A CHRISTMAS CAROL

 

By CHARLES DICKENS


 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION


 

The combined qualities of the realist and the idealist which Dickens

possessed to a remarkable degree, together with his naturally jovial attitude

toward life in general, seem to have given him a remarkably happy feeling toward

Christmas, though the privations and hardships of his boyhood could have

allowed him but little real experience with this day of days.

Dickens gave his first formal expression to his Christmas thoughts in his

series of small books, the first of which was the famous "Christmas Carol," the one

perfect chrysolite. The success of the book was immediate. Thackeray wrote of it:

"Who can listen to objections regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a

national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness."

This volume was put forth in a very attractive manner, with illustrations by

John Leech, who was the first artist to make these characters live, and his

drawings were varied and spirited.

There followed upon this four others: "The Chimes," "The Cricket on the

Hearth," "The Battle of Life," and "The Haunted Man," with illustrations on their

first appearance by Doyle, Maclise, and others. The five are known to-day as the

"Christmas Books." Of them all the "Carol" is the best known and loved, and "The

Cricket on the Hearth," although third in the series, is perhaps next in point of

popularity, and is especially familiar to Americans through Joseph Jefferson's

characterisation of Caleb Plummer.

Dickens seems to have put his whole self into these glowing little stories.

Whoever sees but a clever ghost story in the "Christmas Carol" misses its chief

charm and lesson, for there is a different meaning in the movements of Scrooge

and his attendant spirits. A new life is brought to Scrooge when he, "running to

his window, opened it and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial,

stirring cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sun-light; Heavenly

sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!" All this brightness has

its attendant shadow, and deep from the childish heart comes that true note of

pathos, the ever memorable toast of Tiny Tim, "God bless Us, Every One!" "The

Cricket on the Hearth" strikes a different note. Charmingly, poetically, the sweet

chirping of the little cricket is associated with human feelings and actions, and at

the crisis of the story decides the fate and fortune of the carrier and his wife.

 

 

 

Dickens's greatest gift was characterization, and no English writer, save

Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would be as absurd

to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens his great and varied

powers of creation. Dickens exaggerated many of his comic and satirical

characters, as was his right, for caricature and satire are very closely related,

while exaggeration is the very essence of comedy. But there remains a host of

characters marked by humour and pathos. Yet the pictorial presentation of

Dickens's characters has ever tended toward the grotesque. The interpretations in

this volume aim to eliminate the grosser phases of the caricature in favour of the

more human. If the interpretations seem novel, if Scrooge be not as he has been

pictured, it is because a more human Scrooge was desired—a Scrooge not wholly

bad, a Scrooge of a better heart, a Scrooge to whom the resurrection described in

this story was possible. It has been the illustrator's whole aim to make these

people live in some form more fully consistent with their types.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A CHRISTMAS CAROL


 

In Prose

 

BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAVE ONE

 

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 St. Paul's Church-yard, 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 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, and 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 has

done me good, and 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 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 am 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 overflowings suddenly 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 blood-thirsty 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 St.

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 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 have 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 of 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 did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and he

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, bedroom, 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 saucepan 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 fire-place 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 was."

"Who were you, then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're particular, for a

shade." He was going to say "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 fire-place, 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 own

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 his 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 his head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, 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 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 opportunities 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 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. "Thankee!"

"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 again, 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 doorstep. 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 TWO


 

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 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 hour bell 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

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 its robe in

supplication.

"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."

 

 

 

"Bear but a touch of my hand 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 the 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 by-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 weather-cock 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 earthly 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 had 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 water-spout 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 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 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 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 loath to go,

accompanied her.

A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box, there!"

and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on 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 schoolmaster 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 stomachaches. 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, any how and every how. 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 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 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 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 curtsy, cork-screw, 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 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 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. 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

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 in

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 the neck,

pummel 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

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAVE THREE

 

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 dispatched 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 a 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 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 petrifaction 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 deep 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 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 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 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 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 by-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."

