The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
court before the point of the knife reached him. The Governor of Newgate
sprung upon Todd, and disarmed him in a moment.
From seeing Sir Richard Blunt drop, the general impression in the court
was, that he was killed, or seriously injured, by Todd; and in a moment
a scene of unparalleled confusion arose. Everybody got up from their
seats, and the place was full of cries.
"Kill him!" cried some.--"Down with him!" shouted others.--"Hang him at
once! A surgeon for Sir Richard!"
Amid this Babel of confusion, Sir Richard Blunt rose again, and sprung
upon the barrister's table, calling out in a loud voice that rose above
every other sound--
"I am perfectly unhurt."
Upon this such a cheer arose in the court, that the judge saw that it
was perfectly hopeless to attempt to stop it by any ordinary means, and
he only held up his hand deprecatingly. The cheer was thrice repeated,
and then Sir Richard dismounted from the table, and a death-like
stillness ensued in the court as the judge spoke.
"How was it possible," he said, "that the prisoner at the bar could be
furnished with such a weapon at a time like this?"
The Governor of Newgate felt that this question was addressed to him,
and he tremblingly spoke, saying--
"My lord, I have not the most distant idea upon the subject. He was
searched this morning carefully before leaving his cell. It is beyond my
comprehension."
"My lord," said a counsel at the table, rising, "there was a very
similar case about five years since, when a notorious criminal attacked
a witness for the prosecution with a fork, and it appeared afterwards
that as he was brought through some of the day-rooms of Newgate to the
bar, he had hastily snatched it up from a table that he passed without
the officers noticing him."
"This is very likely a similar case," said the judge.
"It may be so my lord," said the Governor.
Todd yelled with rage, when he found that Sir Richard Blunt had escaped
his malice. If he could but have taken his life or inflicted upon him
some very serious injury, he would have been satisfied almost to have
gone to death; but to fail was almost enough to drive him really mad.
"Curses on ye all!" he cried; and then he burst into a torrent of such
frightful invectives, that everybody shrunk aghast from it, and it is
quite impossible that we should transfer it to our pages. How long he
would have proceeded in such a storm, there is no knowing, had not the
officers rushed upon him, and by main force dragged him from the dock
and the court into the dark passages leading to Newgate.
His voice was yet heard for several moments, uttering the most dreadful
and diabolical curses!
It may be supposed that after what had happened, the officials of the
prison were not over tender in the treatment of Sweeney Todd, for they
well knew that they would be some time before they heard the last of the
knife business, and indeed it was a piece of gross carelessness to allow
a man in Todd's situation, and such a man as Todd too, to have an
opportunity of doing such very serious mischief in a moment as he might
have done.
There can be very little doubt, that if he had been content to do an
injury to any other witness but Sir Richard Blunt, he would really have
succeeded; but that personage was too wary to fall in such a way.
It was not thought advisable by the prison authorities to take Todd back
to the same cell from which they had brought him. It was an idea of the
Governor, and by no means a bad one, that desperate criminals were
caused to change their cells now and then, as it baffled and cut up
completely any combination they might in their own minds have made for
an attempted escape; so Todd found himself in a new place.
"Why is this?" he said. "Why am I placed here? This cell is darker than
the one I before occupied."
"It's quite light enough for you," growled a turnkey.
"Yes," added one of the officers who had been in court. "Folks who are
keen and bright enough to pick up knives, and nobody see 'em, mustn't
have too much light in their cell. Oh, won't it be a mercy when you are
settled next Monday morning."
"The fetters hurt me," said Todd.
"Oh, they are too light," said the officer; "and for your satisfaction,
I have to tell you that the Governor has ordered you another pair."
At this moment a couple of blacksmiths came into the cell, carrying with
them the heaviest set of irons in the whole prison, which the Governor
had determined Sweeney Todd should be accommodated with. Without a word
they proceeded to knock off the fetters that he wore.
"So you are not contented," said Todd, "to cage me as though I were some
wild animal, but you must load me with irons?"
"And a good job too."
"And you think to hang me?"
"Rather!"
"Then thus I disappoint you, and be my own executioner!"
As he spoke, he snatched up one of the smith's hammers, and made a blow
at his own forehead with it, which if it had taken effect, would
unquestionably have fractured his skull, and killed him instantly; but
one of the officers just managed to strike his arm at the moment and
confuse his aim, so that although he did strike himself, it was not with
anything like sufficient force to do himself any hurt.
The hammer was wrested from him in a moment, and he was thrown to the
floor of the cell, and the heavy irons placed upon him.
CHAPTER CXXXII.
TODD MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE IN NEWGATE, AND TRIES AN ESCAPE.
In the course of a quarter of an hour more, Todd was left alone. The
irons he wore weighed upwards of a hundredweight, and it was with some
difficulty that he managed to get up, and sit upon the stone seat that
was in the cell.
It was close upon evening, and the cell was getting very dark indeed, so
that the walls, close as they were together, were only very dimly
discernable indeed.
Todd rested his head upon his hands, and thought.
