The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
went back, and fetched from the chimney-piece shelf his own little wax
light, which was still burning, and carefully guarding its flame from a
similar catastrophe to what had happened to Mrs. Lovett's light, he
descended the staircase, slowly and cautiously, after her. She went with
great deliberation, and it was not until being rather surprised at the
total absence of sound from her tread, that upon looking down to her
feet, he found that they were bare. After this, he could have no doubt
but that, almost immediately upon her lying down in bed, this
somnambulistic trance had come over her, and she had risen to creep
below, and go through the singular scene we are describing. Step by step
they both descended, until Mrs. Lovett came to the iron door. She did
not attempt to open it. If she had, Heaven only knows what might have
resulted from the desperate risk the captive cook might have made to
escape. But even in the madness of Mrs. Lovett--for a sort of madness
the scene she was enacting might be called--there was a kind of method,
and she had no idea of opening the iron door that shut the cook from the
upper world. Pausing, then, at the door leading to the ovens, she, with
as much facility as though she had had broad daylight to do it in,
unfastened the small square wicket in the top part of the window. A dull
reddish glare of light came through it from the furnaces, which night
nor day were extinguished.
"Hist! hist!" said Mrs. Lovett.
"Who speaks?" said a dull hollow voice, which sounded as if coming from
the tomb. "Who speaks to me?"
Mrs. Lovett shut the small wicket in a moment.
"He has not done it, yet," she said. "He has not done it
yet. No--no--no. But blood will flow--yes. It must be so.
One--two--three--four--five--six--seven. The seventh, and not the last.
Horrible! horrible!--most horrible! If, now, I could forget--"
She began rapidly to ascend the stairs, so that Sir Richard Blunt had to
take two at a step, and once three, in order to be up before her, and
even then she reached the parlour so close upon him, that it was a
wonder she did not touch him; but he succeeded in evading her by a
hair's breadth, and then she stood profoundly still for a few moments
with her hands clasped. This quiescent state, however, did not last
long, for suddenly, with eagerness, she leaned forward, and spoke again.
"No suspicion!" she said; "all is well!--Dear me, heap up thousands
more. Oh, Todd, have we not enough?--There, clean up that blood!--Here
is a cloth!--Stop it up--don't you see where it is running to, like a
live thing?--He is not dead yet.--How clumsy.--Another blow with the
hammer!--There--there--on the forehead!--What a crash!--Did the bone go
that time?--Why the eyes have started out!--Horror! horror!--Oh, God,
no--no--no--I cannot come here again.--Oh, God!--Oh, God!"
She sunk down upon the floor in a huddled up mass, and Sir Richard
Blunt, who could not forbear shuddering at the last words that had come
from her lips now he thought that her trance was over, rapidly
approaching her, said--
"Wretched woman, your career is over."
She suddenly rose, and with the same stately movement as before, she
made her way from the parlour by the door leading to the staircase.
During all the strange scenes she had gone through, she had not
abandoned the light, and although the air in the narrow passage of the
staircase had extinguished it, she still continued to carry it with the
same care as though it lit her on her way. Seeing that she still walked
in that strange and hideous sleep, the magistrate let her pass him, nor
did he make any attempt to follow her.
"Be it so," he said. "Let her awaken once again in the fancied security
of her guilt. The doom of the murderess is hanging over her, and she
shall not escape. But there is time yet."
He watched her until, by the turn of the stairs, she disappeared from
his sight, and then he sat down to think. And there, for a brief space,
we leave Sir Richard, while we take a peep at Tobias.
CHAPTER LVI.
TOBIAS UNBOSOMS HIMSELF.
Mrs. Ragg, when she met Sweeney Todd, after he had so comfortably put
out of this world of care, John Mundell, the usurer, was really upon a
mission to Minna Gray, to tell her that Tobias was, to use her own
expressive phraseology--"Never so much better." Together with this news,
Mrs. Ragg, at the colonel's suggestion, sought the company of Minna to
tea upon that afternoon; and the consent of all parties whom it might
concern being duly obtained to that arrangement, we will suppose Minna
upon her way to Colonel Jeffery's. Timidly, and with a bashful boldness,
if we may use the expression, did the fair young girl ring the area bell
at the colonel's. But he and his friend, Captain Rathbone, were both in
the parlour, and saw her advance, so that she was at once welcomed into
that portion of the house. The colonel, like most gentlemen, had the
happy knack of making those with whom he spoke at their ease, so that
Minna in a very short time recovered her first agitation--for if she had
gone a thousand times to that house, agitated she would have been at
first--and was able to discourse with all that gentle fervour and candid
simplicity which belongs to such minds as hers.
"A most favourable change," said the colonel, "has taken place in
Tobias--a change which I attribute to the strong influence which your
visit had upon him; such an opinion is not a mere fancy of mine, for the
medical gentleman who is in attendance upon him fully concurs in that
view of the case."
Minna had no need to say that she was pleased, for she looked all the
delight that such a communication was calculated to give her.
"Under these circumstances, then," continued the colonel, "that which
was only a faint hope of his recovery, has become a certainty."
Minna's eyes filled with tears.
"Yes," added Captain Rathbone, "and we expect that to you he will make
such revelations as shall bring proper punishment upon all those who
have in any way been the cause of this calamity."
