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『クリスマス・キャロル』英文/和訳 STAVE FOUR 上 最後の精霊と孤独な死・色分け増量版

STAVE FOUR を、1段落が長くなりすぎないように細かく分け、重要語句・形容詞・副詞・熟語・情景語・心理語を多めに色分けした増量版です。

動作・変化 感情・心理 恐怖・死 場面・描写 精霊・超自然 金銭・社会 重要表現

STAVE FOUR — THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

The Phantom slowly, grave ly, 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.

The garment concealed its head, its face, and its form, leaving nothing visible save one outstretched hand.

But for this, it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, or separate it from the darkness around it.

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him.

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. Is that so, Spirit?”

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.

That was the only answer he received.

Although used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge fear ed the silent shape so much that his legs trembled.

He could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as if giving him time to recover.

But Scrooge was all the worse for this.

It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror to know that ghostly eyes were fixed upon him behind the dusky shroud.

* * *

He stretched his own eyes to the utmost, yet saw 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 I know your purpose is to do me good. 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.”

The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress.

They scarcely seemed to enter the City. Rather, the City seemed to spring up about them.

There they were in the heart of it, on ’Change, amongst the merchants.

The merchants hurried up and down, chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups.

They looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals, as Scrooge had seen them often.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. 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. “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.

“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin. “Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn’t left it to me.”

* * *

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker, “for 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 followed.

“Well, I am the most disinterested among you,” said the first speaker.

“I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go if anybody else will.”

“When I think of it, I’m not 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 wealthy men of business, and of great importance.

He had always made a point of standing well in their esteem, 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 are 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.

At first Scrooge was surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to such trivial conversations.

But he felt assured that they must have some hidden purpose.

He could scarcely suppose they had any bearing on Jacob’s death, for that was Past.

Nor could he think of anyone immediately connected with himself to whom he could apply them.

Still, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw.

He especially resolved to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared.

He looked about in that very place for his own image, but another man stood in his accustomed corner.

The clock pointed to his usual time, yet he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes.

It gave him little surprise, for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life.

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand.

The turn of the hand made him fancy 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.

Scrooge had never penetrated there before, although he knew its situation and its bad repute.

The ways were foul and narrow. The shops and houses were wretched.

* * *

The people were half naked, drunken, slipshod, and ugly.

Alleys and archways, like cesspools, poured smell, dirt, and life upon the straggling streets.

The whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery.

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop.

There, iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were bought.

Upon the floor were heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron.

Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden there.

Among the wares sat a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age.

He had screened himself from the cold air with a frouzy curtain of miscellaneous tatters.

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop.

She had scarcely entered when another woman, similarly laden, came in too.

She was closely followed by a man in faded black.

After a short period of blank astonishment, they all three burst into a laugh.

“Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” cried the woman 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. “Come into the parlour.”

“We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched. Come into the parlour.”

* * *

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags.

The old man raked the fire together, trimmed his smoky lamp, and put his pipe into his mouth again.

The first woman threw her bundle on the floor and sat down in a flaunting manner.

What odds, then? Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did!”

“That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No man more so.”

“Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose?”

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, 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 a judgment on him,” said Mrs. Dilber.

“ Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain.”

The man in faded black produced his plunder: a seal or two, a pencil-case, sleeve-buttons, and a brooch.

Old Joe examined them, appraised them, and chalked the sums upon the wall.

Mrs. Dilber was next: sheets, towels, a little apparel, silver tea-spoons, sugar-tongs, and a few boots.

“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first woman.

Joe dragged out a large heavy roll of dark stuff. “What do you call this? Bed-curtains?”

“Ah!” returned the woman, laughing. “Bed-curtains!”

“You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, rings and all, with him lying there?”

* * *

“Yes, I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?”

“You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.”

“I shan’t hold my hand when I can get anything in it by reaching it out,” returned the woman coolly.

“Not for the sake of such a man as He was.”

“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?” said old Joe.

“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman.

“You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a hole in it.”

“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.”

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror.

They sat grouped about their spoil in the scanty light of the old man’s lamp.

He viewed them with detestation and disgust.

His disgust could hardly have been greater, even if they had been obscene demons marketing the corpse itself.

“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, as old Joe counted out their gains upon the ground.

* * *

“This is the end of it, you see!” she said.

“He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead!”

“ Spirit!” said Scrooge, shudder ing 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?”

The scene had change d, and now he almost touched a bare, uncurtained bed.

Beneath a ragged sheet lay something covered up, which, though dumb, announced itself in awful language.

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with accuracy.

A pale light fell straight upon the bed.

On it lay the body of this man: plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for.

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 would have disclosed the face.

He thought of it, felt how easy it would be, and longed to do it.

But he 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.

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.

Nor canst thou make one feature odious.

* * *

It is not that the hand is heavy, or that the heart and pulse are still.

It is that the hand WAS open, generous, and true.

The heart was brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse was a man’s.

Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound.

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed.

He thought what this man would think first if he could be raised up now.

Avarice, hard dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!

He lay in the dark, empty house.

There was not a man, a woman, or a child to say that he had been kind to them.

A cat was tearing at the door, and rats were gnawing beneath the hearth-stone.

What they wanted in the room of death, Scrooge did not dare to think.

“ Spirit,” he said, “this is a fear ful 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.”

“If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man’s death, show that person to me, Spirit!”

I beseech you.”

クリスマス・キャロル

『クリスマス・キャロル』英文/和訳 STAVE III 三人の精霊の第二の精霊 下 『クリスマス・キャロル』英文/和訳 STAVE IV 最後の精霊 下