A CHRISTMAS CAROL
PART 1
A
CHRISTMAS CAROL
IN PROSE
BEING
A
Ghost Story of Christmas
BY
CHARLES DICKENS
PREFACE
I HAVE
endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which
shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with
the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish
to lay it.
Their
faithful Friend and Servant,
C. D.
December, 1843.
STAVE ONE
MARLEY’S GHOST
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 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 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
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 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 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 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
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.
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 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,
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-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 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, 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 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 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 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.
THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS.
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 endeavouring to pierce the darkness with
his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring 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; then
stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An
icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!
He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct
this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve: and stopped.
“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 with
the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see
very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and
extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and
making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had
beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great
relief, because “three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr.
Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United
States’ security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, 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 endeavoured 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 passed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go
to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once
convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At
length it broke upon his listening ear.
“Ding, dong!”
“A quarter past,” said Scrooge, counting.
“Ding, dong!”
“Half-past!” said Scrooge.
“Ding, dong!”
“A quarter to it,” said Scrooge.
“Ding, dong!”
“The hour itself,” said Scrooge, triumphantly, “and
nothing else!”
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now
did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed up in the room
upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
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, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself
face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am
now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
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. Its legs and feet,
most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. 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,
in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, 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, by which all this was
visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller
moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
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, 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 gloom wherein they melted away.
To be continued
