To increase the jolly christmas feeling we will now supply you with the first
chapter from the A christmas Carol story by Charles Dickens. Its about the
charity one should withold during his life... or something. Read the first
chapter and see if it interests you!
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Chapter 1 - Marleys 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 Scrooges 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 dont 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 Countrys 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 dont 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 Marleys 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 Hamlets
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 Pauls Churchyard for instance -- literally to
astonish his sons weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marleys 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 oclock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way
to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmens 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 Scrooges 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 clerks fire was so very much smaller
that it looked like one coal. But he couldnt 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 Scrooges 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 Scrooges, 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 Scrooges nephew.
You dont 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? Youre
poor enough.
Come, then, returned the nephew gaily. What right
have you to be dismal? what reason have you to be morose?
Youre rich enough.
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the
moment, said, Bah! again and followed it up with
Humbug.
Dont 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. Whats 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 Scrooges nephew. But you dont
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 youll keep your Christmas by losing your situation.
Youre quite a powerful speaker, sir, he added, turning to
his nephew. I wonder you dont go into Parliament.
Dont 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 Scrooges 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
Ill 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.
Theres another fellow, muttered Scrooge who
overheard him: my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and
a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. Ill
retire to Bedlam.
This lunatic, in letting Scrooges nephew out, had let two
other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to
behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooges
office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to
him.
Scrooge and Marleys, 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. Im 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
dont make merry myself at Christmas and I cant 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 cant 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 dont know that.
But you might know it, observed the gentleman.
Its not my business, Scrooge returned. Its
enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to
interfere with other peoples. 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 Mayors 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
tomorrows 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 Spirits 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
Scrooges 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.
Youll want all day tomorrow, I suppose? said
Scrooge.
If quite convenient, Sir.
Its not convenient, said Scrooge, and its not
fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, youd think
yourself ill-used, I ll be bound?
The clerk smiled faintly.
And yet, said Scrooge, you dont think
me ill-used, when I pay a days wages for no
work.
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
A poor excuse for picking a mans 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 blindmans 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 bankers-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-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 Marleys
face.
Marleys 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 moments 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 Marleys 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-merchants 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 wouldnt
have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was
pretty dark with Scrooges 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, 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 Prophets 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 Marleys 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-merchants 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.
Its humbug still! said Scrooge. I wont 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! Marleys 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! -- Marleys voice, no doubt about it.
Who are you?
Ask me who I was.
Who were you then. said Scrooge, raising
his voice.
Youre 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 didnt 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 dont believe in me, observed the Ghost.
I dont, said Scrooge.
What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of
your senses?
I dont 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. Theres 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 spectres 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 spectres 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
visions 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 lifes
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 arms 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 dont be hard upon me!
Dont 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.
Thankee!
You will be haunted, resumed the Ghost, by Three
Spirits.
Scrooges countenance fell almost as low as the Ghosts had
done.
Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? he
demanded, in a faltering voice.
It is.
I -- I think Id 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.
Couldnt 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, Marleys 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 Marleys 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.