"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 sprinklings 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 in 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 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

beside 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

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, 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 in it. 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-by 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 waterproof; their

clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside

of a pawn-broker'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 blinds 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 capacious palm, and floated on,

outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything

within its reach! The very lamp-lighter, 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 lamp-lighter 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 or 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 seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of

the wind, one might suppose, as seaweed 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 one 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 blessed 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 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 lamp-light.

 

 

 

"Well! I am very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I haven't

any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do 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 consequence 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, 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 awhile 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 a

game at blindman's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was

really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a

done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas

Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was

an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons,

tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself

amongst the curtains, wherever she went, there went he! He always knew where

the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against

him (as some of them did) on purpose, he would have made a feint of

endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your

understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump

sister. She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not. But when, at

last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid

flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then

his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his

pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure

himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain

chain about her neck, was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of

it when, another blind man being in office, they were so very confidential together

behind the curtains.

Scrooge's niece was not one of the blindman's buff party, but was made

comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner where the Ghost

and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her

love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of

How, When, and Where, she was very great, and, to the secret joy of Scrooge's

nephew, beat her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper

could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old,

but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly forgetting, in the interest he

had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he

sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed right, too,

for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was

not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his head to be.

The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked upon him

with such favour, that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests

departed. But this the Spirit said could not be done.

"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half-hour, Spirit, only one!"

It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of

something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions

yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed

elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a

disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted

sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the

streets, and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in

a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or

a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh

question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and

was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa, and

stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!"

"What is it?" cried Fred.

"It's your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some

objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been "Yes": inasmuch as an

answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr.

Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.

"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it would be

ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our

hand at the moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"

"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.

"A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!"

said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it

nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he

would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an

inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off

in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were

again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always

with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they were cheerful; on

foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were

patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital,

and gaol, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had

not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught

Scrooge his precepts.

It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this,

because the Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time

they passed together. It was strange, too, that, while Scrooge remained unaltered

in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed

this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children's Twelfth-Night party,

when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed

that its hair was grey.

"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.

"My life upon this globe is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends to-night."

"To-night!" cried Scrooge.

"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near."

 

 

 

The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that moment.

"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking intently

at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself,

protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"

"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's sorrowful

reply. "Look here."

From the foldings of its robe it brought two children; wretched, abject,

frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the

outside of its garment.

"Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but

prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their

features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand,

like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds.

Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing.

No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all

the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he

tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than

be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to

me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware

of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his

brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!"

cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it

ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with

his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

The bell struck Twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke

ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and, lifting

up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming like a mist

along the ground towards him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAVE FOUR

 

THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

 

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him,

Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit

moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face,

its form, and left nothing of it visible, save one outstretched hand. But for this, it

would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from

the darkness by which it was surrounded.

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its

mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the

Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?" said Scrooge.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened,

but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as

if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent

shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could

hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as

observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain

horror to know that, behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently

fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see

nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.

"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have

seen. But, as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be

another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with

a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious

time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"

The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in

the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.

 

 

 

 

 

They scarcely seemed to enter the City; for the City rather seemed to spring

up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But there they were in the

heart of it; on 'Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down, and

chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their

watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as

Scrooge had seen them often.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the

hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.

"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I don't know much about it

either way. I only know he's dead."

"When did he die?" inquired another.

"Last night, I believe."

"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third, taking a vast quantity of

snuff out of a very large snuff-box. "I thought he'd never die."

"God knows," said the first with a yawn.

"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced gentleman with a

pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-

cock.

"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin, yawning again. "Left it to

his company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's all I know."

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same speaker; "for, upon my

life, I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party, and

volunteer?"

"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the gentleman with the

excrescence on his nose. "But I must be fed if I make one."

Another laugh.

"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all," said the first

speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go if

anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't his

most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met. Bye,

bye!"

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge

knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons

meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.

 

 

 

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very

wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing well in

their esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business point of

view.

"How are you?" said one.

"How are you?" returned the other.

"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"

"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"

"Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are not a skater, I suppose?"

"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their

parting.

