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!"
