'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.
V. 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,