by Oscar Wilde
And it was astonishing to see with what impartiality and with tact the fair pastry-cook bestowed her smiles upon her admirers, so that none could say he was neglected, while it was extremely difficult for anyone to say he was preferred.
This was pleasant, but at the same time it was provoking to all except Mrs Lovett, in whose favour it got up a sort of excitement that paid extraordinarily well, because some of the young fellows thought, and thought it with wisdom too, that he who consumed the most pies would be in the most likely way to receive the greatest number of smiles from the lady.
Acting upon this supposition, some of her more enthusiastic admirers went on consuming the pies until they were almost ready to burst. But there were others again, of a more philosophic turn of mind, who went for the pies only, and did not care one jot for Mrs Lovett. These declared that her smile was cold and uncomfortable—that it was upon her lips, but had no place in her heart—that it was the set smile of a ballet-dancer, which is about one of the most unmirthful things in existence.
Then there were some who went even beyond this, and, while they admitted the excellence of the pies, and went every day to partake of them, swore that Mrs Lovett had quite a sinister aspect, and that they could see what a merely superficial affair her blandishments were, and that there was ‘a lurking devil in her eye’ that, if once roused, would be capable of achieving some serious things, and might not be so easily quelled again. By five minutes past twelve Mrs Lovett’s counter was full, and the savoury steam of the hot pies went out in fragrant clouds into Bell-yard, being sniffed up by many a poor wretch passing by who lacked the means of making one in the throng that were devouring the dainty morsels within.
‘Why, Tobias Ragg,’ said a young man, with his mouth full of pie, ‘where have you been since you left Mr Snow’s in Paper-buildings? I have not seen you for some days.’
‘No,’ said Tobias, ‘I have gone into another line: instead of being a lawyer, and helping to shave the clients, I am going to shave the lawyers now. A twopenny pork, if you please, Mrs Lovett. Ah! who would be an emperor, if he couldn’t get pies like these—eh, Master Clift?’
‘Well, they are good; of course we know that, Tobias; but do you mean to say you are going to be a barber?’
‘Yes, I am with Sweeney Todd, the barber of Fleet Street, close to St Dunstan’s.’ ‘The deuce you are! well, I am going to a party tonight, and I’ll drop in and get dressed and shaved, and patronise your master.’
Tobias put his mouth close to the ear of the young lawyer, and in a fearful sort of whisper said the one word—‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t? what for?’
Tobias made no answer; and throwing down his twopence, scampered out of the shop as fast as he could. He had only been sent a message by Sweeney Todd in the neighbourhood; but, as he heard the clock strike twelve, and two penny-pieces were lying at the bottom of his pocket, it was not in human nature to resist running into Lovett’s and converting them into a pork pie.
‘What an odd thing!’ thought the young lawyer. ‘I’ll just drop in at Sweeney Todd’s now on purpose, and ask Tobias what he means. I quite forgot, too, while he was here, to ask him what all that riot was about a dog at Todd’s door.’
‘A veal!’ said a young man, rushing in; ‘a twopenny veal, Mrs Lovett.’ When he got it he consumed it with voracity, and then, noticing an acquaintance in the shop, he whispered to him, ‘I can’t stand it any more. I have cut the spectacle-maker—Johanna is faithless, and I know not what to do.’
‘Have another pie.’
‘But what’s a pie to Johanna Oakley? You know, Dilki, that I only went there to be near the charmer. Damn the shutters and curse the spectacles! She loves another and I am a desperate individual! I should like to do some horrible and desperate act. Oh, Johanna, Johanna! you have driven me to the verge of what do you call it—I’ll take another veal, if you please, Mrs Lovett.’
‘Well, I was wondering how you got on,’ said his friend Dilki, ‘and thinking of calling upon you.
‘Oh! it was all right—it was all right at first: she smiled upon me.’
‘You are quite sure she didn’t laugh at you?’
‘Sir! Mr Dilki!’
