The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
"And so perhaps lose precious hours. Oh, no--no. Do not ask me now to
submit to any delays, Arabella."
"But if there be reason, Johanna?"
"Well, the reason, then--the reason?"
"I think that, if possible, it would be well to avoid the necessity of
remaining a night at Todd's; and so if you go in the morning, you see,
Johanna, you may have an opportunity before nightfall of making all the
discoveries you wish, or of satisfying yourself that they are not to be
made at all."
"It might be so, and yet--yet I almost think night will be the best time
of all."
"But by waiting until to-morrow morning, Johanna, you will have both day
and night."
"Yes, yes. I wish I knew what would be the best, Arabella. My feelings
are wound up to this enterprise, and I am altogether in such a frightful
state of excitement concerning it, that--that I know not how I should be
able to support myself under the delay of the remainder of to-day and
the whole of the ensuing night."
"In the night you will have repose, and to-morrow morning, with much
more calmness and effect, you will be able to start upon your errand.
Believe me, Johanna, I don't counsel this delay with any hope, or wish,
or expectation, that it will turn you from your purpose, but simply
because I think it will the better ensure its successful termination."
"Successful! What will you call successful, Arabella?"
"Your coming back to me uninjured, Johanna."
"Ah, that speaks your love for me, while I--I love him for whose sake I
am about to undergo so much, sufficiently to feel that were I sure he
was no more, my own death at the hands of Sweeney Todd would be
success."
"Johanna--Johanna, don't speak in such a strain. Have you no thought for
me? have you no thought for your poor father, to whom, as you well know,
you are the dearest tie that he has in the world? Oh, Johanna, do not be
so selfish."
"Selfish?"
"Yes, it is selfish, when you know what others must suffer because they
love you, to speak as though it were a thing to be desired that you
should die by violence."
"Arabella, can you forgive me? can you make sufficient allowances for
this poor distracted heart, to forgive its ravings?"
"I can--I do, Johanna, and in the words of your father, I am ever ready
to say 'God bless you!' You will not go till to-morrow?"
After the pause of a few moments, Johanna said faintly--
"I will not--I will not."
"Oh that is much. Then at least for another night we shall enjoy our old
sweet companionship."
They by this time had reached the home of Arabella, and as it was an
understood thing that Johanna was not expected home, the two young girls
retired to converse in unrestrained freedom upon all their hopes and
fears.
CHAPTER LXIV.
TODD COMMENCES PACKING UP.
"Yes," said Todd, as he suddenly with a spring rose from the
shaving-chair, upon which we left him enjoying reflections of no very
pleasant character. "Yes, the game is up."
He stood for a few moments now in silence, confronting a small piece of
looking glass that hung upon the wall exactly opposite to him, and it
would appear that he was struck very much by the appearance of his own
face, for he suddenly said--
"How old and worn I look."
No one could have looked upon the countenance of Todd for one moment
without fully concurring in this opinion. In truth, he did look old and
worn. But a comparatively short time has elapsed since we first
presented him to the readers of this most veracious narrative. Then he
was a man whose hideous ugliness was combined with such a look of cool
triumphant villany, that one did not know which most to ponder upon. Now
his face had lost its colour; a yellowish whiteness was the
predominating tint, and his cheeks had fallen. There was a wild and an
earnest restlessness about his eyes that made him look very much like
some famished wolf, with a touch of hydrophobia to set him off; and
certainly, take him for all in all, one would not be over anxious
"To see his like again!"
"Old and worn," he repeated, "and the game is up; I am decided. Off and
away! is my game--off and away!--I have enough to be a prince anywhere
where money is worshipped, and that of course must be the case in all
civilised and religious communities. I must keep in some such. In the
more savage wilds of nature man is prized for what he is, but, thank
God, in highly cultivated and educated states he is only prized for what
he has been. Ha! ha! If mankind had worshipped virtue, I would have been
virtuous, for I love power."
A thought seemed suddenly to strike Todd; and he went into the parlour
muttering to himself--
"My friend Peter must be effectually disposed of."
He raised the cover which was upon the table, and with a grunt of
satisfaction, added--
"Gone!--that will do."
There was no trace of the body that he had kicked under the table. By
some strange mysterious agency it had entirely disappeared, and then
Todd went somehow to the back of the house and got a wet mop, by the aid
of which he got rid of some stains of blood upon the floor and the
fender.
"All's right," he said, "I have done some service to Fogg, and I will,
when I am far enough off for any sting not to recoil upon myself, take
good care that the law pays him a visit. The villain as well as the
fool, to deceive me regarding the boy Tobias. What can have become of
him?"
This was a question that gave Todd some uneasiness, but at length he
came to the conclusion that the dreadful treatment he, Tobias, had
received at the asylum had really driven him mad, and that in all human
probability he had fallen or cast himself into the river, or gone into
some field to die.
