A Christmas Carol (AQA GCSE English Literature)

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 ’em up: what then?  The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” 

“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 Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached.  When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.  

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand.  But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded. 

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread.  He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.  

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” said Scrooge. The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand. 

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”  The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.  That was the only answer he received.  

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it.  The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.  

But Scrooge was all the worse for this.  It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.  “Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen.  But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart.  Will you not speak to me?” 

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle. 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed: “A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!” 

Which all the family re-echoed. 

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all. 

He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him. 

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth couldwarm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmen's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his

way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its

distance, was what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at

the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself,

protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply.

“Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful,

hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its

garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but

prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their

features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand,

like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds.

Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing.

No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all

the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried

to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be

parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to

me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want.

Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on

his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!”

cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it

ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his

own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

The bell struck twelve.

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.”