How his voice shook like a reed swayed by the wind, and yet what a world of melody was in it.
"Can you ask me to say yes?" was the reply of the fair young creature by his side. "Can you ask me to say yes, Tobias?"
"It seems to me," said Tobias, "as though it would be such a joy to hear you say so, Minna, and yet I will not ask you."
"How well you have got, Tobias. Your cheek has got its old colour back again. The colour it had long before you knew there was such a man as Sweeney Todd in the world. Your eyes are bright too, and your voice has its old pleasant sound."
"Used it to be pleasant to you, Minna?"
She held up her hand, and shook her head laughingly.
"No questions, Tobias! No questions. I will confess nothing."
"Stop!" said Tobias, as he put himself into an attitude of listening, "what was that, I thought I heard something? It was like a suppressed growl. I wish the colonel would come home. Did you not hear it, Minna?"
Minna had heard it, but she did not say she had.
"Where did it come from, Tobias?"
"From the stair-head, Minna."
"Oh, it is some accidental noise, such as is common to all houses, and such as always defy conjecture and explanation, and being nothing and meaning nothing, always comes to nothing. Yet I will go and see. Perhaps a door has been left open, and is banging to and fro by the wind, and if so it will only vex you to hear it again, Tobias."
It was Todd, who upon hearing the soft and tender speeches from the young lovers, had not been able to suppress a growl, and now that he had heard Minna Grey talk of coming to look what it was, he felt the necessity of instantly concealing himself somewhere.
It was not likely she would come down the stairs, so Todd adopted an original mode of keeping himself out of sight.
He descended steps sufficient, that by laying at full length along them, his head did not reach the top, and in the darkness he then considered that he should be quite safe from the casual glance, that in all likelihood, merely to satisfy Tobias, Minna would give outside the room door.
Todd thought by her manner she had heard nothing.
"No, no, Minna," said Tobias, "there is no occasion. It is nothing, I dare say, and I don't like you to be out of my sight a moment."
"It is only a moment."
She rose, and proceeded to the door.
An unknown feeling of dread, she knew not why, was at the heart of Minna. Certainly the slight sound she had heard, and that too in the house of Colonel Jeffery, was not sufficient to warrant such a feeling, and yet there, at her heart, it sat brooding.
She stood for a moment at the door.
It was only for a moment.
"How foolish I am," she thought, and then she passed out on to the landing, where she stood for a moment glancing round her.
"It is nothing, Minna," called out Tobias, "or shall I try and come. I feel quite strong enough to do so."
"Oh, no--no! It is nothing."
Minna stepped lightly back and sat down. She clasped her hands very tight indeed together, and then placed both upon her breast.
She had seen Todd.
Yes, Minna Grey had seen the man that had been, and who was for all she knew to the contrary still to be, the bane of Tobias's existence. The clear eyes of youth had noticed the lumbering figure as it lay upon the stairs before them.
And she did not scream--she did not cry for help--she did not faint, she only crept back as we have seen, and held her hands upon her heart, and looked at Tobias.
There was no mistaking Todd. Once seen he was known for ever. Like some hideous picture, there dwelt the memory of Sweeney Todd upon the young imagination of the fair Minna Grey.
Once before, a long time ago, so it seemed to her, she had seen him in the Temple skulking up an old staircase. From that moment the face was Daguerreotyped upon her brain.
It was never to be forgotten, and with the face comes the figure too. That she saw upon the stairs.
Alas! Poor Minn!
"And so it was nothing but one of those odd accidents that will occur in defiance of all experience, and calculation," said Tobias.
"Just that," replied Minna.
"Ah, my dear Minna. We are so safe here. It always seems to me as though the very air of this house, belonging as it does to such a man, so full of goodness as the colonel is, such that nothing very bad could live in it for long."
"I--I hope so--I think so.--What a calm and pleasant evening it is, Tobias, did you see the new book of the seasons, so full of pretty engravings in the shape of birds and trees, and flowers, that the colonel has purchased."
"New book?"
"Yes, it lies in his small study, upon this floor. I will fetch it for you, if you wish it, Tobias?"
"Nay, I will go."
"You are still weak. Remain in peace upon the couch, dear Tobias, and I will go for you."
Before she left the room, she kissed the forehead of the boy. A tear, too, fell upon his hand.
"Who knows," she thought, "that I shall ever see him in life again?"
"Minna, you weep."
"Weep? No--no--I am so--so happy."
She hastily left the room. Todd had heard what had passed, and had turned to hide himself again. The young girl knew that she passed the murderer within a hair's breadth. She knew that he had but to stretch out his right hand and say--"Minna Gray, you are my victim!" and his victim she would have become. Was not that dreadful? And she so young and so fair--so upon the threshold, as it were, of the garden of her existence--so loving, and so well-beloved. She felt for a moment, as she crossed the landing--just for a moment as though she were going mad. But the eye of the Omnipotent was upon that house. She staggered on. She made her way into a bed-room. It was the colonel's. Above the mantel-shelf, supported on a small bracket, was a pair of pistols. They were of a large size, and she had heard from the current gossip of the house, how they were always loaded, and how the servants feared to touch them, and how even they shrank from making the bed, lest the pistol from some malice aforethought, or from something incidental to such watching, should go off at once of their own accord, and inevitably shoot whoever chanced to be in the room. Minna Gray laid her hand upon the dreaded weapons.
