The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
The fence was composed of the common privet, so that there would have
been neither difficulty nor danger in forcing his way through it; but
what he might encounter upon the other side was a subject of
consideration well worth his attention.
Through the interstices of the foliage he could see that there was a
pretty and well-kept mixed garden on the other side. Roses and other
flowers grew in quite loving companionship with all kinds of culinary
vegetables, and the little plot of ground was well shadowed by some
half-dozen fruit trees. A part of the ground was made into a kind of
lawn, and upon that lawn was a child about one year old crawling about,
and amusing itself by making weak efforts to pull up the grass.
While Todd was observing these things, a woman came out of a little
white-washed cottage that was at the farther end of the garden, with
some clothes to hang up to dry. The woman spoke to the child, and from
the tone in which she did so, it was quite evident she was the mother of
it.
Todd waited until she had hung the clothes up that she had brought out
into the garden, and then when she went into the house for more, he
burst his way through the hedge, and with a resolution and firmness that
nothing but the exigencies of his situation could possibly have endowed
him with, he took the child up in his arms and walked slowly across the
lawn towards the cottage.
The woman, with another heap of wet clothes in her arms, met him, and
uttered a loud scream.
"Peace," said Todd. "Peace, I say. There is no danger unless you make
some. Listen to me, and I will tell you how you can do a service to me,
and spare your child."
"Help! help! Murder! Thieves!" cried the woman.
Todd took one of his pistols from his pocket, and held it to the head of
the child.
"Another word," he said, "and I fire!"
The woman fell upon her knees, and holding up her hands in the attitude
of prayer, she said--
"Oh, have mercy! Kill me, if you must take a life, but spare the child!"
"The child's life," said Todd, "is in your own hands. Why do you seek to
destroy me?"
"I do not--I do not, indeed."
"Then, peace, and do not cry out for help. Do not shout that dreadful
word 'Murder!' for that will destroy me. I am hunted by my fellow-men. I
am a poor proscribed wretch, and all I ask of you is that you will not
betray me."
"You will spare my child?"
"I will. Why should I harm the little innocent? I was once myself a
little child, and considered to be rather a beauty."
As Todd said this, he made one of his most hideous faces, so that the
woman cried out with terror, and tried to snatch the child from him, but
he held it with a firm grasp.
CHAPTER CLXV.
TODD HIDES IN A CUPBOARD.
"It is in vain," said Todd; "my safety is wound up now with the safety
of this little one. If you would save it, you will save me."
"Oh, no, no. Why should it be so? I cannot save you."
"You can, I think. At all events, I will be satisfied if you make the
effort to do so. I tell you I am pursued by the officers of the law. It
does not matter to you what I am, or who I am, or what crime it is that
they lay to my charge; your child's life is as dear to you in any case.
Hide me in the cottage, and deny my being seen here, and the child shall
live. Betray me, and as sure as the sun gives light, it dies."
"Oh, no, no, no!"
"But, I say, yes. Your course is easy. It is all but certain that my
prosecutors will come to this cottage, as it is the only habitation on
the route that I have taken. They will ask you if you have seen such a
man as I am, and they will tell you that you may earn a large reward by
giving such information as may deliver me into the hands of justice; but
what reward--what sum of money would pay you for your child's life?"
"Oh, not all the world's worth!"
"So I thought; and so you will deny seeing me, or knowing ought of me,
for your child's sake? Is it agreed?"
"It is--it is! God knows who you are, or what you have done that the
hands of your fellow creatures should be raised against you; but I will
not betray you. You may depend upon my word. If you are found in this
place, it shall not be by any information of mine."
"Can you hide me?"
"I will try to do so. Come into the cottage. Ah! what noise is that? I
hear the tread of feet, and the shouts of men!"
Todd paused to listen. He shook for a moment or two; and then, with a
bitter tone, he said--
"My pursuers come! They begin to suspect the trick that I have played
them!--they now know--or think they know, that I have turned upon my
route. They come--they come!"
"Oh, give me the child! I swear to you that I will hide you to the
utmost of my means; but give me the child!"
"Not yet."
The woman looked at him in an agony of tears.
"Listen to me," she said. "If they discover you it will not be my fault,
nor the fault of this little innocent--you feel that! Ah! then tell me
upon what principle of justice can you take its life?"
"I will be just," said Todd. "All I ask of you is, to hide me to the
best of your ability, and to keep secret the fact of my presence here.
If, after you have done all that, you still find that I am taken, it
will be no fault of yours. I do not ask impossibilities of any one, nor
do I threaten punishment against you for not performing improbable
feats. Come in--come in at once! They come--they come! Do you not hear
them now?"
It was quite evident now that a number of persons were approaching, and
beating the bushes as they came on. The tread of a horse's feet, too,
upon the road convinced Todd that among his foes, now, was the mounted
man whom he had seen, and whom he thought he saw point to him as he lay
crouching down behind the hedge, half hidden in the ditch.
