Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

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 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 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 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 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. 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.

`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
battle 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. `I was 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 shows 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
them up in their places -- four, five, six -- barred them and pinned
then -- 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 couples 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 them 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 in 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 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.