RETURNS TO TODD IN THE WOOD AT HAMPSTEAD.
While all this was going on, contingent upon his elopement from Newgate,
Todd was still in the wood at Hampstead--that wood in which he had
committed so barbarous a murder, in ridding the world of almost as great
a rascal as himself, in the shape of Mr. Lupin.
Todd was as anxious as possible to leave the wood, but he felt that to
do so in daylight would be jeopardising himself much too seriously. He
was not without money, as the reader is aware; and after placing some
distance between himself and the dead body of Mr. Lupin, he sat down
upon the roots of an old tree to think.
It was not that Todd had any particular terrors connected with the dead
body of Mr. Lupin that induced him to get away from the neighbourhood of
the body, but he thought it was just possible some people might come
into the wood, and in such a case he did not wish to be connected with
the deed in consequence of any contiguity to it.
"What shall I do?" said Todd, after he had rested for some time with his
head upon his hand. "That is the question--what shall I do? I have some
money, but not enough. Oh, that I had but a tithe of the amount that
once was mine! I would yet leave England for ever, and forego all my
thoughts of vengeance, unless I could contrive from a great distance to
do some mischief, and that might be done if very cunningly contrived;
but they have taken from me all--all!"
Here Mr. Todd indulged in a few expletives, with which we do not think
proper to encumber our pages; and after swearing himself into a state of
comparative calmness again, he held up his left hand, and separating the
fingers, he began to count upon them the names of people.
"Let me see," he said. "Let me see, how many throats now it would give
me a very special pleasure to cut--Humph--Ha. Sir Richard Blunt--one;
Tobias Ragg--two; Colonel Jeffery--three; Johanna Oakley--four; and her
husband, that is, I suppose, by this time, five--confound him! Ah! those
make up the five that I most specially should like to sacrifice! A whole
handful of victims! After they were comfortably despatched, no doubt, I
could think of a few more; but it is better to confine one's attention
to the principals for a time. The others may drop in afterwards, when
one has nothing more important to do."
He thought he heard a noise in the wood, and he stooped his head to
listen. It was nothing, or if it had been anything, it quickly ceased
again, and he was tolerably satisfied that he was alone.
"What a delightful thing, now, it would be," he muttered, "if I could
poison the whole lot of them at once, with some drug that would give
them the most excruciating agony! And then I should like to go round to
them all, and shout in their ears--'I did it!--I, Sweeney Todd, did it!'
That would be glorious, indeed! Ha! ha!"
"Ha!" said a voice behind him, following up his hideous laugh most
closely in point of tone.
It was almost with what might be called a yell of terror that Todd
sprang to his feet, and turned round, fully expecting to see some one;
but not the slightest vestige of the presence of any human being met his
eyes.
After gazing for a moment or two, he thought that surely some one must
be hiding behind one of the trees, and he sprang forward, crying--
"Disclose yourself, villain! Crafty wretch, you or I must die!"
There was no reply to this; and he could find no one, although he looked
narrowly about, for the next quarter of an hour, all over the spot. He
felt quite convinced that no one could have slipped away without him
hearing something of the footfall, however light it might be; and he was
left, by this extraordinary circumstance, in a complete maze of
terrified conjecture. He trembled in every limb from positive fright.
No man was probably more generally free from what might be called
superstitious terrors, than Sweeney Todd. At least, we may certainly
say, that no guilty man ever could be more free from them. Had such not
been the case, it is quite impossible that he could have carried on the
career that he did; but of late, two or three things had happened to him
to give his imagination a kind of jog upon such subjects.
He might well be excused for a little kind of nervousness now, when he
felt quite confident that a laugh from no mortal lungs had sounded
within a few inches of his ears, at so strange a moment.
"What can it be?" he said, in a voice of terror. "What can it be? Have I
all along been mistaken; and is there such a thing as an invisible world
of spirits about us? Oh, what can I think?--what excuse can I now give
myself for an unbelief, without which I should have gone quite mad
long--long ago?"
The heavy drops stood upon his brow, and he was forced to stagger back,
and hold by a tree for support. After a few moments of this condition,
however, the determined spirit of the man triumphed over the fears that
beset him, and raising his voice, he said--
"No--no; I will never be the slave of such wild fancies! This is no time
for me to give way to a belief in these things, which all my life I have
laughed to scorn! If I had believed what the world pretends to believe,
I must have been stark staring mad to load my soul with guilt in the way
I have done, if my recompense had been the accumulated wealth of all the
kingdoms of the earth; for death would, despite all that, come and rob
me of all, leaving me poor as any beggar who lays him down by the road
side to die!"
While he spoke, he glared nervously and apprehensively about him, and
then he drew a long breath, as he added--
"I take shame to myself now to have one particle of fear. Have not I, at
the hour of midnight, many and many a time threaded the mazes of the
dark vaults of St. Dunstan's, when I knew that I was all but surrounded
by the festering, gaunt remains of heaps of my victims? and shall I
here, with the open sky above me, and only the known neighbourhood of
one dead villain, shake in such a way? No--no!"
