Amid all the exciting circumstances that it has been our duty to relate—amid the turmoil of events consequent upon the wild villainy of Todd, and the urgent attempts of Mrs. Lovett to get her accounts audited—we have very much lost sight of Mrs. Oakley. Perhaps the reader has not been altogether unwilling to lose sight of a lady who, we will admit, was not calculated to make great advances in his esteem.
But yet one thing must be recollected, and that is that Mrs. Oakley is Johanna's mother! That we opine is a fact which she should be given some degree of attention for; and insomuch as the bright eyes of the fair and noble-minded Johanna might be dimmed by an additional tear if anything very serious was to become of Mrs. Oakley, we will go a little out of our way just now to see what that deluded parson-ridden woman is about.
The outgoings and the incomings of Mrs. Oakley for a long time past had been so various and discursive, that the poor spectacle-maker had long since left off considering that he had anything in the shape of a domestic establishment. Certainly, Johanna was always at hand, until lately, to attend to her father's comforts—but the wife never. There was either a prayer-meeting, or a love-feast, or some congregation or another assembled to hear or to see Mr. Lupin; so that if the wife and the mother went to such places to learn her duties, it was pretty evident that the lesson occupied the whole of her time.
But still at times she did come home. At odd seasons she was to be found groaning and snuffling at the fireside in the little dark parlour at the back of the shop; but now for some few days she had totally disappeared.
Mr. Oakley was alone.
Up a dingy court in the City, not a hundred miles from the dingy purlieus of Monkwell Street, there was a dingy conventicle, upon the front of which the word "Ebenezer" announced its character, or its would-be character. The upper part of this chapel was converted into a dwelling-place, and there luxuriated Mr. Lupin.
The flock (geese, of course!) of the reverend gent rented the edifice, so that there he was rent free, and there he was in the habit of inviting to tea such of the females of his congregation who either had money of their own, or whose husbands had tills easily accessible, or pockets into which the wife's hand could be dipped at discretion; and dipped it generally was at in-discretion;—for folks, whether they be wives or not, when they can dip into other folks' pockets, do not always know how much to take just and no more.
Now Mr. Lupin had established a Three-days-two-hours and-general-subscription-saving grace-prayer, which consisted of praying every two hours for three days and three nights, and at each prayer making an offering in hard cash for the use of the church and the gospel, he (Mr. Lupin) being both the church and the gospel.
Alas! what will not human folly in the name of religion stoop to! There were women—mothers of families, who came to Mr. Lupin's house above the chapel with what plunder they could get together, and there actually stand the three days and three nights, the reverend gent making it is duty to keep them awake at the end of every two hours at least, as he pretended to pray, and sending them away completely placid, but with the comfortable conviction, as they themselves expressed it, that their "souls were saved alive."
Mrs. Oakley was one of these dupes.
Now, although these proceedings were very profitable to Mr. Lupin, he found that it was very irksome to get up himself in the middle of the night to awaken the sinners to prayer, so he used to introduce brandy-and-water after he had pretty well tired out his devotee, and ascertained the amount of money he was likely to get, and in the confusion of mind consequent upon that gentle stimulant, the time went on very glibly.
"Sister Oakley," said Lupin, on the evening of the first day of Mrs. Oakley's residence beneath his highly-spiritual roof. "Sister Oakley, truly you will be a great brand snatched from the burning—How much money have you got?"
"Alas!" said Mrs. Oakley, "business must be bad, for I only found in the till three pounds eleven-and-sixpence."
Mr. Lupin groaned.
"But I will from time to time take what I can, and let you have it, for the welfare of one's precious soul is above all price."
"Truly, Sister Oakley, it is, and you may as well give me the small instalment now if it shall seem right unto thee, sister. I thank you in the name of the Lord! Humph—only three pounds eleven-and-sixpence. Well, well, we shall do better another time, perhaps, sister. Rest in peace, and I will from time to time come in and awaken thee to prayer. Truly and verily I have a hard time of it always."
It was on the second night that fatigue had had a great effect upon Mrs. Oakley, and upon the reverend gent likewise that he brought her a tumbler of hot brandy-and-water, saying as he placed it by her—
"Truly I have had a dream, and the Lord told me to give you this. I pray you take it, Mrs. O., and may it put you in mind of the glory of the world that is to come—Amen!"
Mr. Lupin retired, and as the stimulant was not at all an ungrateful thing to Mrs. Oakley, she was about to raise it to her lips, when a stunning knock at the chapel door made her give such a start, that she dropped glass, and spirit, and spoon to the ground. No doubt, a repetition of the knock at the moment, prevented Lupin from hearing the crash, which the fall in spirits produced. Mrs. Oakley heard him open the window of his room, and in a voice of stifled anger cry—
"Who is there? Who is there?"
"It's me, Groggs, and you know it," said a female voice. "Come down and open the door, or I will rouse the whole neighbourhood."
"Come, you be off. I have some one here."
"What, another idiot? Ho!—ho!—ho! Why, Groggs, they will find you out some day, and limb you. If they only knew that you were Groggs the returned transport, how they would mob you to be sure. But I have come for money, old fellow, and I will have it. I ain't drunk, but I have had enough—just enough, mark me old boy, and you know what I am capable of when that's the case. I am your wife and you know it. Ho! ho!"
Dab came the knocker again upon the chapel door.<............