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Scrooge
never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above
the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and
Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and
sometimes Marley, but he
answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh!
But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing,
wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and
sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him
froze his old features, nipped
his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes
red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A
frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He
carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External
heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no
wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling
snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to
entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and
snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one
respect. They often `came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody
ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, `My dear
Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?' No beggars implored him
to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or
woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place,
of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they
saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
then would wag their tails as though they said, `No eye at all is better
than an evil eye, dark master!'
But
what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along
the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was
what the knowing ones call `nuts' to Scrooge.
Once
upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old
Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house.
It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the
people in the court outside, go
wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping
their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only
just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all
day -- and candles were flaring in
the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable
brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so
dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses
opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down,
obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and
was brewing on a large scale.
The
door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon
his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying
letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very
much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for
Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came
in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them
to part. Wherefore the clerk
put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in
which effort, not being a man
of a strong imagination, he failed.
`A
merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!' cried a cheerful voice. It was the
voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the
first intimation he had of his approach.
`Bah!'
said Scrooge, `Humbug!'
He
had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew
of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome;
his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. `Christmas a humbug, uncle!'
said Scrooge's nephew. `You don't mean that, I am sure?'
`I
do,' said Scrooge. `Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What
reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.'
`Come,
then,' returned the nephew gaily. `What right have you to be dismal? What
reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.'
Scrooge
having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said `Bah!' again;
and followed it up with `Humbug.'
`Don't
be cross, uncle!' said the nephew.
`What
else can I be,' returned the uncle, `when I live in such a world of fools as
this? Merry Christmas! Out upon
merry Christmas! What's Christmas time
to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding
yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your
books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented
dead against you? If I could work my will,' said Scrooge indignantly, `every
idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be
boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his
heart. He should!'
`Uncle!'
pleaded the nephew.
`Nephew!'
returned the uncle sternly, `keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.'
`Keep
it!' repeated Scrooge's nephew. `But you don't keep it.'
`Let
me leave it alone, then,' said Scrooge. `Much good may it do you! Much good
it has ever done you!'
`There
are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not
profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. `Christmas among the rest. But I
am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due
to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from
that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the
only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women
seem by one consent to open
their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they
really were fellow-passengers
to the grave, and not another race of
creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!'
The
clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of
the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark
for ever.
`Let
me hear another sound from you,' said Scrooge, `and you'll keep your
Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker, sir,'
he added, turning to his nephew. `I wonder you don't go into Parliament.'
`Don't
be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.'
Scrooge
said that he would see him -- yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length
of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
`But
why?' cried Scrooge's nephew. `Why?'
`Why
did you get married?' said Scrooge.
`Because
I fell in love.'
`Because
you fell in love!' growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in
the world more ridiculous than
a merry Christmas. `Good afternoon!'
`Nay,
uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a
reason for not coming now?'
`Good
afternoon,' said Scrooge.
`I
want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?'
`Good
afternoon,' said Scrooge.
`I
am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been
a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my
Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!'
`Good
afternoon,' said Scrooge.
`And
A Happy New Year!'
`Good
afternoon,' said Scrooge.
His
nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at
the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who cold
as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
`There's
another fellow,' muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: `my clerk, with
fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry
Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam.'
This
lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They
were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats
off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and
bowed to him.
`Scrooge
and Marley's, I believe,' said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list.
`Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?'
`Mr.
Marley has been dead these seven years,' Scrooge replied. `He died seven
years ago, this very night.'
`We
have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,'
said the gentleman, presenting his
credentials.
It
certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word
`liberality,' Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the
credentials back.
`At
this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up
a pen, `it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight
provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present
time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of
thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.'
`Are
there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.
`Plenty
of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
`And
the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. `Are they still in operation?'
`They
are. Still,' returned the gentleman, `I wish I could say they were not.'
`The
Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge.
`Both
very busy, sir.'
`Oh!
I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to
stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. `I'm very glad to hear it.'
`Under
the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to
the multitude,' returned the gentleman, `a few of us are endeavouring to
raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink. and means of warmth. We
choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly
felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?'
