The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
He opened the pulpit-door, and had got about three steps down the little
ornamental flight of winding stairs that led from the pulpit to the body
of the building, when the church-door was suddenly opened, and he fled
back with a precipitation that made some noise, when he might have done
so in perfect quietness, for it was not very likely that any one would
have looked up to the pulpit immediately upon their entrance to the
building.
A glance towards the door convinced Mr. Todd that it was the beadle.
"Oh, dear, I thought I heard something," said the beadle, as he closed
the door after him. "But I suppose it was only fancy, after all. Now
they say that all the fire is out, and that it is quite impossible for
the church to be blowed up, I suppose I may come in without any danger.
Lor bless us, that Sir Richard Blunt, I do believe, would think no more
of blowing up a beadle, than he would of eating a penny bun, that's my
opinion of him."
"Curses on your head!" muttered Todd.
"Bless me, what a world we live in," said the beadle.
"Wretch--beast," muttered Todd; "what does he want here at this time of
day?"
"Yes, to-morrow's Sunday," said the beadle, as if pursuing a train of
thought that had found a home in his brain. "How the weeks do run round,
to be sure, and one Sunday comes after another at such a rate, that it
seems as if there was weeks and weeks and weeks of 'em, without any of
the other days at all. I wish I hadn't to come here."
Todd uttered faintly some dreadful imprecations, and the beadle
continued talking to himself to keep his courage up, as was evident from
his nervous and fidgetty manner.
"Ah, dear, me. Conwulsions! I tried to persuade my wife to come and dust
the communion table and the pulpit-cushions for to-morrow, but she
politely declined; she needn't have thrown the bellows at my head
though, for all that."
"Dust the pulpit-cushions!" thought Todd. "The wretch is coming up here!
I shall have to cut his throat, and leave him at the bottom of the
pulpit for the parson to tread upon the first thing he does to-morrow,
upon coming up here to preach."
As Todd spoke, he took a clasped knife out of his pocket, and opened it
with his teeth. "Oh, yes, my old friend, I shall, I see, be under the
painful necessity of cutting your throat, that I shall, and I shall not
hesitate about it at all."
"Yes," added the beadle, "I mean to say that to throw the bellows at the
man is like adding insult to injury, for it is blowing him up in a kind
of way that's anything but agreeable. Lor! how cold and rum the church
does feel. Rum? why did I say rum and put myself in mind of it? Oh,
don't I like it, rather! If I only now had a glass of real fine old
Jamaica rum at this moment, I'd be as happy as a bishop."
"Oh, I'll rum you!" growled Todd.
"Eh? Eh?"
The beadle turned round three times, as though he were going to begin a
game at blind-man's-bluff, and then he said--
"I thought I heard something. Oh dear, how shivery I do get to be sure,
when I'm alone in the church. I'll just get through the dusting job as
quick as I can, and no mistake. Amen! Amen! I'm a miserable
sinner--Amen!"
CHAPTER CLIV.
DETAILS THE PERILOUS SITUATION OF THE BEADLE.
Todd had heard all this with anger and impatience rankling at his heart.
He began to have the most serious thoughts of sacrificing the
beadle--indeed, if any good could have been got to himself by so doing,
he would not have scrupled to do so with the greatest speed. As it was,
however, he could not concoct any plan of proceedings quickly which
would benefit him, and so he was compelled to remain an auditor of the
beadle's private thoughts, and a spectator of what he was about, when he
chose to peep over the edge of the pulpit.
"Well, it's astonishing," continued the beadle, "what a fever that
fellow Todd has kept me in for I don't know how long, one way or
another: me and Fleet Street have been regularly bothered by him. First
of all, I was in all sorts of doubts and uncertainties about the matter
before they took him and tried him, and was a-going to hang him, and
then I did think that he was as--good--as done--for--"
As he uttered these last words, the beadle was banging one of the
cushions of the communion-table, so that he was compelled for want of
breath to utter them at intervals.
"Oh, confound you!" muttered Todd, "if I only had hold of you, I would
throttle you, and then think of what to do afterwards."
Todd's great difficulty arose from the fact that he thought if he tried
to descend from the pulpit, the beadle might see him and get the start
of him in leaving the church, in which event the alarm that he would
raise in Fleet Street would be such, that any attempt to escape would be
attended by the greatest hazard.
"There is nothing for it but to wait," said Todd to himself gloomily. "I
can do nothing else; but woe to him when I do catch him!"
"This dusting job on a Saturday," said the beadle, "does seem to me to
be one of the most disagreeable of all that has to be done with the
church. I don't mind one's duty on a Sunday, but this is horrid. On a
Sunday there's lots of people, and the old place has a sort of cheerful
look about it, but now I don't like it, and I've a good mind to get one
of the charity-boys of the blessed parish to keep me company."
"I will kill him, too, if you do," muttered Todd.
The beadle paused upon this thought concerning the charity-boy; but as
he had finished the communion-table, he did not think that for the mere
dusting the pulpit and its cushions, it was worth while to make any
fuss.
"It will soon be over," he said, "very soon. I'll just pop up and settle
the pulpit, and then get home again as quick as I possibly can. I do
wonder, now, if that old Todd will be caught soon? The old wretch!"