He stamped upon the ground to reassure himself; and then, as though
willing to taunt the unseen laugher into a repetition of the mocking
sound, he again cried--
"Ha!--ha!"
There was no response to this, and it was rather a disappointment to
Todd that there was not, for a hope had been growing upon his mind to
the effect, that it was only some echo in the wood, to which he had been
indebted for his fright; but now, when it did not occur again as it
ought to have done, if it had been a result from any natural cause, he
was thrown back upon his strength of mind merely to shake it off as best
he might.
"Fancy! fancy!" he cried. "It was but fancy after all;" but he did not
believe himself when he so spoke.
Todd remained in the wood tolerably free from any more alarms, until the
sun sunk in the west; and while there was positive darkness in that
place where he was hiding, a sweet twilight still lingered over the fair
face of nature.
"I must not venture forth yet," he said, "but in another hour it will be
dark alike upon the heath as in the wood, and then I will go into the
village and get some refreshment, after which, I rather think, that
London, with all its dangers, will be the best place for me. I have
heard of people hiding there for many a day. I wonder, now, if a lodging
in the Old Bailey would be a good thing? Surely they would never think
of looking for me there."
Todd rather chuckled over this pleasant idea of a lodging in the Old
Bailey. It was just one of the notions that, for its practical
extravagance, rather pleased him than otherwise, but although it had
something to recommend it, it required rather more boldness than even he
was master of to carry it out.
But such thoughts sufficed to amuse him until darkness was upon the face
of the land, and to withdraw his thoughts from other and more tormenting
matters; so that for a time he even forgot the seemingly supernatural
laugh that had sounded so oddly behind him, and produced in him such a
world of alarm.
He heard the clock of Hampstead Church proclaim the hour of nine, and
then he thought that he might venture from his place of concealment; and
yet it will be seen that Todd had not been able to concoct any definite
plan of operations. Then he was wishing to do many things, and yet
unable in that anxious state of his fortunes to do anything at all.
Truly, Sir Richard Blunt was right enough, when he said that Todd, for a
time, would be much too busy with his own affairs to take any active
step for the accomplishment of any of his revenges.
In the wood, now, the darkness was so great, that literally you could
not see your hand before your face; and the only plan by which he could
leave it was by blundering right on, and trusting to get out at any
point to which his chance steps might lead him. In about a quarter of an
hour he came to a rather precipitous bank, which he clambered up, and
then he found himself on the outskirts of the wood, and not far from the
village.
He heard some one coming along the road-way, and whistling as he came.
The moon was struggling against the shadowing influence of a mass of
clouds in the horizon, and Todd felt that in a little time the whole
place would be light enough.
"Am I sufficiently unlike myself," he said, "to trust an appearance in
the village? I want food, and most of all, I want drink. Yes, now more
than ever; I cannot pretend to live without stimulants. Yes, I will risk
it, and then I will go to London."
He sprang down into the road, and in as careless a manner as he could,
he walked on in the direction that he thought would take him to the
village.
The man who was whistling as he came along, rather increased his pace,
and to the great alarm of Todd, overtook him, and said--
"A fine night, sir, we shall have? The moon is getting up nicely now,
sir!"
Todd breathed a little more freely. After all, it was not an enemy, but
only one of those people so common in places a little way out of town,
who are talkative to any one they may meet, for the mere love of
talking. For once in his life, Todd determined upon being wonderfully
gracious, and he replied quite in a tone of serenity--
"Yes, it is a nice night; and, as you say, the moon is rising
beautifully."
"Yes, sir," added the man, who was carrying something that Todd could
not, for the life of him, make out. "Yes, sir, and I am not sorry to get
home, now. I have been all round by Hendon, Golders Green, and Finchley,
sticking bills."
"Bills?"
"Yes, sir, about the murderer Todd, you know!"
"Oh, ah!"
"You know, sir, he has got out of Newgate, and there's five hundred
pounds reward offered by the _guvment_ for him. A nice little set up
that would be, sir, for any one, wouldn't it, sir?"
"Very."
"All the bill-stickers round London have had a job in putting up the
bills, and they say that if it costs a million of money they intend to
have him."
"And very proper too," said Todd. "Can you spare a bill, my friend?"
"Oh, yes. There's hand ones as well as posters. Here's one, sir, and
you'll find a description of him. Oh, don't I only wish I could come
across him, that's all; I'd make rather a tidy day's work then, I think.
That would be a little better, sir, than the paste-pot, wouldn't it?"
"Rather," said Todd; "but he might be rather a dear bargain; for such a
man, I should think, would not be very easily taken!"
"There's something in that, sir, as you say, but yet I would have a try.
Five hundred pounds, you know, sir, is not to be picked up everyday on
the road-side."
"Certainly not! Is that Hampstead where the lights are, to the left,
there?"
"Yes, right on. I live at west-end, and my way lays this way. Good
night, sir!"
"Good night," said Todd. "I hope you may have the luck of meeting with
this Todd, and so earning the five hundred pounds you mention; but I am
afraid, after all, there is not much chance, for I heard he had gone
down to the coast, and had got on board a vessel and was off by this
time. That may not be true, though. Goodnight!"