1843
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
by Charles Dickens
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)þI
Preface to Dicken's Christmas Stories
THE narrow space within which it was necessary to confine
these Christmas Stories when they were originally published,
rendered their construction a matter of some difficulty, and almost
necessitated what is peculiar in their machinery. I could not
attempt great elaboration of detail, in the working out of character
within such limits. My chief purpose was, in a whimsical kind of
masque which the good humour of the season justified, to awaken
some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a
Christian land.
C. D.
Preface
I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the
Ghost of an Idea which shall not put my readers out of humour
with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.
May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C. D.
(r)December, 1843.
Stave I
Marley's Ghost
MARLEY WAS DEAD, TO BEGIN with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the
clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.
Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change
for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge,
what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have
been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece
of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in
the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the
Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat,
emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be
otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how
many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator,
his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole
mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the
sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the
very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted
bargain. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the
point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This
must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of
the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced
that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be
nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an
easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any
other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a
breezy spot- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance- literally to
astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood,
years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley.
The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people
new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes
Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to
him.
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge! a
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous,
old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever
struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as
an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his
pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his
eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating
voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his
wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with
him; he iced his office in the dog-days, and didn't thaw it one
degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No
warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that
blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon
its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather
didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and
hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one
respect. They often 'came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never
did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome
looks, 'My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see
me?' No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children
asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all
his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge.
Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they
saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up
courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, 'No eye
at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!'
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To
edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human
sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call
'nuts' to Scrooge.
Once upon a time- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
Eve- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold,
bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people
in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their
hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone
three, but it was quite dark already- it had not been light all day-
and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring
offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog
came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense
without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses
opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come
drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought
that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might
keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a
sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire,
but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like
one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-
box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the
shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to
part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to
warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a
strong imagination, he failed.
'A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!' cried a cheerful voice.
It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so
quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
'Bah!' said Scrooge, 'Humbug!'
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost,
this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was
ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked
again.
'Christmas a humbug, uncle!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'You don't
mean that, I am sure?'
'I do,' said Scrooge. 'Merry Christmas! What right have you to be
merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.'
'Come, then,' returned the nephew gaily. 'What right have you to
be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich
enough.'
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the
moment, said, 'Bah!' again; and followed it up with 'Humbug.'
'Don't be cross, uncle!' said the nephew.
'What else can I be,' returned the uncle, 'when I live in such a
world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry
Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying
bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but
not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having
every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented
dead against you? If I could work my will,' said Scrooge
indignantly, 'every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas"
on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!'
'Uncle!' pleaded the nephew.
'Nephew!' returned the uncle, sternly, 'keep Christmas in your
own way, and let me keep it in mine.'
'Keep it!' repeated Scrooge's nephew. 'But you don't keep it.'
'Let me leave it alone, then,' said Scrooge. 'Much good may it do
you! Much good it has ever done you!'
'There are many things from which I might have derived good,
by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew.
'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of
Christmas time, when it has come round- apart from the
veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything
belonging to it can be apart from that- as a good time; a kind,
forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in
the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one
consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people
below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave,
and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And
therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver
in my pocket, I believe that it (r)has done me good, and (r)will
do me good; and I say, God bless it!'
The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming
immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and
extinguished the last frail spark for ever.
'Let me hear another sound from (r)you,' said Scrooge, 'and
you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a
powerful speaker, sir,' he added, turning to his nephew. 'I wonder
you don't go into Parliament.'
'Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow.'
Scrooge said that he would see him- yes, indeed he did. He went
the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him
in that extremity first.
'But why?' cried Scrooge's nephew. 'Why?'
'Why did you get married?' said Scrooge.
'Because I fell in love.'
'Because you fell in love!' growled Scrooge, as if that were the
only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry
Christmas. 'Good afternoon!'
'Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened.
Why give it as a reason for not coming now?'
'Good afternoon,' said Scrooge.
'I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we
be friends?'
'Good afternoon,' said Scrooge.
'I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have
never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have
made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my
Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!'
'Good afternoon!' said Scrooge.
'And A Happy New Year!'
'Good afternoon!' said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word,
notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the
greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was
warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
'There's another fellow,' muttered Scrooge; who overheard him:
'my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family,
talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam.' This
lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people
in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now
stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and
papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
'Scrooge and Marley's, I believe,' said one of the gentlemen,
referring to his list. 'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr.
Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?'
'Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,' Scrooge replied.
'He died seven years ago, this very night.'
'We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his
surviving partner,' said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the
ominous word 'liberality,' Scrooge frowned, and shook his head,
and handed the credentials back.
