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 by both 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 these 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 toes. "Mother," he said, "I cannot stay with Sweeney Todd any longer, so do
not ask me." "Not stay with such 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
behaviour, 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 though 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 again, 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 moments, "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 XVI. THE STRANGE ODOUR IN OLD ST. DUNSTAN'S CHURCH. About this time, and while the 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 mouth a handkerchief, in which was some strong
and pungent essence, for the purpose of trying to overcome the horrible
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 _atymouspheric_ 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 or description requires to become venerable by age before any
one 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, Fleet-street, so as to prevent
them even from dozing through the afternoon sermon, it became a very
serious matter indeed.