What that action could be would have been Mrs. Lovett's great difficulty. Of course she would have had no trouble in the world in going at once to a police-office, and denouncing Todd. That, to be sure, would have been a great revenge; but then, in the midst of all her anger, she did not forget that by so doing she had to criminate herself, and from that moment put an end to all her dreams of revelling in some foreign land upon the produce of her crimes.
Situated, then, as she was, Mrs. Lovett felt that she had no sort of resource but to follow Todd up, as it were—to keep close to him, and partly to worry him, and partly to shame him into doing her justice. Well she knew that he was upon the point of fleeing from the scene of his iniquities; and well she knew what a hindrance it would be to his arrangements to have her at his elbow continually.
And so she thought that he would see it was better to pay her, and be rid of her, and so every one would have thought; but Todd's nature was of that mad implacable character, that anything in the shape of opposition only made a wish a passion.
"I will not pay her," he muttered to himself, "if my refusal so to do brings us both to the gallows!"
If Mrs. Lovett could have dived sufficiently deep into Todd's mind to be aware of this sentiment, she might have changed her tactics; but who could have thought it? Who could have supposed that any passion but self-preservation could master all others in his mind?
The two boats sped on towards London Bridge—not the elegant structure that now spans the Thames, but the previous one, with its narrow arches, and its dangerous fall of water when the tide was ebbing, which was the case upon this occasion.
The watermen looked uneasily at the arch through which it would be necessary to go, and where the tide was raging with unexampled fury, and lashing the sides of the arch like a mill-stream, bearing upon its surface millions of bubbles, and making such a seething roaring sound, that it was a point of attraction to some idle chance passengers upon the bridge to watch any adventurous wherry as it shot through the dangerous passage.
"A rough tide, Bill," growled one of the watermen.
"Ay," said the other. "Do you want to go through the bridge, master?"
Todd smiled grimly as he replied by asking a question.