‘I say, are you sure that instead of smiling upon you she was not laughing at you?’
‘Am I sure? Do you wish to insult me, Mr Dilki? I look upon you as a puppy, sir—a horrid puppy.’
‘Very good; now I am convinced that the girl has been having a bit of fun at your expense. Are you not aware, Sam, that your nose turns up so much that it’s enough to pitch you head over heels? How do you suppose that any girl under forty-five would waste a word upon you? Mind, I don’t say this to offend you in any way, but just quietly, by way of asking a question.’
Sam looked daggers, and probably he might have attempted some desperate act in the pie-shop, if at the moment he had not caught the eye of Mrs Lovett, and he saw by the expression on that lady’s face that anything in the shape of a riot would be speedily suppressed, so he darted out of the place at once to carry his sorrows and his bitterness elsewhere.
It was only between twelve and one o’clock that such a tremendous rush and influx of visitors came to the pie-shop, for, although there was a good custom the whole day, and the concern was a money-making one from morning till night, it was at that hour principally that the great consumption of pies took place.
Tobias knew from experience that Sweeney Todd was a skilful calculator of the time it ought to take to go to different places, and accordingly, since he had occupied some portion of that most valuable of all commodities at Mrs Lovett’s, he arrived quite breathless at his master’s shop.
There sat the mysterious dog with the hat, and Tobias lingered for a moment to speak to the animal. Dogs are great physiognomists; and as the creature looked into Tobias’s face he seemed to draw a favourable conclusion regarding him, for he submitted to a caress.
‘Poor fellow!’ said Tobias. ‘I wish I knew what had become of your master, but it made me shake like a leaf to wake up last night and ask myself the question. You shan’t starve, though, if I can help it. I haven’t much for myself, but you shall have some of it.’
As he spoke, Tobias took from his pocket some not very tempting cold meat, which was intended for his own dinner, and which he had wrapped up in not the cleanest of cloths. He gave a piece to the dog, who took it with a dejected air, and then crouched down at Sweeney Todd’s door again.
Just then, as Tobias was about to enter the shop, he thought he heard from within a strange shrieking sort of sound. On the impulse of the moment he recoiled a step or two, and then, from some other impulse, he dashed forward at once, and entered the shop.
The first object that presented itself to his attention, lying upon a side table, was a hat with a handsome gold-headed walking-cane lying across it.
The armchair in which customers usually sat to be shaved, was vacant, and Sweeney Todd’s face was just projected into the shop from the back parlour, and wearing a most singular and hideous expression.
‘Well, Tobias,’ he said, as he advanced, rubbing his great hands together, ‘well, Tobias! so you could not resist the pie-shop?’
‘How does he know?’ thought Tobias. ‘Yes, sir, I have been to the pie-shop, but I didn’t stay a minute.’
‘Hark ye, Tobias! the only thing I can excuse in the way of delay upon an errand is for you to get one of Mrs Lovett’s pies: that I can look over, so think no more about it. Are they not delicious, Tobias?’
‘Yes, sir, they are; but some gentleman seems to have left his hat and stick.’
‘Yes,’ said Sweeney Todd, ‘he has’; and lifting the stick he struck Tobias a blow with it that felled him to the ground. ‘Lesson the second to Tobias Ragg, which teaches him to make no remarks about what does not concern him. You may think what you like, Tobias Ragg, but you shall say only what I like.’
‘I won’t endure it,’ cried the boy; ‘I won’t be knocked about in this way, I tell you, Sweeney Todd, I won’t.’
‘You won’t! have you forgotten your mother?’
‘You say you have a power over my mother; but I don’t know what it is, and I cannot and will not believe it; I’ll leave you, and, come of it what may, I’ll go to sea or anywhere rather than stay in such a place as this.’
‘Oh, you will, will you? then, Tobias, you and I must come to some explanation. I’ll tell you what power I have over your mother, and then perhaps you will be satisfied. Last winter, when the frost had continued eighteen weeks, and you and your mother were starving, she was employed to clean out the chambers of a Mr King, in the Temple, a cold-hearted, severe man, who never forgave anything in all his life and never will.’