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach

importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but, feeling assured that they

must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to

be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob,

his old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor

could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could

apply them. But nothing doubting that, to whomsoever they applied, they had

some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every

word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of

himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future

self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these

riddles easy.

He looked about in that very place for his own image, but another man stood

in his accustomed corner, and, though the clock pointed to his usual time of day

for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured

in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however; for he had been

revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-

born resolutions carried out in this.

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand.

When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied, from the turn of

the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were

looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where

Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation and its

bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the

people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many

cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life upon the straggling

streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery.

 

 

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop,

below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal

were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails,

chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few

would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags,

masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he

dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly

seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without by a

frouzy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line, and smoked his pipe

in all the luxury of calm retirement.

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a

woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered,

when another woman, similarly laden, came in too, and she was closely followed

by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them than they

had been upon the recognition of each other. After a short period of blank

astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three

burst into a laugh.

"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who had entered first.

"Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker's man alone to

be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven't all three met here

without meaning it!"

"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe, removing his pipe from

his mouth. "Come into the parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know;

and the other two an't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it

skreeks! There an't such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I

believe; and I'm sure there's no such old bones here as mine. Ha! ha! We're all

suitable to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the

parlour."

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the

fire together with an old stair-rod, and, having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it

was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it into his mouth again.

While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on

the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on

her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.

"What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the woman. "Every person

has a right to take care of themselves. He always did!"

"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man more so."

"Why, then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid, woman! Who's the wiser?

We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose?"

"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. "We should hope not."

 

 

 

"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough. Who's the worse for the

loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose?"

"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.

"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw," pursued the

woman, "why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had

somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying

gasping out his last there, alone by himself."

"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs. Dilber, "It's a judgment

on him."

"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the woman; "and it should

have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything

else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain.

I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We knew pretty well

that we were helping ourselves before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the

bundle, Joe."

But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man in faded

black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A

seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value,

were all. They were severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the

sums he was disposed to give for each upon the wall, and added them up into a

total when he found that there was nothing more to come.

"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give another sixpence, if I was

to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next?"

Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-

fashioned silver tea-spoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account

was stated on the wall in the same manner.

"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way

I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked me for another

penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal, and knock off

half-a-crown."

"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.

Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and,

having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large heavy roll of some

dark stuff.

"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains?"

"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms.

"Bed-curtains!"

"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and all, with him lying

there?" said Joe.

 

 

 

"Yes, I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"

"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."

"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it

out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you, Joe," returned the

woman coolly. "Don't drop that oil upon the blankets, now."

"His blankets?" asked Joe.

"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He isn't likely to take cold

without 'em, I dare say."

"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said old Joe, stopping in his

work, and looking up.

"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I an't so fond of his

company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah! You may look

through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find a hole in it, nor a

threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too. They'd have wasted it, if

it hadn't been for me."

"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.

"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied the woman with a

laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico an't

good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite as

becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did in that one."

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their

spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a

detestation and disgust which could hardly have been greater, though they had

been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman when old Joe, producing a flannel bag

with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of

it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit

us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"

"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I see, I see. The case of

this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way now. Merciful

Heaven, what is this?"

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched

a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a

something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful

language.

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though

Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what

kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed:

and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body

of this man.

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the

head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the

motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought

of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power

to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it

with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of

the loved, revered, and honoured head thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread

purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy, and will

fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the

hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the

pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the

wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and yet he heard them

when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now,

what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard dealing, griping cares? They

have brought him to a rich end, truly!

He lay, in the dark, empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child to say

he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be

kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats

beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they

were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.

"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its

lesson, trust me. Let us go!"

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.

"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do it if I could. But I have

not the power, Spirit. I have not the power."

Again it seemed to look upon him.

"If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man's

death," said Scrooge, quite agonised, "show that person to me, Spirit! I beseech

you."

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and,

withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her children

were.

She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked up

and down the room; started at every sound; looked out from the window; glanced

at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the

voices of her children in their play.

 

 

At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and

met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though he was

young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of

which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.

He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire, and,

when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence),

he appeared embarrassed how to answer.

