The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
is possible that men with
"Twenty murders on their heads,"
can revisit this world to drive those who have done them to death with
shrieking madness--this world do I say? There is no other. Bah! Priests
may talk, and the weak-brained fools who gape at what they do not
understand, may believe them, but when man dies--when the electric
condition that has imputed to his humanity what is called life, flies,
he is indeed
"Dust to dust!"
Ha! ha! I have lived as I will die, fearing nothing and believing
nothing."
As he uttered those words--words which found no real echo in his heart,
for at the bottom of it lay a trembling belief in, and a dread of the
great God that rules all things, and who is manifest in the meanest
seeming thing that crawls upon the earth--he entered one of the rooms
upon that floor, and glanced uneasily around him. All was still. There
were trunks--clothes upon chairs, and a vast amount of miscellaneous
property in this room, but nothing in the shape of a human being. Todd's
spirits rose, and he held the long knife more carelessly than he had
done.
"Pho! pho!" he said. "I do, indeed, at times make myself the slave of a
disturbed fancy. Pho! pho! I will no more listen to vague sounds,
meaning nothing; but wrapping myself up in my consciousness of having
nothing to fear, I will pursue my course, hideous though it may be."
He turned and took his way towards the landing place of the staircase
again. He was now carrying both the light and the knife rather
carelessly, and everybody knows that when a candle is held before a
person's face, that but little indeed can be seen in the hazy vapour
that surrounds it. So it was with Todd. He had got about two paces from
the door, when a strange consciousness of something being in his way
came over him. He immediately raised his hand--that hand that still
carried the knife, to shade the light, and then, horror! horror! He saw
standing upon the landing a figure attired in faded apparel, whose face
was dabbled in blood, and the stony eyes which were fixed upon the face
of Todd, with so awful an expression, that had the barber's heart been
made of much more flinty materials than it was, he could not have
resisted the terrors of that awful moment. With a shriek that echoed
through the house, Todd fell upon the landing. The light rolled from
stair to stair until it was finally extinguished, and all was darkness.
"Good," said Crotchet, for it was he who had enacted the ghost. "Good!
I'm blessed if I didn't think that ere would nail him. These sort o'
chaps are always on the look-out for something or another to be
frightened at, and you have only to show yourself to put 'em almost out
of their seven senses. It was a capital idea that of me to cut my finger
a little, and get some blood to smear over my face. It's astonishing
what a long way a little drop will go, to be sure. I dare say it makes
me look precious rum."
Mr. Crotchet was quite right regarding the appearance which the blood,
smeared over his face, gave to him. It made him look perfectly hideous,
and any one whose conscience was not--
"With injustice corrupted!"
might well have been excused for a cold chill, and, perchance, even a
swoon, like Sweeney Todd's, at his appearance.
"I rather think," added Crotchet, "that's a settler; so I'll just take
the liberty, old fellow, of lighting your candle again, and then
_mizzling_, for I don't somehow think much good is to be done in this
crib just now."
By the aid of his phosphorus match Crotchet soon succeeded in
re-illumining the candle, which he found on a mat in the passage; but
notwithstanding his opinion that he had seen about as much as there was
to see in Todd's house, he, when he had the candle alight, thought he
might just as well peep into the parlour immediately behind the shop,
before going up-stairs again. The door offered no opposition, for Todd
had certainly not expected any one down stairs, and Mr. Crotchet found
himself in the parlour about as soon as he had formed the wish to be
there. This parlour was perfectly crammed with furniture, and all of the
bureau kind, that is to say, large shapeless looking pieces of mahogany,
with no end of drawers. Crotchet made an attempt at several before he
found one that yielded to his efforts to open it, and that only did so
because the hasp into which the lock was shot had given way, and no
longer held it close. This drawer was full of watches.
"Humph!" said Crotchet, "Todd ought to know the time of day certainly,
and no mistake. Ah, these ere machines, if they had tongues now, I
rather think, could tell a tale or two. Howsomedever, I'll pocket some
of 'em."
Mr. Crotchet put about a dozen watches in his pocket forthwith, and then
he began to think that, as he did not wish to take Mr. Todd just then
into custody, it would be just as well if he left the house. Besides,
the barber had only fell into a swoon through fright, so that his
recovery was a matter that could be calculated upon with something like
certainty in a short time.
"It would be a world of pities if he was to find out as the ghost was
only me," said Crotchet, "so I'll be off before he comes to himself."
Extinguishing the light, Crotchet wound his way up the staircase again,
but when he got to the landing he stopped, and said--
"Bless us! I've not got them canes and swords as Sir Richard wanted me
to bring away with me. Well, the watches will answer better than them,
for all he wants is to compare 'em with the descriptions of some folks
as has been missed by their blessed relations in London, so that's all
right. Hilloa!"
This latter ejaculation arose from Crotchet having trodden upon Todd.
"The deuce!" he added, "I thought I had got clear of him."