The beadle began the ascent of the pulpit.
"It's my opinion," he said, "that Todd--as he had other folks made up
into pies--ought to be made into one himself, and then given to mad dogs
for a supper--Ha! ha! That's a very good thought of mine, and when I go
to the 'Pig's-eye, Tooth, and Tinder-box,' to-night, I will out with it,
and they will knock their pots and glasses against the table
beautifully, and cry out--'Well done, bravo!--bravo!' I rather think I'm
a great man at the 'Pig's-eye, Tooth and Tinder-box.'"
By this time the beadle had got quite to the top of the pulpit stairs,
and had his hand on the door. Todd was crouched down at the bottom of
the pulpit, waiting for him like some famished tiger ready to pounce
upon his prey. He fully intended to murder the unfortunate beadle.
"Well, here goes," said that most unhappily-situated functionary, as he
stepped into the pulpit.
Todd immediately grasped his legs.
"If you say one word, you are a dead man!"
The shock was too much for the nerves of the poor beadle of St.
Dunstan's, and on the instant he fainted, and fell huddled up at the
bottom of the little place.
Todd immediately stood upon the prostrate form of the parochial
authority.
"Ha! ha!" he laughed, "I have him now, and I shall be able to leave St.
Dunstan's yet."
He trampled as hard upon the beadle as he could, and then he took the
clasp knife from his pocket, and said--
"It will be better to kill him. Rise, idiot, rise, and tell me if you
can, why I should not cut your throat?"
The beadle neither moved nor spoke.
"Is he dead?" said Todd. "Has the fright killed him? It is strange; but
I have heard of such things. Why it surely must be so. The sudden shock
has been the death of him, and it would be a waste of time for me to
touch him. He is dead--he must be dead!"
Todd, full of this feeling, retreated two or three steps down the little
winding staircase of the pulpit, and then reaching in his hand, he
caught hold of the poor beadle by the hair of his head, and dragged him
sufficiently out of the pulpit to be enabled to look him in the face.
The eyes were closed, the inspiration seemed to be stopped, and there
was, in truth, every appearance of death about the unfortunate
functionary of the old church.
"Yes, dead," said Todd; "but it will be better for me. He will be found
here, and as no violence will show upon him, the doctors will learnedly
pronounce it a case of apoplexy, and there will arise no suspicion of my
having been here at all. It is much better, oh, much, than as if I had
killed him."
With this feeling, Todd pushed what he considered to be the dead body of
the beadle back into the pulpit again, and then himself rapidly
descended the little spiral flight of stairs.
The clock of St. Dunstan's struck the hour of ten, and Todd carefully
counted the strokes.
"Ten," he said. "A busy hour--a hour of broad daylight, and I with such
a price upon my head, and the hands of all men lifted against me, in one
of the most populous streets in the City of London! It is a fearful
risk!"
It was a fearful risk, and Todd might well shudder to find that his
temerity had brought him into such a position; but yet he felt that if
anything were to save him, it would be boldness, and not shrinking
timidity. One great cause of dread had passed away from Todd when Sir
Richard Blunt left the church. If in any way Todd had had to encounter
him, he would have shrunk back appalled at the frightful risk.
When he gained the body of the church, he glanced again up to the
pulpit, but all was there profoundly still; and the fact of the death of
the beadle appeared to him, Todd, to be so very firmly established, now,
as to require no further confirmation.
Although the beadle had closed the church door, he had placed the key,
most probably for security, in the inner side of the lock, and there
Todd found it. He thought it would be a good thing to put it in his
pocket, and he did so accordingly; and when the key was removed, he
placed his eye to the keyhole, and peeped out into Fleet Street.
Todd could see the people passing quickly, but no one cast a glance
towards the old church, and he began to reason with himself, that surely
there could be no difficulty in getting into the street quite unnoticed,
if not quite unobserved. Again he told himself that he was well
disguised.
"I dread no eye," he said, "but that of Sir Richard Blunt, and he is not
here to look upon me. There is not one else, I think, in London that
would know me through this disguise. There was never but one who could
do so, and she is dead. Yes, Mrs. Lovett might have known me, but she is
no more: so I will venture. Yes, I will venture now."
His heart failed him a little as he placed his hand upon the lock of the
church-door. It well might do so, for the risk he run, or was about to
run, was truly fearful. He was on the point of sallying out among a
population, the whole of whom were familiar with his name, and to whom
he was as a being accursed, who would upon the slightest hint of
identity be gladly hunted to the death.
Truly, Todd might well hesitate.
But yet to hesitate was perhaps to be lost. How could he tell now one
moment from another when some one might come to the church-door? and
then he would be in a worse position than before. Yes, he felt that he
must make the attempt to leave, whether that attempt should involve him
in destruction or not, for to stay were far worse.
He opened the door and coolly closed it again, and marched into Fleet
Street.
We say he did this coolly, but it were better to say that he acted a
coolness that he was far from feeling. A very tempest of terror was at
his heart. His brain for a moment or two felt like a volcano, and he
reeled as he felt himself in the broad open light of day in Fleet Street
among the throng of the population, and yet in that throng was in truth