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 his 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 you, Spirit, walk the earth, and why do you come to me?”
“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, 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? What sins of yours must be paid beyond the grave, for we never encountered such a creature in the course of our employment.”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard. We two straddled the gray worlds, never participating, never appreciating, never loving. We sat in judgment of the human world as well as the spirit one – not dispatching evil spirits to save our own, but out of a selfish vengeance. This chain; 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 squandered the intervening years, sitting on your hands when you had the ability; the skills and tools to continue. The neglect has born new links 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!”
“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 embraced the human experience, and now I’m doomed to watch it play out and relive in every face, what I did nothing to hinder or help the human condition; a weary journey lies before me!”
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. His hands traced the curves of the fob watch that was both in his pocket and decorating Marley’s transparent vest. 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 only now come to see me? Is there no relief I can offer you?”
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 opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!”
“But you were always a good man of our peculiar business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Business of the dead! The dealings of spirits and ghouls dispatched and then I looked down and spat upon the living. Mankind, the living, was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business.
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 fellow-beings with my eyes turning down my nose, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor souls to which its light would have conducted me?”
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and cringed as a quake in his voice betrayed his anxiety.
“I ask you again, Spirit, and answer me plain. Why only now come to see me? Is there no relief I can offer you?”
“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.”
“I will,” said Scrooge. “But don’t leave without your purpose spoken for. 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. “Speak this chance and I will be a friend to you.”
“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.”
Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.
“Am I to dispatch them, Jacob?” he demanded in a faltering voice.
“Perhaps.”
“It has been too long. I--I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge.
“There is something sinister in their mission. I know not what they desire, only that their aim is not for the good of human-kind; of love nor kindness. Be warned,” said the Ghost, “one will help, one will hurt, and one can not be killed, I know not which is which. Expect the first to-morrow when the bell tolls One.”
“Couldn’t I take ‘em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” asked Scrooge wryly.
“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 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.
Marley’s Ghost smiled sadly at the pocket where Scrooge’s hand was lumped; shoved as it was around the fob watch. “Do you want it?” Scrooge offered one last time.
The shade shook his head sadly, “Better the hell you kn
ow.”
Scrooge became sensible of confused noises in the air; out the window pane were 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 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 doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.
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 wards by which the Ghost had entered and found them bungled. He swept away the remnants, vowing to not block out his visitors, if only for a chance at saving his soul. With a bitter thought of becoming a shade himself, he tried to say “Humbug!” but choked on 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 throbbing in his head from the drink, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and passed out upon the instant.
1 A “humbug” is a sad excuse for a ghoul, haunting broken down buildings and wailing miserably at the world. It is easily dispatched with the administration of salt and a prayer, usually grateful for the execution.
STAVE TWO
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. The severity of his sudden motion suddenly caught up with his thick head and he paused with his hands on his knees, willing the pounding to abate. After a goodly time, he managed to right himself and he was obliged to rub the window frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because “Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over, and 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. The man had fought bravely by his side against all variety of ghouls and evil spirits. That he might have become one himself seemed incomprehensible. Every time Scrooge resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it had been some imposter, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, “Was it truly Marley’s Ghost or not?”
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.
“Ding, dong!”
“A quarter past,” said Scrooge, counting.
“Ding, dong!”
“Half past,” said Scrooge.
“Ding, dong!”
“A quarter to it,” said Scrooge.
“Ding, dong!”
“The hour itself,” said Scrooge triumphantly, “and nothing else!”
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white, as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand: and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there 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.”
“I have never heard of such a creature. Are you here to help? Or to hurt?” inquired Scrooge.
“Not every creature presented itself to you in
the course of your occupation. As such, we have not been previously acquainted since my business is with the past.”
“Then why are you here, now, Spirit?”
“Did Marley not explain? There are lessons in the past. You must learn them if you are going to stop repeating them.”
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?” For a moment, the Ghost flickered in its light, his eyes drawing together in a narrow countenance and lips drew tight. In a blink this visage was gone, and the Ghost continued sweetly, “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 willfully “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 made it his policy not to go anywhere with creatures of the underworld. 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 its robe in supplication.
Ebenezer Scrooge Page 3