The Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK™

by Oscar Wilde

  His cheeks were pale and sunken; his eyes had an unnatural brightness about them, and, to look upon his lips, one would think that they had never parted in a smile for many a day, so sadly were they compressed together.

  He seemed ever to be watching likewise for something fearful, and even as he walked the streets, he would frequently turn, and look enquiringly round him with a shudder, and in his brief interview with Colonel Jeffery and his friend the captain, we can have a tolerably good impression of the state of his mind.

  Oppressed with fears and all sorts of dreadful thoughts, panting to give utterance to what he knew and to what he suspected, and yet terrified into silence for his mother’s sake, we cannot but view him as signally entitled to the sympathy of the reader, and as, in all respects, one sincerely to be pitied for the cruel circumstances in which he was placed.

  The sun is shining brightly, and even that busy region of trade and commerce, Fleet-street, is looking gay and beautiful; but not for that poor spirit-stricken lad are any of the sights and sounds which used to make up the delight of his existence, reaching his eyes or ears now with their accustomed force.

  He sits moody and alone, and in the position which he always assumes when Sweeney Todd is from home—that is to say, with his head resting on his hands, and looking the picture of melancholy abstraction.

  ‘What shall I do,’ he said to himself, ‘what will become of me! I think if I live here any longer, I shall go out of my senses. Sweeney Todd is a murderer—I am quite certain of it, and I wish to say so, but I dare not for my mother’s sake. Alas! alas! the end of it will be that he will kill me, or that I shall go out of my senses, and then I shall die in some madhouse, and no one will care what I say.’

  The boy wept bitterly after he had uttered these melancholy reflections, and he felt his tears something of a relief to him, so that he looked up after a little time, and glanced around him.

  ‘What a strange thing,’ he said, ‘that people should come into this shop, to my certain knowledge, who never go out of it again, and yet what becomes of them I cannot tell.’

  He looked with a shuddering anxiety towards the parlour, the door of which Sweeney Todd took care to lock always when he left the place, and he thought that he should like much to have a thorough examination of that room.

  ‘I have been in it,’ he said, ‘and it seems full of cupboards and strange holes and corners, such as I never saw before, and there is an odd stench in it that I cannot make out at all; but it’s out of the question thinking of ever being in it above a few minutes at a time, for Sweeney Todd takes good care of that.’

  The boy rose, and opened a cupboard that was in the shop. It was perfectly empty.

  ‘Now, that’s strange,’ he said; ‘there was a walking-stick with an ivory top to it here just before he went out, and I could swear it belonged to a man who came in to be shaved. More than once—ah! and more than twice, too, when I have come in suddenly, I have seen people’s hats, and Sweeney Todd would try and make me believe that people go away after being shaved and leave their hats behind them.’

  He walked up to the shaving-chair, as it was called, which was a large old-fashioned piece of furniture, made of oak, and carved; and as the boy threw himself into it, he said,-

  ‘What an odd thing it is that this chair is screwed so tight to the floor! Here is a complete fixture, and Sweeney Todd says that it is so because it’s in the best possible light, and if he were not to make it fast in such a way, the customers would shift it about from place to place, so that he could not conveniently shave them; it may be true, but I don’t know.’

  ‘And you have your doubts,’ said the voice of Sweeney Todd, as that individual, with a noiseless step, walked into the shop—‘you have your doubts, Tobias? I shall have to cut your throat, that is quite clear.’

  ‘No, no; have mercy upon me; I did not mean what I said.’

  ‘Then it’s uncommonly imprudent to say it, Tobias. Do you remember our last conversation? Do you remember that I can hang your mother when I please, because, if you do not, I beg to put you 1/in mind of that pleasant little circumstance.’

  ‘I cannot forget—I do not forget.’

  ‘’Tis well; and mark me, I will not have you assume such an aspect as you wear when I am not here. You don’t look cheerful, Tobias; and notwithstanding your excellent situation, with little to do, and the number of Lovett’s pies you eat, you fall away.’

