The Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK™

by Oscar Wilde

  But when he reached the first floor he soon found abundant reason to alter his opinion. The doors were fast, and he had to burst them open; and, when he got in, he found that those rooms were partially furnished, and that they contained a great quantity of miscellaneous property of all kinds and descriptions.

  In one corner was an enormous quantity of walking-sticks, some of which were of a very costly and expensive character, with gold and silver chased tops to them, and in another corner was a great number of umbrellas—in fact at least a hundred of them.

  Then there were boots and shoes, lying upon the floor, partially covered up, as if to keep them from dirt; there were thirty or forty swords of different styles and patterns, many of them appearing to be very firm blades, and in one or two cases the scabbards were richly ornamented.

  At one end of the front and larger of the two rooms was an old-fashioned-looking bureau of great size, and with as much woodwork in it as seemed required to make at least a couple of such articles of furniture.

  This was very securely locked, and presented more difficulties in the way of opening it, than any of the doors had done, for the lock was of great strength and apparent durability. Moreover it was not so easily got at, but at length by using the bar as a sort of lever, instead of as a mere machine to strike with, Tobias succeeded in forcing this bureau open, and then his eyes were perfectly dazzled with the amount of jewellery and trinkets of all kinds and descriptions that were exhibited to his gaze.

  There was a great number of watches, gold chains, silver and gold snuff-boxes, and a large assortment of rings, shoe-buckles, and brooches.

  These articles must have been of great value, and Tobias could not help exclaiming aloud,-

  ‘How could Sweeney Todd come by these articles, except by the murder of their owners?’

  This, indeed, seemed but too probable a supposition, and the more especially so, as in a further part of this bureau a great quantity of apparel was found by Tobias. He stood with a candle in his hand, looking upon these various objects for more than a quarter of an hour, and then as a sudden and a natural thought came across him of how completely a few of them even would satisfy his wants and his mother’s for a long time to come, he stretched forth his hand towards the glittering mass, but he drew it back again with a shudder, saying,-

  ‘No, no, these things are the plunder of the dead. Let Sweeney Todd keep them to himself, and look upon them if he can with the eyes of enjoyment. I will have none of them: they would bring misfortune along with every guinea that they might be turned into.’

  As he spoke, he heard St Dunstan’s clock strike nine, and he started at the sound, for it let him know that already Sweeney Todd had been away an hour beyond the time he said he would be absent, so that there was a probability of his quick return now, and it would scarcely be safe to linger longer in his home.

  ‘I must be gone, I must be gone, I should like to look upon my mother’s face once more before I leave London for ever perhaps. I may tell her of the danger she is in from Todd’s knowledge of her secret; no, no, I cannot speak to her of that, I must go, and leave her to those chances which I hope and trust will work favourably for her.’

  It was a strange and sudden whim that took him, rather than a matter of reflection, that induced him instead of his own hat to take one of those which were lying so indiscriminately at his feet; and he did so.

  By mere accident it turned out to be an exceedingly handsome hat, of rich workmanship and material, and then Tobias, feeling terrified lest Sweeney Todd should return before he could leave the place, paid no attention to anything, but turned from the shop, merely pulling the door after him, and then darting over the road towards the Temple like a hunted hare; for his great wish was to see his mother, and then he had an undefined notion that his best plan for escaping the clutches of Sweeney Todd would be to go to sea.

  In common with all boys of his age, who know nothing whatever of the life of a sailor, it presented itself in the most fascinating colours. A sailor ashore and a sailor afloat are about as two different things as the world can present; but, to the imagination of Tobias Ragg, a sailor was somebody who was always dancing hornpipes, spending money, and telling wonderful stories. No wonder, then, that the profession presented itself under such fascinating colours to all such persons as Tobias; and, as it seemed, and seems still, to be a sort of general understanding that the real condition of a sailor should be mystified in every possible way and shape both by novelist and dramatist, it is no wonder that it requires actual experience to enable those parties who are in the habit of being carried away by just what they hear, to come to a correct conclusion.