`Nothing!'
Scrooge replied.
`You
wish to be anonymous?'
`I
wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. `Since you ask me what I wish,
gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I
can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the
establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly
off must go there.'
`Many
can't go there; and many would rather die.'
`If
they would rather die,' said Scrooge, `they had better do it, and decrease
the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.'
`But
you might know it,' observed the gentleman.
`It's
not my business,' Scrooge returned. `It's enough for a man to understand his
own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me
constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!'
Seeing
clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen
withdrew. Scrooge returned his
labours with an improved opinion of himself, and
in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile
the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links,
proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them
on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always
peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became
invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous
vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up
there. The cold became intense. In the main street at the corner of the
court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great
fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered:
warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The
water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and
turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of
the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the
windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers'
trades became a splendid joke; a glorious pageant, with which it was next to
impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had
anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion
House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a
Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined
five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in
the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
"God bless you, merry gentlemen."
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil
Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his
familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as
bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him
with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
`God
bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!'
Scrooge
seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror,
leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
At
length the hour of shutting up the counting- house arrived. With an ill-will
Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the
expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put
on his hat.
`You'll
want all day to-morrow, I suppose?' said Scrooge.
`If
quite convenient, sir.'
`It's
not convenient,' said Scrooge, `and it's not fair. If I was to stop
half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?'
The
clerk smiled faintly.
`And
yet,' said Scrooge, `you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages
for no work.'
The
clerk observed that it was only once a year.
`A
poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!' said
Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. `But I suppose you must have
the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.'
The
clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The
office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his
white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat),
went down a slide on Cornhill, at
the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas
Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at
blindman's-buff.
Scrooge
took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read
all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his
banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once
belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a
lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be,
that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a
young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the
way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in
it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was
so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with
his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of
the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful
meditation on the threshold.
Now,
it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was
very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning,
during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of
what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even
including -- which is a bold word -- the corporation, aldermen, and livery.
Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on
Marley, since his last mention of his seven years' dead partner that
afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened
that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker,
without its undergoing any intermediate process of change -- not a knocker,
but Marley's face.
Marley's
face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard
were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.
It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look:
with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was
curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were
wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made
it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its
control, rather than a part or its own expression.
As
Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To
say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a
terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be
untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it
sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He
did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did
look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with
the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was
nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the
knocker on, so he said `Pooh, pooh!' and closed it with a bang.
The
sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars
below, appeared to have a separate peal of
echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He
fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly
too: trimming his candle as he went.
You
may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of
Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase,
and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door
towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for
that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he
saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen
gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you
may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up
Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge
liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to
see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room,
bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody
under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the
little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob.
Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which
was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as
usual. Old fire-guards, old
shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs,
and a poker.
Quite
satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his
custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his
dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire
to take his gruel.
It
was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged
to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation
of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The
fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant
long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch
tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels,
Pharaohs' daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through
the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting
off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts --
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient
Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a
blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old
Marley's head on every one.
`Humbug!'
said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After
several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair,
his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the
room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was
with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he
looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset
that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every
bell in the house.
This
might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The
bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise,
deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the
casks in the wine merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard
that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The
cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much
louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight
towards his door.
`It's
humbug still!' said Scrooge. `I won't believe it.'
His
colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy
door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the
dying flame leaped up, as though it cried `I know him; Marley's Ghost!' and
fell again.
"I
know him; Marley's Ghost!"
The
same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter
bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his
head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound
about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of
cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in
steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons
on his coat behind.
Scrooge
had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed
it until now.
No,
nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and
through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded
kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed
before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
`How
now!' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. `What do you want with me?'
`Much!'
-- Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
`Who
are you?'
`Ask
me who I was.'
`Who
were you then?' said Scrooge, raising his voice. `You're particular, for a
shade.' He was going to say `to a shade,' but substituted this, as more
appropriate.
`In
life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.'
`Can
you -- can you sit down?' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
`I
can.'
