Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever
about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk,
the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was
good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is
particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the
wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not
disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat,
emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his
sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary
legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so
dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business
on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from.
There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not
perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would
be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind,
upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman
rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard
for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years
afterwards, above the ware-house 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 grindstone, 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
dog-days; 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 blindmen'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 to-morrow.''
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 greeting 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 resumed 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 overflowings 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 might
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 tomorrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and
the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
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 tomorrow, 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 have 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-year's 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 upon 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 of 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, bed-room, 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 has 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-guard, 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 night-cap; 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,
Pharaoh's 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.
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.''
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
in-doors, 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 fellow-men, 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 opportunities
misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!''
``But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,'' faultered 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 to-morrow, 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.
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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