The state of mind that Todd was in after his arrest, was one that such a man with such strong passions as he had was exceedingly unlikely to come to. It is difficult to describe it, but if we say that he was mentally stunned2, we shall be as near the mark as language will permit us to be.
He walked, and looked, and spoke3 very much like a man in a dream; and it is really doubtful whether, for some hours, he comprehended the full measure of the calamity4 that had befallen him on his apprehension5.
At Newgate they are quite accustomed to find this unnatural6 calmness in great criminals immediately after their arrest, so they take their measures accordingly.
Sir Richard Blunt had given some very special instructions to the Governor of Newgate concerning his prisoner, when he should arrive and be placed in his custody7, so everything was ready for Todd. How little he suspected that for two days and two nights the very cell he was to occupy in Newgate had been actually pointed8 out, and that the irons in which his limbs were to be encompassed9 were waiting for him in the lobby!
He was placed in a small stone room that had no light but what came from a little orifice in the roof, and that was only a borrowed light after all, so that the cell was in a state of semi-darkness always.
Into this place he was hurried, and the blacksmith who was in the habit of officiating upon such occasions, riveted10 upon him, as was then the custom, a complete set of irons.
All this Todd looked at with seeming indifference11. His face had upon it an unnatural flush, and probably Todd had never looked so strangely well in health as upon the occasion of the first few hours he spent in Newgate.
"Now, old fellow," said one of the turnkeys, "I'm not to be very far off, in case you should happen to want to say anything; and if you give a rap at the door, I'll come to you."
"In case I want to say anything?" said Todd.
"Yes, to be sure. What, are you asleep?"
"Am I asleep?"
"Why, he's gone a little bit out of his mind," said the blacksmith, as he gathered up his tools to be gone.
The turnkey shook his head.
"Are you quite sure you have made a tight job of that?"
"Sure? Ay, that I am. If he gets out of them, put me in 'em, that's all. Oh, no! It would take—let me see—it would take about half a dozen of him to twist out o' that suit of armour12. They are just about the best we have in the old stone jug13."
"Good."
"Yes, they are good."
"I mean very well. And now Mr. Sweeney Todd, we will leave you to your own reflections, old boy, and much good may they do you. Good-night, old fellow. I always says good-night to the prisoners, cos it has a tender sort o' sound, and disposes of 'em to sleep. It's kind o' me, but I always was tender-hearted, as any little chick, I was."
He had sat down upon a stool that was in the cell; and that stool, with a sort of bench fastened to the wall, was the only furniture it contained; and there he sat for about half an hour, during which time one of the most extraordinary changes that ever took place in the face of any human being, took place in his.
It seemed as if the wear and tear of years had been concentrated into minutes; and in that short space of time he passed from a middle aged15, to be an old man.
Then reflection came!
"Newgate!" he cried as he sprang to his feet.
"Chains—Newgate—a cell—death! Found out at last! At the moment of my triumph—defeated—detected! Newgate—chains—death!"
He fell back upon the stool again, and sat for the space of about two minutes in perfect silence. Then he sprang up again with such a wild yell of rage and mental agony, that not only the cell, but the whole of that portion of the prison, echoed again with it.
The turnkey opened a small wicket in the door, which when it was opened from without, still was defended by iron bars across it, and peering into the cell, he said—
"Hilloa! What now?"
"Hilloa!" shouted Todd. "Air—air!"
"Air? Why what do you mean by gammoning a fellow in that sort o' way for, eh? Haven't you got lots o' air? Well, of all the unreasonable17 coves18 as ever I comed across, you is the worstest. Be quiet, will you?"
"No—no! Death—death! Give me the means of instant death. I am going mad—mad—mad!"
"Oh, no yer ain't. It's only yer first few hours in the stone-jug that has comed over you a little, that's all, old fellow. You'll soon pick up, and behave yourself like any other christian19. All you have got to do is never to mind, and then it's nothink at all, old chap."
Clap went shut the little wicket door again.
"Help! Help!" shouted Todd. "Take these irons off me. It is only a dream after all. Back, back you grinning fiends—why do you look at me when you know that it is not real? No—no, it cannot be, you know that it cannot be real."
"Be quiet will you?" shouted the turnkey.
"Keep off, I say. All is well. Mrs. Lovett dead—quite dead. The boy to die too. The house in a blaze—all is well arranged. Why do you mock and joke at me?"
"Well, I never!" said the turnkey. "I do begin to think now that he's getting queer in the upper story. I have heard of its driving some of 'em mad to be bowled out when they didn't expect it, more 'special when it's a hanging affair. I wonder what he will say next? He's a regular rum un, he is."
"What have I done?" shouted Todd. "What have I done? Nothing—nothing. The dead tell no tales. All is safe—quite safe. The grave is a good secret keeper. I think Tobias is dead too—why not? Mrs. Lovett is dead. This is not Newgate. These are not chains. It is only the nightmare. Ha! ha! ha! It is only the nightmare—I can laugh now!"
"Oh, can you?" said the turnkey. "It's rather an odd sort o' laugh though, to my thinking. Howsomdever, there's no rule agin grinning, so you can go on at it as long as you like."
"Mercy!" suddenly shrieked20 Todd, and then down he fell upon the floor of the cell, and lay quite still. The turnkey looked curiously21 in at him, through the little grating.
