With a bottle of claret upon the table between them, Colonel Jeffery and his old friend sat over the fire in the bed-room devoted to the use of poor Tobias Ragg. Alas! poor boy, kindness and wealth that now surrounded him came late in the day. Before he first crossed the threshold of Sweeney Todd's odious abode, what human heart could have more acutely felt genuine kindness than Tobias's, but his destiny had been an evil one. Guilt has its victims, and Tobias was in all senses one of the victims of Sweeney Todd. "I am sufficiently, perhaps superstitious, you will call it," said Colonel Jeffery in a low tone of voice, "to think that my meeting with this boy was not altogether accidental."
"Indeed?"
"No. Many things have happened to me during life—although I admit that they may be all accounted for as natural coincidences, curious only at the best but still suggestive of something very different, and make me at times a convert to the belief in an interfering special Providence, and this is one of them."
"It is a dangerous doctrine, my friend."
"Think you so?"
"Yes. It is much better and much safer both for the judgment and imagination to account naturally for all those things which admit of a natural explanation, than to fall back upon a special Providence, and fancy that it is continually interfering with the great and immutable laws that govern the world. I do not—mark me—deny such a thing, but I would not be hasty in asserting it. No man's experience can have been without numerous instances such as you mention."
"Certainly not."
"Then I should say to you, as St. Paul said to the Athenians—'In all things I find you superstitious.' What's that?"
A faint moan had come upon both their ears, and after listening for a few moments another made itself heard, and they fancied, by the direction of the sound, that Tobias's lips must have uttered it. Placing his finger against his mouth to indicate silence, the colonel stepped up to the bedside, and hiding behind the curtains, he said, in the softest and kindest voice he could assume—
"Tobias! Tobias! fear nothing now you are with friends, Tobias; and, above all, you are perfectly free from the power of Sweeney Todd."
"I am not mad! I am not mad!" shouted Tobias with a shrill vehemence that made both the colonel and his friend start.
"Nay, who says you are mad, Tobias? We know you are not mad, my lad. Don't alarm yourself about that, we know you are not mad."
"Mercy! mercy! I will say nothing—nothing. How fiend-like he looks. Oh, Mr. Todd, spare me, and I will go far, far away, and die somewhere else, but do not kill me now, I am yet such—such a boy only, and my poor father is dead—dead—dead!"
"Ring the bell," said Jeffery to his friend, "and tell John to go for Mr. Chisolm, the surgeon. Come—come, Tobias, you still fancy you are under the power of Todd, but it is not so—you are quite safe here."
"Hush! hush! mother—oh, where are you, mother—did you leave me here, mother? Say you took, in a moment of thoughtlessness, the silver candlestick! Is Todd to be a devil, because you were thoughtless once? Hide me from him—hide me—hide! hide! I am not mad. Hark! I hear him—one—two—three—four—five—six steps, and all Todd's. Each one leaves blood in its track. Look at him now! His face changes—'tis a fox's—a serpent's—hideous—hideous—God—God! I am mad—mad—mad!"
The boy dashed his head from side to side, and would have flung himself from the bed had not Colonel Jeffery advanced and held him.
"Poor fellow," he said, "this is very shocking. Tobias! Tobias!"
"Hush! I hear—poor thing, did they say you was mad too?—Hide me in the straw! There—there—what a strange thing it is for all the air to be so full of blood. Do we breathe blood, and only fancy it air? Hush! not a word—he comes with a serpent's face—oh, tell me why does God let such beings ever riot upon the beautiful earth—one—two—three—four—five—six—Hiss—hiss! Off—off! I am not mad—not mad. Ha! ha! ha!"
An appalling shriek concluded this paroxysm, and for a few moments Tobias was still. The medical man at this time entered the room.
"Oh," he said, "we have roused him up again, have we." Medical men are rather fond of the plural identifying style of talking.
"Yes," said Colonel Jeffery, "but he had better have slept the sleep of death than have awakened to be what he is, poor fellow."
"A little—eh?"
The doctor tapped his forehead.
"Not a little."
"Far away over the sea!" said Tobias, "oh, yes—in any ship, only do not kill me, Mr. Todd—let me go and I will say nothing, I will work and send my poor mother hard-earned gold, and your name shall never pass our lips. Oh, no—no—no, do not say that I am mad. Do you see these tears? I have—I have not cried so since my poor father called me to him and held me in a last embrace of his wasted arms, saying, 'Tobias, my darling, I am going—going far from you. God's blessing be upon you, poor child.' I thought my heart would break then, but it did not, I saw him put from the face of the living into the grave, and I did not quite break my heart then, but it is broken—broken now! Mad! mad! oh, no, not mad—no—n............