  ‘I will go to sea!’ ejaculated Tobias. ‘Yes, I will go to sea!’

  As he spoke those words, he passed out of the gate of the Temple, leading into Whitefriars, in which ancient vicinity his mother dwelt, endeavouring to eke out a living as best she might.

  She was very much surprised (for she happened to be at home) at the unexpected visit of her son Tobias, and uttered a faint scream as she let fall a flat-iron very nearly upon his toe.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I cannot stay with Sweeney Todd any longer, so do not ask me.’

  ‘Not stay with a respectable man?’

  ‘A respectable man, mother! Alas, alas, how little you know of him! But what am I saying? I dare not speak! Oh, that fatal, fatal candlestick!’

  ‘But how are you to live, and what do you mean by a fatal candlestick?’

  ‘Forgive me—I did not mean to say that! Farewell, mother! I am going to sea.’

  ‘To see what, my dear?’ said Mrs Ragg, who was much more difficult to talk to than even Hamlet’s grave-digger. ‘You don’t know how much I am obliged to Sweeney Todd.’

  ‘Yes, I do. And that’s what drives me mad to think of. Farewell, mother, perhaps for ever! If I can, of course, I will communicate with you, but now I dare not stay.’

  ‘Oh! what have you done, Tobias—what have you done?’

  ‘Nothing—nothing! but Sweeney Todd is—’

  ‘What—what?’

  ‘No matter—no matter! Nothing—nothing! And yet at this last moment I am almost tempted to ask you concerning a candlestick.’

  ‘Don’t mention that,’ said Mrs Ragg; ‘I don’t want to hear anything said about it.’

  ‘It is true, then?’

  ‘Yes; but did Mr Todd tell you?’

  ‘He did—he did. I have now asked the question I never thought could have passed my lips. Farewell, mother, for ever farewell!’

  Tobias rushed out of the place, leaving old Mrs Ragg astonished at his bearing, and with a strong suspicion that some accession of insanity had come over him.

  ‘The Lord have mercy upon us,’ she said, ‘what shall I do? I am astonished at Mr Todd telling him about the candlestick; it’s true enough, though, for all that. I recollect it as well as if it were yesterday; it was a very hard winter, and I was minding a set of chambers, when Todd came to shave the gentleman, and I saw him with my own eyes put a silver candlestick in his pocket. Then I went over to his shop and reasoned with him about it, and he gave it me back, and I brought it to the chambers, and laid it down exactly on the spot where he took it from.

  ‘To be sure,’ said Mrs Ragg, after a pause of a few moment, ‘to be sure he has been a very good friend to me ever since, but that I suppose is for fear I should tell, and get him hung or transported. But, however, we must take the good with the bad, and when Tobias comes to think of it, he will go back again to his work, I dare say, for, after all, it’s a very foolish thing for him to trouble his head whether Mr Todd stole a silver candlestick or not.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE STRANGE ODOUR IN OLD ST. DUNSTAN’S CHURCH

  About this time, and while these incidents of our most strange and eventful narrative were taking place, the pious frequenters of old St Dunstan�
�s church began to perceive a strange and most abominable odour throughout that sacred edifice.

  It was in vain that old women who came to hear the sermons, although they were too deaf to catch a third part of them, brought smelling-bottles, and other means of stifling their noses; still that dreadful charnel-house sort of smell would make itself most painfully and most disagreeably apparent.

  And the Rev Joseph Stillingport, who was the regular preacher, smelt it in the pulpit; and had been seen to sneeze in the midst of a most pious discourse indeed, and to hold to his pious nose a handkerchief, in which was some strong and pungent essence, for the purpose of trying to overcome the terrible effluvia.

  The organ-blower and the organ-player were both nearly stifled, for the horrible odour seemed to ascend to the upper part of the church; although those who sat in what may be called the pit by no means escaped it.

