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."
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 bye-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 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 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!Serve him right. I'm glad of it.What business had he to be married to the Princess!"
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 business friends in the city, indeed.
"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and yellow tail,with a thing like a 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 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, 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.