The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 344: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

that he had to do previous to leaving England. One item ran thus:— “Mem. To pay Mrs. Lovett in full.” After that item he wrote paid, and then he laughed again in his hideous way, and leaning his head upon his hand, or rather his chin upon it, he spoke in a chuckling tone. “She will turn up some day—yes, she will turn up some day, and the swollen disgusting mass, that was once the bold and glittering Mrs. Lovett, will be pulled through the river mud by a boat-hook, and then there will be an inquest, and a verdict of found drowned, with a statement that the body was in too advanced a state of decomposition to be identified. Ha!” Todd actually rubbed his hands together, and then he took a good drop of brandy, and felt himself quite a pleasant sort of character, and one upon whom the fickle goddess, Fortune, had taken to smiling in her most bland and pleasant way. “When I am snug and comfortable at Hamburgh,” he said, “how eagerly I shall look for the London papers, to let me know how far the fire in Fleet Street, that is to happen to-night, has extended. How I shall laugh if it travel to the old church, and burns that down likewise. Ha! I think I shall take to laughing as a regular thing when T am fairly abroad with all my money, and safe—so safe as I shall be, so very—very safe.” Yes, there sat Sweeney Todd rejoicing. He might have said with Romeo in Mantua— “My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne, And all this day an unaccustomed spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.” But as it was with the young husband of the sainted Juliet, the day of reckoning was coming to Todd, and the spirit that spoke of comfort, joy, and security to his heart and brain, was after all a false one. But we must leave Todd to his self-felicitations, while we request the reader’s kind company to Bell Yard, for certain things had taken place in the establishment of Mrs. Lovett which it is highly necessary should find a place in this veracious and carefully collected narrative. When Mrs. Lovett, with a full notion of the projected perfidy of Todd, left home for the purpose of bringing that individual to a sense of his wrongdoings, and insisting upon a settlement, she did not awaken popular remark or popular interest by shutting up her shop, but she took such measures as she believed would last very well until she got back again. She was not sanguine upon the subject of getting back very soon, for she had made up her mind that back she would not come without the money. Previously, then, to leaving, she sought the narrow opening in the strong iron door through which she was accustomed to speak to the discontented cook, and fastening a bottle of wine by the neck to a piece of cord, she let it down into the prison-house of pie- manufactory, saying as she did so— “T keep my word with you. Here is wine. I trust that you will keep your word with me. A batch is wanted at twelve to-day, as you know.” “Very well,” said the cook. “Very well. They shall be ready. But you promised me freedom, Mrs. Lovett.” “T did, and freedom you shall have shortly. All you have to do now is to attend to business for a little while. When I ring at twelve, send up the batch.” “T will—I will. But yet a “What is it now?” “If you only could fancy, Mrs. Lovett, what it was to pass one’s time in this place, you would have some feeling for me. Will you send or bring me some real butcher’s meat?” Bang went the wicket-door, and the cook found himself once again shut out from the world in those dismal vaults of Mrs. Lovett’s house. “Twelve o’clock,” muttered Mrs. Lovett, as she proceeded to her parlour. “I shall surely be home by twelve. Todd will find out that I am too persevering for him. His fears will force him to pay me, although his justice never would. I will threaten him him into payment. The odious villain! to attempt yet to deprive me of all that I have toiled for, with the exception of what of late I have had the prudence to keep in the house!” The next thing that Mrs. Lovett had to do was to get some one to effectually mind the shop in her absence, and for that purpose she pitched upon a Mrs. Stag, a tall, gaunt-looking female, who acted as a kind of supernumerary laundress in Lincoln’s Inn. With this person Mrs. Lovett felt that she need have no delicacy as regards locking-up and so forth; and as Mrs. Stag laboured under a defect of hearing, she would not be likely to pay any attention to what might take place below; but still Mrs. Lovett was determined to leave nothing to chance, and she left Mrs. Stag a note which was to go down on the movable platform to the cook in case she, Mrs. Lovett, was not at home at the twelve o’clock batch. This note contained the following words, which, as Mrs. Stag’s parents and guardians had omitted to include reading in her education, were perfectly safe from her scrutiny— “Send up the four o’clock batch, and you will be free within twenty-four hours from then.” This she concluded would keep him quiet; and within twenty-four hours Mrs. Lovett felt that her affairs must be settled in some CORniclooo S CO)