The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
your front attic, and--"
"What?"
"Your front attic, and get out of the window to look into the front
attic next door. We won't trouble you if you will oblige us with a
candle. That's all."
Todd advanced two steps further towards the beadle and looked peeringly
in his face. All the suspicious qualities of his nature rose up in
alarm. Every feeling of terror regarding the instability of his
position, and the danger by which he was surrounded, rushed upon him. At
once he conjectured that danger was approaching him, and that in this
covert manner the beadle was intent upon getting into the house, for the
purpose of searching it to his detriment. As the footpad sees in each
bush an officer, so, in the most trivial circumstances, even the acute
intellect of Sweeney Todd saw dangers, and rumours of dangers, which no
one but himself could have had the remotest idea of. He glared upon the
beadle with positive ferocity, and so much affected was Otton by that
lynx-like observation of Sweeney Todd's, that he stepped aside and
disclosed that he was not alone. If anything could have confirmed Todd
in his suspicions that there was a dead-set at him, it was finding that
the beadle was not alone. And yet the shoemaker was well known to him.
But what will lull such suspicion as Sweeney Todd had in his mind? Once
engendered, it was like the jealousy that--
"Makes the meat it feeds on!"
He advanced, step by step, glaring upon the beadle and upon the
shoemaker. Reaching up his hand, he suddenly turned the lamp that hung
from the ceiling clear round, so that, in lieu of its principal light
falling upon him, it fell upon the faces of those who had paid him so
unceremonious a visit.
"Lawks!" said the beadle.
"Excuse us, Mr. Todd," said the shoemaker, "I assure you we only
meant--"
"What?" thundered Todd. Then suddenly softening his voice, he
added--"You are very welcome here indeed. Pray what do you want?"
"Why, sir," said Otton, "you must know that this gentleman has a
lodger."
"A what?"
"A lodger, sir, and so you see that's just the case. You understand that
this lodger--lor, Mr. Todd, this is your neighbour the shoemaker, you
know. The front attic, you know, and all that sort of thing. After this
explanation, I hope you'll lend us a candle at once, Mr. Todd, and let
us up to the attic."
Todd shaded his eyes with his hands, and looked yet more earnestly at
the beadle.
"Why, Mr. Otton," he said, "indeed you do want a shave."
"A shave?"
"Yes, Mr. Otton, I have a good razor here that will go over your chin
like a piece of butter. Only take a seat, sir, and if you, neighbour,
will go home comfortably to your own fireside, I will send for you when
Mr. Otton is shaved."
"But really," said the beadle, rubbing his chin, "I was shaved this
morning, and as I do for myself always, you see, why I don't think I
require. Conwulsions! Mr. Todd, why do you look at a man so? Remember
the _Habus Corpus_. That's what we call the _paladermius_ of the British
Constitution, you know."
By this time the beadle had satisfied himself that he did not at all
require shaving, and turning to the shoemaker, he said--
"Why don't you be shaved?"
"Well, I don't care if I do, and perhaps, in the meantime you, Mr.
Otton, will go up to the attic, and take a peep into the next one, and
see if my lodger is up or in bed, or what the deuce has become of him.
It's a very odd thing, Mr. Todd, that a man should take one's attic, and
then disappear without coming down stairs."
"Disappear without coming down stairs?" said Todd.
"Yes, and my wife says--"
Todd made an impatient gesture.
"Gentlemen, I will look in my attic myself. The fact is, that the
flooring is rather out of order, and unless you know exactly where to
step you will be apt to fall through a hole into the second floor."
"The deuce you are!" said Otton.
"Yes; so I would not advise either of you to make the attempt. Just
remain there, and I'll go at once."
The proposition suited both parties, and Mr. Todd immediately passed
through a door at the back of his shop, which he immediately closed
behind him again. Instead of going up stairs, however, he slid aside a
small opening in the panel of this door, and placed his ear to it. "If
people say anything impudent, it is the moment they are free from the
company that has held them in check," was one of Sweeney Todd's maxims.
His first notion that the beadle and the shoemaker had come covertly to
search his house, had given way a little, and he wanted to convince
himself of the innocency or the reverse of their intentions, before he
put himself to any further trouble.
"I don't like it," said the shoemaker.
"Like what? Conwulsions! what don't you like?"
"Intruding upon Mr. Todd. What does he care about my lodgers? It ain't
as if he let any of his own house, and had a fellow feeling with us."
"Werry good," said the beadle, "but you send for me, and you ask me
what's best, and I tell yer that _Habus Corpus_, and one thing and
another, what I advised was the only thing, that was to get into Mr.
Todd's attic, and then get on the parapet and into yours. But if so be
as there's holes in Mr. Todd's attic, that will alter the affair, you
know."
"Fool--fool!" muttered Todd. "After all, they only come upon their own
twaddling affairs, and I was idiot enough to suspect such muddy pated
rascals."
In an instant he was in the shop again.
"Nobody there, gentlemen; I have looked into the attic, and there's
nobody there."
"Well, I'm very much obliged to you, Mr. Todd," said the shoemaker, "for
taking so much trouble. I'll go, and rather astonish my wife, I think."
