Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close to home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. Ot was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was whiter.
:Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked scrooge.
“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.”
“To-night!” cried scrooge.
“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.”
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 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?” asked the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked around him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming like a mist along the ground, towards him.
Most of this is condensed or skipped in a brief farewell from the Ghost. Many Scrooges, including Lionel Barrymore in the radio version, are genuinely grieved to see Christmas present pass. The Significant Children are frequently slighted, either because screenwriters feel they will distract from the ghastly phantom to come, or because they agree with Dickens (who slashed much of this from his public readings) because the audiences just won’t go for it.
Hicks, Owen, March, Magoo, Haddrick, Matthau, and McDuck omit this section. Their Ghosts merely leave them.
Rathbone, thoughtful, turns to ask “Where will you take me now?” The Spirit replies that it is time for him to leave. They exchange the remarks about a Spirit’s life being short, and the Ghost notes that his life will end at midnight; when a clock strikes, he looks up. “Mark what you have seen,” he commands, and vanishes. Scrooge folds his hands, as if in prayer, and, looking up, also vanishes.
Finney looks around and finds himself in front of his house. “Yes, Scrooge,” says the Ghost, “I have brought you home.” “You’re not going!” Scrooge cries, earnestly upset. “My life on this little planet is very brief. I must leave you now.” “But we still have so much to talk about, haven’t we?” The Ghost replies that there is never time enough to do or say all that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the tie that you have. Time is short, and suddenly you’re not there any more. Scrooge wakes under his blanket, struggling toward the light. “Was I dreaming again? I must have been!” He goes into the net room, hunting for the giant or any of the giant’s props. He finds only the bare room and dust. “I must be mad. There are no ghosts. There are no ghosts.” Turning, he pulls up at the sight of something in his bedroom.
A greyer Spirit conducts Caine to a churchyard; the Spirit moves with difficulty and his whiskers are frost-white. But after explaining that his life on Earth is very brief, he laughs, enjoying the experience of aging as much as the rest. He believes his life will end on the stroke of midnight. “Now? But Spirit, I have learned so much from you!” Dickens tell us that nothing Scrooge could do or say would halt the terrible bells. “Oh, Spirit: do not leave me!” “I think I must, in fact.” The Spirit begins to sparkle. “You have meant so much to me! You have changed me!” “And now I leave you with the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.” “You mean…the future? Must I?” “Go forth, and know him better, man!” Laughing at that last joke, the Ghost vanishes, leaving a brief outline of sparkles.
Curry cannot see the Ghost, who has pulled into a shadow. She emerges from it whitehaired and wrinkled; her voice rasps. She explains that her stay on this Earth is very brief. The clock strikes three times. “Are spirits’ lives so short?” “Farewell, Ebenezer Scrooge.” She vanishes, and as Scrooge reaches for her, the house disappears as well, leaving him in darkness.
Sim I takes us to a poorhouse instead of a prison; here we see Alice (this version’s Belle, remember) working as a volunteer. Scrooge calls to her; the Spirit reproves him for having cut himself off from his fellow beings when he lost the love of this gentle creature. They move to a street. “Where are you taking me now?” “My time with you Ebenezer, is nearly done. Will you profit by what I have shown you of the good in most men’s hearts?” “I don’t know. How can I promise?” “If it’s too hard a lesson for you to learn, then learn this lesson.” He opens his robe; two children, nearly naked, look up listlessly. “Are they yours?” The Ghost replies with a brief version of the textual explanation. Scrooge buries his face in his hands at the first re[petition of “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” Finding himself suddenly alone except for echoing repetitions of these questions, he runs, covering his ears. He stops in terror at the sight of an uplifted hand.
Sim II now has the Ghost completely white-haired, still a giant. “My life upon this globe is very brief; it ends tonight, at midnight.” “Forgive me, but I…I…I see something strange.” The Ghost points to him, and, thoroughly scowling now, says “Look here! Look! Look! Look here!” He reveals two hollow-eyed spectres with talons, long teeth, long toes: the boy is the more demonic of the two, while the girl is more a large-eyed starving waif. We are given an abbreviated explanation of what they are. Scrooge asks if they have no refuge, and winces when the Spirit quotes him. The clock strikes and the Spirit vanishes.
Scott is shown people living under a bridge. A small family, huddling around a fire, is trying to make a meal of eggs. The man is bitter about their situation; he says he would work if he could find work, an obvious reference to Scrooge’s earlier declaration about making idle people merry. “Why ae these people here?” Scrooge demands: “Men and women in rags, children eating scraps: there are institutions.” “Have you visited any of them, these institutions you speak of?” “No, but I’m taxed for them. Isn’t that enough?” “Is it?” The husband, well-spoken and apparently healthy, has become desperate enough to go to the poorhouse, where men and women are housed separately. His wife won’t hear of the family breaking up this way. “We’re together.” Scrooge grows stone-faced, refusing to sympathize. “What has this to do with me?” “Are they not of the human race?” the Spirit demands, voice booming now, “Look here, beneath my robe!” Scraggly children with haunted eyes look out. “What are they?” “They are your children. They are the children of all who walk the earth unseeing.” He goes on with the speech of explanation, emphasizing Doom. “Have they no refuge,” Scrooge inquires, “No resource?” The Ghost smiles. “Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?” Scrooge tries, without much success, to smile back. “Cover them. I do not wish to see them.” “I thought as much.” The Ghost closes his robes. “They are hidden. But they live. Oh, thy live.” He announces that the time has come for him to leave Scrooge. “Leave me? Leave me here?” The Ghost smiles. “Oh, yes.” “You can’t do that. Take me home to my bed.” The Ghost laughs, “It’s too late.” “It’s cold, the place is strange…please don’t leave me.” There is another laugh, a shining light, and the Spirit is gone. “Spirit!” Scrooge cries, angry. “Come back! I wish to talk!” Receiving no answer, he walks along the river, admitting that he may have made mistakes here and there, spoken too quickly about things to which he had given little thought, but they could have come to some working arrangement. “Spirit, have pity on me. Don’t leave me.” There is still no answer. He sits. “What have I done to be abandoned like this? Why? Why?” The mist over the river bubbles and thickens. Light approaches from the far end of the bridge, revealing a figure. Scrooge looks up and sees it.
Stewart is taken to a prison, where the Ghost, throwing him a look of defiance, tosses his watery blessing over a prisoner, who takes up a tin whistle and starts to play “The First Noel”. One prisoner and then another start to sing along. This does not create a warm, cozy holiday, but does bring a moment of music to the dark, cold, cheerless place. The Ghost, haggard now, walks slowly away through what looks like a Victorian parking garage, empty and silent. He announces that his time on this Earth is limited. Scrooge inquires about what he sees under the Spirit’s robes. “Is it a foot or a claw?” The Ghost is weary in response, but reveals what appear to be starving vampire children. The Ghost has to hold them back when they see Scrooge, and explains them, pausing now and again to gasp for breath, of which he is desperately short. At the sound of a bell, Ghost and children are gone. Scrooge, terrified, jogs away through empty streets.
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