He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. Marley had warned of a Spirit that could not be killed, and having dispatched the first two, Scrooge gazed upon the last with an uneasy awareness. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape and feinting that his legs trembled beneath him, used the opportunity to fumble around with his hands for Marley’s fob watch. It did not come to his fingers nor could his eyes see it. Scrooge resigned to follow the Spirit and when he moved to stand, found his aged knees had quite seized up and betrayed him refusing to extend. The Spirit paused a moment, and observing Scrooge’s condition, his shoulders bounced up in down, as if laughing a cold, merciless judgment upon him.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror to know that, behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.
“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. I expect you will show me something that I will not want to see, but must. Will you not speak to me?”
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, as the last winding down of a clock. Lead on, Spirit!”
The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the City; for the City rather seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But there they were in the heart of it; on ‘Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them often.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.
“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I don’t know much about it either way. I only know he’s dead.”
“When did he die?” inquired another.
“Last night, I believe.”
“Why, what was the matter with him? Excessive bile?” asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. “I thought he’d never die.”
“God knows,” said the first with a yawn.
“What has he done with his money?” asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, yawning again. “Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn’t left it to me. That’s all I know.”
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; “for, upon my life, I don’t know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party, and volunteer?”
“I don’t mind going if a drink is provided,” observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. “But I must be properly watered if I make one.”
Another laugh.
“Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,” said the first speaker, “for I never wear black gloves, and I never drink before noon. But I’ll offer to go if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met at the pub. Bye, bye!”
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of the same sort of business he and Marley engaged in: successful and sometimes comrades of arms, when the puzzle presented enough of a challenge. He had not collaborated much since Marley’s passing but made a point always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.
“How are you?” said one.
“How are you?” returned the other.
“Well!” said the first. “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?”
“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it?”
“Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are not a skater, I suppose?”
“No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!”
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but, feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the Future. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. But nothing doubting that, to whomsoever they applied, they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image, where he was oft to be in the morning nursing a swollen head but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and, though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this.
Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied, from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half naked, drunken (which Scrooge would never do – in public), slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, too short of stature and ears too pointed at
the tops to be anything but a goblin. This greedy creature, who had screened himself from the cold air without by a frouzy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line, and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this creature, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too, and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them than they had been upon the recognition of each other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh. Their laughter was terrible, high pitched and squeaking in the extremities. They were not as Scrooge had first presumed, people at all. These were faeries and unpleasant ones at that.
“Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” cried she who had entered first. “Let Bean Nighe’s apprentice alone to be the second; and let the undertaker’s helper alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it!”
“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other two an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an’t such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I’m sure there’s no such old bones here as mine. Ha! ha! We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.”
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and, having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it into his mouth again.
While he did this, the faery who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
“What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the woman. “Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did!”
“That’s true, indeed!” the laundress squeaked. “No man more so.”
“Why, then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, child! Who’s the wiser? We’re not going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I suppose?”
“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the undertaker together. “We should hope not.”
“Very well, then!” cried the first. “That’s enough. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose?”
“No, indeed,” squeaked Mrs. Dilber. She let loose a nervous giggle that assaulted Scrooge’s ears.
“If he wanted to keep ‘em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself. Or met his end as a hunter should, in the execution of some noble cause. No, he gave up on everything, pushed out everyone and died quite assuredly alone.
“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said Mrs. Dilber, “It’s a judgment on him.”
“I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” replied the woman; “and it still could be. You never quite know what the afterlife has in store.” The fairy smiled wickedly then, displaying her pointed teeth. “I got whats I could, which I consider the payment in lieu of notice, which is less than it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.”
But the gallantry of her brethren would not allow of this; and the faery in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a jar containing salt, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a knife of no great value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found that there was nothing more to come.
“That’s your account,” said Joe, “and I wouldn’t give another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who’s next?”
Mrs. Dilber was next. “A laundress of Bean Nighe , under his roof for almost half a year. He never noticed! What kind of hunter was he?” Joe chuckled. Out of the bundle came sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver tea-spoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few neglected boots.
“Ah! You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.”
“What do you call wasting of it?” asked old Joe.
“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied the woman with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. Let Datsueba peel of his skin and make him dance in his bones. Would serve him right, would it not if he came to her river naked as the day he was born.”
Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said old Joe. “That’s your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of being so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown.”
“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first faery.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and, having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large heavy roll of some dark stuff.
“What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed-curtains?”
“Ah!” returned the woman, laughing her terrible laugh and leaning forward on her crossed arms. “To wrap the weapons! Keep digging, keep digging!” She gestured for the goblin to paw deeply into the package. “Old fool had them secreted away so long, even he forgot where he put ‘em, but not I!”
“You don’t mean to say you took ‘em down, rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe.
“Yes, I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?”
“You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.”
“I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you, Joe,” returned the woman coolly. “Don’t drop that oil upon the powder, now.”
“Black powder?” asked Joe.
“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the woman. “It’s old but it will work, I dare say.”
“Plan on blowing up my shop? Eh?” said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman. “You’d never see it coming if I did. Look at the silver work on that fire iron. Worth a pretty penny and more, so’s I say!” And thus the haggling continued and the coldness that had been between them melted as they plotted to separate the silver from the iron and sate the their equal greed.
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust which could hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.
“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. “This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!”
“Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy hun
ter might be my own. My life tends that way now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?”
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed: and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
He lay, in the dark, empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child to say he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that he fancied a small jerk of the finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.
It was at this moment, that the sheet began to stir of its own accord, first with a twitch about where the fingers should be. Then the foot. The sheet rippled as if some freshly animated puppet was slowly learning to move its limbs and, being as the man beneath had certainly been dead, Scrooge steeled himself to face some freshly woken ghoul.
Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honored head thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy, and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand is no longer his own, of his own accord or volition. He has been usurped in mind and deed. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds brought low. He will be reborn into darkness and to evil occupation.
Ebenezer Scrooge Page 9