"Were it otherwise," he said, "I should and must have heard something of
him before now."
Todd then fairly began packing up. From beneath several tables in the
room he dragged out large trunks, and opening then some of the drawers
and cupboards that abounded in his parlour, he began placing their
valuable contents in the boxes.
"My course is simple enough," he said--"very simple; I must and will, by
violence--for she is by far too wily and artful to allow me to do so by
any other means--get rid of Mrs. Lovett. Then I must and will possess
myself of all that she calls her share of the proceeds of business.
Then, at night--the dead hour of the night--after having previously sent
all my boxes full of such valuables as from their likelihood to be
identified I dare not attempt to dispose of in England, to Hamburgh, I
will set the whole house in a flame."
The idea of burning down his house, and if possible involving a great
portion of Fleet Street in the conflagration, always seemed to be
delightful enough to Todd to raise his spirits a little.
"Yes," he added, with a demoniac grin. "There is no knowing what amount
of mischief I may do to society at large upon that one night, besides
destroying amid the roar of the flames a mass of accumulated evidence
against myself that would brand my memory with horrors, and, for aught I
know, cause a European search after me."
As he spoke, watches--rings--shoe buckles--brooches--silver heads of
walking canes--snuff boxes, and various articles of bijouterie were
placed row upon row in the box he was packing.
"Yes," he added, "I know--I feel that there is danger; I know now that I
have spies upon me--that I am watched; but it is from that very
circumstance that I ground my belief that as yet I am safe. They fancy
there is something to find out, and they are trying to find it out. If
they really knew anything, of course it would be--Todd, you are wanted."
Having placed in one of the boxes as many articles of gold and silver as
made up a considerable weight, Todd lifted it at one end, and feeling
satisfied that if he were to place any more metal in the box it would be
too heavy for carriage, he opened a cupboard which was full of hats, and
filled up the box with them. By this means he filled up the box, so that
the really valuable articles within it would not shake about, and then
he securely locked it.
"One," he said. "Some half-dozen of such will be sufficient to carry all
that I shall think worth the taking. As for my money, that will be
safest about me. Ah, I will outwit them yet, I will be off and
away--only just in time. Suspicion will take a long time to ripen into
certainty, and before it does, the flaming embers of this house will be
making the night sky as fair and magnificent as the most golden sunset
of summer." Another box was now opened, and in that, as it was of
considerable length, he began to pack swords of a valuable character. He
went to the rooms above stairs, which, as the reader is already aware,
contained much valuable property, and brought down troops of things,
which with complacent looks he carefully placed in the chest. Ever and
anon, as he went through this process, he kept muttering to himself his
hopes and fears. "What is to hinder me, in some principality of Germany,
from purchasing a title which shall smother all remembrance of what I
now am, and as the Baron Something, I shall commence a new life, for I
am not old; no--no, I am not old--far from old, although late anxieties
have made me look so. I am not so nervous and fearful of slight things
as I was, although my imagination has played me some tricks of late."
Some slight noise, that sounded as if in the house, although it was in
all probability in the next one, came upon his ears, and with a howl of
terror he shrunk down by the side of the box he had been packing.
"Help! mercy! What is that?"
The noise was not repeated, but for the space of about ten minutes or
so, Todd was perfectly incapable of moving except a violent attack of
trembling, which kept every limb in motion, and terribly distorted his
countenance, if it might be called so.
"What--what was it?" he at length gasped. "I thought I heard something,
nay, I am sure I heard something--a slight noise, but yet slight noises
are to me awfully suggestive of something that may follow. Am I really
getting superstitious now?"
He slowly rose and looked fearfully round him. All was still. True, he
had heard a voice, but that was all. No consequences had resulted from
it, and the fit of trembling that had seized him was passing away. He
went to the cupboard where he kept that strong stimulant that had so
much excited the admiration of Peter. He did not go through the ceremony
of procuring a glass, but placing the neck of the bottle to his throat,
he took a draught of the contents which would have been amply sufficient
to confound the faculties of any ordinary person. Upon Todd, however, it
had only a sort of sedative effect, and he gradually recovered his
former diabolical coolness.
"It was nothing," he said. "It was nothing. My fears and my imaginations
are beginning now to play the fool with me. If there were none others,
such would be sufficient warnings to me to be off and away."
He continued the packing of the box which had been temporarily
suspended, but ever and anon he would pause, and lifting up one of his
huge hands, placed it at his ear to listen more acutely, and when
nothing in the shape of alarm reached him he would say with a tone of
greater calmness and contentment--
"All is still--all is still. I shall be off and away soon--off and
away!"
The dusky twilight had crept on while Todd was thus engaged, and he was
thinking of going out, when he heard the creaking noise of his shop door
opening. As he was but in the parlour, he made his way to the shop at
once, and saw a young man, who spoke with an affected lisp, as he said--