With the little child still in his arms, he rushed into the cottage, and
the woman followed him, wringing her hands with terror. And yet Todd was
gentle with the child. He knew that from the mother he had everything to
hope, and everything to dread, and he did not wish to drive her to
despair by any display of harshness to the little one.
"This way," she cried, "this way," as she led the way into an
inner-room. "There is a cupboard here in which you can conceal yourself.
If they do not search the house, they will not find you, and I will do
all that I can to prevent them."
"That will do," said Todd; "but, remember, I will have the child near
me, so that upon the least symptom of treachery from you, I can put it
to death; and I shall not, under any circumstances, at all scruple so to
do. Where is this cupboard that you speak of?"
"It is here--it is here!"
"Ah! that will do." Todd now cast his eyes around the room, and
perceived a little cot, that, at night, was devoted to the slumbers of
the child. "Take that," he said, pointing to it, "and place it against
the door of the cupboard with the child in it. It will seem then not
likely that I am hidden here."
"I will do so."
Todd did not feel any apprehension of treachery from the mother of the
child. He was not slow to perceive that every other feeling was in her
breast weak in comparison with the all-absorbing one of love for the
infant; and so he calculated that, rather than run the shadow of a risk
of injury to it, she would do all that he required. The cupboard was a
deep one; but it was not high enough for Todd quite to stand upright in.
That, however, was a trifling inconvenience, and he got into it at once.
The child's cot was placed against the door; and the young mother, with
a thousand fears tugging at her heart, pretended to busy herself about
her household affairs.
The little interval that now ensued, before Todd's pursuers reached the
spot, was certainly to him rather a fearful one; and he felt that his
fate hung upon the proceedings of the next few moments. He called to the
woman in an earnest tone--
"Courage--courage--all will be well."
"Oh, peace--peace!" she said. "They come!"
Todd quite held his breath now in the painful effort that he made to
listen, so that not the slightest sound that might be indicative of the
approach of his enemies might escape him; and he gave such a start, that
he nearly threw open the cupboard-door, and upset the cot, as he heard a
hoarse man's voice suddenly call out from the garden--
"Hilloa!--House here--house--Hilloa!"
"Now--now," he gasped. "Now I live or die! Upon the next few moments
hangs my fate!"
The cold dew of intense fear stood upon his brow, and his sense of
hearing appeared to be getting preternaturally acute. Not a word that
was said escaped him, although it was right away in the garden that
this, to him, fearfully interesting conversation took place.
"What is the matter?" he heard the woman say, and then the rough voice
replied to her--
"We are the police, my good woman, and we are in search of a man who is
hidden somewhere about this neighbourhood. Has any one come into your
place, or have you seen a tall man pass the cottage?"
"No," said the woman.
Todd breathed a little more freely.
"It's very odd," said another voice; "for he must be about this spot,
that is quite clear, as he was dodging about the field at the back of
here, and hiding in the hedge. We must have passed him."
"Well, he can't get away," said a third; "but after all, he may be lying
down somewhere in the garden, for all we know to the contrary."
"I don't think it," said the woman.
At this moment, the child began to cry violently.
"Oh, confound you for a brat!" said Todd, "I wish it was only safe to
throttle you."
"Is that your child?" said one of the officers.
"Oh, yes--yes," said the young mother, and hastening into the cottage,
she placed a chair by the side of the cot, and began to rock it to and
fro, singing while she did so, to lull the child to sleep.
"She will keep her word," thought Todd. "I feel confident that she will
keep her word, now, with me."
"You look all round the garden, while I take a peep about the house,"
said the principal officer.
"Oh, I am lost!" moaned Todd. "I am surely lost now! If the house should
be searched well, so obvious a place of concealment as a cupboard will
not escape them. All is lost now, indeed."
He almost gave up all thought, now, of keeping life or liberty, and he
waited only for the fatal moment when the officers should approach and
place their hands upon that cupboard door to open it. The child still
cried, and the mother sang to it.
"'Sleep, sleep, little baby--
Oh, sleep all the day;
The sunshine is hiding,
The birds fly away.
Away, away--far away.
The sunshine is hiding,
The birds fly away--'"
"Hilloa! What cupboard is that behind the child's cot?"
"'And when they return
You may open your eyes.'
"Oh, it's where we keep our best crockery. Don't disturb the child--I do
think it is sickening with the measles.
"'And see how the sunset
Is gilding the skies,
Away, away--far away.
And see how the sunset
Is gilding the skies.'
"Have you found him in the garden? I shall be almost out of my wits,
now, till my husband comes home. Who is it that you are looking for, and
pray what has he done? He would need to be clever, indeed, to come in
here without my knowing it; and as for the garden, why, I was hanging
out the clothes there for the last half hour, I tell you."
"Oh, he's not here," said the officer. "It would be no bad thing, marm,
for any one who could lend a helping hand to find him."
"Ah, indeed?"
"Yes. You have heard of Todd, the murderer? Well, that's the man we are