The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
Mrs. Hardman was not very clear about what he would be a warning of, so
she got out of the difficulty by saying--"What's that to you,
stupid?"--and as Ben was rather slow in explaining that it did rather
concern him, she walked down stairs with a look of triumph that was
highly amusing to Sir Richard Blunt, as well as to Mr. Hardman, the
officer.
How Todd listened to the footsteps as they went down the stairs! How his
heart beat responsive to every one of them! and when he felt for certain
that that immediate and awful danger had passed away, he peeped out from
amid the mass of bed-clothes, with his eyes almost starting from his
head.
"Gone! gone!" he gasped. "He has really gone. My mortal enemy--the only
man who can make me tremble, that terrible Sir Richard Blunt! That he
should be within half-a-dozen paces of me; that he should hear me speak;
that he should only have to stretch out his hand to lay it upon my
shoulder, and yet that I should escape him! Oh, it cannot be real!"
Todd heard some accidental noise in the house, and he immediately dived
his head under the bed-clothes again.
"They are coming again!--they are coming again!" he gasped.
The noise led to nothing, and after a few moments, Todd became convinced
that it had nothing to do with him, so he ventured, half-suffocated, to
look up again.
"I must listen--I must listen," he said, in a low anxious tone. "I must
listen until he has gone. When I hear the street-door of the house shut,
I shall think that they have let him go and then I shall be able to
breathe again; but not before. Oh, no--no, not before--hush--hush! What
is that?"
Every little accidental sound in the house now set the heart of Todd
wildly beating. If one had come into the room, and said--"You are my
prisoner,"--the probability was, that he would have fainted; but if he
did not, it is quite certain that he could not have offered any
resistance. A child might have captured him then, during the accession
of terror that had come over him in that house, whither he had slunk
purposely for safety and for secrecy.
At length he heard a noise of voices in the passage, and then the
street-door was opened. As he lay, he could feel a rush of cold air in
consequence. Then it was closed again, and the house was very still.
"He has gone! He has gone!" said Todd.
The manner in which Todd pronounced these few words it would be
impossible to describe. No shivering wretch reprieved upon the scaffold,
with the rope round his neck, could feel a greater relief than did Todd,
when he found that the door of that house was really closed upon Sir
Richard Blunt.
And then he began to felicitate himself upon the fact that, after all,
he had come to that place; "for now," he thought, "I know that, although
I have been in great danger, it has passed away; and as Sir Richard
Blunt has transacted all his business in this house, he is not likely to
come to it again."
That was a pleasant thought, and as Todd dashed from his brow the heavy
drops that intense fear had caused to assemble there, he almost smiled.
A very profound stillness now reigned in the house, for Mrs. Hardman was
resolved to make up to her lodger--as well as she could--for the noise
and disturbance that had been so unwittingly caused in her front room.
She had made Ben go away, and as her husband had likewise gone, in
pursuance of the orders of Sir Richard Blunt, to take measures lest Todd
should make an escape by the Thames, the place remained as calm and
still as if no one were in it but herself.
Todd closed his eyes, and wearied nature sought relief in sleep. Even
Sweeney Todd, with more than twenty mortal murders on his conscience,
slept calmly for no less than six hours of that, to him, most eventful
day.
Twice during this long sleep of her lodger's had Mrs. Hardman stolen
into the front-room to listen, and been quite satisfied by the regular
breathing, that, at all events, her lodger was not dead; and she kept
herself upon the alert to attend to him whenever he should awake from
that deep sleep.
The long shadows of the houses on the other side of the street had
fallen upon the windows of the Hardmans' abode, and a slight fog began
to make itself perceptible in London, when Todd awoke.
"Help--help! Oh, God, where am I?" he cried.
He sprang half out of the bed, and then the full tide of recollection
came back to him, and he fully comprehended his situation in a moment.
"Hush!--hush!--hush!" he said; and he listened most intently to hear if
his sudden exclamation had attracted any attention.
He heard a footstep on the stairs.
"Hush!--hush!" he said again, "hush--who is it? I must be very careful
now!--Oh, very!"
The footstep paused at his door, and then he heard it in the next room,
and Mrs. Hardman advancing to the folding doors, said, in the blandest
of accents--
"Are you awake, sir, if you please?"
Todd at once assumed the tone in which he had formerly addressed her,
and replied--
"Yes, madam, yes. I am awake!"
"And how do you feel now, sir, if you please?"
"Oh, a great deal better, ma'am, a great deal better. Indeed, I feel
quite refreshed. I will come out directly, my dear madam. Pray have the
goodness to take this guinea. I shall want a cup of tea at times, and I
think I could take a cup now, my dear madam. You can get it out of that,
and keep the change, you know, till I want something else."
"Oh, really, sir," said Mrs. Hardman, as she put her hand through a
small opening of one of the folding doors and took the guinea. "It is
quite delightful to have so pleasant a lodger as yourself--oh, quite.--I
will get the tea directly, my dear sir, and pray make yourself quite at
home, if you please."
"Yes, ma'am, I will--I will."
"Do, sir. I should be really unhappy now, if I did not think you were
comfortable."
