[Literature] Charles Dickens: A Christmas Tree
She was surprised;
but she was a woman of remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed
herself and went downstairs, and closeted herself with her brother.
“Now, Walter,” she said, “I have been disturbed all night by a
pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been constantly peeping out of
that closet in my room, which I can’t open. This is some trick.” “I
am afraid not, Charlotte,” said he, “for it is the legend of the
house. It is the Orphan Boy. What did he do?” “He opened the door
softly,” said she, “and peeped out. Sometimes, he came a step or
two into the room. Then, I called to him, to encourage him, and he
shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the door.” “The
closet has no communication, Charlotte,” said her brother, “with
any other part of the house, and it’s nailed up.” This was
undeniably true, and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to get
it open, for examination. Then, she was satisfied that she had seen
the Orphan Boy. But, the wild and terrible part of the story is,
that he was also seen by three of her brother’s sons, in
succession, who all died young. On the occasion of each child being
taken ill, he came home in a heat, twelve hours before, and said,
Oh, Mamma, he had been playing under a particular oak-tree, in a
certain meadow, with a strange boy—a pretty, forlorn-looking boy,
who was very timid, and made signs! From fatal experience, the
parents came to know that this was the Orphan Boy, and that the
course of that child whom he chose for his little playmate was
surely run.
Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit up alone to wait for the Spectre—where we are shown into a room, made comparatively cheerful for our reception—where we glance round at the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire—where we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired, after laying down a fresh store of wood upon the hearth, and setting forth on the small table such supper-cheer as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine- -where the reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after another, like so many peals of sullen thunder—and where, about the small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of divers supernatural mysteries. Legion is the name of the haunted German students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off the footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally blows open. Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all down the boughs!
Among the later toys and fancies hanging there—as idle often and less pure—be the images once associated with the sweet old Waits, the softened music in the night, ever unalterable! Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World! A moment’s pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look once more! I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled; from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow’s Son; and God is good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O may I, with a grey head, turn a child’s heart to that figure yet, and a child’s trustfulness and confidence!
Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves. “This, in commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!”