The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
saw Ben was effectually doing. Tobias had shown some slight symptoms of
vitality before being lifted from the step of the door close to which he
had fallen, but by the time they all reached the chemist's shop, he was
in a complete state of insensibility. Of course the usual crowd that
collects on such occasions followed them, and during the walk the
colonel had time to think, and the result of those thoughts was, that it
would be a most desirable thing to keep the knowledge to himself that
Tobias _was_ Tobias. He had, in order to awe the mob from any
interference with him, announced who he was, but had not announced
Tobias. At least if he had uttered his name, he felt certain that it was
in an interjectional sort of way, and not calculated to awaken any
suspicion.
"I will keep it to myself," he thought, "that Tobias is in my
possession, otherwise if such a fact should travel round to Sweeney
Todd, there's no saying to what extent it might put that scoundrel upon
his guard."
By the time the colonel had arrived at this conclusion the whole party
had reached the chemist's, and Big Ben walked in with Tobias, and placed
him at once upon the top of a plate-glass counter, which had upon it a
large collection of trumpery scent bottles and wonderful specifics for
everything, through which Tobias went with a crash.
"There he is!" said Ben--"ale does it."
"Fire! murder! my glass case!" cried the chemist, "Oh, you monster!"
"Ale does it. What do you mean, eh?"
Big Ben backed a pace or two and went head and shoulders through a glass
case of similar varieties that was against the wall.
"Gracious bless the beasteses," said Ben, "is your house made of glass?
What do you mean by it, eh? A fellow can't turn round here without going
through something. You ought to be persecuted according to law, that you
ought."
Now this learned chemist had in the glass case against which Big Ben had
tumbled a skeleton, which, from the stunning and terrible look it had in
his shop, brought him many customers, and it was against this remnant of
humanity that Big Ben's head met, after going through the glass as a
preparatory step. By some means or another Ben caught his head under the
skeleton's ribs, and the consequence was that out he hooked him from the
glass case, and the first intimation Ben had of anything unusual,
consisted of seeing a pair of bony legs dangling down on each side of
him. So unexpected a phenomenon gave Ben what he called a "blessed
turn," and out he bounced from the shop, carrying the skeleton for all
the world like what is called pick-a-back, for the wires that supplied
the place of cartilages held it erect, and so awful a sight surely was
never seen in the streets of London as Big Ben with a skeleton upon his
back. People fled before--some turned in at shop doors; and an old lady
with a large umbrella and a pair of gigantic pattens went clean through
a silversmith's window. But we must leave Ben and the skeleton to get on
as well as they can _en route_ to the Tower, while we turn our attention
to Tobias.
"Are you a surgeon?" cried Colonel Jeffery.
"A--a surgeon? No, I'm only a druggist; but is that any reason why a
second Goliath should come into my shop and destroy everything?"
Colonel Jeffery did not wait for anything more, but snatching Tobias
from the remnants of the plate glass, he ran to the door with him, and
handing him to the first person he saw there, he cried--
"When I am mounted give me the boy."
"Yes, sir."
He sprang upon his horse; Tobias was handed to him like a bale of goods,
and laying him comfortably as he could upon the saddle before him, off
set the colonel at a good round trot through Finsbury to his own house.
Colonel Jeffery had no sort of intention that the chemist should be a
sufferer, but in his hurry to be off with Tobias, and speedily get
medical advice for him, he forgot to say so, and accordingly there stood
the man of physic then fairly bewildered by the events of the last few
moments, during which his stock in trade had been materially damaged and
a valuable amount of glass broken, to say nothing of the singular and
most unexpected abduction of his friend the skeleton.
"Here's a pretty day's work!" he said. "Here's a pretty day's work! More
mischief done than enough, and the worst of it is, my wife will hear of
it, and then there will be a deal of peace in the house. Oh, dear--oh,
dear--was there ever such an unfort--I knew it--"
A good rap upon his head from a pair of bellows wielded by a little
meagre-faced woman, that he was big enough to have swallowed, confined
his words. While all this was going on, Colonel Jeffery had ridden fast,
and passing through Finsbury and up the City-road, had reached his house
in the fashionable--but now quite the reverse, as the man says in the
play--district of Pentonville.
"This is a prize," thought the colonel, "worth the taking. It will go
hard with me but I will extract from this boy all that he knows of
Sweeney Todd, and we shall see how far that knowledge will go towards
the confirmation of my suspicions regarding him."
He carried Tobias himself to a comfortable bed-room, and immediately
sent for a medical practitioner of good repute in the neighbourhood, who
happening fortunately to be at home, obeyed the summons immediately. He
sent likewise for his friend the captain, whom he knew would be
overjoyed to hear of what he would call the capture of Tobias Ragg. The
medical man made his appearance first, as being much closer at hand, and
the colonel led him to the apartment of the invalid boy, saying to him
as he went--
"I know nothing of what is the matter with this lad--I have been very
anxious to see him on account of certain information that he possesses,
and only found him this morning upon a door step in the street, in the
state you see him."
"Is he very ill?"
"I am afraid he is."
