a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola,
on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one
of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their
walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates
decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the
coach-houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more
retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering the dreary hall,
and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them
poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the
air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow
with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the
back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare,
melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and
desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire;
and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten
self as he had used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice
behind the panneling, 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 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 young 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 an ass laden with wood by
the bridle.
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstacy. "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
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 21.]
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."
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 22.]
"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the child,
clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you
home, home, home!"
"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good and all. Home,
for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that
home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was
going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might
come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to
bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child, opening her eyes,
"and are never to come back here; but first, we're to be together all
the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world."
"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but
being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him.
Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the
door; and he, nothing loth to go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box,
there!" and in the hall appeared the 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'll not gainsay it,
Spirit. God forbid!"
"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 23.]
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 Welch 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
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 24.]
[Illustration: Verso of original manuscript Page 25.]
done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were
dismissed from public life for ever-more; the floor was swept and
watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and
the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room,
as you would desire to see upon a winter's night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk,
and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In
came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss
Fezziwigs, beaming and loveable. 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 down!" 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
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 25.]
[Illustration: Verso of original manuscript Page 26.]
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 'em next. And when old Fezziwig and
Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, hold
hands with your partner; bow and curtsey; corkscrew; thread-the-needle,
and back again to your place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he
appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a
stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and
Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side 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."
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 26.]
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?"
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 27.]
"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 the 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
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 28.]
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 license of a child, and yet
been man enough to know its value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately
ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress was borne
towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time
to greet the father, who, came home attended by a man laden with
Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and
the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling
him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil him of
brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the
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 ecstacy! 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
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 29.]
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.