The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
After this, Todd made his way to a shop where second-hand clothing was
bought and sold, and there he got accommodated with an old gray coat
that reached down to the calves of his legs, and he bought likewise a
very voluminous white cravat; and when he got into the street with these
articles, and purchased at another shop a walking cane, with a great
silver top to it, and put one hand behind his back and stooped very
much, and moved along as if he were afflicted with all the corns and
bunions that his toes could carry, and by bending his knees, decreased
his height six inches, no one could have known him.
At least, so Todd flattered himself.
In this way he tottered on until he got to the immediate neighbourhood
of Fleet Street. To be sure, with all his coolness and courage, he could
not help shaking a little when he came to that well remembered
neighbourhood.
"And I," he thought to himself, "and I by this time hoped and expected
to be far over the sea, instead of being such a wretch as I am now,
crawling about, as it were, amid pitfalls and all sorts of dangers!
Alas! alas!"
He really shook now, and it was quite astonishing how, with his old wig,
and his old gray coat and his stick, and his stooping posture, old and
venerable, yes, positively venerable, Sweeney Todd actually looked.
"Ain't you well, sir?" said a respectable man, stepping up to him. "Can
I assist you?"
Todd perpetrated about half a dozen wheezing coughs, and then, not sorry
for an opportunity of trying his powers of imitation of age, he replied
in a tremulous voice--
"Ah, sir! Yes--old age--old age, sir--eugh!--eugh!--oh, dear me, I feel
that I am on my last legs, and that they are on the shake--old age, sir,
will come on; but it's a comfort to look back upon a long life well
spent in deeds of charity!"
"Not a doubt of it," said the stranger. "I was only afraid, sir, you
were taken suddenly ill, as you stood there."
"Oh, no--no--eugh!--no. Thank you, sir."
"Good evening, sir."
"Good evening, my good sir. Oh, if I had you only in my old shop with a
razor at your throat, wouldn't I polish you off!" muttered Todd, as the
stranger left him.
In the course of another minute, Todd was on the Fleet Street side of
Temple Bar.
He could almost see his old house--that house in which he had passed
years of deep iniquity, and which he had hoped, ere that time, would
have been a heap of ruins. There it was, tall, dismal, and gaunt
looking. The clock of St. Dunstan's struck eleven.
"Eleven," he muttered. "A good hour. The streets are getting deserted
now, and no one will know me. I will stoop yet more, and try to look
older--older still."
Todd a little over acted his part, as he tottered down Fleet Street, so
that some individuals turned to look after him, which was a thing he
certainly did not wish, as his great object was to escape all
observation if possibly he could; so he corrected that, and went on
rather more strongly; and finally he came exactly opposite to his own
house, and getting partially into a door-way, he looked long and fixedly
at it.
What thoughts, at that time, chased each other through the guilty mind
of that man, it is hard to say; but he stood like a statue, fixing his
regards upon the house for the space of about a quarter of an hour.
Once only he clapped his teeth together, and gave a sort of savage
growl.
It was lucky for Todd that no one saw him just then, or they would have
thought him rather an extraordinary old man.
The house was perfectly dark from top to bottom. The shutters of the
shop, of course, were all up, and the shutters of the first-floor
windows were likewise closed. The other windows had their old dingy
blinds all down; and, to all outward appearance, that den of murder was
deserted.
But Todd could not believe such to be the case. In his own mind, he felt
fully sure, that Sir Richard Blunt was not the man to leave the house
without some sort of custody; and he quite settled with himself, that
there was some one or more persons minding it, and, no doubt, by order,
sitting there in one of the back rooms, so that no light should show in
front.
"Curses on them all!" he muttered.
"Ah! you are looking at old Todd's house, sir?" said a voice.
Todd started; and close to him was a person smoking a pipe, and looking
as jolly as possible.
"Yes--yes," stammered Todd, for he was taken by surprise rather. "Oh,
yes, sir. I am amazed at the great wickedness of human nature."
"You may well, sir--you may well! Lord bless me! I never thought him a
good looking man, but I never thought any ill of him neither, and I have
seen him lots of times."
"Indeed, sir? Pray, what sort of man was he? I never saw him, as I live
in Soho; and I am so much in years now, that in the bustling day-time I
don't care to come into streets like this; for you see, sir, I can't
move about as I could sixty years ago; and the people--God help
them--are all in such a hurry now, and they push me here and there in
such a way, that my failing breath and limbs won't stand it;
and--and--eugh!--eugh! Oh, dear."
"Poor old gentleman! I don't wonder at your not liking the crowds. How
old may you be, sir?'"
"A matter of eighty-nine, sir. It's an old age to get to, but I--I am
younger than my brother, yet--Ha! ha! Oh dear, if it wasn't now for the
rheumatism and the lumbago and a pain in my shoulder, and a few other
little things, I should get on very well."
"Not a doubt of it. But you asked me what Todd was like, and I'll tell
you, sir. He was nigh upon six feet high, and his face was two feet of
it. He was just as ugly as any one you would wish to see for a pattern
in that way, and that's his house where he murdered all the people."
