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A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
C D
P : 1843
S : :// . .
Chatham, N.J.
C 1M ’ G
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 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 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
of 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 fire-place 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 fire-place, 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
own 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 his 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 his 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?"
To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment,
would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.
"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," 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. "Thankee!"
"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
doorstep. 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.
C 2T F O T T
S
Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room
was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his
own, to make amends in!
"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge
repeated as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall
strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven and the Christmas Time
be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that
his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been
sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet
with tears.
"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed-
curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all. They are
here—I am here—the shadows of the things that would have been
may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!"
His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them
inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying
them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.
"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in
the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his
stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I
am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A
merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!
Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there:
perfectly winded.
"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge,
starting off again, and going round the fire-place. "There's the door
by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner
where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! There's the window
where I saw the wandering Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all
happened. Ha, ha, ha!"
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years,
it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long,
long line of brilliant laughs!
"I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge. "I don't
know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don't know anything.
I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo!
Whoop! Hallo here!"
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the
lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; ding, dong,
bell! Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog,
no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to
dance to; Golden sun-light; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry
bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!
"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in
Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
"Eh?" returned the boy with all his might of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, Christmas Day."
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it.
The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they
like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
"Hallo!" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's in the next street but one, at the
corner?" Scrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you
know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up
there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?"
"What! the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to
him. Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell
'em to bring it here, that I may give them the directions where to take
it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back
with him in less than five minutes, and I'll give you half-a-crown!"
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a
trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered Scrooge, rubbing his
hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it. It's
twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as
sending it to Bob's will be!"
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one; but
write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street-
door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's man. As he stood there,
waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye.
"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his
hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression
it has in its face! It's a wonderful knocker!—Here's the Turkey. Hallo!
Whoop! How are you? Merry Christmas!"
It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that
bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of
sealing-wax.
"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge.
"You must have a cab."
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he
paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab,
and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be
exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his
chair again, and chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake
very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don't
dance while you are at it. But, if he had cut the end of his nose off,
he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite
satisfied.
He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the
streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen
them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and, walking with his
hands behind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted
smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four
good-humoured fellows said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas
to you!" And Scrooge said often afterwards that, of all the blithe
sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
He had not gone far when, coming on towards him, he beheld the
portly gentleman who had walked into his counting-house the day
before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?" It sent a pang
across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him
when they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and
he took it.
"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the
old gentleman by both his hands, "how do you do? I hope you
succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to
you, sir!"
"Mr. Scrooge?"
"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be
pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the
goodness——" Here Scrooge whispered in his ear.
"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken
away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many
back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that
favour?"
"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him, "I don't know
what to say to such munifi——"
"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come and see
me. Will you come and see me?"
"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do it.
"Thankee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you
fifty times. Bless you!"
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the
people hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and
questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses,
and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him
pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—
could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his
steps towards his nephew's house.
He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to
go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it.
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice
girl! Very.
"Yes sir."
"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll show you up-
stairs, if you please."
"Thankee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on
the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round the door. They
were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for
these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and
like to see that everything is right.
"Fred!" said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had
forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the
footstool, or he wouldn't have done it on any account.
"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me
in, Fred?"
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at
home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked
just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister
when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party,
wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early
there! If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming
late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter
past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his
time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him
come into the tank.
His hat was off before he opened the door; his comforter too. He
was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were
trying to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he
could feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of
day?"
"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."
"You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way,
sir, if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the tank.
"It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge. "I am not going to
stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued,
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat
that he staggered back into the tank again: "and therefore I am about
to raise your salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a
momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and
calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge with an earnestness that
could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier
Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a
year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling
family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a
Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires and buy
another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more;
and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He
became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as
the good old City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough
in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in
him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise
enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good,
at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset;
and, knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought
it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins as have
the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that
was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total-
Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of him
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive
possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!