Saving Mr. Scrooge

by Aine Dyer

  Marley watched excitedly as Scrooge did pause, with a moment’s hesitation, before he slammed the door; and the old man did look cautiously behind it first, like 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 loud echo of the door shattered the silence through the house sending it scurrying into the walls. Scrooge was not deterred by the echoes (Marley knew this) and turned slowly with his candle to the climb the stairs.

  As he approached the third and fourth step, Scrooge peered over his candle into the darkness and, as Marley could see, saw a strange iridescent locomotive hearse going before him in the gloom. Up the stairs Scrooge went not caring a button about that. Just before Ebenezer entered the bedroom he did a safety pass through all the other rooms just to make sure everything was quiet. Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should have been: quiet and undisturbed. 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, Scrooge closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his tie; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. But Marley glided right through the door into the room and floated there, invisible, waiting for the moment to reveal himself.

  Marley moved closer to the fireplace and settled into the mantle hoping Scrooge would look in his direction. The tiny fire flickered light onto the tiles revealing a copy of Marley’s head on everyone.

  “Humbug,” said Scrooge peering at the tiles and then getting up and walking across the room. After a few turns of the room he sat down again. Marley, not deterred, saw him throw his head back in the chair and glance up at the bell above him. The same bell that Marley had jingled during his escape from the room when he visited before.

  Marley rose up and started to push the bell gently back-and-forth above Scrooge’s head. Quicker and quicker the bell rang sending a look of dread into Scrooge’s face. Marley stopped his tapping only to be greeted by all of the bells sounding loudly in the entire house!

  Just as the bells stopped, Marley appeared far below in the wine cellar letting all of his cash-boxes, purses, and chains fall to the ground with a huge CRASH! Then doing the best he could to walk up the stairs dragging everything behind him making sure it was loud. He moved his arms in front of him sending the cellar door flying open with a great thundering boom and then Marley, who was no longer accustomed to being angry, swung his cash-boxes up over his head slamming them into the stairs and the wall making a thundering racket.

  He rattled up the stairs slamming his accoutrements here and there. He reached Scrooge’s door and in a slight bit of nervousness he stopped, afraid to see his old friend.

  “You’ll save more than one soul tonight,” he heard Christmas Present’s booming voice echo somewhere out in the night.

  He looked at the door and as if it was the most important business meeting of his previous life, stood straight up and pushed through into the Scrooge’s room.

  He heard Scrooge yell “it’s humbug still! I won’t believe it!”

  Marley saw his color change though, when, without a pause, he came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before Scrooge’s eyes. At that moment the dying fire leapt up as though it cried “I know him! Marley’s ghost!” and fell again reminding Marley exactly where he was going if he failed. He stood in front of Scrooge staring with the same look on his face as the last day Scrooge had seen him, exactly seven years ago this very night.

  Chapter 16

  The End of The Beginning

  December 24th, 1843

  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. Marley made his body 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.

  Marley stared at Scrooge with chilling influence in his black eyes but Scrooge stared back at him with a immovable disbelief.

  “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 ordered Marley. He saw his old chair on the other side of the fire and sat down in it.

  “You don’t believe in me,” said Marley not surprised by this.

  “I don’t,” said Scrooge.

  “What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

  “I don’t know,” said Scrooge.

  “Why do you doubt your senses?”

  “Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

  Marley in life never knew Ebenezer Scrooge to crack one joke ever, but he guessed when terror had grabbed your soul, you would say just about anything to relieve the frightened feeling.

  “You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge.

  “I do,” replied the Ghost.

  “You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge.

  “But I see it,” said Marley, “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!”

  Marley seized on this moment of defiance to open his mouth for a gut-wrenching frightful cry and shook his chain was such a dismal and appalling noise that he saw Scrooge hold tight to his chair to avoid falling out of it. Marley knew this was the moment to increase the terror in Scrooge’s being. When he took off the bandage around his head as if it were too warm to wear indoors, his lower jaw dropped down upon his chest almost to his stomach.

  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 Marley, pulling his jaw back into place, “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 fel
lowmen, 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 Marley raised a terminal cry, and shook its chain and wrung his shadowy hands.

  “You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

  “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied Marley. “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?”

