With a bottle of claret upon the table between them, Colonel Jeffery and his old friend sat over the fire in the bed-room devoted to the use of poor Tobias Ragg. Alas! poor boy, kindness and wealth that now surrounded him came late in the day. Before he first crossed the threshold of Sweeney Todd's odious abode, what human heart could have more acutely felt genuine kindness than Tobias's, but his destiny had been an evil one. Guilt has its victims, and Tobias was in all senses one of the victims of Sweeney Todd.
"I am sufficiently, perhaps superstitious, you will call it," said Colonel Jeffery in a low tone of voice, "to think that my meeting with this boy was not altogether accidental."
"Indeed?"
"No. Many things have happened to me during life--although I admit that they may be all accounted for as natural coincidences, curious only at the best but still suggestive of something very different, and make me at times a convert to the belief in an interfering special Providence, and this is one of them."
"It is a dangerous doctrine, my friend."
"Think you so?"
"Yes. It is much better and much safer both for the judgment and imagination to account naturally for all those things which admit of a natural explanation, than to fall back upon a special Providence, and fancy that it is continually interfering with the great and immutable laws that govern the world. I do not--mark me--deny such a thing, but I would not be hasty in asserting it. No man's experience can have been without numerous instances such as you mention."
"Certainly not."
"Then I should say to you, as St. Paul said to the Athenians--'In all things I find you superstitious.' What's that?"
A faint moan had come upon both their ears, and after listening for a few moments another made itself heard, and they fancied, by the direction of the sound, that Tobias's lips must have uttered it. Placing his finger against his mouth to indicate silence, the colonel stepped up to the bedside, and hiding behind the curtains, he said, in the softest and kindest voice he could assume--
"Tobias! Tobias! fear nothing now you are with friends, Tobias; and, above all, you are perfectly free from the power of Sweeney Todd."
"I am not mad! I am not mad!" shouted Tobias with a shrill vehemence that made both the colonel and his friend start.
"Nay, who says you are mad, Tobias? We know you are not mad, my lad. Don't alarm yourself about that, we know you are not mad."
"Mercy! mercy! I will say nothing--nothing. How fiend-like he looks. Oh, Mr. Todd, spare me, and I will go far, far away, and die somewhere else, but do not kill me now, I am yet such--such a boy only, and my poor father is dead--dead--dead!"
"Ring the bell," said Jeffery to his friend, "and tell John to go for Mr. Chisolm, the surgeon. Come--come, Tobias, you still fancy you are under the power of Todd, but it is not so--you are quite safe here."
"Hush! hush! mother--oh, where are you, mother--did you leave me here, mother? Say you took, in a moment of thoughtlessness, the silver candlestick! Is Todd to be a devil, because you were thoughtless once? Hide me from him--hide me--hide! hide! I am not mad. Hark! I hear him--one--two--three--four--five--six steps, and all Todd's. Each one leaves blood in its track. Look at him now! His face changes--'tis a fox's--a serpent's--hideous--hideous--God--God! I am mad--mad--mad!"
The boy dashed his head from side to side, and would have flung himself from the bed had not Colonel Jeffery advanced and held him.
"Poor fellow," he said, "this is very shocking. Tobias! Tobias!"
"Hush! I hear--poor thing, did they say you was mad too?--Hide me in the straw! There--there--what a strange thing it is for all the air to be so full of blood. Do we breathe blood, and only fancy it air? Hush! not a word--he comes with a serpent's face--oh, tell me why does God let such beings ever riot upon the beautiful earth--one--two--three--four--five--six--Hiss--hiss! Off--off! I am not mad--not mad. Ha! ha! ha!"
An appalling shriek concluded this paroxysm, and for a few moments Tobias was still. The medical man at this time entered the room.
"Oh," he said, "we have roused him up again, have we." Medical men are rather fond of the plural identifying style of talking.
"Yes," said Colonel Jeffery, "but he had better have slept the sleep of death than have awakened to be what he is, poor fellow."
"A little--eh?"
The doctor tapped his forehead.
"Not a little."
"Far away over the sea!" said Tobias, "oh, yes--in any ship, only do not kill me, Mr. Todd--let me go and I will say nothing, I will work and send my poor mother hard-earned gold, and your name shall never pass our lips. Oh, no--no--no, do not say that I am mad. Do you see these tears? I have--I have not cried so since my poor father called me to him and held me in a last embrace of his wasted arms, saying, 'Tobias, my darling, I am going--going far from you. God's blessing be upon you, poor child.' I thought my heart would break then, but it did not, I saw him put from the face of the living into the grave, and I did not quite break my heart then, but it is broken--broken now! Mad! mad! oh, no, not mad--no--no, but the last--but the last. I tell you, sir, that I am--am--am not mad. Why do you look at me, I am not mad--one--two--three--four--five--six. God--God--God! I am mad--mad. Ha! ha! ha! There they come, all the serpents, and Todd is their king. How the shadows fly about--they shrink--I cannot shrink. Help! God! God! God!"
