The String of Pearls (1850), p. 332

THE STRING OP PEARLS.
She rested her head upon her hands, and in a softer voice, said—"Let me think—let me think of the means, now that I have yet a little time. What do I dread most? The man below? Yes. He is at work for his deliverance. I feel that he is, and if he succeed before I flee from here, all is lost—all is lost! I must speak to him."
Filled with this idea, and with an unknown dread of what the discontented cook might do, Mrs. Lovett stepped into the shop first, and made the door fast by slipping a bolt at the back of it. It was not very often that immediately after the disposal of a batch of pies any customers came in, and if they should attempt to do so for the purpose of purchasing any stale pies, she was by far too intent upon what she was come about, and considered it by far too important to heed what they might think or say upon finding the door fast. She then opened the seeming cupboard in the parlour, which conducted to the strong iron door, with the small grating at the top of it. She reached that point of observation with great rapidity, and peered into the cavernous dungeon-like bakehouse. At first she could see nothing by the uncertain light that was there, but as her eyes got accustomed to the absence of daylight, she could just see the figure of the cook sitting upon a stool, and apparently watching one of the fires.
"It is a long—long time,"
" What is a long time?" cried Mrs. Lovett.
The captive cook sprang to his feet in a moment, and in a voice of alarm, he said—
"Who spoke? Who is that?"
"I," replied Mrs. Lovett ? " Do you not know me?"
"Ah," said the cook, directing his eyes to the grating above the door, "I know you too well. What do you want with me? Have I failed in doing your
bidding here? Have I disappointed you of a single batch of those execrable pies?"
"Certainly not, but I have come to see—if—if you are quite comfortable."
"Comfortable! What an insult!"
"Nay, you wrong me."
"That is impossible. This is the commencemet only of some new misery. Speak on, madam. Speak on. I am helpless here, and condemned to suffer."
Notwithstanding these words of the cook there was a certain tone of hilarity about him, that Mrs. Lovett might well be surprised at, and she asked herself
what does he hope. The fact is that much as he wished still to enact the character of a man full of despair, the cook could not get out of his head and heart the promises of Sir Richard Blunt—promises which still rung in his ears, like a peal of joy bells.
"Come, come," said Mrs. Lovett, "you are getting reconciled to your fate."
"Confess as much."
"I reconciled? Never."
"But you are not so unhappy?"
"Worse worse. This apathetic condition that I am now in, and which to you may look like the composure of resignation, will end, in all likelihood, in raging madness.*
"Indeed?"
"Yes, madam, I feel already the fire in my brain."
"Be calm."
"Calm—calm! Ha!—ha! Calm. It is all very well for you upon that side of the iron door to talk of calmness, madam, but upon this side the words
sound strange."
It will not sound so strange when I tell you that I have absolute compassion upon you, and that the cause of my present visit was to talk to you of some
means by which the worst portion of your fate here might be in some measure ameliorated, and your existence rendered tolerable.