The String of Pearls; or, The Barber of Fleet Street — page 211: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STRING OF PEARLS. | 2 || trade, and firmly clutching it in his right hand, while he carried the candle in his left, he once more approached the staircase. “JT do not think,” he said, “ that for nine years now any mortal footsteps, but | my own, have trod upon these stairs or upon the flooring of the rooms above, | | Woe be to those who may now attempt to doso. Woe, I say, be to them, for their death is at hand.” | These words were spoken in a deep hollow voice, that sounded like tones from a sepulchre, as they came from the lips of that man of many crimes. To give Todd his due, he did not seem to shrink from the unknown and dimly appre- | ciated danger that might be up staiis in his house. He was courageous, but it | | was not the high-souled courage that nerves a man to noble deeds. No, | Sweeney Todd's courage was that of hate—hatred to the whole human race, | || which he considered, with a strange inconsistency, had conspired agains him; | || whereas he had been the one to place an impassable barrier between himself and | | the amenities of society. He ascended the stairs with great deliberation. When he reached the landing upon the first floor, he cast his eyes suspiciously about | | him, shading the light as he did so with his hand—that same hand that held |) | the knife, the shadow of which fell upon the wall in frightful proportions. i | ‘All is still,” he said, ‘* Is fancy, after all, only playing me such tricks as | | she might have played me twenty years ago? I thought I was too old for such | | freaks of the imagination.” ; Todd did not suspect that there was a second period in his life, when the mental infirmities of his green youth might come back to him, with many superadded | horrors accumulated, with a consciousness of guilt. He slowly approached a | | door and pushed it open, saying as he did so— | } ‘*No—no—no. Above all things, I must not be superstitious. If I were so, | | into what a world of horrors might I not plunge. No—no, I will not people the | | darkness with horrible phantasies, I will not think that itis possible that men with ‘* Twenty murders on their heads,” | can revisit this world to drive those who have done them to death with shrieking | | madness—this world do I say? There is no other. Bah! Priests may talk, | | and the weak-brained fools who gape at whaf they do not understand, may | | believe them, but when man dies—when the electric condition that has imputed | to his humanity what is called life, flies, he 1s indeed « Dust to dust!” Ha! ha! I have lived as I will die, fearing nothing and believing nothing.” As he uttered- those words—words which found no real echo in his heart, for | at the bottom of it lav a trembling belief in, and a dread of the great God that | rules all things, and who is manifest in the meanest seeming thing that crawls | | upon the earth—he entered one of the rooms upon that floor, and glanced uneasily | around him. All was still. There were trunks—clothes upon chairs, and a vast | amount of miscellaneous property in this room, but nothing in the shape of a human being. Todd’s spirits rose, and he held the long knife more carelessly | than he had done. |. “Pho! pho!” he said. ‘I do, indeed, at times make myself the slave of a disturbed fancy. Pho! pho! Iwill no more listen to vague sounds, meaning | nothing; but wrapping myself up in my consciousness of having nothing to fear, | I will pursue my course, hideous though it may be.” - “i He turned and took his way towards the landing place of the staircase again. | He was now carrying both the light and the knife rather carelessly, and every: | body knows that when a candle is held before a person’s face, that but little | indeed can be seen in the hazy vapour that surrounds it. So it was with Todd. | He had got about two paces from the door, when a strange consciousness of | something being in his way came over him. he immediately raised his hand— that hand thatstill carried the knife, to shade the light, and then, horror ! horror He saw standing upon the landing a figure attired in faded apparel, whose face was dabbled in blood, and the stony eyes which were fixed upon tke face of comicbooks.com