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. 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. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter.
On the stroke of midnight christina rossetti full#
This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
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 last, 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. 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.
Five minutes, ten minutes, a quater of an hour went by, yet nothing came. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) 25 A Christmas Carol: Stave 3Ĭharles Dickens The Second of the Three SpiritsĪwaking 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.
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