'At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,' said the
gentleman, taking up a pen, 'it is more than usually desirable that
we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute,
who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in
want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want
of common comforts, sir.'
'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.
'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen
again.
'And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still
in operation?'
'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman, 'I wish I could say they
were not.'
'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said
Scrooge.
'Both very busy, sir.'
'Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm
very glad to hear it.'
'Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer
of mind or body to the multitude,' returned the gentleman, 'a few
of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat
and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time because it
is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance
rejoices. What shall I put you down for?'
'Nothing!' Scrooge replied.
'You wish to be anonymous?'
'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what I
wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at
Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to
support the establishments I have mentioned- they cost enough;
and those who are badly off must go there.'
'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.'
'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population. Besides- excuse me- I don't know
that.'
'But you might know it,' observed the gentleman.
'It's not my business,' Scrooge returned. 'It's enough for a man to
understand his own business, and not to interfere with other
people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon,
gentlemen!'
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the
gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an
improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than
was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran
about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before
horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient
tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily
down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became
invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with
tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in
its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main
street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing
the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round
which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming
their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture.
The water-plug being left in solitude, its over-flowings sullenly
congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the
shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of
the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers'
and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant,
with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull
principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord
Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave
orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord
Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had
fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and
bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his
garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the
good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a
touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar
weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the
hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at
Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the
first sound of
'God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!'
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the
singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more
congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived.
With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly
admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly
snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.
'You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?' said Scrooge.
'If quite convenient, sir.'
'It's not convenient,' said Scrooge, 'and it's not fair. If I was to
stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be
bound?'
The clerk smiled faintly.
'And yet,' said Scrooge, 'you don't think (r)me ill-used, when I
pay a day's wages for no work.'
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
'A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!' said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. 'But
I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier
next morning.'
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with
a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with
the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for
he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the
end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being
Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he
could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy
tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest
of the evening with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived
in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner.
They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building
up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could
scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young
house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten
the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for
nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as
offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its
every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so
hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if
the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about
the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a
fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his
whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of
what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London,
even including- which is a bold word- the corporation, aldermen,
and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not
bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his
seven-years' dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man
explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his
key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its
undergoing any intermediate process of change- not a knocker,
but Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other
objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad
lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at
Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up
on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by
breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were
perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible;
but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its
control, rather than a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker
again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not
conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger
from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key
he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his
candle.
He (r)did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut
the door; and he (r)did look cautiously behind it first, as if he
half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail
sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the
door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he
said 'Pooh, pooh!' and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every
room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below,
appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was
not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and
walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his
candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good
old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but
I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and
taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the
door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty
of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason
why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before
him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street
wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that
it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap,
and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked
through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough
recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bed-room, lumber-room. All as they should be.
Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the
grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little sauce-pan of gruel
(Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the
bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which
was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-
room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets,
washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in;
double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured
against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown
and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take
his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He
was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could
extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long
ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to
illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's
daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams,
Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds
of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley,
seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and
swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at
first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a
copy of old Marley's head on every one.
'Humbug!' said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head
back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a
disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some
purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the
building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange,
inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to
swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a
sound; but soon it rang out loudly; and so did every bell in the
house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed
an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were
succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some
person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-
merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that
ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he
heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up
the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
'It's humbug still!' said Scrooge. 'I won't believe it.'
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on
through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes.
Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried,
'I know him; Marley's Ghost!' and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual
waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like
his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The
chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and
wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge
observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds,
and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so
that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat,
could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but
he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the
phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him;
though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and
marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its
head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was
still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
'How now!' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. 'What do you
want with me?'
'Much!'- Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
'Who are you?'
'Ask me who I (r)was.'
'Who (r)were you then?' said Scrooge, raising his voice. 'You're
particular, for a shade.' He was going to say (r)'to a shade,' but
substituted this, as more appropriate.
'In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.'
'Can you- can you sit down?' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully
at him.
'I can.'
'Do it, then.'
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a
ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a
chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might
involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the
ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were
quite used to it.
'You don't believe in me,' observed the Ghost.
'I don't,' said Scrooge.
'What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your
senses?'
'I don't know,' said Scrooge.
'Why do you doubt your senses?'
'Because,' said Scrooge, 'a little thing affects them. A slight
disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an
undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a
fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of
grave about you, whatever you are!'
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he
feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he
tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and
keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very
marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a
moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There
was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided
with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it
himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat
perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still
agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
'You see this toothpick?' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the
charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were
only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
'I do,' replied the Ghost.
'You are not looking at it,' said Scrooge.