"Is it good," she said, "or bad?" to help him.

"Bad," he answered.

"We are quite ruined?"

"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."

"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is past hope, if such a

miracle has happened."

"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."

She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth; but she was

thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped hands. She prayed

forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her

heart.

"What the half-drunken woman, whom I told you of last night, said to me

when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay, and what I thought was a mere

excuse to avoid me, turns out to have been quite true. He was not only very ill,

but dying, then."

"To whom will our debt be transferred?"

"I don't know. But, before that time, we shall be ready with the money; and,

even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a

creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!"

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's faces,

hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter;

and it was a happier house for this man's death! The only emotion that the Ghost

could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.

"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said Scrooge; "or that

dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever present to me."

The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet; and, as

they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was

he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house,—the dwelling he had

visited before,—and found the mother and the children seated round the fire.

 

 

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one

corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. The mother and

her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!

"'And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy

must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he

not go on?

The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her face.

"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.

The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!

"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It makes them weak by

candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father, when he comes home,

for the world. It must be near his time."

"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book. "But I think he has

walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings, mother."

They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice,

that only faltered once:

"I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon

his shoulder very fast indeed."

"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."

"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.

"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon her work, "and his

father loved him so, that it was no trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at

the door!"

She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter—he had need of

it, poor fellow—came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried

who should help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees,

and laid, each child, a little cheek against his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it,

father. Don't be grieved!"

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family. He

looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed of Mrs.

Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said.

"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his wife.

"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have gone. It would have

done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised

him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!" cried Bob. "My

little child!"

 

 

He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have helped it, he

and his child would have been farther apart, perhaps, than they were.

He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above, which was lighted

cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close beside the child,

and there were signs of some one having been there lately. Poor Bob sat down in

it, and, when he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed the little

face. He was reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite

happy.

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working still. Bob

told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had

scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing

that he looked a little—"just a little down, you know," said Bob, inquired what

had happened to distress him. "On which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-

spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr.

Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.' By-the-bye, how he ever

knew that I don't know."

"Knew what, my dear?"

"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.

"Everybody knows that," said Peter.

"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they do. 'Heartily sorry,' he

said, 'for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any way,' he said, giving

me his card, 'that's where I live. Pray come to me.' Now, it wasn't," cried Bob, "for

the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way,

that this was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim,

and felt with us."

"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.

"You would be sure of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if you saw and spoke to

him. I shouldn't be at all surprised—mark what I say!—if he got Peter a better

situation."

"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping company with some

one, and setting up for himself."

"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.

"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days; though there's plenty

of time for that, my dear. But, however and whenever we part from one another, I

am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim—shall we—or this first parting

that there was among us?"

"Never, father!" cried they all.

 

 

"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we recollect how

patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little child, we shall not

quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it."

"No, never, father!" they all cried again.

"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young Cratchits

kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish

essence was from God!

"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our parting moment is at

hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw

lying dead?"

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before—though at a

different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions,

save that they were in the Future—into the resorts of business men, but showed

him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything, but went straight on,

as to the end just now desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.

"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now, is where my place

of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the house. Let me behold

what I shall be in days to come."

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.

"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you point away?"

The inexorable finger underwent no change.

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office

still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was

not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.

He joined it once again, and, wondering why and whither he had gone,

accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round before

entering.

A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man, whose name he had now to

learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses;

overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up

with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A worthy place!

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced

towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded

that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer

me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they

shadows of the things that May be only?"

 

 

 

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they

must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will

change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and, following the finger, read

upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.

"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried upon his knees.

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"

The finger still was there.

"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me! I am not the man I

was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show

me this, if I am past all hope?"

For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "your

nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these

shadows you have shown me by an altered life?"

The kind hand trembled.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live

in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within

me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away

the writing on this stone!"

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was

strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an

alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled

down into a bedpost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

STAVE FIVE


 

THE END OF IT

 

Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his

own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends

in!

"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge repeated as he

scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh, Jacob

Marley! Heaven and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees,

old Jacob; on my knees!"