  Marley saw Scrooge’s trembling increase.

  “Or would you know,” pursued Marley, “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 labored on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”

  “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!”

  “You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

  “Slow!” the Marley retorted.

  “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 Marley.

  “You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge.

  Marley, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked his chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the police would have been justified in indicting him for a nuisance.

  “Oh! Captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried Marley, “not to know, that ages of incessant labor by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! Such was I!”

  “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge.

  “Business!” cried Marley, wringing his 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!”

  Marley held up his chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all his unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

  “At this time of the rolling year,” Marley 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 tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.”

  “You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. “Thank’ee!”

  “You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.”

  Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.

  “Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?” he demanded, in a faltering voice.

  “It is.”

  “I—I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge.

  “Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.”

  “Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” hinted Scrooge.

  “Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”

  When he had said these words, Marley gathered up his bandage, rewrapped his head, crunched his teeth together, and tied the bandage on the top. Then he turned and stood in front of Scrooge with his chain wound over and about his arm.

  Marley then floated backwards away from Scrooge and with every movement the ghost made, the window raised up a little, so that when Marley reached it, it was wide open. He beckoned his former partner to approach, which he did. When the two were about two feet apart from each other, Marley held up his hand, warning Scrooge to proceed no longer and Scrooge stopped but could still see through the window. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

  Marley had floated backwards because he didn’t want to be reminded of where he had come from and now, where he had to return. And he wanted to share that with his friend Scrooge to show him what was waiting for him. And in one moment on entering the window, Scrooge’s world was gone, and Marley was back to roaming, at least until Christmas Day, with Robert by his side.

  Epilogue

  December 25, 1843

  Christmas Day was here and Marley paced back and forth in front of his headstone listening to some gray ones try to squeak out Joy to the World. Actually, he hadn’t been able to rest and now the gray sun was rising over the gray horizon and he wondered if his plan had worked. Or had it done anything at all. The night before had been so exciting that although he had paced, now he sat and watched his brother sleep comfortably on the top of his grave. Robert finally woke and sat up smiling when he saw Marley.

  “Nice job with the bells and the fire,” Marley exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “The fire? I didn’t do anything with the fire. But the bells I had some help with,” and he pulled a tiny fig from his robe and showed it to Marley.

  “Ahhh,” Marley nodding his head and smiling. “That’s some heavenly help right there.”

  “So what’s next?” Robert asked.

  “I don’t know,” Marley said. He stood up, turned, and studied his gravestone again as he always did.

  “Jacob, look at that!” Robert said. “Your stone…it’s changing”

  The Psalm that he had had traced with his finger over and over the last seven years disappeared and he watched as something else replaced it.

  Greater has no one than this,

  that he lay down his life for his friends.

  �
��John 15:13

  And the etching came to an end with a small tufts of granite dust sitting on the ground in front of the tombstone.

  “Jacob! That must mean that it worked!”

  “I guess,” Marley said staring at the verse. He didn’t feel like he had laid down his life for his friend. He felt more like he had kept himself out of the fire. But maybe, he had saved his friend and at the same time saved himself. Maybe that was what Christmas Present had meant when he said that Marley would be saving more that one soul last night.

  “Let us go to London and see,” Marley said calmly, not wanting to get excited yet. He reached for Robert’s robe slowly, touched it gently, and they flew together towards the veil in London to Scrooge. They touched down in front of the small Lime Street home and stood for a moment and listened. Marley heard church bells excited about the coming of Christ in the distance and saw people everywhere hugging, laughing and cheering as they walked the streets. Finally, he could take no more, and raced up to his old door with the huge lion knocker, he pushed through and heard his friend. They got to the top of the stairs and saw that there was new life in the bedroom and the energy had changed. Light streamed in through the newly raised windows.

  “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge exclaimed, as Marley saw him scramble 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!”

  Marley stood for a while listening to the wonderful musings of his friend and smiled while he and Robert proceeded outside to the front walk.

  He and Robert spontaneously laughed and hugged before they saw Scrooge emerge from his front door and dance down the street. Marley felt like dancing himself! But with his cash-boxes and chains, he knew that was impossible making him just stand and watch Scrooge with a tiny bit of envy. He turned to face Robert.