When we think of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol we are likely to remember Ebenezer Scrooge, the most famous miser of them all and how three ghosts gave him insight and the ability to find his heart again after so many years of burying it under greed and avarice.

But it’s the Ghost of Christmas Past who shows us the true Scrooge, the young boy who was alone at school and unwanted at home. We see Scrooge as a young man, clerk to the jovial and kind Fezziwig, before money became his god. Finally we see a Scrooge that is often overlooked in the story - Scrooge in love.

The ghost returns Scrooge to the day his fiancee, Belle, told him that she could no longer hold to their promise to marry. The scene is particularly heart-breaking because we feel as Belle feels, that Scrooge no longer loves her with his whole heart but that his worldly pursuits have the greatest hold on him, and love for money has replaced love for others in his heart. She tells him that she has been replaced in his affections.

“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.”

We want to feel Scrooge’s heartbreak, but we are not sure, as she is not, that he truly regrets the break-up.

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? Ah, 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 to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl — you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh 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 - the memory of what is past half 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 have chosen.”

It is not until we see her again, with her daughter and husband that we begin to know Scrooge’s pain. He cries to the Spirit “Why do you delight to torture me?”

We know that Scrooge never married. Was it because his all-consuming pursuit of riches didn’t allow him time to woo and wed a wife? Or could it be that he did truly love Belle and throughout his life his heart could not be re-awakened by any other love?

Perhaps this only served to make his heart harder and more bitter, as he lived without the love that was once so freely given to him but was withdrawn out of fear of what he was becoming.