Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes,
nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then.
The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of
distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror;
for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his
bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a
moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with
him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s
being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.
Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the
case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair,
and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot
vapour from an oven.
‘You see this toothpick?’ said Scrooge, returning
quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and
wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the
vision’s stony gaze from himself.
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‘I do,’ replied the Ghost.
‘You are not looking at it,’ said Scrooge.
‘But I see it,’ said the Ghost, ‘notwithstanding.’
‘Well!’ returned Scrooge, ‘I have but to swallow this,
and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of
goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you!
humbug!’
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its
chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge
held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a
swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the
phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it
were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped
down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands
before his face.
‘Mercy!’ he said. ‘Dreadful apparition, why do you
trouble me?’
‘Man of the worldly mind!’ replied the Ghost, ‘do you
believe in me or not?’
‘I do,’ said Scrooge. ‘I must. But why do spirits walk
the earth, and why do they come to me?’
‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that
the spirit within him should walk abroad among his
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fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes
not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is
doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me!
— and witness what it cannot share, but might have
shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and
wrung its shadowy hands.
‘You are fettered,’ said Scrooge, trembling. ‘Tell me
why?’
‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I
made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my
own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its
pattern strange to you?’
Scrooge trembled more and more.
‘Or would you know,’ pursued the Ghost, ‘the weight
and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full
as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago.
You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!’
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the
expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or
sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.
‘Jacob,’ he said, imploringly. ‘Old Jacob Marley, tell me
more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!’
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‘I have none to give,’ the Ghost replied. ‘It comes from
other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by
other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you
what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I
cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My
spirit never walked beyond our counting-house — mark
me! — in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow
limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie
before me!’
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became
thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.
Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but
without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
‘You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,’
Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with
humility and deference.
‘Slow!’ the Ghost repeated.
‘Seven years dead,’ mused Scrooge. ‘And travelling all
the time!’
‘The whole time,’ said the Ghost. ‘No rest, no peace.
Incessant torture of remorse.’
‘You travel fast?’ said Scrooge.
‘On the wings of the wind,’ replied the Ghost.
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‘You might have got over a great quantity of ground in
seven years,’ said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and
clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the
night, that the Ward would have been justified in
indicting it for a nuisance.
‘Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,’ cried the
phantom, ‘not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by
immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity
before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed.
Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in
its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life
too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that
no space of regret can make amends for one life’s
opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!’
‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’
faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.
‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my
business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence,
were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but
a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my
business!’
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It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the
cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon
the ground again.
‘At this time of the rolling year,’ the spectre said ‘I
suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellowbeings
with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to
that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!
Were there no poor homes to which its light would have
conducted me!’
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre
going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
‘Hear me!’ cried the Ghost. ‘My time is nearly gone.’
‘I will,’ said Scrooge. ‘But don’t be hard upon me!
Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!’ ‘How it is that I appear
before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I
have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.’
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and
wiped the perspiration from his brow.
‘That is no light part of my penance,’ pursued the
Ghost. ‘I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet
a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and
hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.’
‘You were always a good friend to me,’ said Scrooge.
‘Thank ‘ee!’
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‘You will be haunted,’ resumed the Ghost, ‘by Three
Spirits.’
Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s
had done.
‘Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?’ he
demanded, in a faltering voice.
‘It is.’
‘I — I think I’d rather not,’ said Scrooge.
‘Without their visits,’ said the Ghost, ‘you cannot hope
to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when
the bell tolls One.’
‘Couldn’t I take ‘em all at once, and have it over,
Jacob?’ hinted Scrooge.
‘Expect the second on the next night at the same hour.
The third upon the next night when the last stroke of
Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more;
and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has
passed between us!’
When it had said these words, the spectre took its
wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as
before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth
made, when the jaws were brought together by the
bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found
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his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect
attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at
every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that
when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It
beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they
were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held
up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge
stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for
on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused
noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and
regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory.
The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the
mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark
night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his
curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and
thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every
one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few
(they might be guilty governments) were linked together;
none were free. Many had been personally known to
Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one
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old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe
attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable
to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw
below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human
matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist
enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their
spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had
been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by
which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he
had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were
undisturbed. He tried to say ‘Humbug!’ but stopped at the
first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had
undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the
Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or
the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went
straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon
the instant.
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Stave 2: 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
endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes,
when the chimes of a neighbouring 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
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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 on 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 could make nothing of
it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and,
the more he endeavoured 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, andpresented the same
problem to be worked all through, ‘Was it a dream or
not?’
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone
three-quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden,
that the Ghost hadwarned him of a visitation when the
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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
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up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to
face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to
it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at
your elbow.
It was a strange figure — like a child: yet not so like a
child as like an old man, viewed through some
supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of
having receded from the view, and being diminished to a
child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck
and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the
face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was
on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the
hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength.
Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those
upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white,
and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of
which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly
in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry
emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But
the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its
head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all
this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of
its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a
cap, which it now held under its arm.
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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.
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‘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
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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 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.’
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Hallo.’
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.
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‘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
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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
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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.’
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