A Christmas Carrol
Seite 7.)
when he thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full
of promise, might have
called him father, and been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life,
his sight grew very dim
indeed.
'Belle,' said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, 'I saw an
old friend of yours this
afternoon.'
'Who was it?'
'Guess!'
'How can I? Tut, don't I know?' she added in the same breath, laughing
as he laughed. 'Mr.
Scrooge.'
'Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shut
up, and he had a candle
inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point
of death, I hear; and there
he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe.'
'Spirit!' said Scrooge in a broken voice, 'remove me from this place.'
'I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,' said the
Ghost. 'That they are what
they are, do not blame me!'
'Remove me!' Scrooge exclaimed, 'I cannot bear it!'
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face,
in which in some
strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled
with it. 'Leave me!
Take me back. Haunt me no longer!'
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost with
no visible resistance on its
own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed
that its light was
burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over
him, he seized the
extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole
form; but though
Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light,
which streamed from under
it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness;
and, further, of
being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his
hand relaxed; and had
barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.
Stave III
The Second of the Three Spirits
AWAKING IN THE MIDDLE OF A prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in
bed to get his
thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was
again upon the stroke of
One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of
time, for the especial
purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched to
him through Jacob
Marley's intervention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when
he began to wonder
which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every
one aside with his own
hands, and lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the
bed. For he wished to
challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish
to be taken by surprise, and
made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted
with a move or
two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range
of their capacity for
adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss
to manslaughter;
between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide
and comprehensive range
of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I
don't mind calling on you to
believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances,
and that nothing between
a baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared
for nothing; and,
consequently, when the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken
with a violent fit of
trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet
nothing came. All this time,
he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light,
which streamed upon it
when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more
alarming than a dozen
ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at;
and was sometimes
apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of
spontaneous
combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however,
he began to think- as
you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in
the predicament who knows
what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done
it too- at least, I say, he
began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be
in the adjoining room, from
whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full
possession of his mind, he
got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by
his name, and bade him
enter. He obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone
a surprising
transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that
it looked a perfect
grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The
crisp leaves of holly,
mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors
had been scattered there; and
such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification
of a hearth had never
known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season
gone. Heaped up on
the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry,
brawn, great joints of meat,
sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels
of oysters, red-hot
chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense
twelfth-cakes, and
seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious
steam. In easy state upon
this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing
torch, in shape not unlike
Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as
he came peeping round the door.
'Come in!' exclaimed the Ghost. 'Come in! and know me better, man!'
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not
the dogged Scrooge he
had been; and though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not
like to meet them.
'I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,' said the Spirit. 'Look upon me!'
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or
mantle, bordered with white
fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast
was bare, as if disdaining
to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath
the ample folds of the
garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than
a holly wreath, set here
and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free;
free as its genial face, its
sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour,
and its joyful air.
Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it,
and the ancient sheath
was eaten up with rust.
'You have never seen the like of me before!' exclaimed the Spirit.
'Never,' Scrooge made answer to it.
'Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning
(for I am very young)
my elder brothers born in these later years?' pursued the Phantom.
'I don't think I have,' said Scrooge. 'I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?'
'More than eighteen hundred,' said the Ghost.
'A tremendous family to provide for!' muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
'Spirit,' said Scrooge submissively, 'conduct me where you will. I went
forth last night on
compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you
have aught to teach me,
let me profit by it.'
'Touch my robe!'
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,
meat, pigs, sausages,
oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did
the room, the fire, the
ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas
morning, where (for
the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant
kind of music, in
scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from
the tops of their houses,
whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into
the road below, and
splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting
with the smooth
white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the
ground; which last deposit
had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons;
furrows that
crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets
branched off; and
made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow and icy water.
The sky was gloomy, and
the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half
frozen, whose heavier
particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys
in Great Britain had, by one
consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts' content.
There was nothing very
cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness
abroad that the
clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to
diffuse in vain.
For the people who were shovelling away on the house-tops were jovial and
full of glee; calling
out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious
snowball-
better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest- laughing heartily if
it went right and not less
heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open,
and the fruiterers' were radiant
in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts,
shaped like the waistcoats
of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the
street in their apoplectic
opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad- girthed Spanish Onions,
shining in the fatness
of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in
wanton slyness at the girls as
they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were
pears and apples,
clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made
in the shopkeepers'
benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might
water gratis as they
passed; there were piles of filberts' mossy and brown, recalling, in their
fragrance, ancient walks
among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves;
there were Norfolk
Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons,
and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching
to be carried home in
paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth
among these choice
fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared
to know that there
was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their
little world in slow
and passionless excitement.
The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down,
or one; but through
those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the
counter made a
merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that
the canisters were
rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of
tea and coffee were so
grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the
almonds so extremely
white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious,
the candied fruits
so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel
faint and
subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that
the French plums
blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything
was good to eat
and in its Christmas dress; but the
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