'But I see it,' said the Ghost, 'notwithstanding.'
'Well!' returned Scrooge, 'I have but to swallow this, and be for
the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my
own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!'
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with
such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to
his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much
greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage
round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower
jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his
face.
'Mercy!' he said. 'Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?'
'Man of the worldly mind!' replied the Ghost, 'do you believe in
me or not?'
'I do,' said Scrooge. 'I must. But why do spirits walk the earth,
and why do they come to me?'
'It is required of every man,' the Ghost returned, 'that the spirit
within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel
far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is
condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through
the world- oh, woe is me!- and witness what it cannot share, but
might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!'
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its
shadowy hands.
'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?'
'I wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. 'I made it
link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will,
and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to
(r)you?'
Scrooge trembled more and more.
'Or would you know,' pursued the Ghost, 'the weight and length
of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as
long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it
since. It is a ponderous chain!'
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of
finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron
cable: but he could see nothing.
'Jacob,' he said, imploringly. 'Old Jacob Marley, tell me more.
Speak comfort to me, Jacob!'
'I have none to give,' the Ghost replied. 'It comes from other
regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to
other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little
more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot
linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-
house- mark me!- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow
limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before
me!'
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to
put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the
Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or
getting off his knees.
'You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,' Scrooge
observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and
deference.
'Slow!' the Ghost repeated.
'Seven years dead,' mused Scrooge. 'And travelling all the time!'
'The whole time,' said the Ghost. 'No rest, no peace. Incessant
torture of remorse.'
'You travel fast?' said Scrooge.
'On the wings of the wind,' replied the Ghost.
'You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven
years,' said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its
chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward
would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
'Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,' cried the phantom, 'not
to know that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures for
this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is
susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its
mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know
that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity
misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'
'But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered
Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind
was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity,
mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The
dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the
comprehensive ocean of my business!'
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of
all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground
again.
'At this time of the rolling year,' the spectre said, 'I suffer most.
Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes
turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led
the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to
which its light would have conducted (r)me!'
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at
this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
'Hear me!' cried the Ghost. 'My time is nearly gone.'
'I will,' said Scrooge. 'But don't be hard upon me! Don't be
flowery, Jacob! Pray!'
'How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I
may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a
day.'
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the
perspiration from his brow.
'That is no light part of my penance,' pursued the Ghost. 'I am
here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of
escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.'
'You were always a good friend to me,' said Scrooge. 'Thank'ee!'
'You will be haunted,' resumed the Ghost, 'by Three Spirits.'
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had
done.
'Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?' he
demanded, in a faltering voice.
'It is.'
'I- I think I'd rather not,' said Scrooge.
'Without their visits,' said the Ghost, 'you cannot hope to shun
the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls
One.'
'Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?' hinted
Scrooge.
'Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third
upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to
vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake,
you remember what has passed between us!'
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from
the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew
this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were
brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes,
and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect
attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it
took the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre
reached it, it was wide open.
It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were
within two paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held up its hand,
warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the
raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the
air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings
inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after
listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated
out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He
looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither
in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them
wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty
governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had
been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been
quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a
monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at
being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it
saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters
and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded
them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded
together; and the night became as it had been when he walked
home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the
Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with
his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say
'Humbug!' but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the
emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his
glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the
Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went
straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the
instant.
Stave II
The First of the Three Spirits
WHEN SCROOGE AWOKE, IT WAS so dark that, looking out
of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from
the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce
the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a
neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for
the hour.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to
seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then
stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock
was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve! He
touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve: and stopped.
'Why, it isn't possible,' said Scrooge, 'that I can have slept
through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible
that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!'
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and
groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off
with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything;
and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it
was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no
noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as
there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off
bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great
relief, because 'three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay
to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,' and so forth, would have
become a mere United States' security if there were no days to
count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and
thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it.
The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he
endeavoured not to think, the more he thought.
Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he
resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a
dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to
its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all
through, 'Was it a dream or not?'
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters
more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had
warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to
lie awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he
could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the
wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced
he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the
clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.
'Ding, dong!'
'A quarter past,' said Scrooge, counting.
'Ding, dong!'
'Half-past!' said Scrooge.
'Ding, dong!'
'A quarter to it,' said Scrooge.
'Ding, dong!'
'The hour itself,' said Scrooge, triumphantly, 'and nothing else!'
He spoke before the bell had sounded, which it now did with a
deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room
upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand.
Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those
to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were
drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent
attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who
drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in
the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure- like a child: yet not so like a child as like
an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which
gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and
being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung
about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet
the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on
the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the
same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet,
most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It
wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a
lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of
fresh green holly in its hand; and in singular contradiction of that
wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But
the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head
there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was
visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its
duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held
under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
steadiness, was (r)not its strangest quality. For as its belt
sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and
what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure
itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one
arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs
without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving
parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they
melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself
again, distinct and clear as ever.
'Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?' asked
Scrooge.
'I am!'
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of
being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
'Who, and what are you?' Scrooge demanded.
'I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.'
'Long Past?' inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature.
'No. Your past.'
Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody
could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit
in his cap, and begged him to be covered.
'What!' exclaimed the Ghost, 'would you so soon put out, with
worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one
of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through
whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!'
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any
knowledge of having wilfully 'bonneted' the Spirit at any period of
his life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought him
there.
'Your welfare!' said the Ghost.
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help
thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more
conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking,
for it said immediately:
'Your reclamation, then. Take heed!'
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by
the arm.
'Rise! and walk with me!'
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather
and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed
was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that
he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and
nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp,
though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose:
but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped his
robe in supplication.
'I am a mortal,' Scrooge remonstrated, 'and liable to fall.'
'Bear but a touch of my hand (r)there,' said the Spirit, laying it
upon his heart, 'and you shall be upheld in more than this!'
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and
stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. The
city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The
darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear,
cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground.
'Good Heaven!' said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he
looked about him. 'I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!'
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it
had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old
man's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours
floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts,
and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!
'Your lip is trembling,' said the Ghost. 'And what is that upon
your cheek?'
Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it
was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.
'You recollect the way?' inquired the Spirit.
'Remember it!' cried Scrooge with fervour; 'I could walk it
blindfold.'
'Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!' observed the
Ghost. 'Let us go on.'
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every gate, and
post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared in the distance,
with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies
now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs,
who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by
farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each
other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the
crisp air laughed to hear it!
'These are but shadows of the things that have been,' said the
Ghost. 'They have no consciousness of us.'
The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew
and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all
bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart
leap up as they went past! Why was he filled with gladness when
he heard them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at
cross-roads and bye-ways, for their several homes! What was
merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What
good had it ever done to him?
'The school is not quite deserted,' said the Ghost. 'A solitary
child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.'
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and soon
approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-
surmounted cupola on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a
large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices
were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows
broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the
stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were overrun with grass.
Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering
the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many
rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There
was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place,
which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by
candle-light, and not too much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at
the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long,
bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal
forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a
feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his
poor forgotten self as he used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the
mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed
waterspout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless
boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an
empty storehouse door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon
the heart of Scrooge with a softening influence, and gave a freer
passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger
self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in foreign
garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside
the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the
bridle an ass laden with wood.
'Why, it's Ali Baba!' Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. 'It's dear old
honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas time, when
yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he (r)did come, for
the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine,' said
Scrooge, 'and his wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what's
his name, who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of
Damascus; don't you see him! And the Sultan's Groom turned
upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his head! Serve him
right. I'm glad of it. What business had (r)he to be married to the
Princess!'
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on
such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and
crying; and to see his heightened and excited face; would have
been a surprise to his business friends in the city, indeed.
'There's the Parrot!' cried Scrooge. 'Green body and yellow tail,
with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there
he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came home
again after sailing round the island. "Poor Robin Crusoe, where
have you been, Robin Crusoe?" The man thought he was
dreaming, but he wasn't. It was the Parrot, you know. There goes
Friday, running for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop!
Halloo!'
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual
character, he said, in pity for his former self, 'Poor boy!' and cried
again.
'I wish,' Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and
looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: 'but it's too
late now.'
'What is the matter?' asked the Spirit.
'Nothing,' said Scrooge. 'Nothing. There was a boy singing a
Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should like to have given
him something: that's all.'
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it
did so, 'Let us see another Christmas!'
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the room
became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the
windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and
the naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought
about, Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it
was quite correct; that everything had happened so; that there he
was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the
jolly holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his
head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came
darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing
him, addressed him as her 'Dear, dear brother.'
'I have come to bring you home, dear brother!' said the child,
clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. 'To bring
you home, home, home!'
'Home, little Fan?' returned the boy.
'Yes!' said the child, brimful of glee. 'Home, for good and all.
Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to
be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear
night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him
once more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should;
and sent me in a coach to bring you. And you're to be a man!' said
the child, opening her eyes, 'and are never to come back here; but
first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have the
merriest time in all the world.'
