The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 306: what you’re looking at

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

unless he was out on the moment that the flames burst forth? Then if he stayed, he had Mrs. Lovett to encounter, but that was all; and surely he could put her off for a few hours? Surely she, of all people in the world, was not to run to a police-office and destroy both him and herself, just because she did not get some money at ten o’clock that he had promised to hand to her. “She shall be put off,” he said, suddenly, “and I will stay over to-morrow. I am safer here than anywhere else, of that I feel assured. If there are any suspicious whisperings about me at all, they will grow to loud clamours the moment I am gone, and then they may reach the ears of these ship-owners, and they may say at once, ‘Why we have such a man with a passage taken in one of our Hamburgh ships.’ Let them say that when the ship is some twenty hours gone with me on board, and I don’t care; but with me on land, and the ship only to sail, instead of having actually sailed, it is quite a different matter.” He rose from his seat. His mind was made up. He had not quite decided what he should say to Mrs. Lovett, but he had decided upon staying. “Charley will live another day,” he muttered; “but to-morrow night he dies, and his body will be consumed with this house, and, I hope, a good part of Fleet Street. It will not be prudent to get him to assist now in disposing the combustibles to fire the house. He might speak of it before to-morrow night.” Todd came out into the shop. “Charley, my boy!” How kindly he spoke! “T am here, sir.” “You must not mind what I say when I am vexed. Many things happen to put me out of the way. Sometimes people that I have done I don’t know how much for, turn out to be very ungrateful, and then I get chafed, you see, Charley.” “Yes, sir, no doubt.” “But, after I have retired to the parlour and prayed a little, my mind soon recovers its usual religious tone, and its wonted serenity; and for the sake of the Almighty, who, you know, is good to us all, Charley, I forgive all that is done to me, and pray for the wicked.” Johanna shuddered. This hypocrisy sounded awful to her. “Never go to rest, Charley, without saying your prayers. There’s three-pence for you. You can get yourself a bed in the neighbourhood for that amount somewhere, I daresay. I am very sorry I cannot accommodate you here, Charley. Now go away, and let me have you here by seven in the morning; and mind, above all things, cultivate a religious spirit, and do unto your neighbours as you would that your neighbours should do unto you.” Johanna could not reply. “Here is a tract that you can read before you go to sleep, if they allow you a candle, when you get a-bed. It is entitled ‘Groans of Grace, or the Sinner Sifted,’ a most godly production, from a pious bookseller in Paternoster Row, Charley.” “Yes,” Johanna just managed to say. “Now you may go.” She darted from the shop. “Hilloa! hilloa! Stop—stop, Charley! Stop—stop, will you? Confound you, stop! The infernal shutters are not up. Do you hear? I forgot them.” Todd rushed to his door. He looked right and left, and over the way, and, in fact, everywhere, but no Charley was to be seen. The fact is, that Johanna, the moment she felt herself released from the shop, had darted over the way, and into the fruiterers, where she had found so friendly a welcome before, and all this was done in such a moment, that she was housed before Todd could get his shop-door open. “Welcome!” said a voice. She found it proceeded from the fruiterer’s daughter, who had behaved so kindly to her. Johanna burst into tears. “What has happened?—what has happened?” cried the young girl. “Nothing, now,” said Johanna. “But I cannot keep up longer than when I am in that shop. As soon as I am fairly out of the presence of that dreadful man, I feel ready to faint.” “Be of good cheer,” said a deep-toned voice. She looked up, and saw Sir Richard Blunt. “You here, sir?” “Yes, Johanna. I have been now for some time watching Todd’s shop from our friends first-floor window. I saw you dart across the road, and for the moment feared something had gone wrong. Did Todd get two letters?” “He did.” “They will, I hope, keep him quiet until another night. Dare you go back again, Johanna, to that place?” “Yes, if it be necessary; but he has told me to sleep out, and the gust of pleasure I felt at the permission, almost, I fear, betrayed me.” “He came to the door and looked furiously after you, but he did not see which way you had come. You were over here like a flash of light.” “He would have had me back again, then?—What could that be for?” “At all events, you shall not go until the morning, and not then, unless after a night’s rest here you feel that you can do so with a CORniclooo S CO)