  ‘I cannot help it,’ said Tobias. ‘Since you told me what you did concerning my mother, I have been so anxious that I cannot help—’

  ‘Why should you be so anxious? Her preservation depends upon yourself, and upon yourself wholly. You have but to keep silent, and she is safe; but if you utter one word that shall be displeasing to me about my affairs, mark me, Tobias, she comes to the scaffold; and if I cannot conveniently place you in the same madhouse where the last boy I had was placed, I shall certainly be under the troublesome necessity of cutting your throat.’

  ‘I will be silent—I will say nothing, Mr Todd. I know I shall die soon, and then you will get rid of me altogether, and I don’t care how soon that may be, for I am quite weary of my life—I shall be glad when it is over.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the barber; ‘that’s all a matter of taste. And now, Tobias, I desire that you look cheerful and smile, for a gentleman is outside feeling his chin with his hand, and thinking he may as well come in and be shaved. I may want you, Tobias, to go to Billingsgate, and bring me a pennyworth of shrimps.’

  ‘Yes,’ thought Tobias with a groan—‘yes, while you murder him.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE SECOND INTERVIEW BETWEEN JOHANNA AND THE COLONEL IN THE TEMPLE GARDENS

  Now that there was a great object to be gained by a second interview with Colonel Jeffery, the anxiety of Johanna Oakley to have it became extremely great, and she counted the very hours until the period should arrive when she could again proceed to the Temple-gardens with something like a certainty of finding him.

  The object, of course, was to ask him for a description of Mr Thornhill, sufficiently accurate to enable her to come to something like a positive conclusion, as to whether she ought to call him to her own mind as Mark Ingestrie or not.

  And Colonel Jeffery was not a bit the less anxious to see her, than she was to look upon him; for, although in diverse lands he had looked upon many a fair face, and heard many a voice that had sounded soft and musical to his ears, he had seen none that, to his mind, was so fair, and had heard no voice that he had considered really so musical and charming to listen to as Johanna Oakley’s.

  A man of more admirable and strict sense of honour than Colonel Jeffery could not have been found, and therefore it was that he allowed himself to admire the beautiful, under any circumstances, because he knew that his admiration was of no dangerous quality, but that, on the contrary, it was one of those feelings which might exist in a bosom such as his, quite undebased by a meaner influence.

  We think it necessary, however, before he has his second interview with Johanna Oakley, to give such an explanation of his thoughts and feelings as is in our power.

  When first he met her, the purity of her mind, and the genuine and beautiful candour of all she said, struck him most forcibly, as well as her great beauty, which could not fail to be extremely manifest.

  After that he began to reason with himself as to what ought to be his feelings with regard to her—namely, what portion of these ought to be suppressed, and what ought to be encouraged.

  If Mark Ingestrie were dead, there was not a shadow of interference or dishonour in him, Colonel Jeffery, loving the beautiful girl, who was surely not to be shut out of the pale of all affections, because the first person to whom her heart had warmed, with a pure and holy passion, was no more.

  ‘It may be,’ he thought, ‘that she is incapable of feeling a sentiment which can at all approac
h that which once she felt; but still she may be happy and serene, and may pass many joyous hours as the wife of another.’

  He did not positively make these reflections, as applicable to himself, although they had a tendency that way, and he was fast verging on a state of mind which might induce him to give them a more actual application.

  He did not tell himself that he loved her—no, the word ‘admiration’ took the place of the more powerful term; but then, can we not doubt that, at this time, the germ of a very pure and holy affection was lighted up in the heart of Colonel Jeffery, for the beautiful creature, who had suffered the pangs of so much disappointment, and who loved one so well, who, we almost fear, if he was living, was scarcely the sort of person fully to requite such an affection.

  But we know so little of Mark Ingestrie, and there appears to be so much doubt as to whether he be alive or dead, that we should not prejudge him upon such very insufficient evidence.

