is it?'
'Why, I feel faint, and if you could let me have a pot of porter, I would undertake to make a batch of pies superior to any you have ever had, and without any grumbling either.'
Mrs Lovett was silent for a few moments, and then said, 'If you are supplied with porter, will you continue in your situation?'
'Well, I don't know that; but perhaps I may. At all events, I will make you the nine o'clock batch, you may depend.'
'Very well. You shall have it.'
'She disappeared at these words, and in about ten minutes, a small trapdoor opened in the roof, and there was let down by a cord a foaming pot of porter.
'This is capital,' cried the victim of the pies, as he took half of it at a draught. 'This is nectar for the gods. Oh, what a relief, to be sure. It puts new life into me.'
And so it really seemed, for shouldering the poker, which was more like a javelin than anything else, he at once rushed into the vault where the meat was kept.
'Now,' he said, 'for a grand effort at freedom, and if I succeed I promise you, Mrs Lovett, that I will come round to the shop, and rather surprise you, madam. Damn the pies!'
We have before described the place in which the meat was kept, and we need now only say that the shelves were very well stocked indeed, and that our friend, in whose progress we have a great interest, shovelled off the large pieces with celerity from one of the shelves, and commenced operations with the poker.
He was not slow in discovering that his work would not be the most easy in the world, for every now and then he kept encountering what felt very much like a plate of iron; but he fagged away with right good will, and succeeded after a time in getting down one of the shelves, which was one point gained at all events.
'Now for it,' he said. 'Now for it; I shall be able to act - to work upon the wall itself, and it must be something unusually strong to prevent me making a breach through it soon.'
In order to refresh himself, he finished the porter, and then using his javelin-like poker as a battering ram, he banged the wall with the end of it for some moments, without producing any effect, until suddenly a portion of it swung open just like a door, and he paused to wonder how that came about.
All was darkness through the aperture, and yet he saw that it was actually a little square door that he had knocked open; and the idea then recurred to him that he had found how the shelves were supplied with meat, and he had no doubt that there was such a little square door opening at the back of every one of them.
'So,' he said, that mystery is solved; but what part of Mrs Lovett's premises have I got upon now? We shall soon see.'
He went boldly into the large cellar, and procured a light - a flaming torch, made of a piece of dry wood, and returning to the opening he had made in the wall, he thrust his head through it, and projected the torch before him.
With a cry of horror he fell backwards, extinguishing the torch in his fall, and he lay for a full quarter of an hour insensible upon the floor. What dreadful sight had he seen that had so chilled his young blood, and frozen up the springs of life?
When he recovered, he looked around him in the dim, borrowed light that came from the other vault, and he shuddered as he said, Was it a dream?'
Soon, however, as he rose, he gave up the idea of having been the victim of any delusion of the imagination, for there was the broken shelf, and there the little square opening, through which he had looked and seen what had so transfixed him with horror.
Keeping his face in that direction, as if it would be dreadful to turn his back for a moment upon some frightful object, he made his way into the larger cellar where the ovens were, and then he sat down with a deep groan.
'What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?' he muttered. I am doomed - doomed.'
'Are the pies doing?' said the voice of Mrs Lovett. It's eight o'clock.'
'Eight, is it?'
'Yes, to be sure, and I want to know if you are bent upon your own destruction or not? I don't hear the furnaces going, and I'm quite sure you have not made the pies.'
'Oh, I will keep my word, madam, you may depend. You want two hundred pies at nine o'clock, and you will see that they shall come up quite punctually to the minute.
'Very good. I am glad you are better satisfied than you were.'
'I am quite satisfied now, Mrs Lovett. I am quite in a different mood of mind to what I was before. I can assure you, madam, that I have no complaints to make, and I think the place has done me some good; and if at nine o'clock you let down the platform, you shall have two hundred pies up, as sure as fate, and something else, too,' he added to himself, 'or I shall be of a very different mind to what I now am.'
We have already seen that Mrs Lovett was not deceived by this seeming submission on the part of the cook, for she used that as an argument with Todd, when she was expatiating upon the necessity of getting rid of him that night.
But the cleverest people make mistakes at times, and probably, when the nine o'clock batch of pies makes its appearance, something may occur at the same time which will surprise a great many more persons than Mrs Lovett and the reader.
But we must not anticipate, merely saying with the eastern sage, what will be will be, and what's impossible don't often come to pass; certain it is that the nine o'clock batch of two hundred pies were made and put in the ovens; and equally certain is it that the cook remarked, as he did so,-
'Yes, I'll do it - it may succeed; nay, it must succeed; and if so, woe be to you, Mrs Lovett, and all who are joined with you in this horrible speculation, at which I sicken.'
XXXVIII. Sweeney Todd Shaves a Good Customer. The Arrest.
Johanna is still alone in the barber's shop. Her head is resting upon her hands, and she is thinking of times gone past, when she had hoped for happiness with Mark Ingestrie. When we say alone, we must not be presumed to have forgotten the two officers who were so snugly packed in the cupboard. But Johanna, as her mind wandered back to her last interview with him whom she had loved so well, and clung to so fondly, and so constantly, almost for a time forgot where she was and that there was such a person as Sweeney Todd in existence.
'Alas, alas!' she said, 'it seems likely enough that by the adoption of this disguise, so unsuited to me, I may achieve vengeance, but nothing more. Where are you, Mark Ingestrie? Oh, horror! something seems to tell me that no mortal voice can answer me.'
Tears came trickling to her relief; and as she felt them trickling through her fingers, she started as she thought that the hour which Todd had said would expire before he returned must have nearly gone.
'I must control these thoughts,' she said, 'and this emotion. I must seem that which I am not.'
She rose, and ceased weeping; she trimmed the little miserable lamp, and then she was about to go to the door to look for the return of Todd, when that individual, with a slow and sneaking footstep, made his appearance, as if he had been hiding just within the doorway.
