She held in her hands the means of
death, and yet she hesitated--not that she had the remotest intention of
foregoing her fixed resolve; but feeling that at any moment she had it
in her power now to carry it out, she lingered there upon the shores of
life. "And it has come to this," she said. "After all my scheming--after all
my resolves, it has come to suicide in a felon's cell. Well, I played a
daring game, and for heavy stakes, and I have lost, that is all." She covered her eyes with her hands for several minutes, and slowly
rocked to and fro. Who shall say what thoughts crossed that bold bad woman's soul at that
time? Who shall say that in those few moments her memory did not fly
back to some period when she was innocent and happy?--for even Mrs.
Lovett must have been innocent and happy once; and the thought that such
had been her blessed state, compared to what it was now, was enough to
drive her mad--quite mad. When she withdrew her hands from before her eyes she uttered a cry of
terror. Memory had conjured up the forms of departed spirits to her; and
now so strong had become the impression upon her mind in that hour of
agony, that she thought she saw them in her cell. "Oh, mercy--mercy!" she said. "Why should I be tortured thus? Why should
I suffer such horrors? Why do you glare at me with such fiery eyes for,
horrible spectres!" [Illustration: Mrs. Lovett In Newgate.--Is Conscience-Stricken.] She covered up her eyes again; but then a still more terrible
supposition took possession of her, for instead of fancying that the
spectres were in the darkness of the cell at some distance from her, she
thought that they all came crowding up to within an inch of her face,
gibing and mocking. "Off--off!" she cried, as she suddenly stretched out her arm. "Do not
drive me quite mad." Her eyes glared in the darkness like those of some wild animal. They
looked phosphorescent, and for some time such was the agony and the
thraldom of her feelings, that she quite forgot she had the means of
death in her hands. She began to question the spirits that fancy presented in the darkness
as thronging her cell. "Who are you?" she said. "I know you not. I did not kill you! Why do you
glare at me? And you, with your face matted with blood, I did not kill
you. Who are you, too, with those mangled limbs? I killed none of you. Go to Sweeney Todd--go to Sweeney Todd!" She kept her hands stretched out before her, and she fancied that it was
only by such an action that she kept them from touching her very face. Then she dropped upon her knees, and in the same wild half-screaming
voice she spoke again, crying--

"Away with you all! Todd it was that killed you--not I. He would have
killed me, too. Do you hear, that he tried to kill me? but he could not. What boy are you? Oh, I know you now. He sent you to the madhouse. You
are George Allan. Well, I did not kill you. I see that there is blood
upon you! But why do you all come to me and leave Todd's cell
tenantless, except by himself? for you cannot be here and there both! Away, I say! Away to him! Do not come here to torture me!" Tap--tap--tap came a sound on the door of the cell. "Hush!" she said. "Hush!" "What's the matter?" said the turnkey. "Nothing--nothing." "But I heard you calling out about something." "It is nothing, my friend. All is right. I was only--only praying." "Humph!" said the turnkey. "If you were, it is something rather new, I
reckon. She can't do any mischief, that's one comfort; and many of the
worst ones as comes here don't pass very nice, cosy, comfortable nights. They fancies they sees all sorts of things, they does. Poor devils! I
never seed nothing worse than myself or my wife in all my time, and I
don't think I ever shall." Mrs. Lovett did not now utter one word until she was sure the turnkey
was out of hearing. That slight interruption had recalled her to
herself, and done much to banish from her disturbed imagination all
those fancied monsters of the brain which had disturbed her. "Why did I yield even for a moment," she said, "to such a load of
superstition? I thought that even at such a moment as this I should be
free from such terrors. How I should have smiled in derision of any one
else who had been weak enough to give way to them--and yet how real they
looked. How very unlike the mere creations of a disturbed brain. Could
they be real? Is it possible?" Mrs. Lovett shook a little as she asked herself these questions, and it
was only at such a moment that she could or was at all likely to ask
them, for our readers may well believe that such a woman could have had
no sort of belief in a providence, or she never, with her active
intellect, could have fallen into the mistake of supposing that she was
compassing happiness by committing crime. For awhile now the doubt that she had suggested to herself shook her
very much. It was the very first time in all her wicked life that
anything like a perception of a future state had crossed her mind; and
each minute how fearfully to her the possibility, and then the
probability, that there really was another world than this, began now to
grow upon her. That thought was more full of agony than the appearance of the spectres
had been to her--those spectres which were only called into existence by
her own consciousness of overpowering guilt and deep iniquity. "I am going now," she said. "I am going. World that I hate, and all upon
thee, farewell!" She broke the tin case containing the poison, and applying one of the
broken ends to her lips, she swallowed two drops of the deadly liquid,
and fell dead upon the floor of her cell. CHAPTER CXXVI. SWEENEY TODD IS PLACED UPON HIS TRIAL. It was about eight o'clock in the morning that the officials of Newgate
found their way to the cell of Mrs. Lovett. At first they thought that
she was sleeping upon the floor of her prison, but when they picked her
up, they soon became aware of what had really happened, and the alarm
spread through the prison. The governor was vexed, and the chaplain was vexed, and when the sheriff
was sent for, he, too, was vexed, so they all revenged themselves upon
the turnkey, whose duty it was to be in the passage adjoining the cell,
and they fancied they met the justice of the case by discharging him. Of course, in a very few hours the news of Mrs. Lovett's suicide became
known all over London, with very many exaggerations; and there was not
one person in the whole of the vast population of the great city who did
not know the fact, save and except that man who would feel most
interested in it. We, of course, allude to Sweeney Todd. He, in his cell in Newgate, saw no newspapers, and held no conversation
with the world without; and as none of the persons in any way connected
with the prison chose to inform him of what had happened, he had not the
least idea but that Mrs. Lovett was, along with him, suffering all the
terrors of suspense antecedent to her trial upon the serious charge
impending over her.