The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 295: what you’re looking at

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

shall never look upon his frightful face again, and how awful he did squint, too. Dear me, what did the colonel say he had with his vision—could it be—a something afixity? No, that isn’t it.” “Obliquity!” said Todd, popping his head in at the kitchen door. “It was obliquity, and if you scream or make the least alarm, I'll skin you, and strew this kitchen with your mangled remains!” Mrs. Ragg sank into a chair with a melodramatic groan, that would have made her fortune over the water in domestic tragedy if she could have done it so naturally. Todd kept his eye upon her. That basilisk-like eye, which had fascinated the good woman often, and this time it acted as a kind of spell, for truly might he have said, or rather might some one have said for him, “He held her with his glittering eye.” Todd’s first care now was to get between Mrs. Ragg and the kitchen door, lest upon some sudden impulse she should rise and flee. Then he folded his arms, and looked at her calmly, and with such a devilish smile as might have become Mephistopheles himself, while contemplating the ruin of a soul. He took from his pocket a razor. “Mercy,” gasped Mrs. Ragg. “Where is Tobias?” “Up stairs. Back room, second floor, looking into the garden.” “Alone?” “No, Minna Grey is with him.” “Listen to me. If you stir from here until I come to you again. I will not only murder you, but Tobias likewise, and every one whom I meet with in this house. You know me, and can come to some opinion as to whether or not I am a man likely to keep my word. Remain where you are; move not, speak not, and all will be well.” Mrs. Ragg slowly slid off her chair, and fell to the floor of the kitchen, where she lay, in what seemed a swoon. “That will do as well,” said Todd as he glanced at her, “and yet as I return—” He made a movement with his hand across his throat to indicate what he would do, and then feeling assured that he had little or, indeed, no opposition to expect in the house, he left the kitchen, and walked up stairs. When he reached the top of the kitchen stairs he paused to listen. All was very still in the house. “Tis well,” he said “’tis well. This deed of blood shall be done, and long before it can be thought that it was I who struck the blow, I shall be gone.” Alas! After passing through so much! After being pursued in so almost a miraculous manner from the murderous intentions of Todd, backed by the cupidity of Fogg, and his subordinate Watson, was poor Tobias yet to die a terrible death as a victim to the cruel passions of his relentless persecutor? No, we will not yet believe that such is to be the fate of poor honest Tobias, although at the present time, his prospects look gloomy. Todd may, and no doubt has taken as worthy lives, but we will hope that the hand of Providence will prevent him from taking this one. He reached the landing of he first floor, and he paused to listen again. He thought this time, that he heard the faint sound of voices above, but he was not quite sure. Otherwise all was quiet. This was a critical situation for Todd. If any one, who was a painter of pictures or of morals had but seen him, Sweeney Todd, as he there stood, they would no longer have doubted either that there was a devil, or that some persons in this world, were actuated by a devilish fiend. He looked the incarnate fiend!—the Mephistopheles of the imagination, such as he is painted by the German enthusiast. His laugh too? Was not that satanic? He set himself to listen to the voices that he heard in that quiet rooms and the sounds, holy and full of affection as they were, awakened no chord of answering feeling, in that bold, bad man’s breast, lie stood apart from human nature, a solitary being. A wreck upon the ocean of society “None loving, and by none beloved.” Who would be Sweeney Todd, for all the wealth, real or fabled, of a million Californias? “He is here,” he said, “I know his voice. Tobias is here. Ah! he mentions the name of God. Ha! He is more fitting to go to that heaven he can talk of so glibly, but there is none. There is none! No, no! all that is a fable.” Of course Todd could not believe in a divinity of goodness and mercy. If he had, what on earth could have saved him from absolute madness? Q9ODO0GOOO CORniclooo S CO)