"Humph!" he said, "I must go and report him to the Governor, and he will do whatsomdever he likes about him; but I suppose as they will send the doctor to him, and all that ere sort o' thing, for it won't do to let him slip out o' the world and quite cheat the gallows22; oh dear no."
Muttering these and similar remarks to himself, the turnkey went, as he was bound in duty to do upon any very extraordinary conduct upon the part of any prisoner in his department, to report what Todd was about to the Governor.
"Ah!" said that functionary23, the surgeon, "and I will soon come to him. I fully24 expected we should have some trouble with that man. It really is too bad, that when people come into the prison, they will not be quiet. It would be just as well for them, and much more comfortable for me."
"Werry much, sir," said the turnkey.
"Well—well, he shall be attended to."
"Werry good, sir."
The turnkey went back and took up his post again outside Todd's door, and in the course of ten minutes or so, without making the least hurry of the subject, the Governor and the jail surgeon arrived and entered the cell.
Todd was picked up, and then it was found that he had struck his head against the stone floor, and so produced a state of insensibility, but whether he had done it on purpose or by accident, they could come to no opinion.
"Lay him on the bench," said the surgeon, "I can do nothing with him. He will come to himself again in a little while, I daresay, and be all right again in the morning."
"He seems really, indeed, to be a very troublesome man," said the Governor to the surgeon.
"Very likely. Have you a mind for a game of cribbage to-night, Governor? I suppose this fellow will hang?"
"Yes, I don't mind a game. Yes, they will tuck him up."
With this they left Todd's cell, and the turnkey closed the door, and made the highly philosophical25 remark to himself of—
"Werry good."
Todd remained until the morning in a state of insensibility, and when he awakened26 from it he was very much depressed27 in strength indeed. He lay for about two hours gazing on the ceiling of his cell, and then the door was opened, and the turnkey appeared with a bason of milk-and-water and a lump of coarse bread.
"Breakfast!" he cried.
Todd glared at him.
"Breakfast; don't you understand that, old cock? However, it's all one to me. There it is—take it or leave it."
Todd did not speak, and the not over luxurious28 meal was placed on the table, or rather upon the end of the bench upon which he lay, and which served the purpose of a table.
The moment Todd heard the door of the cell closed behind the turnkey, he rose from his recumbent posture29, and, although he staggered when he got to his feet, he seized the bason, and at once, without tasting any of its contents, broke it against the corner of the bench to fragments.
"I shall elude30 them yet!" he said. "They think they have me in their toils—but I shall elude them yet!"
He selected a long jagged piece of the broken bason, and dragging down his cravat31 with one hand, he was upon the very point of plunging32 it into his throat with the other, when the turnkey sprang into the cell.
Todd In Newgate, Tries To Commit Suicide.
Todd In Newgate, Tries To Commit Suicide.
"Hold a bit!" he cried. "We don't allow that sort of thing here with any of our customers. You should have thought of those games before you got into the stone jug!"
With one powerful blow, the turnkey struck the piece of the broken bason from the hand of Todd, and with another he felled him to the floor.
"None o' your nonsense," he said; and then he carefully collected the pieces of the broken bason.
"Why should you grudge33 me the means of death," said Todd, "when you know that you have brought me here among you to die?"
"Contrary to rules."
"In mercy, I ask you only to give me leave to take my own life, for I have failed in the object of my living."
"Contrary to rules."
The turnkey left the cell, then, as coolly as if nothing had happened, and carefully locked the door again, while he went to report the attempted suicide of the prisoner to the proper quarter.
Foiled, then, in every way, Todd looked round the cell for some means of ridding himself of his life and his troubles together; but he found none. He then paced the cell to and fro like a maniac34, as he muttered to himself—
"All lost—lost—lost—all lost! Foiled, too, at the moment when I thought myself most secure—when I had made every preparation to leave England for ever! Oh, dolt35 that I was, not to have done so long ago, when I had half—ay, when I had only a quarter of the sum that I should this day have fled with! In my dreams I have seen myself as I am now, and the sight has shaken me, but I never thought to be so in reality. Is there any hope for me? What do they know?—what can they know?"
Upon these questions, Todd paused in his uneasy walk in the cell, and sat down upon the low stool to think. His head rested upon his breast, and he was profoundly still.
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1
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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3
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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4
calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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5
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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6
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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7
custody
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| n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留 | |
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8
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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encompassed
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| v.围绕( encompass的过去式和过去分词 )；包围；包含；包括 | |
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10
riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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11
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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12
armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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13
jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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14
hoops
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| n.箍( hoop的名词复数 )；（篮球）篮圈；（旧时儿童玩的）大环子；（两端埋在地里的）小铁弓 | |
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15
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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17
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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18
coves
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| n.小海湾( cove的名词复数 )；家伙 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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20
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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functionary
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| n.官员；公职人员 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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26
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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27
depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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28
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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29
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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30
elude
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| v.躲避，困惑 | |
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31
cravat
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| n.领巾，领结；v.使穿有领结的服装，使结领结 | |
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32
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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33
grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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34
maniac
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| n.精神癫狂的人；疯子 | |
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35
dolt
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| n.傻瓜 | |
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