was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from There is no doubt that Marley was dead This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night in an easterly wind upon his own ramparts than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turn ing out after dark in a breezy spot say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance literally to astonish his son’s weak mind Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name There it stood years afterwards above the warehouse door Scrooge and Marley The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge and sometimes Marley but he an swered to both names It was all the same to him Oh But he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone Scrooge A squeezing wrenching grasping scraping clutching covetous old sin ner Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster The cold within him froze his old features nipped his pointed nose shriv MARLEY’S GHOST 8 A CHRISTMAS CAROL
eled his cheek stiffened his gait made his eyes red his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice A frosty rime was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin He carried his own low temperature always about with him he iced his office in the dog days and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge No warmth could warm no wintry weather chill him No wind that blew was bit terer than he no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose no pelting rain less open to entreaty Foul weather didn’t know where to have him The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect They often came down handsomely and Scrooge never did Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say with gladsome looks My dear Scrooge how are you When will you come to see me No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle no children asked him what it was o’clock no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him and when they saw him coming on would tug their owners into doorways and up courts and then would wag their tails as though they said No eye at all is better than an evil eye dark master MARLEY’S GHOST 9 CHARLES DICKENS
But what did Scrooge care It was the very thing he liked To edge his way along the crowded paths of life warning all human sympathy to keep its distance was what the knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge Once upon a time of all the good days in the year on Christ mas Eve old Scrooge sat busy in his countinghouse It was cold bleak biting weather foggy withal and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down beating their hands upon their breasts and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them The city clocks had only just gone three but it was quite dark already it had not been light all day and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices like ruddy smears upon the pal pable brown air The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole and was so dense without that although the court was of the narrow est the houses opposite were mere phantoms To see the dingy cloud come drooping down obscuring everything one might have thought that Nature lived hard by and was brewing on a large scale The door of Scrooge’s countinghouse was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk who in a dismal little cell beyond a sort of tank was copying letters Scrooge had a very small fire but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal But he couldn’t re plenish it for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room and so surely MARLEY’S GHOST 10 A CHRISTMAS CAROL
as the clerk came in with the shovel the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle in which effort not being a man of a strong imagination he failed A merry Christmas uncle God save you cried a cheerful voice It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach Bah said Scrooge Humbug He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost this nephew of Scrooge’s that he was all in a glow his face was ruddy and handsome his eyes sparkled and his breath smoked again Christmas a humbug uncle said Scrooge’s nephew You don’t mean that I am sure I do said Scrooge Merry Christmas What right have you to be merry What reason have you to be merry You’re poor enough Come then returned the nephew gaily What right have you to be dismal What reason have you to be morose You’re rich enough Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment said Bah again and followed it up with Humbug Don’t be cross uncle said the nephew What else can I be returned the uncle when I live in such a MARLEY’S GHOST 11 CHARLES DICKENS