"Oh, forgive them all, now," said Minna. "Since he recovers, we can
forgive them all, you know, now."
"That cannot be, for the persecution that Tobias has endured is but part
of a system which he will be the means of exposing. Will you come up
stairs at once now, Miss Gray, and see him?"
"Oh, yes--yes."
How her heart beat as she ascended the staircase, and how quickly she
inspired and respired when she actually got to the door of Tobias's
room. But then she heard the kind, although not very musical voice of
Mrs. Ragg from within, say--
"But, my dear, you will give her time to come?"
"A long time, mother," said Tobias.
Ah, how well Minna knew that voice. It was the voice of Tobias as of
old. The same voice, in tone perhaps only a little weakened, and
rendered more soft by sickness than it had been, but to her it was like
the soft memory of some well remembered tone that she had heard, and
wept with joy to hear in happier days.
"I am here, Tobias! I am here."
"Minna--Minna!"
She entered the room radiant and beautiful as some fairy come to breathe
joy by the magic of some spell, Tobias stretched out his arms towards
her. She paused a moment, and then with a soft and gentle movement,
embraced him. It was but for an instant she held him in her arms, and
then she stepped back a pace or two and looked at him.
"Quite well," said Tobias, understanding the look.
"Quite?"
"Oh, yes, Minna, and as happy--as--as--fifty kings."
"Are kings happy?"
"Well, I don't know that they are, Minna, but at all events if they are,
they can't possibly be happier than I am."
"Bless the boy," said Mrs. Ragg, "how he does talk, to be sure."
"Why, Tobias," said Colonel Jeffery, "you are wonderfully improved
within this last hour."
"Yes, sir, and still more wonderfully since the best physician in the
world has come to see me."
The direction of his eyes towards Minna Gray let them know, if they had
not guessed it before, who Tobias considered the best physician in the
world to him. Minna shook her head, and said--
"But, Tobias, it is to this gentleman that you owe your life."
"Yes," replied Tobias, "and if ever I forget to be grateful to him for
all that he has done for me, I shall consider myself the worst person in
the world. Aye, as bad, quite as--as Sweeney Todd."
Tobias shuddered perceptibly as he pronounced Todd's name, and it was
quite evident that even in safety, as he could not but feel himself, and
profoundly protected from the deadly malice of his late master, he could
not divest himself of the absolute horror which even a mere remembrance
of him engendered.
"Well, Tobias," said the colonel, as he drew a chair close to him,
"since you have named Todd, pray tell us all about him."
"All?"
"Yes, all, Tobias."
"I will tell all I know. Come closer to me, Minna; I feel, when you are
near me, as though God had sent one of his angels to keep Todd from me.
Oh, yes, I will tell all I know. How can he harm me now?"
"How indeed, Tobias?" said Minna.
Tobias still trembled. What a shock that bold, bad, unscrupulous man had
given to the nerves of that boy. His bodily health might be restored,
and his mind once more be brought back to sanity, but if Tobias Ragg
were to live to the age of a patriarch, the name of Todd would be to him
a something yet to shrink from, and the tone of his nervous system could
never be what it once was. Minna looked up in his face, and the colonel,
too, gazed fully upon him, so that Tobias found he was absolutely called
upon to say something.
"Yes," he began, "I remember that people came to the shop, and--and that
they never went out of it again."
"Can you particularise any instance?"
"Yes, the gentleman with the dog."
Colonel Jeffery showed by his countenance how much he was interested.
"Go on," he said. "What about the gentleman with the dog?"
"I don't know how it was," added Tobias, "but that circumstance seemed
to tell more upon my fancy than any other. I suppose it was the conduct
of the dog."
"What sort of a dog was it?"
"A large handsome dog, and Todd would not let it remain in the shop, so
his master made him wait outside."
"Did he name the dog?"
Tobias passed his hand across his brow several times, and then his
countenance suddenly brightening up, he said--
"Hector! Yes, Hector!"
Colonel Jeffery nodded.
"What then happened, Tobias?" said Minna.
"Why, I think Todd sent me out upon some message, and when I came back
the gentleman was gone, but not the dog."
"Now, Tobias, can you tell us what sort of a man the man with the dog
was?"
"Yes, fresh-coloured, and good-looking rather, with hair that curled. I
should know him again."
"Ah, Tobias," said the colonel, "I am afraid we shall none of us ever
see him again in this world."
"Never!" said Tobias. "Todd killed him. How he did it, or what he did
with the body, I know not; but he did kill him, and many more, I am
certain as that I am now here. Many people came into the shop that never
left it again."
"No doubt; and now, Tobias, how came you in the street by London Bridge
so utterly overcome and destitute?"
"The madhouse."
"Madhouse?"
"Yes, I shall recollect it all. Where are you, mother?"
"Bless us and save us!--here, to be sure," said Mrs. Ragg.
"Did I not come to you at your room and find you ironing, and did I not
tell you that I had something to say about Todd, and ask you to fetch
somebody?"
"To be sure."
"Well, when you left, Todd came, and after once looking in his face, I
almost forgot what happened, except that there was a madhouse and a man
named Watson."
"Watson?" said Colonel Jeffery, as he made a note of the name.