"Oh it's all right, ma'am. Eugh! Oh, dear! I do think my cough has been
better since I have been here."
"How delightful to hear you say that!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardman, speaking
in quite a tremulous voice of sympathetic emotion. "I will get the tea,
directly, sir."
She left the room, and as she went down the stairs, she said to
herself--
"What a pearl of a lodger, to be sure! He pays for everything over and
over again. I should not, now, in the least wonder but the dear old
gentleman will quite forget the change out of this guinea; if he does,
it is not for me to vex him by putting him in mind of it. I know well,
that old people never like it to be supposed that their memory fails
them; so if he says nothing about it, I am sure I shall not. Oh, dear,
no!"
"Wretch!" muttered Todd, as he crept out of the back room into the
front. "Wretch, I find that money will purchase anything in this house;
but am I surprised at that? Oh, no--no. Will not money purchase anything
in this great world? Of course it will. Why, then, should this house be
an exception to the rule so general? No--no. It is no exception; and I
may be very safe for a few guineas well spent; and they are well spent,
indeed. Oh, so well!"
Todd then, as he flung himself into the depths of an easy chair, that
was really easy for a wonder, considering that it was in a
lodging-house, began to arrange in his own mind his course of proceeding
for the night.
"Let me think--let me think," he muttered. "I am now very much refreshed
indeed, and feel quite strong and well, and equal to any emergency. That
sleep has done me a world of good, and it is strange, too, that it has
been the calmest and the quietest sleep I have enjoyed for many a month.
I hope it is not prophetic of some coming evil."
He shuddered at the thought. Todd was each day--ay, each hour, becoming
more and more superstitious.
"No--no. I will not think that. I will not be so mad as to disarm myself
of my courage, by thinking that for a moment. I will take my tea here,
and then I will sally forth, telling this woman that I will soon return,
and then, after a dose of brandy, I will hire a boat and take to the
river. What is that?"
The wind with a sudden gust came dashing against the windows, giving
them such a shake, that it seemed as if it were intent upon getting into
the room to buffet Todd.
He immediately rose, and going to the window, he placed his hideous face
close to one of the panes, and looked out.
The sky was getting very black, and huge clouds were careering about it.
The wind was evidently rising, and there was every appearance of its
being most squally and tempestuous. Todd bit his lips with vexation.
"Always something!" he said. "Always something to annoy me, and to cross
me. Always--always!"
"The tea, sir, if you please."
Todd turned round so suddenly, that he almost upset the servant with the
tea equipage.
"Oh, very well. That will do--that will do. You are the servant of the
house?"
"If you please, sir."
"Ah, you will then have to attend upon me while I am here, my dear, I
presume?"
"Yes, sir, if you please."
"Very good--very good. You are a very nice young woman, and there's
half-a-guinea for you. Eugh! I shall give you that sum every week while
I stay here, you know."
"Lor, sir, will you?"
"Yes, yes. You can go now. Is the tea all right?"
"Oh, dear, yes, sir. You are very good indeed. Misses said as you was a
very good lodger, which I knowed to mean as you didn't be _petikler_
about your money, and now I sees you ain't. Thank you, sir, for me. I'll
get up in the night if you want anythink."
CHAPTER CLIX.
TODD MAKES A VIGOROUS ATTEMPT TO REACH GRAVESEND.
The servant was so profuse in her acknowledgments for the half-guinea,
that she seemed as if she would never get out of the room, and Todd had
to say--
"There--there, that will do. Now leave me, my good girl--that will do,"
before she, with a curtsey at every step, withdrew.
"Well," she said, as she went down stairs. "If I tell misses of this,
I'm a Prussian. Oh, dear, I keeps it to myself and says nothing to
nobody, excepting to my Thomas as is in the horse-guards. Ah, he is a
nice fellow, and out o' this I'll make him a present of a most elegant
watch-ribbon, that he can put a bullet at the end of, and let it hang
out of his fob all as if he had a real watch in his pocket."
"Humph!" said Todd. "I have bought her good opinion cheap. It was well
worth ten-and-sixpence not to have the servant watching me, with, for
all I know to the contrary, eyes of suspicion--well worth it."
It was not very often that Todd indulged himself with a cup of tea.
Something stronger was commonly more congenial to his appetite; but upon
this occasion, after his long sleep, the tea had upon him a most
refreshing effect, and he took it with real pleasure. Mrs. Hardman, in
consideration of the guinea she had received beforehand, had done him
justice, as far as the quality of the tea was concerned, and he had it
good.
"Well," he said, after his third cup, "I did not think that there was so
much virtue in a cup of tea, after all; but of a surety, I feel
wonderfully refreshed at it. How the wind blows."
The wind did, indeed, blow, for all the while that Todd was taking his
tea it banged and buffeted against the window at such a rate, that it
was really quite a fearful thing to listen to it.
A couple of candles had been lighted and brought into the room, but the
gale without soon laid hold of their little flames, and tossed them
about so, that they gave but a dim and sepulchral kind of light.
Todd rose again, and went to the window--again he placed his face close
to the pane of glass, and shading his eyes with his hands, he looked
out. A dashing rain was falling.
"They say that when the rain comes the wind moderates," he muttered;