Pumpkins' Glow: 200+ Eerie Tales for Halloween. Джек Лондон

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      V. The Meeting in the Temple

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