"This is horrible," said Colonel Jeffery.
"It is appalling, from the lips of one so young," said the captain.
The medical man rubbed his hands together as he said--
"Why, a-hem! it certainly is strangely indicative of a considerable amount of mental derangement, but we shall be able, I dare say, to subdue that. I think, if he could be persuaded to swallow a little draught I have here, it would be beneficial, and allay this irritation, which is partly nervous."
"There cannot be much difficulty," said the colonel, "in making him swallow anything, I should think."
"Let us try."
They held Tobias up while the doctor poured the contents of a small phial into his mouth. Nature preferred performing the office of deglutition to choking, and it was taken. The effect of the opiate was rapid, and after some inarticulate moans and vain attempts to spring from the bed, a deep sleep came over poor Tobias.
"Now, gentlemen," said Mr. Chisolm, "I beg to inform you that this is a bad case."
"I feared as much."
"A very bad case. Some very serious shock indeed has been given to the lad's brain, and if he at all recovers from it, he will be a long time doing so. I do not think those violent paroxysms will continue, but they may leave a kind of fatuity behind them which may be exceedingly difficult to grapple with."
"In that case, he will not be able to give me the information I desire, and all I can do is to take care that he is kindly treated somewhere, poor lad. Poor fellow, his has been a hard lot. He evidently has a mind of uncommon sensibility, as is manifest from his ravings."
"Yes, and that makes the case worse. However, we must hope for the best, and I will call again in the morning."
"Will he awake soon?"
"Not for six or eight hours at least, and when he does, it is very unlikely that those paroxysms will again ensue. He will be quiet enough."
"Then it will be scarcely necessary, during that time, to watch him, poor fellow?"
"Not at all. Of course, when he awakens it will be very desirable that some one should be here to speak to him; for, finding himself in a strange place, he will otherwise naturally be terrified."
All this was promised by the colonel, and the medical man left the house, evidently with very slender hopes in his own mind of the recovery of Tobias. The colonel and his friend retired to another room, and then, after a consultation, they agreed that it was highly proper they should inform Sir Richard Blunt of what had taken place, for although poor Tobias was in no present condition to give any information, yet his capture, if it might be called by such a term, was so important an event that it would be unpardonable to keep it from the magistrate. They accordingly went together to his house, and luckily finding him at home, they at once communicated to him their errand. He listened to them with the most profound attention, and when they had concluded, he said--
"Gentlemen, it will be everything, if this lad recovers sufficiently to be a witness against his rascal of a master, for that is just what we want. However, from the account you give me of him, I am very much afraid the poor fellow's mind is too severely affected."
"That, too, is our fear."
"Well, we must do the best we can, and I should advise that when he awakens some one should be by him with whose voice, as a friendly sound, he will be familiar."
"Who can we get?"
"His poor mother."
"Ah, yes, I will set about that at once."
"Leave it to me," said Sir Richard Blunt, "leave that to me--I know where to find Mrs. Ragg, and what's best to say to her in the case. Let me see, in about four hours from now probably Tobias may be upon the point of recovery."
"Most probably."
"Then, sir, expect me at your house in that time with Mrs. Ragg. I will take care that the old lady's mind is put completely at ease, so that she will aid us in any respect to bring about the recovery of her son, who no doubt has suffered severely from some plan of Todd's to put him out of the way. That seems to me to be the most likely solution to the mystery of his present condition."
"Todd, I am convinced," said Colonel Jeffery, "would stop at no villany."
"Certainly not. My own belief is, that he is so steeped to the lips in crime, that he sees no other mode of covering his misdeeds already done than by the commission of new ones. But his career is nearly at an end, gentlemen."
The colonel and the captain took the rising of the magistrate from his chair as a polite hint that he had something else to do than to gossip with them any longer, and they took their leave, after expressing again to him how much they appreciated his exertions.
"If the mystery of the fate of my unhappy friend," said the colonel, "is ever cleared up, it will be by your exertion, Sir Richard, and he and I, and society at large, will owe to you a heavy debt of gratitude for unmasking so horrible a villain as Sweeney Todd, for that he is such no one can doubt."
