Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously sonorous snore, and sitting up on what seemed to be a nightmare-like blend of the Treasury Bench and his own bed, to get his thoughts together, Sadstone (like Scrooge) had no occasion to be told that Big Ben was again upon the stroke of Twelve.
Now, being prepared for almost anything—from J-ss-e C-ll-ngs to a Vote of Censure—he was not by any means prepared for Nothing! Consequently, when the bell boomed its twelfth stroke, and nothing appeared, or happened—not even a nightmare in the shape of T-mmy B-wl-s, or a Motion for Adjournment—he was taken with a fit of the shivers.
At last he began to think that the source and centre of the ghostly light which seemed to gleam on him from nowhere in particular, might be in the adjoining room, his own private Downing Street sanctum. Thence indeed, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Sadstone's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with shamrock green and shillelagh branches that it looked a perfect Grove of Blarney. A lurid blaze, like a blue-tongued snapdragon flare, went hissing up the chimney, revealing in weird glimpses on the heated hearth and chimney tiles spectral figures of impish design and menacing gesture. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were Blue Books, abortive Bills, scrolls on which were inscribed endless questions and unnumbered amendments; bundles of party papers and political pamphlets; pallid sucking-pigs that seemed to demand rather opportune interment than human digestion; long wreaths of sausage-like shackles; resurrection pies of indigestible crust and full of offal scraps and tainted "block ornaments"; pudding-shaped bombs; barrels of explosives and fulminants; red hot (political) "chestnuts" of the most hackneyed partisan sort; Dead-Sea apples of the dustiest kind, savouring of sand and strife; fiery looking Ulster oranges; belated (parliamentary) pairs, and seething bowls of raw and vitriolic party spirit, that made the chamber dim, dank, and malodorous with their heady steam. In uneasy state upon this extraordinary conglomerate couch or throne, there sat an ogreish giant of pantomimic size and bogeyishly menacing expression, portentous to see; who bore a smokily-flaring torch, in shape not unlike an Anarch's beacon or Fury's bale-fire, and held it up, high up, to shed its lurid light on Sadstone, as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghoul-Ghost. "Come in, and know me better, (G. O.) Man!"
Sadstone entered timidly, and hung his head before the Spirit. He was hardly the dogged Sadstone he had been, and the Spirit's eyes were so glowering and ungenial, he did not like to meet them.
"I am the Spirit of Christmas Present," said the apparition. "Look upon me!"
Sadstone sorrowfully did so. It was clothed in one simple emerald-green robe or mantle, bordered with buff fur of the dull tint dear to the old Scotch Whig. This garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. On its head it wore no other covering than a wreath of shamrock, set here and there with a thistle. Its dull black curls were long and elf-like and weird; weird as its frowning face, its staring eye, its clenched hand, its raucous voice, its despotic demeanour, and its gloomy air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard, holding a huge two-handed sword; the blade, ready to leap from its sheath, seemed a most unsuitable and unseasonable adjunct to what mankind has been wont to regard as the gentle and genial Spirit of Peace and Goodwill.
"You have never seen the like of Me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.