The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain — John Shaqi
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's BargainDickens, Charles
General
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
Dickens, Charles
Christmas stories; Ghost stories
“Behold, I say,” pursued the Spectre, “the perfect type of what it was
your choice to be. Your influence is powerless here, because from this
child’s bosom you can banish nothing. His thoughts have been in
‘terrible companionship’ with yours, because you have gone down to his
unnatural level. He is the growth of man’s indifference; you are the
growth of man’s presumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, in each
case, overthrown, and from the two poles of the immaterial world you come
together.”
The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and, with the same
kind of compassion for him that he now felt for himself, covered him as
he slept, and no longer shrank from him with abhorrence or indifference.
Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the darkness
faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chimney stacks and gables
of the ancient building gleamed in the clear air, which turned the smoke
and vapour of the city into a cloud of gold. The very sun-dial in his
shady corner, where the wind was used to spin with such unwindy
constancy, shook off the finer particles of snow that had accumulated on
his dull old face in the night, and looked out at the little white
wreaths eddying round and round him. Doubtless some blind groping of the
morning made its way down into the forgotten crypt so cold and earthy,
where the Norman arches were half buried in the ground, and stirred the
dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging to the walls, and quickened the
slow principle of life within the little world of wonderful and delicate
creation which existed there, with some faint knowledge that the sun was
up.
The Tetterbys were up, and doing. Mr. Tetterby took down the shutters of
the shop, and, strip by strip, revealed the treasures of the window to
the eyes, so proof against their seductions, of Jerusalem Buildings.
Adolphus had been out so long already, that he was halfway on to “Morning
Pepper.” Five small Tetterbys, whose ten round eyes were much inflamed
by soap and friction, were in the tortures of a cool wash in the back
kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby presiding. Johnny, who was pushed and hustled
through his toilet with great rapidity when Moloch chanced to be in an
exacting frame of mind (which was always the case), staggered up and down
with his charge before the shop door, under greater difficulties than
usual; the weight of Moloch being much increased by a complication of
defences against the cold, composed of knitted worsted-work, and forming
a complete suit of chain-armour, with a head-piece and blue gaiters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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