The String of Pearls 124The Criminals in Newgate.--Todd'S Attempt at Suicide
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 124
The Criminals in Newgate.--Todd'S Attempt at Suicide
PrestEnglish
It is grievous to turn from the contemplation of so pleasant and grateful a scene as that that was taking place at the old spectacle-maker's house, to dive into the interior of Newgate. But thither it is that now we would conduct the reader.
The state of mind that Todd was in after his arrest, was one that such a man with such strong passions as he had was exceedingly unlikely to come to. It is difficult to describe it, but if we say that he was mentally stunned, we shall be as near the mark as language will permit us to be.
He walked, and looked, and spoke very much like a man in a dream; and it is really doubtful whether, for some hours, he comprehended the full measure of the calamity that had befallen him on his apprehension.
At Newgate they are quite accustomed to find this unnatural calmness in great criminals immediately after their arrest, so they take their measures accordingly.
Sir Richard Blunt had given some very special instructions to the Governor of Newgate concerning his prisoner, when he should arrive and be placed in his custody, so everything was ready for Todd. How little he suspected that for two days and two nights the very cell he was to occupy in Newgate had been actually pointed out, and that the irons in which his limbs were to be encompassed were waiting for him in the lobby!
He was placed in a small stone room that had no light but what came from a little orifice in the roof, and that was only a borrowed light after all, so that the cell was in a state of semi-darkness always.
Into this place he was hurried, and the blacksmith who was in the habit of officiating upon such occasions, riveted upon him, as was then the custom, a complete set of irons.
All this Todd looked at with seeming indifference. His face had upon it an unnatural flush, and probably Todd had never looked so strangely well in health as upon the occasion of the first few hours he spent in Newgate.
"Now, old fellow," said one of the turnkeys, "I'm not to be very far off, in case you should happen to want to say anything; and if you give a rap at the door, I'll come to you."
"In case I want to say anything?" said Todd.
"Yes, to be sure. What, are you asleep?"
"Am I asleep?"
"Why, he's gone a little bit out of his mind," said the blacksmith, as he gathered up his tools to be gone.
The turnkey shook his head.
"Are you quite sure you have made a tight job of that?"
"Sure? Ay, that I am. If he gets out of them, put me in 'em, that's all. Oh, no! It would take--let me see--it would take about half a dozen of him to twist out o' that suit of armour. They are just about the best we have in the old stone jug."
"Good."
"Yes, they are good."
"I mean very well. And now Mr. Sweeney Todd, we will leave you to your own reflections, old boy, and much good may they do you. Good-night, old fellow. I always says good-night to the prisoners, cos it has a tender sort o' sound, and disposes of 'em to sleep. It's kind o' me, but I always was tender-hearted, as any little chick, I was."
Bang went the cell door, and its triple locks were shot into their hoops. Todd was alone.
He had sat down upon a stool that was in the cell; and that stool, with a sort of bench fastened to the wall, was the only furniture it contained; and there he sat for about half an hour, during which time one of the most extraordinary changes that ever took place in the face of any human being, took place in his.
It seemed as if the wear and tear of years had been concentrated into minutes; and in that short space of time he passed from a middle aged, to be an old man.
Then reflection came!
"Newgate!" he cried as he sprang to his feet.
The chains rattled and clanked together.
"Chains--Newgate--a cell--death! Found out at last! At the moment of my triumph--defeated--detected! Newgate--chains--death!"
He fell back upon the stool again, and sat for the space of about two minutes in perfect silence. Then he sprang up again with such a wild yell of rage and mental agony, that not only the cell, but the whole of that portion of the prison, echoed again with it.
The turnkey opened a small wicket in the door, which when it was opened from without, still was defended by iron bars across it, and peering into the cell, he said--
"Hilloa! What now?"
"Hilloa!" shouted Todd. "Air--air!"
"Air? Why what do you mean by gammoning a fellow in that sort o' way for, eh? Haven't you got lots o' air? Well, of all the unreasonable coves as ever I comed across, you is the worstest. Be quiet, will you?"
"No--no! Death--death! Give me the means of instant death. I am going mad--mad--mad!"
"Oh, no yer ain't. It's only yer first few hours in the stone-jug that has comed over you a little, that's all, old fellow. You'll soon pick up, and behave yourself like any other christian. All you have got to do is never to mind, and then it's nothink at all, old chap."
Clap went shut the little wicket door again.
"Help! Help!" shouted Todd. "Take these irons off me. It is only a dream after all. Back, back you grinning fiends--why do you look at me when you know that it is not real? No--no, it cannot be, you know that it cannot be real."
"Be quiet will you?" shouted the turnkey.
"Keep off, I say. All is well. Mrs. Lovett dead--quite dead. The boy to die too. The house in a blaze--all is well arranged. Why do you mock and joke at me?"
