“I am a mortal still,” Scrooge remonstrated, “and liable to fall. Is this your purpose?”
“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!” The coldness of the Spirit’s touch froze all words and protests on Scrooge’s lips. For a moment it seemed his very heart had stopped dead in his chest and the silence thundered in his ears.
The Spirit dragged him forward and 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 the 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!” He rounded on the Spirit with a sharp look. “What business do you have in bringing me to this place?”
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its cold touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling, making him wary and somewhat short of breath. 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 slyly. “And what is that upon your cheek?”
“You are unkind,” Scrooge muttered, “to use a man so.” Clearing his voice he continued louder, “Since we are here, we should be about this business, just to see an end of it, if nothing else!”
“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. You cannot warn them of the events to come.”
“And you cannot intervene in what was?”
The Spirit nodded stonily.
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 by-ways for their several homes? What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him?
“The school is not quite deserted,” said the Ghost. “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.”
Scrooge said he knew it. And a sadness he thought he had long extinguished bloomed again to weigh heavily on his countenance.
They left the high-road by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weather-cock surmounted cupola on the roof and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes: for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state within; for, entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthly 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 the innocence he had once possessed and was doomed to lose again.
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 storehouse door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
“Why, it’s Ali Baba!” Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. “It’s dear old wise 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! This,” Scrooge exclaimed, “was the real tutor of my youth! Not one month hence, an ill creature will appear in the drawing room, bent on tempting the young lad to ruin, and Ali Baba will dispatch it. I fastened myself to him and his teachings after that.”
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 public house acquaintances in the City, indeed.
“There’s the Crow!” cried Scrooge. “Black as night and cross from the day he was hatched. There he is, he would soon as pick your fingers clean as eat the proffered scraps – but never a better hunting companion, was he. One night his caw alerted us to an apparition as it was about to get the upper hand! The bird ate well that night, I tell you. “
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 forever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home
; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. And you’re to be a man!” said the child, opening her eyes; “and are never to come back here; but first we’re to be together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world.”
Scrooge, the elder, remembered this moment well. Ali Baba, perhaps had seen the touch of evil upon Scrooge’s life first, before the ill spirit ever came to him in the drawing room. Years of training, of listening to Scrooge’s tale, one day Ali Baba had silently disappeared, taking Crow with him on a solitary mission. When he returned, several weeks later, his already rough face had gained a fresh mark and Crow was gone for good. But Ali Baba had assured him the possession of his father had come to an end. And with it, soon, his solitary exile.
Still, young Scrooge could not quite believe his sister had come to collect him!
Fan 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 loath 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 installments 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 (Scrooge with a mix of feelings); 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, “never touched by the evils that tormented you.”
“Does she rest easy, Spirit?”
“She will not come visiting, as Mr. Marley has.” The Ghost paused before venturing, “She had a child, did she not?”
“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! Jacob!”
Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-’prentice.
“Jacob Marley, to be sure!” said Scrooge to the Ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. He looks so young, a child really in adult clothes!”
“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas-eve, Jacob. 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 Jacob! 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 stomachaches. 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, any how and every how. 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.”
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side 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.
Too roused by the events of the evening, the two lads tidied the room and set it back to order. Jacob, catching a whiff of a burning candle, scaled his way to the top of the room and all the way to Fezziwigs high desk to
find the offending taper and put snuff to it. There, the lad paused, and his hands began to shake.
“Ebie,” said young Marley, his voice queer.
“How now, Jacob? You going to set the place ablaze?” Scrooge cheerfully shouted up to his friend.
“Did we not see the fiddler leave?” Marley inquired, his voice beginning to shake.
“Aye, the man could play like Old Hob, true.”
“Come here and check my eyes.”
Curious, young Scrooge scaled his way to Jacob and there the two looked down on the prone body of the dead fiddler. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in a silent scream and his fingers, what remained of them, smoked. The man was quite rightly dead, and by unnatural means as well.
Quickly taking charge, Scrooge bent to examine the body, using the skills he had learned at his other apprenticeship with Ali Baba. He noted the slight bruising at the wrist, the early appearance of stiffness and odor of sulfur emanating from the body. All the while he spoke to Marley, explaining about ghouls and unnatural creatures of darkness.
“If the man was killed here,” Jacob ventured, “then what walked out wearing his face not an hour hence?”
“A doppelganger of some sort, to be sure,” Scrooge stood and dusted his hands on his trousers. “We will need to catch the creature and put it paid, for the fiddler, if not its next victim.” The two lads were soon head together, conspiring to trap and dispatch the foul spirit.
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 Jacob 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.
Ebenezer Scrooge Page 4