to ask to be an errand boy in a barber's shop? I don't understand it. You had different expectations."
"Yes, sir. But Mrs. Green—"
"Mrs. who?"
"Green, sir, my mother-in-law, don't use me well, and I would rather go to sea, or seek my living in any way, than go back again to her; and if I were to come into your service, all I would ask would be, that you did not let her know where I was."
"Humph! Your mother-in-law, you say?"
"Yes, sir. I have been far happier since I ran away from her, than I have been for a long time past."
"Ah, you ran away? Where lives she?"
"At Oxford. I came to London in the waggon, and at every step the lazy horses took, I felt a degree of pleasure that I was placing a greater distance between me and oppression."
"Your own name?"
"Charley Green. It was all very well as long as my father lived; but when he was no more, my mother-in-law began her ill-usage of me. I bore it as long as I could, and then I ran away. If you can take me, sir, I hope you will."
"Go along with you. You won't suit me at all. I wonder at your impudence in coming."
"No harm done, sir. I will try ............