'You are quite a woman, little Fan!' exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head;
but being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace
him. Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness,
towards the door; and he, nothing loth to go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried, 'Bring down Master Scrooge's
box, there!' and in the hall appeared the school-master himself,
who glared at Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescension, and
threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with
him. He then conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well
of a shivering best-parlour that ever was seen, where the maps
upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the
windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of
curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, and
administered instalments of those dainties to the young people: at
the same time, sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of
'something' to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the
gentleman, but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he
had rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied on
to the top of the chaise, the children bade the school-master good-
bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily down the
garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow
from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.
'Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered,'
said the Ghost. 'But she had a large heart!'
'So she had,' cried Scrooge. 'You're right. I will not gainsay it,
Spirit. God forbid!'
'She died a woman,' said the Ghost, 'and had, as I think,
children.'
'One child,' Scrooge returned.
'True,' said the Ghost. 'Your nephew!'
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, 'Yes.'
Although they had but that moment left the school behind them,
they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy
passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches
battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city
were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that
here too it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the
streets were lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
Scrooge if he knew it.
'Know it!' said Scrooge. 'Was I apprenticed here!'
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig,
sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches
taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge
cried in great excitement:
'Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig alive
again!'
Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock,
which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted
his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes
to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily,
rich, fat, jovial voice:
'Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!'
Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in,
accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
'Dick Wilkins, to be sure!' said Scrooge to the Ghost. 'Bless me,
yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick.
Poor Dick! Dear, dear!'
'Yo ho, my boys!' said Fezziwig. 'No more work to-night.
Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters
up,' cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, 'before a
man can say Jack Robinson!'
You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it! They
charged into the street with the shutters- one, two, three- had 'em
up in their places- four, five, six- barred 'em and pinned 'em-
seven, eight, nine- and came back before you could have got to
twelve, panting like race-horses.
'Hilli-ho!' cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk,
with wonderful agility. 'Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of
room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!'
Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away,
or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It
was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were
dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and
watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire;
and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a
ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty
desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-
aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came
the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six
young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young
men and women employed in the business. In came the
housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her
brother's particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from
over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from
his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door
but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her
mistress. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some
boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some
pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all
went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the
other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in
various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always
turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again,
as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom
one to help them! When this result was brought about, old
Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, 'Well
done!' and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter,
especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his
reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no
dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home,
exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to
beat him out of sight, or perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more
dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a
great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold
Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the
great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when
the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his
business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up 'Sir
Roger de Coverley.' Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with
Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut
out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who
were not to be trifled with; people who (r)would dance, and had
no notion of walking.
But if they had been twice as many- ah, four times- old Fezziwig
would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig.
As to (r)her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of
the term. If that's not high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A
positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They
shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn't have
predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them
next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all
through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner,
bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to
your place; Fezziwig 'cut'- cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink
with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr.
and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the
door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or
she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When
everybody had retired but the two 'prentices, they did the same to
them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were
left to their beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out
of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his
former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything,
enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was
not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick
were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and
became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the
light upon its head burnt very clear.
'A small matter,' said the Ghost, 'to make these silly folks so full
of gratitude.'
'Small!' echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who
were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he
had done so, said, 'Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds
of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that
he deserves this praise?'
'It isn't that,' said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking
unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. 'It isn't that,
Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make
our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his
power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant
that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The
happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.'
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
'What is the matter?' asked the Ghost.
'Nothing particular,' said Scrooge.
'Something, I think?' the Ghost insisted.
'No,' said Scrooge, 'No. I should like to be able to say a word or
two to my clerk just now. That's all.'
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to
the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in
the open air.
'My time grows short,' observed the Spirit. 'Quick!'
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could
see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw
himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face
had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to
wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy,
restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had
taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a
mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in
the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
'It matters little,' she said, softly. 'To you, very little. Another
idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time
to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to
grieve.'
'What Idol has displaced you?' he rejoined.
'A golden one.'
'This is the even-handed dealing of the world!' he said. 'There is
nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it
professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!'
'You fear the world too much,' she answered, gently. 'All your
other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance
of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off
one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I
not?'
'What then?' he retorted. 'Even if I have grown so much wiser,
what then? I am not changed towards you.'
She shook her head.
'Am I?'
'Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor
and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our
worldly fortune by our patient industry. You (r)are changed.
When it was made, you were another man.'
'I was a boy,' he said impatiently.
'Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,' she
returned. 'I am. That which promised happiness when we were
one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How
often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is
enough that I (r)have thought of it, and can release you.'
'Have I ever sought release?'
'In words, no. Never.'
'In what, then?'
'In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere
of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my
love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been
between us,' said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness,
upon him; 'tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now?
Ah, no!'
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of
himself. But he said with a struggle, 'You think not.'
