a christmas carol(圣诞赞歌)-4

remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking fullupon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.30--------------------------------------- 31A CHRISTMAS CAROL`A small matter,' said the Ghost,' to make these silly folks so full ofgratitude.'`Small.' echoed Scrooge.The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who werepouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done so,said,`Why. Is it not. He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money:three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise.'`It isn't that,' said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speakingunconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. `It isn't that, Spirit. Hehas the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light orburdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words andlooks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add andcount them up: what then. The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if itcost a fortune.'He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.`What is the matter.' asked the Ghost.`Nothing in particular,' said Scrooge.`Something, I think.' the Ghost insisted.`No,' said Scrooge,' No. I should like to be able to say a word or two tomy clerk just now. That's all.'His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish;and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.`My time grows short,' observed the Spirit. `Quick.'This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see,but it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. Hewas older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh andrigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care andavarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, whichshowed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of thegrowing tree would fall.He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in amourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in thelight that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.31--------------------------------------- 32A CHRISTMAS CAROL`It matters little,' she said, softly. `To you, very little. Another idol hasdisplaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as Iwould have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.'`What Idol has displaced you.' he rejoined. `A golden one.'`This is the even-handed dealing of the world.' he said. `There isnothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professesto condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.'`You fear the world too much,' she answered, gently. `All your otherhopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordidreproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until themaster-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not.'`What then.' he retorted. `Even if I have grown so much wiser, whatthen. I am not changed towards you.'She shook her head.`Am I.'`Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor andcontent to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldlyfortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, youwere another man.'`I was a boy,' he said impatiently.`Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,' shereturned. `I am. That which promised happiness when we were one inheart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and howkeenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I havethought of it, and can release you.'`Have I ever sought release.'`In words. No. Never.'`In what, then.'`In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life;another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of anyworth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,' said thegirl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him;' tell me, would youseek me out and try to win me now. Ah, no.'He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself.32--------------------------------------- 33A CHRISTMAS CAROLBut he said with a struggle,' You think not.'`I would gladly think otherwise if I could,' she answered, `Heavenknows. When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong andirresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday,can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl -- you who, inyour very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her,if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to doso, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow. I do;and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.'He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, sheresumed.`You may -- the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will -- have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss therecollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happenedwell that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen.'She left him, and they parted.`Spirit.' said Scrooge,' show me no more. Conduct me home. Why doyou delight to torture me.'`One shadow more.' exclaimed the Ghost.`No more.' cried Scrooge. `No more, I don't wish to see it. Show me nomore.'But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced himto observe what happened next.They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large orhandsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful younggirl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same, until he sawher, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in thisroom was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there, thanScrooge in his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike thecelebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conductingthemselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty. Theconsequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care;on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed itvery much; and the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got33--------------------------------------- 34A CHRISTMAS CAROLpillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not havegiven to one of them. Though I never could have been so rude, no, no. Iwouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, andtorn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off,God bless my soul. to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, asthey did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should have expectedmy arm to have grown round it for a punishment, and never come straightagain. And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips;to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have lookedupon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have letloose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price:in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licenceof a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rushimmediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress wasborne towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in timeto greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden withChristmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and theonslaught that was made on the defenceless porter. The scaling him withchairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paperparcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel hisback, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection. The shouts of wonder anddelight with which the development of every package was received. Theterrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting adoll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of havingswallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter. The immenserelief of finding this a false alarm. The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy.They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees the childrenand their emotions got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up tothe top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when themaster of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat downwith her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that suchanother creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have34--------------------------------------- 35A CHRISTMAS CAROLcalled him father, and been a spring-time 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 oldfriend of yours this afternoon.'`Who was it.'`Guess.'`How can I. Tut, don't I know.' she added in the same breath, laughingas he laughed. `Mr Scrooge.'`Mr Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shutup, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. Hispartner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quitealone 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 theGhost. `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 aface, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces ithad 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 withno visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of itsadversary, Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and bright; anddimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized theextinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered itswhole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, hecould not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbrokenflood upon the ground.He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistibledrowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap aparting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel tobed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.35--------------------------------------- 36A CHRISTMAS CAROLStave 3: The Second of the ThreeSpiritsAwaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up inbed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told thatthe bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored toconsciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holdinga conference with the second messenger despatched to him through JacobMarley's intervention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably coldwhen he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre woulddraw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands, and lyingdown again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For, he wishedto challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wishto be taken by surprise, and made nervous.Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on beingacquainted 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 thatthey are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; betweenwhich opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide andcomprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite ashardily as this, I don't mind calling on you to believe that he was ready fora good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between ababy and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any meansprepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the Bell struck One, and noshape 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 waspowerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimesapprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of36--------------------------------------- 37A CHRISTMAS CAROLspontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. Atlast, 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 oughtto have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too -- atlast, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly lightmight be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, itseemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got upsoftly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice calledhim by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it hadundergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hungwith living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which,bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, andivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scatteredthere; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dullpetrification 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, toform a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, greatjoints 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 bowlsof punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easystate upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see:, who bore aglowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, toshed 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 wasnot the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes wereclear 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, ormantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on thefigure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or37--------------------------------------- 38A CHRISTMAS CAROLconcealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds ofthe garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other coveringthan a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark browncurls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its openhand, 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 youhad 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 wentforth 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 vanishedinstantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, andthey stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weatherwas severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind ofmusic, 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 tosee it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificiallittle snow-storms.The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and withthe dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up38--------------------------------------- 39A CHRISTMAS CAROLin deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows thatcrossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streetsbranched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellowmud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets werechoked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavierparticles descended in shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys inGreat Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away totheir dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climateor the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that theclearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured todiffuse in vain.For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops werejovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, andnow and then exchanging a facetious snowball -- better-natured missile farthan many a wordy jest -- laughing heartily if it went right and not lessheartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, andthe fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly oldgentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in theirapoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthedSpanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at thegirls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe.There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; therewere bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to danglefrom conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as theypassed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in theirfragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankledeep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab andswarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the greatcompactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching tobe carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold andsilver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though membersof a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there wassomething going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their39--------------------------------------- 40A CHRISTMAS CAROLlittle world in slow and passionless excitement.The Grocers'. oh the Grocers'. nearly closed, with perhaps two shuttersdown, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses. It was not alone thatthe scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twineand roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled upand down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea andcoffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were soplentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamonso long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits socaked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feelfaint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist andpulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from theirhighly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in itsChristmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the