He paused, and heard Todd utter a deep groan. Mr. Crotchet took this as
a signal that he had better be off; and accordingly he ascended the next
staircase quickly, and in a very few minutes reached the attic of Todd's
house. When there, he quickly made his appearance in the shoemaker's
attic, and found that Sir Richard Blunt had left the door of it just
upon the latch for him. He was upon the point of passing out of the
room, and going down stairs, when he heard a confused sound approaching
the attic, and he paused instantly. The sound came nearer and nearer,
until Crotchet found that some half dozen people were upon the landing,
and all talking together in anxious whispers.
"What the deuce is up now?" he thought.
He approached the door and listened.
"I tell you what it is, Mr. Otton," said a female voice. "It's now
getting on for ten o'clock, and I positively can't sleep in my bed
unless I know something more about this horrid attic."
"Well, but, mum--"
"Don't speak to me. Here's an attic, and two men go into it. Then all at
once there's no men in it; and then all at once, one man comes down and
walks out as cool as a cucumber, and says nothing at all; and then we
know well enough as there was two men, and only one--"
"But, mum--"
"Don't speak to me, and only one has come down."
"And here's the t'other!" cried Crotchet, suddenly bouncing out of the
attic.
The confusion that ensued baffles all description. A grand rush was made
into the apartments of the lady who was fond of putting her feet into
hot water; and in the midst of the confusion, Crotchet quickly enough
went down stairs, and made his escape from the shoemaker's house.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE GREAT SACRIFICE.
While all these things were going on at Sweeney Todd's, in Fleet-street,
Mrs. Lovett was not quite idle as regarded her own affairs and feelings.
That lady's--what shall we say--certainly not affections, for she had
none--passions is a better word--were inconceivably shocked by the
discovery she had made of the perfidy of her flaunting and moustachied
lover. It will be perceived, by this little affair of Mrs. Lovett's, how
strong-minded women have their little weaknesses. The hour of the
appointment, which she (Mrs. Lovett) had made with her military-looking
beau, came round; and there she sat, looking rather disconsolate.
"Am I never to succeed," she muttered to herself, "in finding one with
whom I can make my escape from this sea of horrors that surrounds me? Am
I, notwithstanding I have so fully accomplished all I wished to
accomplish, by--by"--she shuddered and paused.--"Well, well, the time
will come--I must go alone. Let Todd go alone, and let me go alone. Why
should he wish to trammel my actions? He cannot surely think, for a
moment, that with him I will consent to pass the remainder of my life!"
The scornful curl of the lip, and the indignant toss of the head, which
accompanied these words, would have been quite sufficient to convince
Todd, had he seen them, of the hopelessness of any such notion.
"No," she added, after a pause, "I shall be alone in the world, or, if I
make ties, they shall be made in another country. There it is possible I
may be--oh, no, no--not happy; but I may be powerful, and have cringing
slaves about me, who, finding that I am rich, will tell me that I am
beautiful, and I shall be able to drink deeply of the intoxicating cup
of pleasure, in some land where prudery, or what is called propriety,
has not set up its banner as it has in this land of outward virtue. As
for Todd--I--I will try to be assured that he is a corpse before I
breathe freely; and if I fail in that, I will hope that we shall be
thousands of leagues asunder."
A shadow passed the window. Mrs. Lovett started to her feet.
"Ah! who comes? 'Tis he--no--God! 'tis Todd."
For a moment she pressed her hands upon her face, as though she would
squeeze out the traces of passion from the muscles, and then her old set
smile came back again. Todd entered the shop. For a few moments they
looked at each other in silence, and then Todd said--
"Alone?"
"Quite," she replied.
He gave one of his peculiar laughs, and then glided into the parlour
behind the shop. Mrs. Lovett followed him.
"News?" he said.
"None."
"Hem! The time is coming."
"The time to leave off this--"
"Yes. The time to quit business, Mrs. Lovett. All goes well--swimmingly.
Ha! ha!"
She shuddered as she said--
"Do not laugh."
"Let those laugh who win," replied Todd. "How old are you, Sarah?"
"Old?"
"Yes, or to shape the question perhaps more to a woman's liking, how
young are you? Have you yet many years before you in which to enjoy the
fruits of our labours? Have you the iron frame which will enable you to
say--'I shall revel for years in the soft enjoyments of luxury stolen
from a world I hate?' Tell me."
Mrs. Lovett fell into a musing attitude, and Todd thought she was
reflecting upon her age; but at length she said--
"I sometimes think I would give half of what is mine if I could forget
how I became possessed of the whole."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, Todd. Has no such feeling ever crossed you?"
"Never! I am implacable. Fate made me a barber, but nature made me
something else. In the formation of man there is a something that gives
weakness to his resolves, and makes him pause upon the verge of
enterprise with a shrinking horror. That is what the world calls
conscience. It has no hold of me. I have but one feeling towards the
human race, and that is hatred. I saw that while they pretended to bow
down to God, they had in reality set up another idol in their heart of
hearts. Gold! gold! Tell me--how many men there are in this great city
who do not worship gold far more sincerely and heartily than they
worship Heaven?"
"Few--few."
"Few? None, I say, none. No. The future is a dream--an _ignis fatuus_--a