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
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
