Dickens's Christmas Books - complete online versions

The Christmas Carol, The Chimes, Cricket On the Hearth, Battle Of Life
& The Haunted Man & the Ghosts's Bargain with Illustrations.

Home Main Menu Order Support About Search



Share page  


Previous Contents Next

384                                   THE HAUNTED MAN.
" Where's my boy William ?" said the old man hurriedly. "William, come away from here. We'll go home."
" Home, father !" returned William. " Are you going to leave your own son ?"
"Where's my own son?" replied the old man.
" Where ? why, there !"
" That's no son of mine," said Philip, trembling with resentment. " No such wretch as that, has any claim on me. My children are pleasant to look at, and they wait upon me, and get my meat and drink ready, and are useful to me. I've a right to it! I'm eighty-seven !"
" You're old enough to be no older," muttered William, looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. " I don't know what good you are, myself. We could have a deal more pleasure without you."
" My son, Mr. Redlaw ! " said the old man. " My son, too ! The boy talking to me of my son ! Why, what has he ever done to give me any pleasure, I should like to know ?"
"I don't know what you have ever done to give me any pleasure," said William, sulkily.
"Let me think," said the old man. "For how many Christ­mas times running, have I sat in my warm place, and never had to come out in the cold night air; and have made good cheer, without being disturbed by any such uncomfortable, wretched sight as him there ? Is it twenty, William ?"
"Nigher forty, it seems," he muttered. "Why, when I look at my father, Sir, and come to think of it," addressing Redlaw, with an impatience and irritation that were quite new, "I'm whipped if I can see anything in him but a calendar of ever so many years of eating and drinking, and making himself comfort­able, over and over again."
"I—I'm eighty-seven," said the old man, rambling on, childishly and weakly, "and I don't know as I ever was much put out by anything. I'm not going to begin now, because of what he calls my son. He's not my son. I've had a power of pleasant times. I recollect once—no I don't—no, it's broken off. It was something about a game of cricket and a friend of mine, but it's somehow broken off. I wonder who he was—I suppose I liked him ? And I wonder what became of him—I suppose he died ? But I don't know. And I don't care, neither; I don't care a bit."
In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put his hands into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he found a bit of holly (left there, probably last night), which he now took out, and looked at.
Previous Contents Next