"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 pa............