`Do
it, then.'
"Marley's ghost"
Scrooge
asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent
might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the
event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an
embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the
fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
`You
don't believe in me,' observed the Ghost.
`I
don't.' said Scrooge.
`What
evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?'
`I
don't know,' said Scrooge.
`Why
do you doubt your senses?'
`Because,'
said Scrooge, `a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach
makes them cheats. You may be
an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment
of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy
than of grave about you, whatever you are!'
Scrooge
was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart,
by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a
means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the
spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To
sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would
play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful,
too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.
Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though
the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were
still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
`You
see this toothpick?' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the
reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to
divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
`I
do,' replied the Ghost.
`You
are not looking at it,' said Scrooge.
`But
I see it,' said the Ghost, `notwithstanding.'
`Well!'
returned Scrooge, `I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my
days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I
tell you! humbug!'
At
this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a
dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save
himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when
the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to
wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Scrooge
fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
`Mercy!'
he said. `Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?'
`Man
of the worldly mind!' replied the Ghost, `do you believe in me or not?'
`I
do,' said Scrooge. `I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do
they come to me?'
`It
is required of every man,' the Ghost returned, `that the spirit within him
should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that
spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is
doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it
cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!'
Again
the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
`You
are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. `Tell me why?'
`I
wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. `I made it link by
link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own
free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?'
Scrooge
trembled more and more.
`Or
would you know,' pursued the Ghost, `the weight and length of the strong
coil you bear yourself? It was
full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have
laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!'
Scrooge
glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation
of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable:
but he could see nothing.
`Jacob,'
he said, imploringly. `Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me,
Jacob!'
`I
have none to give,' the Ghost replied. `It comes from other regions,
Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men.
Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me.
I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never
walked beyond our counting-house -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never
roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary
journeys lie before me!'
It
was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in
his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now,
but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
`You
must have been very slow about it, Jacob,' Scrooge observed, in a
business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
`Slow!'
the Ghost repeated.
`Seven
years dead,' mused Scrooge. `And travelling all the time!'
`The
whole time,' said the Ghost. `No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of
remorse.'
`You
travel fast?' said Scrooge.
`On
the wings of the wind,' replied the Ghost.
`You
might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,' said
Scrooge.
The
Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so
hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been
justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
`Oh!
captive, bound, and double-ironed,' cried the phantom, `not to know, that
ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass
into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed.
Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere,
whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means
of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one
life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'
`But
you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now
began to apply this to himself.
`Business!'
cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. `Mankind was my business. The
common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and
benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of
my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my
business!'
It
held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its
unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
`At
this time of the rolling year,' the spectre said `I suffer most. Why did I
walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never
raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were
there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'
Scrooge
was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began
to quake exceedingly.
`Hear
me!' cried the Ghost. `My time is nearly gone.'
`I
will,' said Scrooge. `But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob!
Pray!' `How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can
see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.'
It
was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from
his brow.
`That
is no light part of my penance,' pursued the Ghost. `I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet
a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring,
Ebenezer.'
`You
were always a good friend to me,' said Scrooge. `Thank 'ee!'
`You
will be haunted,' resumed the Ghost, `by Three Spirits.'
Scrooge's
countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.
`Is
that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?' he demanded, in a faltering
voice.
`It
is.'
`I
-- I think I'd rather not,' said Scrooge.
`Without
their visits,' said the Ghost, `you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.
Expect the first tomorrow, when
the bell tolls One.'
`Couldn't
I take `em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?' hinted Scrooge.
`Expect
the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night
when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no
more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between
us!'
When
it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and
bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound
its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He
ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor
confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about
its arm.
The
apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window
raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide
open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within
two paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to
come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not
so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the
hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of
lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the
mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge
followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The
air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless
haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together;
none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He
had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a
monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being
unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a
door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to
interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
"The air was filled with phantoms"
Whether
these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell.
But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as
it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge
closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It
was double-locked, as he had
locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to
say `Humbug!' but stopped at
the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the
fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull
conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of
repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the
instant.
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