remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full
upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.
30
--------------------------------------- 31
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
`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 them 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 in 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.
31
--------------------------------------- 32
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
`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 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 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.
32
--------------------------------------- 33
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
But he said with a struggle,' You think not.'
`I would gladly think otherwise if I could,' she answered, `Heaven
knows. When 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
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
33
--------------------------------------- 34
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have
given to 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
34
--------------------------------------- 35
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
called him father, and been a spring-time 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.
35
--------------------------------------- 36
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Stave 3: 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
36
--------------------------------------- 37
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
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
last, 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
37
--------------------------------------- 38
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
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
38
--------------------------------------- 39
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that
crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets
branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow
mud 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 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 housetops 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 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
39
--------------------------------------- 40
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
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