  The churchwardens looked at each other in their pews with contorted countenances, and were almost afraid to breathe; and the only person who did not complain bitterly of the dreadful odour in St Dunstan’s church, was an old woman who had been a pew-opener for many years; but then she had lost the faculties of her nose, which, perhaps, accounted satisfactorily for that circumstance.

  At length, however, the nuisance became so intolerable, that the beadle, whose duty it was in the morning to open the church-doors, used to come up to them with the massive key in one hand, and a cloth soaked in vinegar in the other, just as the people used to do in the time of the great plague of London; and when he had opened the doors, he used to run over to the other side of the way.

  ‘Ah, Mr Blunt!’ he used to say to the bookseller, who lived opposite—‘ah, Mr Blunt! I is obligated to cut over here, leastways, till the atymonspheric air is mixed up all along with the stinkifications which come from the church.’

  By this, it will be seen that the beadle was rather a learned man, and no doubt went to some mechanics’ institution of those days, where he learned something of everything but what was calculated to be of some service to him.

  As might be supposed from the fact that this sort of thing had gone on for a few months, it began to excite some attention with a view to a remedy; for, in the great city of London, a nuisance of any sort of description requires to become venerable by age before anyone thinks of removing it; and after that, it is quite clear that that becomes a good argument against removing it at all.

  But at last, the churchwardens began to have a fear that some pestilential disease would be the result, if they for any longer period of time put up with the horrible stench; and that they might be among its first victims, so they began to ask each other what could be done to obviate it.

  Probably, if this frightful stench, being suggestive, as it was, of all sorts of horrors, had been graciously pleased to confine itself to some poor locality, nothing would have been heard of it; but when it became actually offensive to a gentleman in a metropolitan pulpit, and when it began to make itself perceptible to the sleepy faculties of the churchwardens of St Dunstan’s church, in Fleet-street, so as to prevent them even from dozing through the afternoon sermon, it became a very serious matter indeed.

  But what it was, what could it be, and what was to be done to get rid of it—these were the anxious questions that were asked right and left, as regarded the serious nuisance, without the nuisance acceding any reply.

  But yet one thing seemed to be generally agreed, and that was, that it did come, and must come, somehow or other, out of the vaults from beneath the church.

  But then, as the pious and hypocritical Mr Batterwick, who lived opposite, said,-

  ‘How could that be, when it was satisfactorily proved by the present books that nobody had been buried in the vault for some time, and therefore it was a very odd thing that dead people, after leaving off smelling and being disagreeable, should all of a sudden burst out again in that line, and be twice as bad as ever they were at first.’

  And on Wednesdays, sometimes, too, when pious people were not satisfied with the Sunday’s devotion, but began again in the middle of the week, the stench was positively horrific.

  Indeed, so bad was it, that some of the congregation were forced to leave, and have been seen to slink into Bell-yard, where Lovett’s pie-shop was situated, and then and there relieve themselves with a pork or a veal pie, in order that their mouths and noses should be full of a delightful and agreeable flavour, instead of one most peculiarly and decidedly the reverse.

  At last there was a confirmation to be held at St Dunstan’s church, and so great a concourse of persons assembled, for a sermon was to be preached by the bishop, after the confirmation; and a very great fuss indeed was to be made about really nobody knew what.

  Preparations, as newspapers say, upon an extensive scale, and regardless of expense, were made for the purpose of adding lustre to the ceremony, and surprising the bishop when he came with a good idea that the authorities of St Dunstan’s church were somebodies and really worth confirming.

  The confirmation was to take place at twelve o’clock, and the bells ushered in the morning with their most pious tones, for it was not every day that the authorities of St Dunstan’s succeeded in catching a bishop, and when they did so, they were determined to make the most of him.

  And the numerous authorities, including churchwardens, and even the very beadle, were in an uncommon fluster, and running about and impeding each other, as authorities always do upon public occasions.

