The Shop Of Ghosts - Page 2

the
face of one's own best friend as an unmeaning pattern of spectacles
or moustaches. They are commonly marked by the two signs of the
slowness of their growth and the suddenness of their termination.
The return to real thinking is often as abrupt as bumping into a man.
Very often indeed (in my case) it is bumping into a man.
But in any case the awakening is always emphatic and,
generally speaking, it is always complete. Now, in this case,
I did come back with a shock of sanity to the consciousness
that I was, after all, only staring into a dingy little toy-shop;
but in some strange way the mental cure did not seem to be final.
There was still in my mind an unmanageable something that told
me that I had strayed into some odd atmosphere, or that I
had already done some odd thing. I felt as if I had worked
a miracle or committed a sin. It was as if I had at any rate,
stepped across some border in the soul.

To shake off this dangerous and dreamy sense I went into the shop
and tried to buy wooden soldiers. The man in the shop was very old
and broken, with confused white hair covering his head and half
his face, hair so startlingly white that it looked almost artificial.
Yet though he was senile and even sick, there was nothing of suffering
in his eyes; he looked rather as if he were gradually falling
asleep in a not unkindly decay. He gave me the wooden soldiers,
but when I put down the money he did not at first seem to see it;
then he blinked at it feebly, and then he pushed it feebly away.

"No, no," he said vaguely. "I never have. I never have.
We are rather old-fashioned here."

"Not taking money," I replied, "seems to me more like an uncommonly
new fashion than an old one."

"I never have," said the old man, blinking and blowing his nose;
"I've always given presents. I'm too old to stop."

"Good heavens!" I said. "What can you mean? Why, you might
be Father Christmas."

"I am Father Christmas," he said apologetically, and blew
his nose again.

The lamps could not have been lighted yet in the street outside.
At any rate, I could see nothing against the darkness but the shining
shop-window. There were no sounds of steps or voices in the street;
I might have strayed into some new and sunless world.
But something had cut the chords of common sense, and I could
not feel even surprise except sleepily. Something made me say,
"You look ill, Father Christmas."

"I am dying," he said.

I did not speak, and it was he who spoke again.

"All the new people have left my shop. I cannot understand it.
They seem to object to me on such