A Christmas Carrol

 

Seite 2.)

                         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
                        over-flowings 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

 

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