'I would gladly think otherwise if I could,' she answered, 'Heaven
knows! When (r)I have learned a Truth like this, I know how
strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-
morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a
dowerless girl- you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh
everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were
false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know
that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I
release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.'
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, she
resumed.
'You may- the memory of what is past half makes me hope you
will- have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will
dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream,
from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in
the life you have chosen!'
She left him, and they parted.
'Spirit!' said Scrooge, 'show me no more! Conduct me home.
Why do you delight to torture me?'
'One shadow more!' exclaimed the Ghost.
'No more!' cried Scrooge. 'No more. I don't wish to see it. Show
me no more!'
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and
forced him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or
handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a
beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was
the same, until he saw (r)her, now a comely matron, sitting
opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly
tumultuous, for there were more children there, than Scrooge in
his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated
herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting
themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like
forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one
seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed
heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning
to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most
ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of them!
Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn't for the
wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it
down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it
off, God bless my soul! to save my life. As to measuring her waist
in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I
should have expected my arm to have grown round it for a
punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I should have
dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned
her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the
lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let
loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond
price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the
lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to
know its value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush
immediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered
dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous
group, just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by
a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting
and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the
defenceless porter! The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive
into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight
by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back, and kick
his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of wonder and
delight with which the development of every package was
received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken
in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was
more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued
on a wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this a false
alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all
indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees the children and
their emotions got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up
to the top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when
the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on
him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside; and
when he thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and
as full of promise, might have called him father, and been a
springtime in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very
dim indeed.
'Belle,' said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, 'I saw
an old friend of yours this afternoon.'
'Who was it?'
'Guess!'
'How can I? Tut, don't I know?' she added in the same breath,
laughing as he laughed. 'Mr. Scrooge.'
'Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not
shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing
him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he
sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe.'
'Spirit!' said Scrooge in a broken voice, 'remove me from this
place.'
'I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,' said
the Ghost. 'That they are what they are, do not blame me!'
'Remove me!' Scrooge exclaimed, 'I cannot bear it!'
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him
with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of
all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it. 'Leave me! Take
me back. Haunt me no longer!'
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the
Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed
by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was
burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its
influence over him, he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a
sudden action pressed it down upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered
its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his
force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it,
in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an
irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom.
He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and
had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.
Stave III
The Second of the Three Spirits
AWAKING IN THE MIDDLE OF A prodigiously tough snore,
and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no
occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One.
He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of
time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the
second messenger despatched to him through Jacob Marley's
intervention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when
he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would
draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands, and
lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed.
For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and made
nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on
being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to
the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for
adventure by observing that they are good for anything from
pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes,
no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of
subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I
don't mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good
broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a
baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any
means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the Bell
struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit
of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went
by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very
core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it
when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light,
was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to
make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes
apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting
case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation
of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think- as you or I
would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the
predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and
would unquestionably have done it too- at least, I say, he began to
think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in
the adjoining room, from whence, 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 Scrooge'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 living green, that it looked a perfect grove;
from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The
crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as
if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a
mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull
petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or
Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up
on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game,
poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of
sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot
chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made
the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon
this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a
glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up,
high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round
the door.
'Come in!' exclaimed the Ghost. 'Come in! and know me better,
man!'
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He
was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit's
eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
'I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,' said the Spirit. 'Look upon
me!'
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green
robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. 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. Its feet,
observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare;
and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set
here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long
and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its
cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air.
Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword
was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
'You have never seen the like of me before!' exclaimed the Spirit.
'Never,' Scrooge made answer to it.
'Have never walked forth with the younger members of my
family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in
these later years?' pursued the Phantom.
'I don't think I have,' said Scrooge. 'I am afraid I have not. Have
you had many brothers, Spirit?'
'More than eighteen hundred,' said the Ghost.
'A tremendous family to provide for!' muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
'Spirit,' said Scrooge submissively, 'conduct me where you will. I
went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is
working now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me
profit by it.'
'Touch my robe!'
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry,
brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and
punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy
glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on
Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people
made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in
scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings,
and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to
the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and
splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,
contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs,
and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had
been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts
and wagons; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other
hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made
intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow and icy water.
The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with
a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles
descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in
Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing
away to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very
cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest
summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
For the people who were shovelling away on the house-tops were
jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the
parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball-
better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest- laughing
heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The
poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were
radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets
of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen,
lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their
apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-
girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like
Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness
at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up
mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in
blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made in the
shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that
people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were
piles of filberts' mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance,
ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle
deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab
and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons,
and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently
entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and
eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among
these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something
going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little
world in slow and passionless excitement.