"Conwulsions!" said the beadle. "It's an odd thing, but you know, Mr.
Todd, _Habus Corpus_ must have his way."
CHAPTER XLI.
TODD'S VISION.
When they had left, Todd remained for some minutes in an attitude of
thought.
"Is this an accident?" he said, "or is it but the elaboration of some
deep design to entrap me. What am I to think?"
Todd was an imaginative man quite. He was just the individual to think,
and think over the affair until he made something of it, very different
from what it really was, and yet there was some hope that the matter was
no more than what it appeared to be, by the character of the parties who
had come upon the mission. If anything serious had come to the ears of
the authorities, he thought, that surely two such people as the beadle
of St. Dunstan's, and his neighbour the shoemaker, would not be employed
to unravel such a mystery. He sat down in an arm chair and rested his
head upon his hand, and while he was in that attitude the door of his
shop opened, and a man in the dress of a carter made his appearance.
"Be this Mister Todd's?"
"Well," said Todd, "what then?"
"Why, then, this be for him like. It's a letter, but larning waren't
much i' the fashion in my young days, so I can't read what's on it."
Todd stretched out his hand. An instant examination showed him it bore
the Peckham post-mark.
"Ah!" he muttered, "from Fogg. Thank you, my man, that will do. That
will do. What do you wait for?"
"Please to remember the carter, your honour!"
Todd looked daggers at him, and slowly handed out twopence, which the
man took with a very ill grace.
"What," said Todd, "would you charge me more for carrying a letter than
King George the Third does, you extortionate rascal?"
The carter gave a nod.
"Get out with you, or by--"
Todd snatched up a razor, and the carter was off like a shot, for he
really believed, from the awful looks of Todd, that his life was not
worth a minute's purchase. Todd opened the letter with great
gravity.--It contained the following words:--
"DEAR SIR,"
"The lad, T. R., I grieve to say, is no more. Let us hope he is gone
where the weary are at rest, and where there is neither sin nor
sorrow.
"I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
"JACOB B. FOGG."
"Humph!" said Todd.
He held the letter in the flame of the lamp until it fell a piece of
airy tinder at his feet.
"Humph!" he repeated, and that humph was all that he condescended to say
of poor Tobias Ragg, whom the madhouse-keeper had thought proper to say
was dead; hoping that Todd might never be undeceived, for the barber was
a good customer.
If, however, Tobias should turn up to the confusion of Fogg and of Todd,
what could the latter do for the deceit that had been practised upon
him?--literally nothing.
"No sooner," said Todd, "does one cloud disappear from my route than
another takes its place. What can that story mean about the attic next
door? It sounds to my ears strange and portentous. What am I to think of
it?"
He rose and paced his shop with rapid strides. At length he paused as
though he had come to a determination.
"The want of a boy is troublesome to me," he said. "I must get one, but
for the present this must suffice."
He wrote upon a small slip of paper the words--"Gone to the Temple--will
return shortly." He then, by the aid of a wafer, affixed this
announcement to the upper part of the half-glass door leading into his
shop. Locking this door securely on the inside, and starting a couple of
bolts into their sockets, he lit a candle and left his shop. With a
stealthy, cat-like movement, Todd passed through the room immediately
behind his business apartment, and opening another door he made his way
towards the staircase. Then he paused a moment. He thought some sound
from above had come upon his ears, but he was not quite sure. To
suspect, however, was with such a man as Todd to be prepared for the
worst, and accordingly he went back to the room behind his shop again,
and from a table-drawer he took a knife, such as is used by butchers in
their trade, and firmly clutching it in his right hand, while he carried
the candle in his left, he once more approached the staircase.
"I do not think," he said, "that for nine years now any mortal
footsteps, but my own, have trod upon these stairs or upon the flooring
of the rooms above. Woe be to those who may now attempt to do so. Woe, I
say, be to them, for their death is at hand."
These words were spoken in a deep hollow voice, that sounded like tones
from a sepulchre, as they came from the lips of that man of many crimes.
To give Todd his due, he did not seem to shrink from the unknown and
dimly appreciated danger that might be up stairs in his house. He was
courageous, but it was not the high-souled courage that nerves a man to
noble deeds. No, Sweeney Todd's courage was that of hate--hatred to the
whole human race, which he considered, with a strange inconsistency, had
conspired against him; whereas he had been the one to place an
impassable barrier between himself and the amenities of society. He
ascended the stairs with great deliberation. When he reached the landing
upon the first floor, he cast his eyes suspiciously about him, shading
the light as he did so with his hand--that same hand that held the
knife, the shadow of which fell upon the wall in frightful proportions.
"All is still," he said. "Is fancy, after all, only playing me such
tricks as she might have played me twenty years ago? I thought I was too
old for such freaks of the imagination."
Todd did not suspect that there was a second period in his life, when
the mental infirmities of his green youth might come back to him, with
many superadded horrors accumulated, with a consciousness of guilt. He
slowly approached a door and pushed it open, saying as he did so--
"No--no--no. Above all things, I must not be superstitious. If I were
so, into what a world of horrors might I not plunge. No--no, I will not
people the darkness with horrible phantasies, I will not think that it