‘I remember,’ said Tobias: ‘we were starving and owed a whole guinea for rent; but mother borrowed it and paid it, and after that got a situation where she now is.’
‘Ah, you think so. The rent was paid; but, Tobias, my boy, a word in your ear—she took a silver candlestick from Mr King’s chambers to pay it. I know it. I can prove it. Think of that, Tobias, and be discreet.’
‘Have mercy upon us,’ said the boy: ‘they would take her life!’
‘Her life!’ screamed Sweeney Todd; ‘ay, to be sure they would: they would hang her—hang her, I say; and now mind, if you force me, by any conduct of your own, to mention this thing, you are your mother’s executioner. I had better go and be deputy hangman at once, and turn her off.’
‘Horrible! horrible!’
‘Oh, you don’t like that? indeed, that don’t suit you, Master Tobias? Be discreet then, and you have nothing to fear. Do not force me to show a power which will be as complete as it is terrible.’
‘I will say nothing—I will think nothing.’
‘’Tis well; now go and put that hat and stick in yonder cupboard. I shall be absent for a short time; and if anyone comes, tell them I am called out, and shall not return for an hour or perhaps longer, and mind you take good care of the shop.
Sweeney Todd took off his apron, and put on an immense coat with huge lapels, and then, clapping a three-cornered hat on his head, and casting a strange withering kind of look at Tobias, he sallied forth into the street.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE MEETING IN THE TEMPLE
Alas! Poor Johanna Oakley—thy day has passed away and brought with it no tidings of him you love; and oh! what a weary day, full of fearful doubts and anxieties, has it been! Tortured by doubts, hopes, and fears, that day was one of the most wretched that poor Johanna had ever passed. Not even two years before, when she had parted with her lover, had she felt such an exquisite pang of anguish as now filled her heart, when she saw the day gliding away and the evening creeping on apace, without word or token from Mark Ingestrie. She did not herself know, until all the agony of disappointment had come across her, how much she had counted upon hearing something from him on that occasion; and when the evening deepened into night, and hope grew so slender that she could no longer rely upon it for the least support, she was compelled to proceed to her own chamber, and, feigning indisposition to avoid her mother’s questions—for Mrs Oakley was at home, and making herself and everybody else as uncomfortable as possible—she flung herself on her humble couch and gave way to a perfect passion of tears.
‘Oh, Mark, Mark!’ she said, ‘why do you thus desert me, when I have relied so abundantly upon your true affection? Oh, why have you not sent me some token of your existence, and of your continued love? the merest, slightest word would have been sufficient, and I should have been happy.’
She wept then such bitter tears as only such a heart as hers can know, when it feels the deep and bitter anguish of desertion, and when the rock upon which it supposed it had built its fondest hopes resolves itself to a mere quicksand, in which becomes engulfed all of good that this world can afford to the just and the beautiful.
Oh, it is heartrending to think that such a one as she, Johanna Oakley, a being so full of all those holy and gentle emotions which should constitute the truest felicity, should thus feel that life to her had lost its greatest charms, and that nothing but despair remained.
‘I will wait until midnight,’ she said; ‘and even then it will be a mockery to seek repose, and tomorrow I must myself make some exertion to discover some tidings of him.’
Then she began to ask herself what that exertion could be, and in what manner a young and inexperienced girl, such as she was, could hope to succeed in her enquiries. And the midnight hour came at last, telling her that, giving the utmost latitude to the word day, it had gone at last, and she was left despairing.
She lay the whole of that night sobbing, and only at times dropping into an unquiet slumber, during which painful images were presented to her, all, however, having the same tendency, and pointing towards the presumed fact that Mark Jngestrie was no more.
But the weariest night to the weariest waker will pass away, and at length the soft and beautiful dawn stole into the chamber of Johanna Oakley, chasing away some of the more horrible visions of the night, but having little effect in subduing the sadness that had taken possession of her.
