The String of Pearls (1850), p. 76

CHAPTER, XIV.

TOBIAS'S THREAT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Perhaps one of the most pitiable objects now in our history is poor Tobias, Sweeney Todd's boy, who certainly had his suspicions aroused in the most terrific manner, but who was terrified, by the threats of what the barber was capable of doing against his mother, from making any disclosures. The effect upon his personal appearance of this wear and tear of his intellect was striking and manifest. The hue of youth and health entirely departed from his cheeks, and he looked so sad and careworn, that it was quite a terrible thing to look upon a young lad so, as it were, upon the threshold of existence, and in whom anxious thoughts were making such war upon the physical energies. His cheeks were pale and sunken; his eyes had an unnatural brightness about them, and, to look upon his lips, one would think they had never parted in a smile for many a day, so sadly were they compressed together. He seemed ever to be watching likewise for something fearful, and even as he walked the streets he would frequently turn and look inquiringly around him with a shudder; and in his brief interview with Colonel Jeffery and his friend the captain, we can have a tolerably good comprehension of the state of his mind. Oppressed with fears, and all sorts of dreadful thoughts, panting to give utterance to what he knew and to what he suspected, yet terrified into silence for his mother's sake, we cannot but view him as signally entitled to the sympathy of the reader, and as, in all respects, one sincerely to be pitied for the cruel circumstances in which he was placed. The sun is shining brightly, and even that busy region of trade and commerce, Fleet-street, is looking gay and beautiful; but not for that poor spirit-stricken lad are any of the sights and sounds which used to make up the delight of his existence, reaching his eyes or ears now with their accustomed force. He sits moody and alone, and in the position which he always assumes when Sweeney Todd is from home —that is to say, with his head resting on his hands, and looking the picture of melancholy abstraction.
"What shall I do?" he said to himself, "what will become of me? I think
if I live here any longer, I shall go out of my senses. Sweeney Todd is a murderer—I am quite certain of it, and I wish to say so, but I dare not for my mother's sake. Alas! alas! the end of it will be, that he will kill me, or that I shall go out of my senses, and then I shall die in some mad-house, and no one will care what I say."
The boy wept bitterly after he had uttered these melancholy reflections, and he felt his tears something of a relief to him, so that he looked up after a little time, and glanced around him.
"What a strange thing." he said, "that people should come into this shop, to my certain knowledge, who never go out of it again, and yet what becomes of them I cannot tell."
He looked with a shuddering anxiety towards the parlour, the door of which Sweeney Todd took care to lock always when he left the place, and he thought that life should like much to have a thorough examination of that room.
"I have been in it," he said, "and it seems full of cupboards and strange holes and corners, such as I never saw before, and there is an odd stench in it that I cannot make out at all; but it's out of the question thinking of ever being in it above a few minutes at a time, for Sweeney Todd takes good care of that."
The boy rose, and opened a small cupboard that was in the shop. It was perfectly empty.
"Now, that's strange," he said, "there was a walking-stick with an ivory top to it here just before he went out, and I could swear it' belonged to a man who came in to be shaved. More than once—ah! and more than twice, too, when I have come in suddenly, I have seen people's hats, and Sweeney Todd would try and make me believe that people go away after being shaved, and leave their hats behind them."