A Christmas Carol — Stave Two : The First of the Three Spirits (part 1)
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 endeavoring to pierce
the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the
chimes of a neighboring church struck the four
quarters. So he listened for the hour.
To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went
on from six to seven, 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 he 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 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 en-
deavored 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 re-
leased, to its first position, and presented 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 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 in-
stant, 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 propor-
tions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and
down its back, was white as if with age; and
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, on 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 toward the window, clasping its
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 instanta-
neous, appeared still present to the old man's
sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thou-
sand odors floating tin the air, each one con-
nected 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 fervor;
"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 recog-
nized 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
toward 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 con-
sciousness of us."
The jocund travelers 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 byways, 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 cu-
pola, on the large 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 savor 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 paneling,
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 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!
Serves him right. I'm glad of it. What busi-
ness had he to be married to the Princess!"
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness
of his nature on such subjects, in a most extra-
ordinary 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 lettuce
growing out of the top of his head; there he is!
Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he
came home again after sailing round the island.
'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming,
but he wasn't. It was the Parrot, you know.
There goes Friday, running for his life to the
little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
Then with a rapidity of transition very for-
eign 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 dry-
ing 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 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!"
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
Robert K. Haas, Inc., Publishers, New York, N.Y.
Little Leather Edition, pp. 32 - 42
Posted Jul 25, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC · edited
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