"For Tobias! for Tobias!" she gasped.
Then she paused to listen. All was still as the grave. Todd was not yet ready for the murder, or he wished to take their lives both together, and in the one room. That was more probable. Then she began to think that he must have some suspicion, and that it was necessary upon her part to do something more than merely make no alarm. The idea of singing occurred to her. It was a childish song that she had been taught, when a pretty child, that she now warbled forth a few lines of--
"If I were a forest bird,
I'd shun the noisy town;
I'd seek the verdure of the spring
The dear autumnal brown.
And even when the winter came,
By sunny skies bereft,
I'd sleep in some deep distant cave,
Which wanton winds had left."
She crossed the landing.
"Minna," said Tobias. "My Minna!"
"I come."
She passed into the room, and the moment she crossed the threshold--she turned her face to it and presented both the pistols before her. Then as she wound, inch by inch, into the centre of the room, all her power of further concealment of her feelings deserted her, and she could only say, in a strange choking tone--
"Todd!--Todd!--Todd!"
"No--no--no! Oh, God, no!" cried Tobias.
"Todd!--Todd!--Todd!"
"No--no! Help! help!"
"D--n!" said Sweeney Todd, as he dashed open the door of the chamber, and stood upon the threshold with a glittering knife in his right hand.
"Hold!" shrieked Minna Gray. "Another step, murderer, and I send you to your God!"
Todd waited. He could almost see down the barrels of the large pistols, which a touch of the young girl's finger would explode in his face. With a sharp convulsive cry, Tobias fell to the floor. The blood gushed from his mouth, and he lay bereft of sensation.
"Away!" cried Minna. "Monster, away! Another moment, and as Heaven hears me, I will fire; once--twice--"
Todd darted to the stair head, but he darted away again quicker than he had gone there; for who, to his horror, should he meet, advancing with great speed up the steps, but Mrs. Ragg, who had managed to get out of the kitchen, and who bore, as a weapon of offence and defence, the large kitchen poker, which was of a glowing red heat. Todd caught a touch of it on his face.
"Oh, you villain of the world!" cried Mrs. Ragg, "I'll teach you to come here murdering people. My poor Tobias is no more, I know; but I'll take the law of you, I will. Murder! murder! Police! Colonel!"
With an alacrity, that was far beyond to all appearance Mrs. Ragg's powers, that good lady pursued Todd with the red-hot poker. He dared not take refuge in Tobias's room, for there stood Minna with the pistols in her hand, so he darted up the first flight of stairs he saw, which led to the top of the house. Mrs. Ragg pursued him; but when she got to the head of the stairs, Minna pressed too hard upon the hair-trigger of one of the pistols, and off it went. Mrs. Ragg fully believed herself shot, and rolled down the stairs, poker included; while Todd, labouring under the impression that the shot was at him, became still more anxious to find some place of refuge. Upon the landing, which he was not a moment in reaching, he found a great show of doors; for he was, in fact, upon the floor from which all the sleeping rooms of the servants opened. It was quite a chance that the first one he bounced into was one that had in the roof a little square trap-door, facetiously called "a fire escape;" but which, in the event of a fire, would have acquired the agility of a harlequin, and the coolness of a tax-gatherer to get through. Todd dragged a bedstead beneath the trap; and then his great height enabled him to thrust it open, and project his head through it. He found that part of his corporality was in the roof as it were--that is to say, in the cavity, between the ceiling of the room and the house. A trap-door of somewhat larger size in the actual roof, opened to the air. Todd dragged himself through, and was fairly upon the top of the colonel's house. A slippery elevation! But surely that was better than facing a red-hot poker, and a pair of hair-trigger duelling pistols; and so, for a time, the desire to escape kept down every other feeling. Even his revengeful thoughts gave way to the great principle of self-preservation; and Todd was only intent upon safely getting away. He glared round him upon the night sky, and a gaudy assemblage of chimney tops. What was he to do? In a minute he uttered a string of such curses, as we cannot very well here set down, and he turned preternaturally calm and still.
"Shall I go back," he said, "or escape?"
He heard the tramp of horses' feet, and peeping carefully over the front parapet of the house, he saw Colonel Jeffery arrive on horseback, and dismount. His groom led the horse away, and the colonel ascended the steps. Then, and not until then, Todd made up his mind.
"Escape," he said, "and be off."
There was a long sloping part of the roof close to where he was, and he thought that if he slid down that very carefully he should be able to get on to the roof of the next house, and so perchance through their trap door, and by dint of violence or cunning, or both united, reach the street.
It was a desperate resource, but his only one.
The top part of the long sloping roof was easily gained, and then Todd began to let himself down very carefully, but the angle of the roof was greater than he had imagined, and by the time he got about half way down he found a dangerous and most uncomfortable acceleration of motion ensuing.
It was in vain he tried to stop himself: down he went with a speed into the gutter behind the copping-stone, that left him lying there for a few moments half stunned, and scarcely conscious if he were safe or not.
The colonel's house, however, was stoutly built, and Todd's weight had not displaced anything; so that there he lay safe enough, wedged into a narrow rain gutter, from which, when he did recover himself sufficiently to make the attempt, he found some difficulty in wrenching himself out of.
Sore and shaken, Todd now looked about him. He was close to the roof of the next-door house. To be sure there was a chasm of sixty feet; but its width was not as many inches, so Todd ought, with his long legs, to easily step it.
