高考英语阅读素材 A CHRISTMAS CAROLC02.pdf

A CHRISTMAS CAROL C02 Chapter 2 The First of the Three Spirits When Scrooge awoke it was so dark that looking out of bed he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters So he listened for the hour To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven and from seven to eight and regularly up to twelve then stopped Twelve It was past two when he went to bed The clock was wrong An icicle must have got into the works Twelve He touched the spring of his repeater to correct this most preposterous clock Its rapid little pulse beat twelve and stopped Why it isn t possible said Scrooge that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night It isn t possible that anything has happened to the sun and this is twelve at noon The idea being an alarming one he scrambled out of bed and groped his way to the window He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could see anything and could see very little then All he could make out was that it was still very foggy and extremely cold and that there was no noise of people running to and fro and making a great stir as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day and taken possession of the world This was a great relief because three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr Ebenezer Scrooge or his order and so forth would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by Scrooge went to be again and thought and 1 thought and thought it over and over and could make nothing of it The more he thought the more perplexed he was and the more he endeavoured not to think the more he thought Marley s Ghost bothered him exceedingly Every time he resolved within himself after mature inquiry that it was all a dream his mind flew back like a strong spring released to its first position and presented the same problem to be worked all through Was it a dream or not Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more when he remembered on a sudden that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one He resolved to lie awake until the hour was past and considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power The quarter was so long that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously and missed the clock At length it broke upon his listening ear Ding dong A quarter past said Scrooge counting Ding dong Half past said Scrooge Ding dong A quarter to it said Scrooge Ding dong The hour itself said Scrooge triumphantly and nothing else He spoke before the hour bell sounded which it now did with a deep dull hollow melancholy ONE Light flashed up in the room upon the instant and the curtains of his bed were drawn The curtains of his bed were drawn aside I tell you by a hand Not the curtains at his feet nor the curtains at his back but those to which his face was addressed The curtains of his bed were drawn aside and Scrooge starting up into a half recumbent attitude found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them as close to it as I am now to you and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow It was a strange figure like a child yet not so like a child as like an old man viewed through some supernatural medium which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view and being diminished to a child s proportions Its hair which hung about its neck and down its back was white as if with age and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it and the tenderest bloom was on the skin The arms were very long and muscular the hands the same as if its hold were of uncommon strength Its legs and feet most delicately formed were like those upper members bare It wore a tunic of the purest white and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt the sheen of which was beautiful It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand and in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem had its dress trimmed with summer flowers But the strangest thing about it was that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light by which all this was visible and which was doubtless the occasion of its using in its duller moments a great extinguisher for a cap which it now held under its arm Even this though when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness was not its strangest quality For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another and what was light one instant at another time was dark so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness being now a thing with one arm now with one leg now with twenty legs now a pair of legs without a head now a head without a body of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away And