The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two
shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It
was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a
merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so
briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like
juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee
were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so
plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of
cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the
candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make
the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was
it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums
blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or
that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the
customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise
of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door,
crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon
the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed
hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while
the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the
polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind
might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection,
and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and
chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their
best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time
there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless
turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers'
shops. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the
Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a
baker's doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed,
sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a
very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were
angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each
other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their
good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame
to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it
was! In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet
there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the
progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each
baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones were
cooking too.
'Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?'
asked Scrooge.
'There is. My own.'
'Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?' asked
Scrooge.
'To any kindly given. To a poor one most.'
'Why to a poor one most?' asked Scrooge.
'Because it needs it most.'
'Spirit,' said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, 'I wonder you, of
all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp
these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment.'
'I!' cried the Spirit.
'You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh
day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,'
said Scrooge. 'Wouldn't you?'
'I!' cried the Spirit.
'You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?' said
Scrooge. 'And it comes to the same thing.'
(r)'I seek!' exclaimed the Spirit.
'Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at
least in that of your family,' said Scrooge.
'There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit,
'who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion,
pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name,
who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had
never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on
themselves, not us.'
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible, as
they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a
remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed at
the baker's), that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could
accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood
beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural
creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing
off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty
nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight
to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him,
holding to his robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit
smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the
sprinkling of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen 'Bob' a-
week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed
his four-roomed house!
Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but
poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are
cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the
cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also
brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into
the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous
shirt collar (Bob's private property, conferred upon his son and
heir in honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself
so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen to the
fashionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl,
came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt
the goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious
thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced about
the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he
(not proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire,
until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the
saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled.
'What has ever got your precious father then?' said Mrs. Cratchit.
'And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha warn't as late last
Christmas Day by half-an-hour?'
'Here's Martha, mother!' said a girl, appearing as she spoke.
'Here's Martha, mother!' cried the two young Cratchits. 'Hurrah!
There's (r)such a goose, Martha!'
'Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!' said
Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl
and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
'We'd a deal of work to finish up last night,' replied the girl, 'and
had to clear away this morning, mother!'
'Well! Never mind so long as you are come,' said Mrs. Cratchit.
'Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless
ye!'
'No, no! There's father coming,' cried the two young Cratchits,
who were everywhere at once. 'Hide, Martha, hide!'
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at
least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down
before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to
look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny
Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an
iron frame!
'Why, where's our Martha?' cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
'Not coming,' said Mrs. Cratchit.
'Not coming!' said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high
spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church,
and had come home rampant. 'Not coming upon Christmas Day!'
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in
joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door,
and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny
Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the
pudding singing in the copper.
'And how did little Tim behave?' asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she
had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter
to his heart's content.
'As good as gold,' said Bob, 'and better. Somehow he gets
thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest
things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped
the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it
might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who
made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.'
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled
more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came
Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother
and sister to his stool before the fire; and while Bob, turning up
his cuffs- as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more
shabby- compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and
lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to
simmer; Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits
went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high
procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the
rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan
was a matter of course- and in truth it was something very like it
in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in
a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes
with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-
sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside
him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set
chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting
guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped.
At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was
succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly
all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but
when she did, and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued
forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even
Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table
with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there
ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and
cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by
apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the
whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight
(surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't
ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the
eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda,
Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone- too nervous to bear witnesses-
to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break
in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall
of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the
goose- a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became
livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper.
A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an
eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a
laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a
minute Mrs. Cratchit entered- flushed, but smiling proudly- with
the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm,
blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight
with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that
he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit
since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was
off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the
quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large
family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit
would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being
tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon
the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the
Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit
called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow
stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup
without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming
looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked
noisily. Then Bob proposed:
'A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!' Which all
the family re-echoed.
'God bless us every one!' said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob
held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and
wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be
taken from him.
'Spirit,' said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before,
'tell me if Tiny Tim will live.'
'I see a vacant seat,' replied the Ghost, 'in the poor chimney-
corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If
these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.'
'No, no,' said Scrooge. 'Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be
spared.'
'If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of
my race,' returned the Ghost, 'will find him here. What then? If he
be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus
population.'
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the
Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
'Man,' said the Ghost, 'if man you be in heart, not adamant,
forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the
surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live,
and 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. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf
pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in
the dust!'
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his
eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on hearing his
own name.
'Mr. Scrooge!' said Bob; 'I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder
of the Feast!'
'The Founder of the Feast indeed!' cried Mrs. Cratchit,
reddening. 'I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind
to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it.'
