Marley was dead. There was no doubt about it. The burial register had been signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge had signed it. Scrooge's name was trusted in business for anything he chose to put his hand to. Scrooge knew that Marley was dead. He and Marley had been partners for many years. Scrooge was responsible for Marley's affairs and was the only person who mourned him. Even so, he was not so upset by the funeral that he could not do business on the same day. He solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. Scrooge never painted out Marley's name. Years later it still stood above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. People new to the business sometimes called him Scrooge and sometimes Marley. He answered to both names. It was all the same to him. But he was a tight-fisted man. He was hard and sharp as flint, secret, self-contained, and solitary. The cold inside him seemed to freeze his face, his nose, his cheeks, his walk, his eyes, and his lips. He carried his own low temperature with him. He kept his office cold even in hot weather, and Christmas did not warm him at all. No warmth could warm him, and no winter weather could chill him. No wind was bitterer than he was. No snow was more determined, and no rain less willing to listen to a request. People did not stop him to ask how he was or when he would visit them. Beggars did not ask him for help. Children did not ask him the time. People did not ask him for directions. Even the dogs of blind people seemed to know him and pulled their owners away. Scrooge liked this. He liked keeping human sympathy at a distance. On Christmas Eve he sat busy in his counting-house, his office. It was cold, bleak, and foggy. People outside stamped their feet and beat their hands to keep warm. The clocks had only just struck three, but it was already dark. Candles burned in the windows of nearby offices. Fog came in through every crack and keyhole. The door of Scrooge's office was open so that he could keep an eye on his clerk. The clerk was copying letters in a small room beyond. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so much smaller that it looked like one coal. The clerk could not add more coal because Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room. If the clerk came in with the shovel, Scrooge warned that they would have to part. So the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle. "Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was Scrooge's nephew. He had walked quickly through the fog and frost and was glowing with warmth. His face was ruddy, his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked. "Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!" "Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said the 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," said the nephew. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough." Scrooge had no better answer. He said "Bah!" again, and then "Humbug." "Don't be cross, uncle," said the nephew. "What else can I be," said Scrooge, "when I live in such a world of fools? Merry Christmas! What is Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer? A time for balancing your books and seeing every item against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about saying 'Merry Christmas' should be punished with his own pudding. He should!" "Uncle!" pleaded the nephew. "Nephew!" said Scrooge sternly. "Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine." "Keep it!" repeated the nephew. "But you don't keep it." "Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!" The nephew said that there were many things from which he might have gained good and had not. Christmas was among them. But he had always thought of Christmas as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. It was the time when people seemed to open their hearts and think of others as fellow travelers through life. It had never put money in his pocket, but he believed it had done him good and would do him good. The clerk in the small room applauded without meaning to. Then he realized that this was improper. He poked the fire and put out the last spark. "Let me hear another sound from you," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your job." He turned to his nephew. "You're quite a powerful speaker, sir. I wonder you don't go into Parliament." "Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow." Scrooge refused. He said that he would see him in a certain place first. "But why?" cried the nephew. "Why?" "Why did you get married?" said Scrooge. "Because I fell in love." "Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the most ridiculous thing in the world. "Good afternoon!" "Nay, uncle," said the nephew, "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," said the nephew. "We have never had a quarrel that I have been part of. But I have made the trial in honor of Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas spirit to the last. A Merry Christmas, uncle!" "Good afternoon!" said Scrooge. "And a Happy New Year!" "Good afternoon!" said Scrooge. The nephew left without an angry word. At the outer door he wished the clerk a merry Christmas. The clerk, cold as he was, returned the greeting warmly. "There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge. "My clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam." The clerk had let two other people in while letting the nephew out. They were portly, pleasant men with books and papers. They bowed to Scrooge. "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of them. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley?" "Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," said Scrooge. "He died seven years ago, this very night." "We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said the gentleman. At the word "liberality," Scrooge frowned and shook his head. He handed back the papers. "At this festive season," said the gentleman, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some provision for the poor and destitute. Many thousands are in want of common necessities. Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts." "Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge. "Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman. "And the Union workhouses?" asked Scrooge. These were places where poor people had to work for help. "Are they still in operation?" "They are," said the gentleman. "Still. 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!" said Scrooge. "I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had stopped them in their useful course. I'm very glad to hear it." The gentleman explained that prisons and workhouses did not give many people comfort or kindness. A few people were trying to raise money to buy the poor some meat, drink, and means of warmth. They chose this time because want was keenly felt while abundance rejoiced. "What shall I put you down for?" asked the gentleman. "Nothing!" said Scrooge. "You wish to be anonymous?" "I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, 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. Those who are badly off must go there." "Many can't go there," said the gentleman. "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," said Scrooge. "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 that it would be useless to continue, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his work with a better opinion of himself and in a more cheerful temper than usual. Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened. People ran about with lights to guide horses and carriages. The old church tower became invisible, and its bell struck the hours and quarters in the clouds. The cold became intense. In the main street, laborers repairing gas pipes had lighted a fire in a brazier. Ragged men and boys gathered around it, warming their hands and eyes. The shop windows, decorated with holly, made pale faces look ruddy as people passed. Grocers' and poulterers' shops looked like splendid pageants. The Lord Mayor ordered his cooks and servants to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should. Even the little tailor whom Scrooge had fined for being drunk and quarrelsome was stirring up tomorrow's pudding while his wife and baby went out to buy beef. Foggier yet, and colder! A boy with a thin nose, hungry and cold, stooped at Scrooge's keyhole to sing a Christmas carol. But at the first sound of "God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!" Scrooge seized his ruler. The singer fled in terror. At last it was time to close the office. Scrooge got up with an ill-will and let the clerk know that the day was ending. "You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge. "If quite convenient, sir," said the clerk. "It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I stopped 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 said that it was only once a year. "A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!" The clerk promised that he would. Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office closed quickly. The clerk, with the long ends of his comforter hanging below his waist, went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a line of boys, twenty times in honor of Christmas Eve. Then he ran home to Camden Town as fast as he could, to play blindman's-buff. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern. He read all the newspapers and looked at his bank account. Then he went home to bed. He lived in rooms that had once belonged to Marley. They were in a gloomy building up a yard where there was little business. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew every stone, had to feel his way. Fog and frost hung about the old gateway. The door knocker was large, but otherwise there was nothing particular about it. Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence there. He had as little fancy as any man in the City of London. He had not thought about Marley since mentioning his dead partner that afternoon. Yet as he put his key in the lock, he saw in the knocker not a knocker but Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow. It had a dismal light about it. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. Its hair seemed stirred by breath or hot air. Its eyes were wide open but motionless. Its livid color made it horrible. As Scrooge looked, it was a knocker again. He was startled. His blood felt a terrible sensation that had been strange to him since childhood. But he put his hand on the key, turned it, walked in, and lighted his candle. He paused before shutting the door and looked behind it, half expecting to see Marley's pigtail sticking into the hall. There was nothing there except the screws and nuts holding the knocker. He said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed the door with a bang. The sound echoed through the house. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs, trimming his candle as he went. The staircase was wide enough for a hearse. Scrooge thought he saw a hearse moving before him in the gloom. The street lamps would not have lighted the entrance well, so it was dark with his small candle. Up Scrooge went, not caring about the darkness. Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before shutting his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to want to do that. Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the grate. Spoon and basin ready. A little saucepan of gruel on the hob, because Scrooge had a cold. Nobody under the bed. Nobody in the closet. Nobody in his dressing gown, which hung against the wall. The lumber room was as usual. Satisfied, he closed the door and locked himself in. He double-locked it, which was not his custom. Then he took off his cravat, put on his dressing gown, slippers, and night cap, and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. The fire was very low. He had to sit close to it and think about it before he could feel any warmth. The fireplace was old, built by a Dutch merchant long ago, and paved with tiles illustrating Bible stories. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, queens of Sheba, angels, Abrahams, Belshazzars, and apostles in boats. Yet the face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient prophet's rod and swallowed up the whole. "Humbug!" said Scrooge, and walked across the room. After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back, his glance rested on a disused bell hanging in the room. It communicated with a chamber in the highest story of the building. To his astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, he saw the bell begin to swing. It swung softly at first, then rang loudly. So did every bell in the house. This might have lasted half a minute or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased together. Then came a clanking noise deep below, as if someone were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar. Scrooge remembered hearing that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. The cellar door flew open with a booming sound. The noise became louder on the floors below, then came up the stairs, then straight toward his door. "It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it." His color changed when the noise came through the heavy door and into the room. The dying flame leaped up, as if it cried, "I know him! Marley's Ghost!" and fell again. The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, waistcoat, tights, and boots. The tassels on his boots bristled like his pigtail, coat skirts, and hair. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long and wound about him like a tail. It was made of cashboxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent. Scrooge could look through his waistcoat and see the buttons on his coat behind. Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels. Now he believed it. No, he did not believe it even now. Though he looked through the phantom, felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and saw the kerchief bound about its head and chin, he was still incredulous. He fought against his senses. "How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?" "Much!" said Marley's voice. "Who are you?" "Ask me who I was." "Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're particular—for a shade." "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 asked because he did not know whether a transparent ghost could sit down. But the ghost sat on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if quite used to it. "You don't believe in me," observed the ghost. "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 a little thing affects them," said Scrooge. "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!" Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, and he did not feel waggish. He was trying to distract his own attention and keep down his terror. The spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones. To sit staring at those fixed, glazed eyes in silence would be dreadful. There was something awful in the ghost's own atmosphere. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but the ghost's hair, skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by hot vapor from an oven. "You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge. "I do," replied the ghost. "You are not looking at it," said Scrooge. "But I see it," said the ghost, "notwithstanding." "Well!" said 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!" At this the spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chain with a dismal, appalling noise. Scrooge held on tight to his chair to keep from falling in a swoon. But his horror was greater when the phantom took off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, and its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast. 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 the ghost. "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 replied, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide. If that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness." Again the spectre raised a cry, shook its chain, and wrung its shadowy hands. "You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why." "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the ghost. "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?" Scrooge trembled more and more. "Or would you know," pursued the ghost, "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!" Scrooge glanced about the floor, expecting to find himself surrounded by iron cable. He could see nothing. "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. In life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole. And weary journeys lie before me!" Scrooge put his hands in his pockets, as he often did when thoughtful. He remained on his knees. "You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," he observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference. "Slow!" the ghost repeated. "Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And traveling 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 the ghost. "You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years," said Scrooge. The ghost set up another cry and clanked its chain so hideously in the silence that the watch would have been justified in complaining about the noise. "Oh, captive, bound, and double-ironed!" cried the phantom. "Not to know that ages of incessant labor by immortal creatures must pass before the good of which this earth is capable is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere 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 opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!" "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. "Business!" cried the ghost, wringing its 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!" It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. "At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through the 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 you!" "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 tomorrow, when the bell tolls one." "Couldn't I take them 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 it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this by the smart sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again and found the supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm. The apparition walked backward from him. At every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley's ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. Not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear. On the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air: incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret, wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. 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. It cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was clearly that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever. Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together, and the night became as it had been when he walked home. Scrooge closed the window and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable. Being in need of repose, from the emotion he had undergone, the fatigues of the day, his glimpse of the invisible world, the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, he went straight to bed without undressing and fell asleep upon the instant.