  But of those who only look to the surface of things, and who come to admire what was grand and magnificent in the preparations, the beadle certainly carried away the palm, for that functionary was attired in a completely new cocked hat and coat, and certainly looked very splendid and showy upon the occasion. Moreover, the beadle had been well and judiciously selected, and the parish authorities made no secret of it, when there was an election for beadle, that they threw all their influence into the scale of that candidate who happened to be the biggest, and, consequently, who was calculated to wear the official costume with an air that no smaller man could possibly have aspired to on any account.

  At half-past eleven o’clock the bishop made his gracious appearance, and was duly ushered into the vestry, where there was a comfortable fire, and on the table in which, likewise, were certain cold chickens and bottles of rare wines; for confirming a number of people, and preaching a sermon besides, was considered no joke, and might, for all they knew, be provocative of a great appetite in the bishop.

  And with a bland and courtly air the bishop smiled as he ascended the steps of St Dunstan’s church. How affable he was to the church-wardens, and he actually smiled upon a poor, miserable charity boy, who, his eyes glaring wide open, and his muffin cap in his hand, was taking his first stare at a real live bishop.

  To be sure, the beadle knocked him down directly the bishop had passed, for having the presumption to look at such a great personage, but then that was to be expected fully and completely, and only proved that the proverb which permits a cat to look at a king, is not equally applicable to charity boys and bishops.

  When the bishop got to the vestry, some very complimentary words were uttered to him by the usual officiating clergyman, but, somehow or another, the bland smile had left the lips of the great personage, and, interrupting the vicar in the midst of a fine flowing period, he said,-

  ‘That’s all very well, but what a terrible stink there is here!’

  The churchwardens gave a groan, for they had flattered themselves, that perhaps the bishop would not notice the dreadful smell, or that, if he did, he would think it was accidental and say nothing about it; but now, when he really did mention it, they found all their hopes scattered to the winds, and that it was necessary to say something.

  ‘Is this horrid charnel-house sort of smell always here?’

  ‘I am afraid it is,’ said one of the churchwardens.

  ‘Afraid!’ said
the bishop, ‘surely you know; you seem to me to have a nose.

  ‘Yes,’ said the churchwarden, in great confusion, ‘I have that honour, and I have the pleasure of informing you, my lord bishop—I mean I have the honour of informing you, that this smell is always here.’

  The bishop sniffed several times, and then he said, ‘It is very dreadful; and I hope that by the next time I come to St Dunstan’ s you will have the pleasure and the honour, both, of informing me that it has gone away.’

  The churchwarden bowed, and got into an extreme corner, saying to himself,-

  ‘This is the bishop’s last visit here, and I don’t wonder at it, for as if out of pure spite, the smell is ten times worse than ever today.’

  And so it was, for it seemed to come up through all the crevices of the flooring of the church with a power and perseverance that was positively dreadful.

  ‘Isn’t it dreadful?—did you ever before know the smell in St Dunstan’s so bad before?’ and everybody agreed that they had never known it anything like so bad, for that it was positively awful—and so indeed it was.

  The anxiety of the bishop to get away was quite manifest, and if he could decently have taken his departure without confirming anybody at all, there is no doubt but that he would have willingly done so, and left all the congregation to die and be—something or another.

  But this he could not do, but he could cut it short, and he did so. The people found themselves confirmed before they almost knew where they were, and the bishop would not go into the vestry again on any account, but hurried down the steps of the church and into his carriage, with the greatest precipitation in the world, thus proving that holiness is no proof against a most abominable stench.

  As may be well supposed, after this, the subject assumed a much more serious aspect, and on the following day a solemn meeting was held of all the church authorities, at which it was determined that men should be employed to make a thorough and searching examination of all the vaults of St Dunstan’s, with the view of discovering, if possible, from whence particularly the abominable stench emanated.