Mrs. Lovett's immersion in the Thames had really not done her much harm. Perhaps the river was a little purer than we now find it, and probably it had not entirely got rid of its name of the "Silver Thames"--an appellation that now would be really out of place, unless we can imagine some silver of a much more dingy hue than silver ordinarily presents to the eye of the observer.
She soon, we find, settled in her own mind a plan of action, notwithstanding the rather complicated and embarrassing circumstances in which she found herself placed. That plan of action had for its basis the impeachment of Todd as a murderer, at the same time that it looked forward to her own escape from the hands of justice. Her first action was to quiet the cook in the regions below, for if she did not take some such step, she was very much afraid her establishment might come to a stand-still some few hours before she intended that it should do so.
With this object, she wrote upon a little slip of paper the following words, and passed it into the cellar through an almost imperceptible crevice in the flooring of the shop--
"Early to-morrow morning you shall have your liberty, together with gold to take you where you please. All I require of you is, that you do your ordinary duty to-night, and send up the nine o'clock batch of pies."
This, she considered, could not but have its due effect upon the discontented cook; and having transmitted it to him in the manner we have described, she sat down at her desk to write the impeachment of Todd. In the course of an hour, Mrs. Lovett had filled two pages of writing paper with a full account of how persons met their death in the barber's shop. She sealed the letter, and directed it to Sir Richard Blunt in a bold free hand.
"It is done," she said. "When I am far from London, as I can easily find the means of being, this will reach the hands of the magistrate to whom it is addressed, and who has the character of being sharp and active." (Mrs. Lovett did not know how sharp and active Sir Richard had already been in her affairs!) "He will act upon it. Todd, in the midst of his guilt, with many evidences of it about him, will be taken, and I shall escape! Yes, I shall escape, with about a tithe of what I ought to have--but I shall have revenge!"
On one of the shelves of the shop--certainly out of reach, but only just so--stood an old dirty-looking tin jar, such as fancy biscuits might be kept in. No one for a moment would have thought of looking for anything valuable in such a place; and yet, keeping the shop door locked the while, lest any intruder should at unawares pop in and see what she was about, it was to this tin can upon its dirty shelf that Mrs. Lovett cautiously went.
"Those who hide can find," she muttered. "I warrant now that Todd had searched in every seemingly cunning and intricate hiding-place in this whole house, and he has gone away disappointed. The secret of hiding anything is not to try to find some place where people may be baffled when they look, but to light upon some place into which they will not look at all."
With these words, Mrs. Lovett took down the tin can, and having from the upper portion of it removed some dusty, mouldy small biscuits, she dived her hand into it, and fished up a leathern bag. The tape that held its mouth together was sealed, and a glance sufficed to convince Mrs. Lovett that it had not been touched.
"Safe, safe!" she muttered. "It is but a thousand pounds, but it is safe, and it will enable me to fly from this place--it will enable me to have vengeance upon Todd; and small as the sum is, in some country, where money is worth more than it is in pampered England, I shall yet be able to live upon it. I will not complain if I have but the joy of reading an account of the execution of Todd. I fear I must deny myself the pleasure of seeing that sight."
The little leathern bag she hid about her, and then she carefully replaced the tin case upon the shelf whence she had taken it, to disburthen it of its costly contents.
After this Mrs. Lovett got much calmer. She had not the least apprehension now of a visit from Todd. She saw by the state of the house that his search had been a prolonged one, and until he shut up his own shop, she did not expect that he would again think of coming to Bell Yard, and as that would be ten o'clock, she fully believed that before then she would be far away.
And then she sat behind her counter, looking only a shade or so paler than was her wont, and moving her lips slightly now and then as she settled in her own mind the course that she would take so as to baffle all pursuit.
"With no luggage but my gold and notes," she muttered, "I will leave this place at half past nine, by which time the last batch of pies will have been up and sold, and all will be quiet. That will be a little more money to me. Then on foot I will take my way to Highgate--yes, to Highgate, and I will trust no conveyance, for that might be a ready means of tracing me. I will go on foot. Then passing Highgate, I will go on foot upon the Great North Road until some coach overtakes me. It will not matter whither it be going, so that it takes me on that road; and by one conveyance and another, I shall at length reach Liverpool, from which port I shall find some vessel starting to some place abroad, where I can live free from the chance of detection. Yes, that is the plan! That is the plan!"
Mrs. Lovett was a woman of some tact, and the plan of operations she had chalked out was all very well, provided such very malapropos proceedings had not taken place at Sweeney Todd's in the meantime. Little did Mrs. Lovett suspect what was there transpiring.
And now we will leave her for a brief space behind her counter, ruminating, and at odd times smiling to herself in a ghastly fashion, while we pop down to the cellars, and take a glance at the impatient imprisoned cook.
