A CHRISTMAS CAROL (IN PROSE BEING, A Ghost Story of Christmas)
by Charles Dickens
(OCF editing – Part 9)
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
- 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 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! 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 ’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, Dick! Chirrup,
Ebenezer!”
Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared
away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking
- 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 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.
Charles Dickens