A CHRISTMAS CAROL
PART 2
[Ebenezer
Scrooge encounters the first of the three spirits which the spirit of his
former business partner Jacob Marley has warned him to expect..]
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 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 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 bye-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
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 over-run 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 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 store-house door, no,
not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart 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, 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 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
stomach-aches. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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
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
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 petrification 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.
To be continued
