A Christmas Carrol
Seite 11.)
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all
of their degree, but most of all beware this
boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing
be erased. Deny it!' cried
the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who
tell it ye! Admit it for your
factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!'
'Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge.
'Are there no prisons?' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time
with his own words. 'Are
there no work-houses?' The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke
ceased to vibrate, he
remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
beheld a solemn Phantom,
draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.
Stave IV
The Last of the Spirits
THE PHANTOM SLOWLY, GRAVELY, silently approached. When it came near him,
Scrooge bent
down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved
it seemed to scatter gloom
and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its
face, its form, and left
nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would
have been difficult to detach
its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it
was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that
its mysterious presence filled
him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke
nor moved.
'I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?' said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
'You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not yet happened,
but will happen in
the time before us,' Scrooge pursued. 'Is that so, Spirit?'
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds,
as if the Spirit had
inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the
silent shape so much
that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand
when he prepared to
follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and
giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain
horror, to know that
behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him,
while he, though he
stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand
and one great heap of
black.
'Ghost of the Future!' he exclaimed, 'I fear you more than any spectre
I have seen. But as I know
your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man
from what I was, I am
prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you
not speak to me?'
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
'Lead on!' said Scrooge. 'Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is
precious time to me, I know.
Lead on, Spirit!' The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge
followed in the
shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather seemed to spring
up about them, and
encompass them of its own act. But there they were, in the heart of it;
on 'Change, amongst the
merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets,
and conversed in
groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their
great gold seals; and so
forth, as Scrooge had seen them often.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that
the hand was pointed to
them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.
'No,' said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, 'I don't know much about
it, either way. I only
know he's dead.'
'When did he die?' inquired another.
'Last night, I believe.'
'Why, what was the matter with him?' asked a third, taking a vast quantity
of snuff out of a very
large snuff-box. 'I thought he'd never die.'
'God knows,' said the first, with a yawn.
'What has he done with his money?' asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous
excrescence
on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
'I haven't heard,' said the man with the large chin, yawning again. 'Left
it to his company, perhaps.
He hasn't left it to me. That's all I know.'
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
'It's likely to be a very cheap funeral,' said the same speaker; 'for upon
my life I don't know of
anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?'
'I don't mind going if a lunch is provided,' observed the gentleman with
the excrescence on his
nose. 'But I must be fed, if I make one.'
Another laugh.
'Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,' said the first
speaker, 'for I never wear black
gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will.
When I come to think of it,
I'm not at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend; for we used
to stop and speak whenever
we met. Bye, bye!'
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge
knew the men, and
looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons
meeting. Scrooge listened
again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very wealthy,
and of great
importance. He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem:
in a business point of
view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.
'How are you?' said one.
'How are you?' returned the other.
'Well!' said the first. 'Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?'
'So I am told,' returned the second. 'Cold, isn't it?'
'Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I suppose?'
'No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!'
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach
importance to
conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must
have some hidden purpose,
he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely
be supposed to have any
bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and
this Ghost's province was the
Future. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself,
to whom he could
apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had
some latent moral for
his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and
everything he saw;
and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he
had an expectation that
the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would
render the solution of
these riddles easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood
in his accustomed
corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being
there, he saw no likeness
of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave
him little surprise,
however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought
and hoped he saw
his new- born resolutions carried out in this.
Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand.
When he roused
himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand,
and its situation in
reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly.
It made him shudder, and
feel very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where
Scrooge had never
penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute.
The ways were foul
and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half- naked, drunken,
slipshod, ugly.
Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
smell, and dirt, and life,
upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with
filth, and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop,
below a pent-house
roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought.
Upon the floor within,
were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales,
weights, and refuse iron of all
kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in
mountains of unseemly
rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among
the wares he dealt in, by
a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly
seventy years of age; who
had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining
of miscellaneous tatters,
hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman
with a heavy
bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another
woman, similarly laden,
came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who
was no less startled by
the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each other.
After a short period of
blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them,
they all three burst into a
laugh.
'Let the charwoman alone to be the first!' cried she who had entered first.
'Let the laundress alone
to be the second; and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look
here, old Joe, here's a
chance! If we haven't all three met here without meaning it!'
'You couldn't have met in a better place,' said old Joe, removing his pipe
from his mouth. 'Come
into the parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the
other two an't strangers.
Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such
a rusty bit of metal in the
place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's no such old bones
here, as mine. Ha, ha!
We're all suitable to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the parlour.
Come into the parlour.'
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked
the fire together with an
old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with
the stem of his pipe, put it
in his mouth again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the
floor, and sat down
in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking
with a bold
defiance at the other two.
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