She felt that it would be better for her to make her appearance below than to hazard the remarks and conjectures that her not doing so would give rise to, so, all unfitted as she was to engage in the most ordinary intercourse, she crept down to the breakfast-parlour, looking more like the ghost of her former self than the bright and beautiful being we have represented her to the reader. Her father understood what it was that robbed her cheek of its bloom: and although he saw it with much distress, yet he had fortified himself with what he considered were some substantial reasons for future hopefulness.
It had become part of his philosophy—it generally is a part of the philosophy of the old—to consider that those sensations of the mind that arise from disappointed affections are of the most evanescent character; and that, although for a time they exhibit themselves with violence, they, like grief for the dead, soon pass away, scarcely leaving a trace behind of their former existence.
And perhaps he was right as regards the greatest number of those passions; but he was certainly wrong when he applied that sort of worldly-wise knowledge to his daughter Johanna. She was one of those rare beings whose hearts are not won by every gaudy flatterer who may buzz the accents of admiration in their ears. No; she was qualified, eminently qualified, to love once, but only once; and, like the passion-flower, that blooms into abundant beauty once and never afterwards puts forth a blossom, she allowed her heart to expand to the soft influence of affection, which, when crushed by adversity, was gone forever.
‘Really, Johanna,’ said Mrs Oakley, in the true conventicle twang, ‘you look so pale and ill that I must positively speak to Mr Lupin about you.’
‘Mr Lupin, my dear,’ said the spectacle-maker, ‘may be all very well in his way as a parson; but I don’t see what he can do with Johanna looking pale.’
‘A pious man, Mr Oakley, has to do with everything and everybody.’
‘Then he must be the most intolerable bore in existence; and I don’t wonder at his being kicked out of some people’s houses, as I have heard Mr Lupin has been.’
‘And if he has, Mr Oakley, I can tell you he glories in it. Mr Lupin likes to suffer for the faith; and if he were to be made a martyr tomorrow, I am quite certain it would give him a deal of pleasure.’
‘My dear, I am quite sure it would not give him half the pleasure it would me.’
‘I understand your insinuation, Mr Oakley; you would like to have him murdered on account of his holiness; but, though you say these kind of things at your own breakfast-table, you won’t say as much when he comes to tea this afternoon.’
‘To tea, Mrs Oakley! haven’t I told you over and over again that I will not have that man in
my house!’
‘And haven’t I told you, Mr Oakley, twice that number of times that he shall come to tea? and I have asked him now, and it can’t be altered.’
‘But, Mrs Oakley-’
‘It’s of no use, Mr Oakley, your talking. Mr Lupin is coming to tea, and come he shall; and if you don’t like it, you can go out. There now, I am sure you can’t complain, now you have actually the liberty of going out; but you are like the dog in the manger, Mr Oakley, I know that well enough, and nothing will please you.
‘A fine liberty, indeed, the liberty of going out of my own house to let somebody else into it that I don’t like!’
‘Johanna, my dear,’ said Mrs Oakley, ‘I think my old complaint is coming on, the beating of the heart, and the hysterics. I know what produces it—it’s your father’s brutality; and just because Dr Fungus said over and over again that I was to be kept perfectly quiet, your father seizes upon the opportunity like a wild beast, or a raving maniac, to try and make me ill.’
Mr Oakley jumped up, stamped his feet upon the floor, and, uttering something about the probability of his becoming a maniac in a very short time, rushed into his shop, and set to polishing spectacles as if he were doing it for a wager.
This little affair between her father and her mother certainly had had the effect, for a time, of diverting attention from Johanna, and she was able to assume a cheerfulness she did not feel; but she had something of her father’s spirit in her as regards Mr Lupin, and most decidedly objected to sitting down to any meal whatever with that individual, so that Mrs Oakley was left in a minority of one upon the occasion, which, perhaps, as she fully expected, was no great matter after all.
