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 persued 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 the 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. He 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?