About ten minutes before he received the letter--if letter the little flattering memorandum of Mrs. Lovett could be called--from his mistress, the cook had been a little alarmed by a noise in the stone pantry, where the mysterious meat used to make its appearance. Upon proceeding to the spot with a light, he found lying upon the floor a sealed paper, upon lifting which he saw was addressed to himself, and at one corner was written the following words--
"Definitive instructions for to-night from Sir Richard Blunt."
To tear open the letter and to read it with great care, was the work of a few moments only, and then drawing a long breath, the cook said--
"Thank God! I shall not stop another night in this place. I shall be free before midnight. Oh, what an oppressive--what an overpowering joy it will be to me once more to see the sky--to breathe pure fresh air, and to feel that I have bid adieu for ever to this dreadful--dreadful place."
The poor cook looked around him with a shudder, and then he had hardly placed the magistrate's letter securely in his bosom, when the little missive from Mrs. Lovett came fluttering to his feet, through the crack in the roof.
"'Tis well," he said, when he had read it. "'Tis very well. This will chime in most admirably with my instructions from Sir Richard Blunt. Mrs. Lovett I thank you. You shall have the nine o'clock batch. Oh, yes, you shall have them. I am all obedience. Alas, if she whom I loved had not been false to me, I might yet, young as I am, feel the sunshine of joy in the great world again. But I can never love another, and she is lost--lost to me for ever. Ay, for ever!"
With this the poor cook, who but a few moments before had been so elated by the thoughts of freedom, sat himself down, and in quite a disconsolate manner rested his head upon his hands, and gave himself up to bitter fancy.
"That she should be false to me," he said mournfully. "It does indeed almost transcend belief. She, so young, so gentle, so innocent, and so guileless. If an angel from Heaven had come and told me as much I should have doubted still; but I cannot mistrust the evidence of my own senses. I saw her. Yes, I saw her!"
The cook rose and paced the gloomy place to and fro in the restlessness of a blighted heart, and no one to look at him could for a moment have supposed that he was near his freedom from an imprisonment of the most painful and maddening description to one of his impatient temperament. But so it is with us all; no sooner do we to all appearance see the end of one evil, than with an activity of imagination worthy to be excited in better things, we provide ourselves with some real or unreal reason for the heartache.
"I will so contrive," said the cook, "that before I leave for ever the land of my birth, I will once more look upon her. Yes, I will once again drink in, from a contemplation of her wondrous beauty, most delicious poison; and then when I have feasted my eyes, and perchance grieved my heart, I will at once go far away, and beneath the sun of other skies than this, I will wait for death."
The more the poor cook thought of this unknown beauty of his, who surely had behaved to him very ill, or he could not have spoken of her in such terms, the more sorrow got upon his countenance, and imparted its sad sweetness to his tones. Surely the time had not been very far distant when that young man must have been in a widely different sphere of life to that limited one in which he now moved.
Suddenly, however, he was recalled to a consciousness of what he had to do, by the clock striking seven. He counted the strokes, and then pausing before one of the large ovens, he said--
"The time has now come when I must cease to be making preparations to obey the mandate of my imperious mistress. She will not now be content merely to have issued her orders, but she will keep an eye upon me to see that they are being executed, and unarmed as I am, and without the knowledge of what power of mischief she may have, I feel that it would not be safe yet to provoke her. No--no. I must seem to do her bidding."
With this, the cook set about the manufacture of the pies; and as it would really have been much more troublesome to sham making them than to make them in earnest, he really did manufacture a hundred of them.
But it was after all with a very bad grace that the poor imprisoned cook now made the pies; and probably so very indifferent a batch of those delicious pieces of pastry had never before found its way into the ovens of Mrs. Lovett. The cook was not wrong in his idea that his imperious mistress would take a peep at him before nine o'clock. At about eight, the little grating in the high-up door was tapped by something that Mrs. Lovett had in her hand, with which to attract the attention of the cook. He looked up, and saw her dimly.
"Are you busy?" she said.
"Yes, madam, as busy as the nine o'clock batch usually makes me. Do you not hear the oven?"
"I do--'tis well."
"Ah, madam," said the dissembling cook, "it will be well, indeed, if you keep your word with me, and set me to-night at freedom."
"Do you doubt it?"
"I have no particular reason to doubt it, further than that the unfortunate are always inclined to doubt too good news. That is all, madam."
"If you doubt, you will be agreeably disappointed, for I shall keep my word with you. You have done for me much better than I ever expected, and I will be grateful to you now that you are going. I have said that you shall not go without means, and you shall have a purse of twenty guineas to help you on your way wherever you wish."
"How kind you are, madam! Ah, I shall be able now to forgive you for all that I have suffered in this place--and, after all, it has been a refuge from want."
"It has. No one can be better pleased than I am to find you view things so reasonably. Send up the nine o'clock batch; and then wait patiently until I come to you."
"I will."
"Till then, good-night!"
Mrs. Lovett left the grating; and as she went up to the shop, she muttered to herself--
"They will, when they find him here, suspect he is an accomplice. Well, let them hang him, for all I care. What can it matter to me?"
