Roland Graeme: Knight. A Novel of Our Time

by Agnes Maule Machar

Roland took his place on the platform, with the quick, energetic motion habitual with him, yet with the dreamy remoteness of eye of a man absorbed in the pictures he is going to present. His fine, well-proportioned physique, and his candid, open face, enlisted the sympathy of the audience in the reading, in the preparation of which he had taken as much pains as if it were to be given before the most select and fashionable audience in Minton. He had taken the "Christmas Carol" of Dickens, and arranged it for a reading which should bring out the episodes and scenes most likely to carry the sympathy of his readers, bridging the gaps by a slender thread of narrative. He kept the audience alternately amused and touched by the mingled humor and pathos of the earlier scenes. He introduced them to the lonely boy at school, in whom early neglect was sowing the seeds of future churlishness; then to the youth, in whom the canker of worldliness was already beginning to work; then carried them on to the home of the Cratchits, their famous Christmas dinner, and the pathetic picture of "Tiny Tim." He kept the younger portion of his audience, at least, convulsed over his spirited rendering of the anxiety of the Cratchits as to the success of their Christmas goose and Christmas pudding, and the final satisfaction of everybody, even the "ubiquitous young Cratchits," at the result. Then he put all the tense feeling of his own nature into the satirical reply of the "Spirit" to the miser's agonized inquiry whether Tiny Tim would live:—

"'What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!'"

Roland ought, in the exercise of a judicious discretion, to have stopped here; but he was a young man with a young man's heat of impulse, and he let himself be carried on into the words that follow, giving them with a stirring emphasis that vibrated through every chord in Nora's sensitive heart.

"'Man,' said the ghost, 'if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant till you have discovered what that surplus is, and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that, in the sight of Heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child! O God! to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!'"

Nora could not help glancing about her, to see whether such words might not have too much effect on that particular audience. She was reassured, however, by the discovery that it did not seem to produce much effect of any kind. The audience was not reflective enough to take in the satire. A little farther on, Roland introduced the lean, gaunt, wretched boy and girl who appear at the edge of the robe of the Spirit of Christmas Presents, "yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful Youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of Age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked and jibed out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in any guise, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread!"

"'Spirit, are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more. 'They are man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them, 'and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree; but, most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand to the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes and make it worse! and bide the end!'"

There was no mistaking the genuine emotion in Roland's voice as these words rang out in tones of indignant warning. Just such children had he seen, and the very fact of their existence seemed to him a wrong, not to man only, but to the God who gave their grand possibilities, abased, stunted and thwarted by man's sin and neglect. Something of this he stopped to say, in a few strenuous, burning words, ending with a strong appeal to the fathers and mothers, "by all the holy memories of the day," to guard their children from evil, and ignorance, and do for them at least the best they could!

"It is clear, then, he can't be an agnostic!" thought Nora to herself, unaware of how indefinite is the term, and how indefinite too—as well as inconsistent—a position can be which has no basis but "I don't know." She looked around her again to see what the effect might have been, but again she saw that it counted for very little. The high-wrought, poetical description and the invective had gone over the heads of most of the listeners. One pale-faced, slender man, with dark, deep-set eyes riveted in breathless attention on the speaker, caught her eye and her interest. But in general, little more than the stirring tones and dramatic gestures had been taken in by ears unaccustomed to intelligent listening, and chiefly on the watch for something "funny."

Roland, knowing something of the taste of his hearers, passed lightly and rapidly over the sadder scenes of the last part of the story, touching them a little, however, by the fate of "Tiny Tim," in whom he centred the interest of the story. Then, after a glance at the gloomy churchyard, where the remorseful miser beholds his own grave, he hastened to the cheerful reality of Christmas Present, of the delight of Scrooge as he sees himself once more possessed of the possibilities of life, and of the heart to generously use them. And then, after depicting the altered fortunes of the Cratchit family, under the auspices of a regenerated master, he threw all his heart into bringing out the meaning of the closing sentences:

"'Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened in this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter at the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind any way, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive form. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.