behind the paneling, 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 store-house door,
no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the head of Scrooge with
a softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self,
intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in foreign garments--wonderfully
real and distinct to look at--stood outside the window, with an axe
stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed, in ecstasy. "It's dear old
honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas time, when yonder
solitary child was left here all alone, he _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,
forever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be that
home's like heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was
going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might
come home; and he said yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring
you. And you're to be a man," said the child, opening her eyes, "and
are never to come back here; but first, we're to be together all the
Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world."
"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but
being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him.
Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the
door; and he, nothing loth to go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box,
there!" and in the hall appeared the school-master himself, who glared
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 parlor
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 meager servant to offer a glass
of "something" to the post-boy, 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 onto the top
of the chaise, the children bade the school-master good by right
willingly, and getting into it drove gayly 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 forevermore, 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 out 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, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once;
hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up
again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old
top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple
starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last,
and not a bottom one to help them! When this result was brought about,
old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well
done!" and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter
especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his
reappearance, he instantly began again--though there were no dancers
yet--as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a
shutter, and he were a brand-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 have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs.
Fezziwig had gone all through the dance--advance and retire, both hands
to your partner, bow and curtsey, 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 up on his feet again without a
stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs.
Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and
shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out,
wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the
two 'prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices
died away, and the lads were left to their beds, which were under a
counter in the back shop.
During the whole of this time Scrooge had acted like a man out of his
wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self.
He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything,
and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the
bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he
remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full
upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.
"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of
gratitude."
"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
The spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were
pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and when he had done
so, said, "Why, is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal
money--three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this
praise?"
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking
unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. "It isn't that,
Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our
service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power
lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it
is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he
gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to be able to say a word or two
to my clerk just now. That's all."
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish;
and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.
"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see, but
it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was
older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and
rigid lines of later years, but it had begun to wear the signs of care
and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye,
which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of
the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a
mourning dress, in whose eyes there were tears which sparkled in the
light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little. Another
idol has displaced me, and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to
come as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."
"What idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
"A golden one."
"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is
nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it
professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently. "All your other
hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its
sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by
one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what
then? I am not changed towards you."
She shook her head.
"Am I?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and
content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly
fortune by our patient industry. You _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 ever 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, there 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 license of a child, and yet to have been man enough to
know its value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately
ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne
towards it, the center 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 defenseless porter! The scaling him
with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown
paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck,
pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The
shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every
package was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been
taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was
more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey glued on a
wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The
joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It
is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions got out of
the parlor, and by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house,
where they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master
of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with
her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such
another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have
called him father, and been a springtime in the haggard winter of his
life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife, with a smile, "I saw an
old friend of yours this afternoon."
"Who was it?"
"Guess!"
"How can I? Tut, don't I know," she added, in the same breath, laughing
as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window, and as it was not shut
up and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His
partner lies upon the point of death, I hear, and there he sat alone.
Quite alone in the world, I do believe."
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, in a broken voice, "remove me from this place."
"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the
Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"
"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a
face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the
faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost
with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any
effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was burning
high and bright, and dimly connecting that with its influence over him,
he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its
whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he
could not hide the light which streamed from under it in an unbroken
flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible
drowsiness; and further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a
parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed, and had barely time to reel
to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep.
STAVE 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 despatched to
him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he turned
uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this
new specter would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own
hands, and lying down again, established a sharp lookout all round the
bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being
acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of
day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by
observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter, between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a
tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing
for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you to
believe that he was ready for a good, broad field of strange
appearances, and that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros would have
astonished him very much.