Dateline Originals - Morrison Mysteries - A Christmas Carol Ep. 2: The First of the Three Spirits

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

The Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge and takes him back to his own childhood. He’s reminded that he was shown kindness as a young man, and had even been in love, before his greed took over. This episode was originally published on December 11, 2023

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is episode two of A Christmas Carol. Old Ebenezer Scrooge has just had the fright of his life. He's been visited by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley tells Scrooge he's been roaming the earth since the very day of his death, haunted by his own story of stinginess and greed. He'd like to change it all, but it's too late now. And he warns Scrooge that he, too, is destined for a tortured afterlife if he doesn't mend his ways.

As if all that isn't enough, the Ghost of Marley announces that Scrooge will be visited again by three more ghosts, beginning when the clock strikes one. We pick up our story as Ebenezer wakes from a fitful sleep, confused, and, as Dickens writes, with one eye on the clock. 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 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 and from seven to eight and regularly up to twelve and then stopped. Twelve? It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have gotten into the works. Twelve? 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 of 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 foggy and extremely cold,

and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day and taken possession of the world. Scrooge went to bed again, and thought and thought and thought it over and over and thought, and thought, and thought it over, and over, and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was, and the more he endeavored 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 released 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 past. He was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously and missed the clock, but at length it broke upon his listening ear. The hour itself, said Scrooge triumphantly, and nothing else.

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which now it did, with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy one. Light flashed up in the room upon the deep, dull, hollow, melancholy one. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and 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 found himself face to face with

the unearthly visitor who drew them. 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 proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age, 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. 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 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. 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 and 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 bloom 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. No, your past. 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 and dressing gown and nightcap, and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grass, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose, but finding that the spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.

I am a mortal, Scrooge remonstrated, and liable to fall. There, 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 instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors 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. "'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 blindfolded. Could it be that Ebenezer actually possesses feelings, after all, and a visit to his boyhood home would suddenly warm the coldest of hearts? Oh, if only it were that simple. They walked along the road,

Scrooge recognizing 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 on 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 Oz. The happy travelers came on, and as they came, Scrooge knew and named every one of them. 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 crossroads and byways for their several homes. What was Merry Christmas to Scrooge? 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 tubula on the roof and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes, for the spacious

rooms 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. Entering the dreary hall and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, vast. There was an earthy savor in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candlelight 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. A lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire, and Scrooge wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be. The spirit touched him on the arm and pointed to his younger self intent upon his reading, and 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, a donkey 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. 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 its head. There he is. Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. Then, with a rapidity of transition

very foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity of 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, and 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. 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 toward 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 to me gently 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 again. But first we're to be together all the Christmas long and have the merriest time in 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 toward the door, and he 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. Master Scrooge's trunk, being by this time tied to the top of the carriage, the children bade the schoolmaster goodbye, right willingly.

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. 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. I was 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 Fezzerwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezzerwig alive again! Old Fezzerwig 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 apprentice. 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 Fezzerwig. No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Poor Dick, dear, dear. Yo-ho, my boys, said Fezzerwig. No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up, cried old Fezzerwig with a sharp

clap of his hands. You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters. One, two, three, they had them up in their places. Four, five, six, barred them and pinned them. Seven, eight, nine, and came back before you could have got to twelve panting like racehorses. Hilly-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. 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. 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 ballroom as you would desire to see on a winter's night. In came a fiddler with a music book. In came Mrs. Fezzerwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezzerwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they stole. 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 bored enough from his master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door, but one who was suspected of not having bored 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 every how. And away they all went, twenty couples at once, hand half round and back again the other way, down the middle and up again, round and round. There were more dances and more dances, and there was cake, and there was a great piece of cold roast, and there were mince pies and plenty of beer.

But the great effect of the evening came after the roast. When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezzerwig 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 apprentices, 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 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 Fezzerwig. 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 them up. What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune. He felt the spirit's glance and stopped. What is the matter? asked the ghost. Nothing particular, said Scrooge. Something, I think, the ghost insisted. No, said Scrooge. No, I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now.

That's all. His former self turned down the lamps, and Scrooge and the ghost again stood side by side in the open air. My time grows short, observed the spirit. Quick! This was not addressed to Scrooge or to anyone 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. Oh, there would be no more Fezziwig now. What Ebenezer is going to see now is not nearly as heartwarming. Oh no, not at all. The Spirit from the Past is about to show Ebenezer himself as a young adult. He's with a young woman named Belle,

his fiancée, in fact. She had once loved him, but she is going to tell him he has changed, for he has a new mistress, money. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here again,

the words of Charles Dickens. He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a morning 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 toward 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 have I thought of this, I will not say.

It is enough that I have thought of it and can release you. Have I ever sought release? In words, no, never. In what, then? In a changed nature, in an altered spirit, in another atmosphere of life, another hope as its great end, in everything that made my love any worth or value in your sight, if this had never been between us, said the girl, looking mildly but with steadiness upon him, tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now?

Oh, no. He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of himself, but he said, with a struggle, you think not. I would gladly think otherwise if I could, she answered. Heaven knows. When I have learned a truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl? You who in your very confidence with her, weighing everything by gain, or choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do, and I release you with a full heart for the love of him you once were.

He was about to speak, but with her head turned from him, she resumed. You may, and the memory of what his past have makes me hope you will have pain in this. A very, very brief time. And you will dismiss the recollection of it gladly as an unprofitable dream from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you've chosen. She left him, and they parted. Spirit, said Scrooge, show me no more. Conduct me home.

Why do you delight to torture me? One shadow more, exclaimed the ghost. No more, cried Scrooge. No more. I don't wish to see it. Show me no more. But the relentless ghost pinioned him in both his arms and forced him to observe what happened next.

They were in another scene and place, a room not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief, but no one seemed to care.

On the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily and enjoyed it very much. And the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. But I would not have given to be one of them. But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne toward it in the center of a flushed and boisterous group,

just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on that defenseless porter, the scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets to spoil him of brown paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck,

pummel his back, kick his legs in irrepressible affection. The shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package was received, the terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey glued on a wooden platter. The immense relief of finding this was a false alarm. The joy and gratitude and ecstasy, they're all indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the parlor and by one stare at a time up to the top of the house where they went to bed and so subsided. And now Scrooge looked

on more attentively than ever when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside. And when he thought that such another creature quite as graceful and as full of promise might have called him father, and had been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed. "'Bell,' said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "'I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.' "'Who was it?' "'Guess.' "'How can I? I don't know,' she added, in the same breath, laughing as he laughed.

"'Mr. Scrooge.' "'Mr. Scrooge! Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window, as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside. I could scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear, and there he sat, alone, quite alone in the world, I do believe. Spirit, said Scrooge in a broken voice, remove me from this place. I told you these were shadows of the things that have been, said the ghost. That they are what they are, do not blame me. Remove me, Scrooge exclaimed. I cannot bear it. He turned upon the ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face in which,

in some strange way, there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it. Leave me. Take me back! Haunt me no more! He was conscious of being exhausted and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness and further, of being in his own bedroom. His hand relaxed and had barely time to reel to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep. He sees it now, to Scrooge, the happiness that could have been his if only he thought less of his wallet and more of his heart. But his torments are not over. They are

just beginning.