A satanic pact from “Wonderful London”

“Wonderful London” was published in 1878 and has a little fragment which is useful in roleplaying games. The anonymous narrator is talking with a late-night coffee seller about his most unusual customers, and there’s an odd little Satanic pact mentioned. Over to Peter Yearsley, from Librivox, with thanks to him and his team.

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Why, there’s dozens of these unaccountable customers I could call to mind if it was worth while,’ he continued, after a short pause. ^ Just about the end of last year there used to drop in here every Friday night, as regularly as clockwork between twelve and one, an old woman — precious old to be sure she seemed— with an old-fashioned coalscuttle bonnet and a crutched stick just like that Mother Shipton has in the picture of her. I never saw a more ugly old woman, and she looked all the uglier from always coming in company with as sweet a little creature of a child, a girl of five or six years old say, as ever you set eyes on; a delicate blue-eyed little thing, with hair like yellow-floss silk, nearly all tucked away into the dark-cloth hood she wore, and with a complexion that, compared with the old woman’s, was the whitest marble against Spanish mahogany. She didn’t seem unkind to the child, but let it eat and drink what it wished for ; but the old woman herself never on any occasion ate or drank a morsel, though on every occasion of her Friday night’s visit she seemed and the child too as though they had tramped a very long way, being wet with the rain or dusty with the dust, as the weather might be. There was no fear of them taking cold, however, for they were both, and especially the little girl, well shod and as warmly clad as need be. But the puzzle to me was what two such strange
companions wanted out of a night together.

At last — that was after they had paid me ten or a dozen visits — there came in a man while they were there, and as soon as he saw the old woman he looked towards me and winked in a way I didn’t understand. The old woman must have seen him wink, for all in a moment she took the little girl by her hand, and hobbled off with her as quick as her legs would move her bent old body.

“You know who that is?” the man asked me.

“No, I don’t,” said I.

“Well,” says he, ” that’s old Mother Mutch of Stepney. She’s sold herself to the devil ; but the bargain was, that when the old un wanted her he was to fetch her out of her bed at midnight, and that time to be put off as long as she could get a child who had not yet shed its milk-teeth to be her companion. She could roll in money if she liked; and she is under a promise to leave it all to that little girl when her time comes. It is to stave off that time that she never sleeps in her
bed of nights, but wanders about London from dark till daylight with the little child with her.”

Now what do you think of that?’ asked the coffee-stall keeper.

What did Mother Mutch say the next time she came ?’ I asked.

^She never came after that time when she saw the man wink, which / think looks black against her.”