"Well, I never!" said the turnkey. "I do begin to think now that he's getting queer in the upper story. I have heard of its driving some of 'em mad to be bowled out when they didn't expect it, more 'special when it's a hanging affair. I wonder what he will say next? He's a regular rum un, he is."
"What have I done?" shouted Todd. "What have I done? Nothing--nothing. The dead tell no tales. All is safe--quite safe. The grave is a good secret keeper. I think Tobias is dead too--why not? Mrs. Lovett is dead. This is not Newgate. These are not chains. It is only the nightmare. Ha! ha! ha! It is only the nightmare--I can laugh now!"
"Oh, can you?" said the turnkey. "It's rather an odd sort o' laugh though, to my thinking. Howsomdever, there's no rule agin grinning, so you can go on at it as long as you like."
"Mercy!" suddenly shrieked Todd, and then down he fell upon the floor of the cell, and lay quite still. The turnkey looked curiously in at him, through the little grating.
"Humph!" he said, "I must go and report him to the Governor, and he will do whatsomdever he likes about him; but I suppose as they will send the doctor to him, and all that ere sort o' thing, for it won't do to let him slip out o' the world and quite cheat the gallows; oh dear no."
Muttering these and similar remarks to himself, the turnkey went, as he was bound in duty to do upon any very extraordinary conduct upon the part of any prisoner in his department, to report what Todd was about to the Governor.
"Ah!" said that functionary, the surgeon, "and I will soon come to him. I fully expected we should have some trouble with that man. It really is too bad, that when people come into the prison, they will not be quiet. It would be just as well for them, and much more comfortable for me."
"Werry much, sir," said the turnkey.
"Well--well, he shall be attended to."
"Werry good, sir."
The turnkey went back and took up his post again outside Todd's door, and in the course of ten minutes or so, without making the least hurry of the subject, the Governor and the jail surgeon arrived and entered the cell.
Todd was picked up, and then it was found that he had struck his head against the stone floor, and so produced a state of insensibility, but whether he had done it on purpose or by accident, they could come to no opinion.
"Lay him on the bench," said the surgeon, "I can do nothing with him. He will come to himself again in a little while, I daresay, and be all right again in the morning."
"He seems really, indeed, to be a very troublesome man," said the Governor to the surgeon.
"Very likely. Have you a mind for a game of cribbage to-night, Governor? I suppose this fellow will hang?"
"Yes, I don't mind a game. Yes, they will tuck him up."
With this they left Todd's cell, and the turnkey closed the door, and made the highly philosophical remark to himself of--
"Werry good."
Todd remained until the morning in a state of insensibility, and when he awakened from it he was very much depressed in strength indeed. He lay for about two hours gazing on the ceiling of his cell, and then the door was opened, and the turnkey appeared with a bason of milk-and-water and a lump of coarse bread.
"Breakfast!" he cried.
Todd glared at him.
"Breakfast; don't you understand that, old cock? However, it's all one to me. There it is--take it or leave it."
Todd did not speak, and the not over luxurious meal was placed on the table, or rather upon the end of the bench upon which he lay, and which served the purpose of a table.
The moment Todd heard the door of the cell closed behind the turnkey, he rose from his recumbent posture, and, although he staggered when he got to his feet, he seized the bason, and at once, without tasting any of its contents, broke it against the corner of the bench to fragments.
"I shall elude them yet!" he said. "They think they have me in their toils--but I shall elude them yet!"
He selected a long jagged piece of the broken bason, and dragging down his cravat with one hand, he was upon the very point of plunging it into his throat with the other, when the turnkey sprang into the cell.
"Hold a bit!" he cried. "We don't allow that sort of thing here with any of our customers. You should have thought of those games before you got into the stone jug!"
With one powerful blow, the turnkey struck the piece of the broken bason from the hand of Todd, and with another he felled him to the floor.
"None o' your nonsense," he said; and then he carefully collected the pieces of the broken bason.
"Why should you grudge me the means of death," said Todd, "when you know that you have brought me here among you to die?"
"Contrary to rules."
"In mercy, I ask you only to give me leave to take my own life, for I have failed in the object of my living."
"Contrary to rules."
The turnkey left the cell, then, as coolly as if nothing had happened, and carefully locked the door again, while he went to report the attempted suicide of the prisoner to the proper quarter.
Foiled, then, in every way, Todd looked round the cell for some means of ridding himself of his life and his troubles together; but he found none. He then paced the cell to and fro like a maniac, as he muttered to himself--
"All lost--lost--lost--all lost! Foiled, too, at the moment when I thought myself most secure--when I had made every preparation to leave England for ever! Oh, dolt that I was, not to have done so long ago, when I had half--ay, when I had only a quarter of the sum that I should this day have fled with! In my dreams I have seen myself as I am now, and the sight has shaken me, but I never thought to be so in reality. Is there any hope for me? What do they know?--what can they know?"
Upon these questions, Todd paused in his uneasy walk in the cell, and sat down upon the low stool to think. His head rested upon his breast, and he was profoundly still.