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken

voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his

conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed-curtains in his

arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all. They are here—I am here—the

shadows of the things that would have been may be dispelled. They will be. I

know they will!"

His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out,

putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties

to every kind of extravagance.

"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same

breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light

as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as

giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to

all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there: perfectly

winded.

"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge, starting off again,

and going round the fire-place. "There's the door by which the Ghost of Jacob

Marley entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat!

There's the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it

all happened. Ha, ha, ha!"

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a

splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant

laughs!

 

 

 

"I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge. "I don't know how

long I have been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby.

Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!"

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest

peals he had ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; ding, dong, bell! Bell, dong, ding;

hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist;

clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden

sun-light; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!

"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes,

who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

"EH?" returned the boy with all his might of wonder.

"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.

"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."

"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits

have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can.

Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"

"Hallo!" returned the boy.

"Do you know the Poulterer's in the next street but one, at the corner?"

Scrooge inquired.

"I should hope I did," replied the lad.

"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know whether

they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there?—Not the little prize

Turkey: the big one?"

"What! the one as big as me?" returned the boy.

"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my

buck!"

"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.

"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."

"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.

"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it

here, that I may give them the directions where to take it. Come back with the

man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes,

and I'll give you half-a-crown!"

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who

could have got a shot off half so fast.

 

 

 

"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and

splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny

Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be!"

The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one; but write it he

did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street-door, ready for the coming

of the poulterer's man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught

his eye.

"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his hand. "I

scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face! It's

a wonderful knocker!—Here's the Turkey. Hallo! Whoop! How are you? Merry

Christmas!"

It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He

would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.

"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge. "You must

have a cab."

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for

the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with

which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with

which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried.

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much;

and shaving requires attention, even when you don't dance while you are at it.

But, if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-

plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.

He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the streets. The

people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of

Christmas Present; and, walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded

every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word,

that three or four good-humoured fellows said, "Good morning, sir! A merry

Christmas to you!" And Scrooge said often afterwards that, of all the blithe sounds

he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.

He had not gone far when, coming on towards him, he beheld the portly

gentleman who had walked into his counting-house the day before, and said,

"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?" It sent a pang across his heart to think how this

old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he knew what path lay

straight before him, and he took it.

"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the old

gentleman by both his hands, "how do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It

was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"

"Mr. Scrooge?"

 

 

 

"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to

you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness——" Here

Scrooge whispered in his ear.

"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "My

dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"

"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many back-

payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favour?"

"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him, "I don't know what to

say to such munifi——"

"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come and see me. Will you

come and see me?"

"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do it.

"Thankee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times.

Bless you!"

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people

hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars,

and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found

that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—

that anything—could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his

steps towards his nephew's house.

He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and

knock. But he made a dash, and did it.

"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very.

"Yes sir."

"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.

"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll show you up-stairs, if

you please."

"Thankee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-

room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round the door. They were looking

at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these young housekeepers

are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right.

"Fred!" said Scrooge.

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had forgotten,

for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't

have done it on any account.

"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"

 

 

 

"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?"

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in five

minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper

when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when

they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful

happiness!

But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there! If he

could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing

he had set his heart upon.

And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No

Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his

door wide open, that he might see him come into the tank.

His hat was off before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his

stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine

o'clock.

"Hallo!" growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it.

"What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"

"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."

"You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you

please."

"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the tank. "It shall not

be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."

"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge. "I am not going to stand

this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued, leaping from his stool,

and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the tank

again: "and therefore I am about to raise your salary!"

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of

knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court

for help and a strait-waistcoat.

"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge with an earnestness that could not be

mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good

fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour

to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very

afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires and

buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"

 

 

 

 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to

Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend,

as good a master, and as good a man as the good old City knew, or any other

good old city, town, or borough in the good old world. Some people laughed to see

the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was

wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which

some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and, knowing that

such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should

wrinkle up their eyes in grins as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own

heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total-

Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of him that he knew

how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that

be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us,

Every One!