'My dear,' said Bob, 'the children! Christmas Day.'
'It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,' said she, 'on which one
drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man
as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better
than you do, poor fellow!'
'My dear,' was Bob's mild answer, 'Christmas Day.'
'I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's,' said Mrs.
Cratchit, 'not for his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a
happy new year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no
doubt!'
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their
proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank it last of
all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the
family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party,
which was not dispelled for full five minutes.
After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than
before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done
with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for
Master Peter which would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-
sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously
at the idea of Peter's being a man of business; and Peter himself
looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he
were deliberating what particular investments he should favour
when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income.
Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's, then told them
what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she worked
at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for
a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home.
Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before,
and how the lord 'was much about as tall as Peter'; at which Peter
pulled up his collars so high that you couldn't have seen his head
if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went
round and round; and by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost
child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive
little voice, and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a
handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far
from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might
have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But
they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and
contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier
yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting,
Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until
the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and
as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of
the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was
wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations
for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through
before the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut
out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house were
running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers,
cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again,
were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and
there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and
all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour's
house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter-
artful witches, well they knew it- in a glow!
But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way
to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at
home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every
house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney
high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its
breadth of breast, and opened its capricious palm, and floated on,
outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth
on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on
before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was
dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as
the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had
any company but Christmas!
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood
upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude
stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants;
and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done
so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but
moss and furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the
setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the
desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower,
lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.
'What place is this?' asked Scrooge.
'A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the
earth,' returned the Spirit. 'But they know me. See!'
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they
advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone,
they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire.
An old, old man and woman, with their children and their
children's children, and another generation beyond that, all
decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice
that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren
waste, was singing them a Christmas song- it had been a very old
song when he was a boy- and from time to time they all joined in
the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got
quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour
sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and
passing on above the moor, sped- whither? Not to sea? To sea. To
Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a
frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened
by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged
among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to
undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from
shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year
through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed
clung to its base, and storm-birds- born of the wind one might
suppose, as sea-weed of the water- rose and fell about it, like the
waves they skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire,
that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of
brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the
rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry
Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too,
with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the
figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that
was like a Gale in itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea- on,
on- until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they
lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel,
the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark,
ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among
them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or
spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone
Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every
man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder
word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had
shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those
he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to
remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning
of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on
through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths
were secrets as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to
Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a
much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own
nephew's, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room,
with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that
same nephew with approving affability! 'Ha, ha!' laughed
Scrooge's nephew. 'Ha, ha, ha!'
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man
more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I
should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll
cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while
there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the
world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.
When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides,
rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant
contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as
he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand,
roared out lustily.
'Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!'
'He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!' cried Scrooge's
nephew. 'He believed it too!'
'More shame for him, Fred!' said Scrooge's niece, indignantly.
Bless those women; they never do anything by halves. They are
always in earnest.
She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed
made to be kissed- as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots
about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed;
and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's
head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking,
you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory.
'He's a comical old fellow,' said Scrooge's nephew, 'that's the
truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences
carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against
him.'
'I'm sure he is very rich, Fred,' hinted Scrooge's niece. 'At least
you always tell (r)me so.'
'What of that, my dear!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'His wealth is of
no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make
himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking-
ha, ha, ha!- that he is ever going to benefit US with it.'
'I have no patience with him,' observed Scrooge's niece.
Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the
same opinion.
'Oh, I have!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'I am sorry for him; I
couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims!
Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and
he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He
don't lose much of a dinner.'
'Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,' interrupted
Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be
allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had
dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round
the fire, by lamplight.
'Well! I'm very glad to hear it!' said Scrooge's nephew, 'because I
haven't great faith in these young housekeepers. What do (r)you
say, Topper?'
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's
sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast,
who had no right to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat
Scrooge's niece's sister- the plump one with the lace tucker: not
the one with the roses- blushed.
'Do go on, Fred,' said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. 'He
never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous
fellow!'
Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was
impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried
hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously
followed.
'I was only going to say,' said Scrooge's nephew, 'that the
consequences of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry
with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which
could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions
than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old
office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance
every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail
at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it- I
defy him- if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after
year, and saying, Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him
in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, (r)that's
something; and I think I shook him yesterday.'
It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking
Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring
what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he
encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the bottle
joyously.
After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family,
and knew what they were about, when they sung a Glee or Catch,
I can assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the
bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his
forehead, or get red in the face over it. Scrooge's niece played well
upon the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air (a
mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two minutes),
which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from
the boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of
Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things
that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more
and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often,
years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his
own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the
sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley.
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while
they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and
never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a
child himself. Stop! There was first |
