obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it before he could extract
the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The
fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and
paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the
Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of
Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like
feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that
face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod,
and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at
first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of
old Marley's head on every one.
"Humbug!" said Scrooge, and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in
the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell that
hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten,
with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great
astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he
looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the
outset that it scarcely made a sound, but soon it rang out loudly, and
so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded
by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some person were dragging a
heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar. Scrooge then
remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described
as dragging chains.
The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the
noise much louder on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then
coming straight towards his door.
"It's humbug, still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
His color 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 his 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 fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your
senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight
disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit
of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an
underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you,
whatever you are."
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel,
in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to
be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention and keeping down
his terror; for the Specter'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 Specter's being provided with an infernal
atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was
clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its
hair, and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapor
from an oven.
"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning quickly to the
charge, for the reason just assigned, and wishing, though it were only
for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
"I do," replied the Ghost.
"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
"Well," returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the
rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own
creation. Humbug, I tell you! Humbug!"
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with
such a dismal and appalling noise that Scrooge held on tight to his
chair to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was
his horror when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as
if it were too warm to wear 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 fellowmen, 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 Specter 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 labored 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 traveling 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 labor, by immortal creatures, for this earth
must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is
all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in
its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too
short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of
regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was
I! Oh, such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge,
who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my
business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy,
forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my
trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my
business!"
It held up its chain at arm's-length, as if that were the cause of all
its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the Specter 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 Specter going on at this
rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."
"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery,
Jacob, pray!"
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may
not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered and wiped the
perspiration from his brow.
"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here
to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping
my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. "Thank'ee!"
"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by three spirits."
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he demanded, in a
faltering voice.
"It is."
"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the
path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one."
"Couldn't I take 'em all at once and have it over, Jacob?" hinted
Scrooge.
"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon
the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate.
Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember
what has passed between us!"
When it had said these words the Specter 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 Specter 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 Specter, after listening for a moment, joined in
the mournful dirge, and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked
out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in
restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains
like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were
linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to
Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost
in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle,
who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an
infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all
was clearly that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters,
and had lost the power forever.
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 endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret
eyes when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters.
So he listened for the hour.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and
from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve!
It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle
must have got into the works. Twelve!
He touched the spring of his repeater to correct this most preposterous
clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and stopped.
"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through
a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything
has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!"
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his
way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve
of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very
little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy
and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to
and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have
been if night had beaten off bright day and taken possession of the
world. This was a great relief, because "three days after sight of this
First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order," and so
forth, would have become a mere United States' security if there were
no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again and thought and thought, and thought it over
and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought,
the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavored 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 willfully "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 the bed was
warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad
but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and night-cap; and that he
had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's
hand, was not to be resisted. He rose; but finding that the Spirit made
towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
"Bear but a touch of my hand _there_," said the Spirit, laying it
upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this!"
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon
an open country road, with fields on either hand. The city had entirely
vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist
had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow
upon the ground.
"Good heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked
about him. "I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!"
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been
light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense
of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors 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 fervor; "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 recognizing 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 travelers 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 earthy savor in the air, a chilly bareness in the
place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by
candle-light, and not too much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the
back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare,
melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and
desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire, and
Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self
as he used to be.