  Johanna Oakley did think of taking Arabella Wilmot with her to this meeting with Colonel Jeffery, but she abandoned the idea, because it really looked as if she was either afraid of him, or afraid of herself, so she resolved to go alone; and when the hour of appointment came, she was there walking upon that broad, gravelled path, which has been trodden by some of the best, and some of the most eminent, as well as some of the worst of human beings.

  It was not likely that with the feelings of Colonel Jeffery towards her, he should keep her waiting. Indeed, he was there a good hour before the time, and his only great dread was, that she might not come.

  He had some reason for this dread, because it will be readily recollected by the reader, that she had not positively promised to come; so that all he had was a hope that way tending and nothing farther.

  As minute after minute had passed away, she came not, although the time had not really arrived; his apprehension that she would not give him the meeting, had grown in his mind, almost to a certainty, when he saw her timidly advancing along the garden walk.

  He rose to meet her at once, and for a few moments after he had greeted her with kind civility she could do nothing but look enquiringly in his face, to know if he had any news to tell her of the object of her anxious solicitude.

  ‘I have heard nothing, Miss Oakley,’ he said, ‘that can give you any satisfaction, concerning the fate of Mr Thornhill, but we have much suspicion—I say we, because I have taken a friend into my confidence—that something serious must have happened to him, and that the barber, Sweeney Todd, in Fleet-street, at whose door the dog so mysteriously took his post, knows something of that circumstance, be it what it may.’

  He led her to a seat as he spoke, and when she had recovered sufficiently the agitation of her feelings to speak, she said in a timid, hesitating voice, ‘Had Mr Thornhill fair hair, and large, clear, grey eyes?’

  ‘Yes, he had such; and, I think, his smile was the most singularly beautiful I ever beheld in a man.’

  ‘Heaven help me!’ said Johanna.

  ‘Have you any reason for asking that question regarding Thornhill?’

  ‘God grant, I had not; but alas! I have indeed. I feel that, in Thornhill, I must recognise Mark Ingestrie himself.’

  ‘You astonish me.’

  ‘It must be so, it must be so; you have described him to me, and I cannot doubt it; Mark Ingestrie and Thornhill are one; I knew that he was going to change his name when he went upon that wild adventure to the Indian sea. I was well aware of that fact.’

  ‘I cannot think, Miss Oakley, that you are correct in that supposition. There are many things which induce me to think otherwise; and the first and foremost of them is, that the ingenuous character of Mr Thornhill forbids the likelihood of such a thing occurring. You may depend on it it is not—cannot be, as you suppose.

  ‘The proofs are too strong for me, and I find I dare not doubt them. It is so, Colonel Jeffery, as time, perchance, may show; it is sad, very sad, to think that it is so, but I dare not doubt it, now that you have described him to me exactly as he lived.’

  ‘I must own, that in giving an opinion on such a point to you, I may be accused of arrogance and assumption, for I have had no description of Mark Ingestrie, and never saw him; and although you never saw certainly Mr Thornhill, yet I have described him to you, and therefore you are able to judge from that description something of him.’

  ‘I am indeed, and I cannot—dare not doubt. It is horrible to be positive on this point to me, because I do fear with you that something dreadful has occurred, and that the barber in Fleet-street could unravel a frightful secret, if he chose, connected with Mark Ingestrie’s fate.’

  ‘I do sincerely hope from my heart that you are wrong; I hope it, because I tell you frankly, dim and obscure as is the hope that Mark Ingestrie may have been picked up from the wreck of his vessel, it is yet stronger than the supposition that Thornhill has escaped the murderous hands of Sweeney Todd, the barber.’

  Johanna looked in his face so imploringly, and with such an expression of hopelessness, that it was most sad indeed to see her, and quite involuntarily he exclaimed, ‘If the sacrifice of my life would be to you a relief, and save you from the pangs you suffer, believe me, it should be made.’

