A CHRISTMAS CAROL
PART 4
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.
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 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.
“What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the
woman. “Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always
did.”
“That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No man
more so.”
“Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was
afraid, woman; who’s the wiser? We’re not going to pick holes in each other’s
coats, I suppose?”
“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man
together. “We should hope not.”
“Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s enough.
Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I
suppose.”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a
wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime?
If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck
with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.”
“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said
Mrs. Dilber. “It’s a judgment on him.”
“I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” replied
the woman; “and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have
laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the
value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for
them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we
met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.”
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of
this; and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his
plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of
sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally
examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give
for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found there was
nothing more to come.
“That’s your account,” said Joe, “and I wouldn’t
give another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who’s next?”
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little
wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and
a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness
of mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said old Joe. “That’s your account.
If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of
being so liberal and knock off half-a-crown.”
“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the
first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater
convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged
out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.
“What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed-curtains!”
“Ah!” returned the woman, laughing and leaning
forward on her crossed arms. “Bed-curtains!”
“You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, rings and
all, with him lying there?” said Joe.
“Yes I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?”
“You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe,
“and you’ll certainly do it.”
“I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get
anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I
promise you, Joe,” returned the woman coolly. “Don’t drop that oil upon the
blankets, now.”
“His blankets?” asked Joe.
“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the woman. “He
isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I dare say.”
“I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? Eh?”
said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman.
“I an’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for such things, if he
did. Ah! you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t
find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one
too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.”
“What do you call wasting of it?” asked old Joe.
“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,”
replied the woman with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took
it off again. If calico an’t good enough for such a purpose, it isn’t good
enough for anything. It’s quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier
than he did in that one.”
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As
they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old
man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust, which could hardly
have been greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse
itself.
“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the
ground. “This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him
when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!”
“Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to
foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life
tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!”
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed,
and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a
ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb,
announced itself in awful language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed
with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret
impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the
outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft,
unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady
hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the
slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have
disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and
longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the
spectre at his side.
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine
altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for
this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst
not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not
that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the
heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the
heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike!
And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life
immortal!
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears,
and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man
could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice,
hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!
He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a
woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the
memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door,
and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they
wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed,
Scrooge did not dare to think.
“Spirit!” he said, “this is a fearful place. In
leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!”
Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to
the head.
“I understand you,” Scrooge returned, “and I would
do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.”
Again it seemed to look upon him.
“If there is any person in the town, who feels
emotion caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge quite agonised, “show that
person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!”
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a
moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a
mother and her children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious
eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked
out from the window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her
needle; and could hardly bear the voices of the children in their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She
hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and
depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a
kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to
repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding
for him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not
until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
“Is it good?” she said, “or bad?”—to help him.
“Bad,” he answered.
“We are quite ruined?”
“No. There is hope yet, Caroline.”
“If he relents,” she said, amazed, “there
is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened.”
“He is past relenting,” said her husband. “He is
dead.”
She was a mild and patient creature if her face
spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with
clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the
first was the emotion of her heart.
“What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of
last night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week’s delay; and
what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have been quite
true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then.”
“To whom will our debt be transferred?”
“I don’t know. But before that time we shall be
ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be a bad fortune
indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night
with light hearts, Caroline!”
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were
lighter. The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so
little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man’s
death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was
one of pleasure.
“Let me see some tenderness connected with a
death,” said Scrooge; “or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now,
will be for ever present to me.”
The Ghost conducted him through several streets
familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to
find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit’s
house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and the
children seated round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were
as still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book
before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely
they were very quiet!
“ ‘And He took a child, and set him in the
midst of them.’ ”
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not
dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the
threshold. Why did he not go on?
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put
her hand up to her face.
“The colour hurts my eyes,” she said.
The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
“They’re better now again,” said Cratchit’s wife.
“It makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your
father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time.”
“Past it rather,” Peter answered, shutting up his
book. “But I think he has walked a little slower than he used, these few last
evenings, mother.”
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and
in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:
“I have known him walk with—I have known him walk
with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed.”
“And so have I,” cried Peter. “Often.”
“And so have I,” exclaimed another. So had all.
“But he was very light to carry,” she resumed,
intent upon her work, “and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble: no
trouble. And there is your father at the door!”
She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his
comforter—he had need of it, poor fellow—came in. His tea was ready for him on
the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young
Cratchits got upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against his
face, as if they said, “Don’t mind it, father. Don’t be grieved!”
Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke
pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised
the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long
before Sunday, he said.
“Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?” said his
wife.
“Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “I wish you could
have gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But
you’ll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My
little, little child!” cried Bob. “My little child!”
He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If
he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart perhaps
than they were.
He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room
above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair
set close beside the child, and there were signs of some one having been there,
lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed
himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what had happened, and
went down again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and
mother working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr.
Scrooge’s nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in
the street that day, and seeing that he looked a little—“just a little down you
know,” said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. “On which,” said
Bob, “for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him. ‘I
am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,’ he said, ‘and heartily sorry for your
good wife.’ By the bye, how he ever knew that, I don’t know.”
“Knew what, my dear?”
“Why, that you were a good wife,” replied Bob.
“Everybody knows that!” said Peter.
“Very well observed, my boy!” cried Bob. “I hope
they do. ‘Heartily sorry,’ he said, ‘for your good wife. If I can be of service
to you in any way,’ he said, giving me his card, ‘that’s where I live. Pray
come to me.’ Now, it wasn’t,” cried Bob, “for the sake of anything he might be
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite delightful.
It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt with us.”
“I’m sure he’s a good soul!” said Mrs. Cratchit.
“You would be surer of it, my dear,” returned Bob,
“if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised—mark what I
say!—if he got Peter a better situation.”
“Only hear that, Peter,” said Mrs. Cratchit.
“And then,” cried one of the girls, “Peter will be
keeping company with some one, and setting up for himself.”
“Get along with you!” retorted Peter, grinning.
“It’s just as likely as not,” said Bob, “one of
these days; though there’s plenty of time for that, my dear. But however and
whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor
Tiny Tim—shall we—or this first parting that there was among us?”
“Never, father!” cried they all.
“And I know,” said Bob, “I know, my dears, that
when we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he was a little,
little child; we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny
Tim in doing it.”
“No, never, father!” they all cried again.
“I am very happy,” said little Bob, “I am very
happy!”
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him,
the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit
of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God!
“Spectre,” said Scrooge, “something informs me that
our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man
that was whom we saw lying dead?”
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as
before—though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in
these latter visions, save that they were in the Future—into the resorts of
business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for
anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until besought
by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
“This court,” said Scrooge, “through which we hurry
now, is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I
see the house. Let me behold what I shall be, in days to come!”
The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
“The house is yonder,” Scrooge exclaimed. “Why do
you point away?”
The inexorable finger underwent no change.
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and
looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same,
and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.
He joined it once again, and wondering why and
whither he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused
to look round before entering.
A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose
name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place.
Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation’s
death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A
worthy place!
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down
to One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had
been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you
point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the
things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by
which it stood.
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to
which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be
departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and
following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name,
Ebenezer Scrooge.
“Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he
cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back
again.
“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”
The finger still was there.
“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe,
“hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but
for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!”
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground
he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me
that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”
The kind hand trembled.
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to
keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The
Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons
that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It
sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The
Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his
fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk,
collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
To be concluded