The medical man followed the colonel to the room in which poor Tobias
lay, and after gazing upon him for a few moments, and opening with his
fingers the closed eyelids of Tobias, he shook his head.
"I wish I knew," he said, "what has produced this state. Can you not
inform me, sir?"
"Indeed I cannot, but I suspect that the boy's imagination has been
cruelly acted upon by a man, whom you will excuse me from naming just at
present, but whom I sincerely hope to bring to justice shortly."
"The boy's brain, no doubt, is in a bad condition. I do not take upon
myself to say that, as an organ, it is diseased, but fractionally it is
damaged. However, we must do the best we can to recover him from this
condition of collapse in which he is."
"Can you form any opinion as to his probable recovery?"
"Indeed I cannot, but he is young, and youth is a great thing. The best
that can be done shall be done."
"I thank you. Spare nothing for the lad, and pay him every attention, as
though he were a son or a brother of my own; I long to hear him speak,
and to convince him that he is really among friends, who are not only
willing to protect him, but have likewise the power to do so."
The medical man bowed, as he said--
"May I ask his name, sir?"
He had his tablets in his hand ready to book the name of Tobias, but the
colonel was so very much afraid that Sweeney Todd might by some means
learn that Tobias was in his house, and so take an alarm, that he would
not trust even the medical man, who, no doubt, had no other motive in
asking the name than merely to place it in his list of calls.
"Smith," said the colonel.
The medical man gave a short dry sort of cough, as he wrote "Master
Smith" upon his tablets, and then promising to return in half an hour,
he took his leave. At the expiration of half an hour Tobias was put
under a course of treatment. His head was shaved, and a blister clapped
upon the back of his neck. The room was darkened, and strict quiet was
enjoined.
"As soon as he betrays any signs of consciousness, pray send for me,
sir," said the surgeon.
"Certainly."
In the course of the day the captain made his appearance, and Colonel
Jeffery detailed to him all that had taken place, only lamenting that,
after so happily getting possession of Tobias, he should be in so sorry
a condition. The captain expressed a wish to see him, and they both went
to the chamber, where a woman had been hired to sit with Tobias, in
order to give the first intimation of his stirring. Of course, as it was
her duty, and what she was specially hired for, to keep wide awake, she
was fast asleep, and snoring loud enough to awaken any one much worse
than poor Tobias. But that was to to be expected.
"Oh," said the captain, "this is a professional nurse."
"A professional devil!" said the colonel. "How did you know that?"
"By her dropping off so comfortably to sleep, and her utter neglect of
her charge. I never knew one that did not do so, and, in good truth, I
am inclined to think it is the very best thing they can do, for if they
are not asleep they are obnoxiously awake."
The colonel took a pin from his cravat, and rather roughly inserted its
point into the fat arm of the nurse. She started up, exclaiming--
"Drat the fleas, can't a mortal sleep in peace for them?"
"Madam," said the colonel, "how much is owing to you for sleeping here a
few hours?"
"Lord bless me, sir, is this you? The poor soul has never so much as
stirred. How my heart bleeds continually for him, to be sure. Ah, dear
me, we are all born like sparks, and keep continually flying upward, as
the psalm says."
"How much do I owe you?"
"Here to-day, and gone to-morrow. Bless his innocent face."
The colonel rung the bell, and a strapping footman made his appearance.
"You will see this woman to the door, John," he said, "and pay her for
being here about three hours."
"Why, you mangy skin-flint," cried the woman. "What do you--"
She was cut short in her vituperative eloquence by John, who handed her
down stairs with such dispatch that a pint bottle of gin rolled out of
her pocket and was smashed, filling the house with an odour that was
quite unmistakeable.
"What do you propose to do?" said the captain.
"Why, as we have dined, if you have no objection we will sit here and
keep this poor benighted one company for awhile. He is better with no
one than such as she whom I have dislodged; but before night he shall
have a more tender and less professional nurse. You know more of the
world, after all, than I do, captain."
CHAPTER XXII.
TOBIAS HAS A MIND DISEASED.
With a bottle of claret upon the table between them, Colonel Jeffery and
his old friend sat over the fire in the bed-room devoted to the use of
poor Tobias Ragg. Alas! poor boy, kindness and wealth that now
surrounded him came late in the day. Before he first crossed the
threshold of Sweeney Todd's odious abode, what human heart could have
more acutely felt genuine kindness than Tobias's, but his destiny had
been an evil one. Guilt has its victims, and Tobias was in all senses
one of the victims of Sweeney Todd.
"I am sufficiently, perhaps superstitious, you will call it," said
Colonel Jeffery in a low tone of voice, "to think that my meeting with
this boy was not altogether accidental."
"Indeed?"
"No. Many things have happened to me during life--although I admit that
they may be all accounted for as natural coincidences, curious only at
the best but still suggestive of something very different, and make me
at times a convert to the belief in an interfering special Providence,
and this is one of them."
"It is a dangerous doctrine, my friend."
"Think you so?"
"Yes. It is much better and much safer both for the judgment and
imagination to account naturally for all those things which admit of a