  She started as she said, ‘No, no; Heaven knows enough has been sacrificed already—more than enough, much more than enough. But do not suppose that I am ungrateful for the generous interest you have taken in me. Do not suppose that I think any the less of the generosity and nobility of soul that would offer a sacrifice, because it is one I would hesitate to accept. No, believe me, Colonel Jeffery, that among the few names that are enrolled in my breast—and such to me will ever be honoured—remember yours will be found while I live, but that will not be long—but that will not be long.’

  ‘Nay, do not speak so despairingly.’

  ‘Have I not cause for despair?’

  ‘Cause have you for great grief, but yet scarcely for despair. You are young yet, and let me entertain a hope that even if a feeling of regret may mingle with your future thoughts, time will achieve something in tempering your sorrow, and if not great happiness, you may know great serenity.’

  ‘I dare not hope it, but I know your words are kindly spoken, and most kindly meant.

  ‘You may well assure yourself that they are so.’

  ‘I will ascertain his fate, or perish.’

  ‘You alarm me by those words, as well as by your manner of uttering them. Let me implore you, Miss Oakley, to attempt nothing rash; remember how weak and inefficient must be the exertions of a young girl like yourself, one who knows so little of the world, and can really understand so little of its wickedness.’

  ‘Affection conquers all obstacles, and the weakest and most inefficient girl that ever stepped, if she have strong within her that love which, in all its sacred intensity, knows no fear, shall indeed accomplish much. I feel that in such a cause, I could shake off all girlish terrors and ordinary alarms; and if there be danger, I would ask, what is life to me without all that could adorn it, and make it beautiful?’

  ‘This, indeed, is the very enthusiasm of affection, when believe me, it will lead you to some excess—to some romantic exercise of feeling, such as will bring great danger in its train, to the unhappiness of those who love you.

  ‘Those who love me—who is there to love me now?’

  ‘Johanna Oakley, I dare not and will not utter words that come thronging to my lips, but which I fear might be unwelcome to your ears; I will not say that I can answer the questions you have asked, because it would sound ungenerous at such a time as this, when you have met me to talk of the fate of another. Oh! forgive me, that hurried away by the feeling of a moment, I have uttered these words, for I meant not to utter them.’

  Johanna looked at him in silence, and it might be that there was the slightest possible tinge of reproach in her look, but it was very slight, for one glance at that in
genuous countenance would be sufficient to convince the most sceptical of the truth and single-mindedness of its owner: of this, there could be no doubt whatever, and if anything in the shape of a reproach was upon the point of coming from her lips, she forbore to utter it.

  ‘May I hope,’ he added, ‘that I have not lowered myself in your esteem, Miss Oakley, by what I have said?’

  ‘I hope,’ she said gently, ‘you will continue to be my friend.’

  She laid an emphasis on the word ‘friend’, and he fully understood what she meant to imply thereby, and after a moment’s pause said,-

  ‘Heaven forbid, that ever by word, or by action, Johanna, I should do aught to deprive myself of that privilege. Let me be your friend, since—’

  He left the sentence unfinished, but if he had added the words—’since I can do no more’, he could not have made it more evident to Johanna that those were the words he intended to utter.

  ‘And now,’ he added, ‘that I hope and trust we understand each other better than we did, and you are willing to call me by the name of friend, let me once more ask you, by the privilege of such a title, to be careful of yourself, and not to risk much in order that you may perhaps have some remote chance of achieving very little.’

  ‘But can I endure this dreadful suspense?’

  ‘It is, alas! too common an affliction on human nature, Johanna. Pardon me for addressing you as Johanna.’

  ‘Nay, it requires no excuse. I am accustomed so to be addressed by all who feel a kindly interest for me. Call me Johanna if you will, and I shall feel a greater assurance of your friendship and your esteem.

  ‘I will then avail myself of that permission, and again and again I will entreat you to leave to me the task of making what attempts may be made to discover the fate of Mr Thornhill. There must be danger even in enquiring for him, if he has met with any foul play, and therefore I ask you to let that danger be mine.’