"Has it then really come to this?" he said. "Am I truly doomed to die?
Oh, what a dreadful thing it is for me now to begin to doubt of what I
always thought myself so sure, namely, that there was no world beyond
the grave. Oh, if I could only still please myself with an assurance of
that! But I cannot--I cannot now. Oh, no--no--no."
He started, for the cell door opened, and the turnkey brought him in his
food for the night, which he placed on the floor. It was not then the
custom to sit up with condemned prisoners.
"There," said the man, "it's more than you deserve. Good-night, and be
hanged to you. Here's the sheriff been kicking up the devil's delight in
the prison about that knife affair."
"I hope he will discharge you all," said Todd.
"Do you?"
"Oh, yes. I wish you had all one neck only, and I a knife at it. With
what a pleasant gash I would force it in--in--in!"
"Well, you are a nice article, I must say."
"Bring me two candles, and pens, ink, and paper."
The turnkey stared with astonishment.
"Anything else," he said, "in a small way that you'd like? Buttered
rolls, perhaps, and a glass of something good? Perhaps a blunderbuss
would suit you? I tell you what it is, old fellow, it ain't very often
that anybody goes out from here on a Monday morning to be scragged, that
we don't feel a little sorry for them, but I don't think we shall any of
us cry after you. You may sleep or do what you like now until to-morrow
morning, for you have got it all to yourself. Two candles, indeed! Well
I'm sure--what next? Two candles!--Oh, my eye!"
The turnkey banged shut the door of the cell, and barred and bolted it
in a passion; and then away he went to the lobby, which was the great
gossiping place, to relate the cool demands of Sweeney Todd.
Once more the prisoner was alone. For some time he set in silence, and
then he muttered--
"All the night to myself. He will not visit this cell until the morning.
A long--long night; many hours of solitude. Well, I may chance to
improve them. It was well in that scuffle for the hammer, when they
threw me down, that I contrived to grasp a handful of tools from the
smith's basket, and hid them among my clothing. Let me see what I
have--ay, let me see, or rather feel, for by this light, or rather by
this darkness, I can only judge of them by the feel."
The tools that Sweeney Todd had been clever enough to abstract from the
smith's basket, consisted of two files and a chisel. He ran his fingers
over them with some feeling of satisfaction.
"Now," he muttered, "if the feeling to die were upon me, here are the
means; but it has passed away, and even with these small weapons, and in
a cell of Newgate, I do not feel quite so helpless as I was. It will be
time to die if all should fail else, but yet if I could only for a time
live for revenge, what a glorious thing it would be! How I should like
yet to throttle Tobias. What a pleasure it would be to me to hold that
girl by the throat, who so hoodwinked me as to impose herself upon me
for a boy, and hear and see her choking. How I should like to see the
blood of Sir Richard Blunt weltering forth while his colour faded, and
he expired gradually!"
Todd ground his teeth together in his rage.
"Yes," he added, while he moved with difficulty under the weight of his
iron. "Yes, I have bidden adieu to wealth and the power that wealth
would have given me. I have carried on my life of crimes for nothing,
and in blood I have waded to accomplish only this world of danger that
now surrounds me--to give to myself the poor privilege of suicide; but
yet how fain I would live for vengeance!"
His chains rattled upon his limbs.
"Yes, for revenge. I would fain live for revenge. There are some five or
six that I would like to kill! Yes, and I would gloat over their
death-agonies, and shriek in their ears, 'I did it! I, Sweeney Todd, did
it!'"
The fetters entangled about his legs, and threw him heavily to the floor
of the cell.
He raved and cursed frightfully, until he was too much exhausted to
continue such a course, and then he sat upon the floor, and with one of
the files he began working away assiduously at the iron, in order to
free himself from those clogs to his movements.
As he so worked, he heard the prison clock strike ten.
"Ten," he said. "Ten already. Of a truth I did not think it was so late.
I must be quick. Others have escaped from Newgate, and why should not I?
The attempt will and shall be made; and who knows but that it may be
successful? A man may do much when he is resolved that he will do all he
wishes or die."
Todd filed away at the chains.
"Who will stop me," he said, "with the feeling that will possess me? Who
will say, 'I will stop this man, or he shall kill me?' No one--no one!"
The file was a good one, and it bit fairly into the iron. In the course
of a quarter of an hour Todd had one wrist at liberty, and that was a
great thing. He was tired, however, of the comparatively slow progress
of the file, and he made a great effort to break the chains from his
ankles; but he only bruised himself in the attempt to do so without
succeeding.
With a feeling of exhaustion, he paused.
"Oh, that I could find an opportunity of exerting so much force against
those whom I hate!" he said.
At this moment he fancied he heard a slight noise not far from him, and
every faculty was immediately strained to assist in listening for a
repetition of it. It did not come again then.
"It must have been imagination," he said, "or some sound far off in the
prison conveyed by echoes to this spot. I will not suffer myself to be
alarmed or turned from my purpose. It is nothing--nothing. I will use
the file again."