"Peace be to their souls!"
"Amen! And there are underground places that lead right away through the
vaults of St. Dunstan's to Bell-yard, where Mrs. Lovett's pie-shop was,
you know, sir."
"I have heard. Ah, dear--dear, I have heard. A very wicked woman,
indeed--very wicked; and yet, sir, it is to be hoped she has found mercy
in another world."
"There would need be plenty of it," said the man with the pipe, "if Mrs.
Lovett is to be accommodated with any."
"My friend," said Todd, "don't be profane; and now I must go, as I don't
like being out late."
"And so must I, for my pipe's out. I shall turn in, now. Good night,
sir, and a pleasant walk home to you."
"Thank you, sir, thank you--eugh! eugh! I think if it were not for my
cough, I should do very well."
Todd hobbled away, and the man, who lived in Bouverie Street, went home.
Todd had not got any real information from this man; but the brief
conversation he had had with him, had given him a sort of confidence in
his disguise, and in his power of acting, that he had not had before, so
that, upon the whole, he was not sorry for the little incident.
And now it was quite evident that the streets were getting very much
deserted. During the whole length of Fleet Street there was not half a
dozen persons to be seen at all, and Todd, after casting a rapid glance
around him to note if he were observed, suddenly crossed the way, and
boldly went up to the door of old St. Dunstan's Church.
When once close to the door of the old building, he was so much in
shadow that he felt tolerably secure from observation, but still he
lingered a little, for he did not want to do anything so hastily as to
rob it of its caution.
With his back against the church-door he glanced right and left, and
then for the space of five minutes he bent all his faculties to the one
task of ascertaining if any one was sufficiently near to watch him, and
he got perfectly satisfied that such was not the case. He stood securely
against the old church-door.
"So far," he muttered, "I am safe--quite safe."
CHAPTER CXLIV.
TODD MAKES HIS WAY INTO HIS OWN HOUSE.
When Todd was satisfied that he was not watched or even observed by any
one, he turned and commenced operations upon the door of the church. The
cunning person who had put on the lock, had had a notion in his
necromantic head, that the larger you made a lock the better it was, and
the less likely to be picked; and the consequence of this was, that Todd
found no difficulty in opening the church-door.
The moment he felt the lock yield to the false key he employed, he took
another keen glance around him, and, seeing no one, slipped into the
sacred edifice and closed the door behind him. Feeling, then, up and
down the door until his hand touched a bolt, he shot it into its socket,
and then a feeling of great security took possession of him, although
the interior of the church was most profoundly dark, and any one would
have thought that such a man as Todd--in such a place--could hardly have
been free from some superstitious terrors. An overbearing selfishness,
however, mingled with the most vengeful and angry feelings, kept Todd
above all these sensations, which are mostly the result of vacant
mindedness.
The church felt cold, and the silence had about it a character such as
the silence of no other kind of place has. It may be imagination, but
the silence of a church deserted, always appears to us to be a silence
different from any other, as the silence in a wood is entirely different
from any other description of stillness.
"All is quiet enough here," whispered Todd. "I and the dead have this
place to ourselves now, and so we have often had it. Many a time have I
waded about this building in the still hours of the night, when all
London slept, and opened some little window, with the hope of letting
out the stench from the dead bodies before the morning should bring
people to the building; but it would not do. The smell of decomposition
lingered in the air, and it is here still, though not so bad. Yes, it is
here still! I can smell it now, and I know the odour well."
Todd was sufficiently familiar with St. Dunstan's church almost to go
over it even at that hour, and amid that darkness, without running
against anything; but yet he was very careful as he went, and kept his
arms outstretched before him. He dreaded to get a light, although he had
the means of doing so, for Mr. Lupin had, at his request, given him some
of the matches and little wax-candle-ends that the pious lady had
supplied him with. Yet Todd knew how small a light would suffice to
shine through some of the richly stained glass windows of the church,
and therefore he dreaded to give himself a light.
He felt confident that he should have no sort of difficulty in getting
into the vaults, for in consequence of recent events the stone that
covered up the entrance could not be fast, and he knew from past
experience that his strength was sufficient to raise it if he once got
hold of it, and if it were not fastened down by cement, which, no doubt,
was not the case now.
"I shall yet get," he said, "into my old house. The time has been rather
short, and the goods there deposited by me in old times may there
remain; and if so, I will carry away enough with me to keep me far above
the necessities of life, and when once I have achieved that much, I will
from some obscure place meditate upon my revenge."
In the course of about ten minutes he found the flat stone that led into
the vaults, and to his satisfaction he found that it was merely laid
crosswise over the aperture, in order to prevent any one in day time
from heedlessly tumbling in, but at night it was not, of course,
expected that any one would be there to fall into such a danger.
With one effort Todd removed it.
"Good," he said. "Now I can make my way, and once below the level of the
floor of the church, there will be no danger in at once accommodating