_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 chimes 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 sprang 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 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 toward 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 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 toward 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 highroad, by a well-remembered lane, and soon
approached 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
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 had used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the
mice 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 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 an ass laden with wood by
the bridle.
"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 shrank, 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 toward 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, toward 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-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 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-by 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 think, children."
"One child," Scrooge returned.
"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"