The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge Read Free Page B

passed through his door, he eagerly searched his rooms for any evidence that the event foreshadowed in the knocker had already taken place, but found everything in its usual order and himself quite alone. The door to his rooms he left unlocked, as if this would provide a more convenient ingress for his expected visitor. Quite satisfied with this minimal and wholly unnecessary preparation, he took off his cravat and put on his dressing gown and slippers, eschewinghis nightcap in silent sympathy with the rest of London, who, unlike him, suffered from the heat. He sat down before the grate—empty as much because of economy as because of the weather—to read a novel by the flickering light of his taper.
    At the end of a chapter in which the youthful hero had walked from London to Dover with little to assuage his hunger or protect him from the elements, Scrooge laid his book upon the table so that he might wipe a tear from his eye, so moved was he by the plight of the fictional boy. He gazed for a moment at the tiles around his fireplace, barely visible in the candlelight. They were designed to illustrate the Scriptures, but Scrooge had come to think of them as unnecessarily focused on violent incidents from the Old Testament. He had, the previous year, thought to replace them with a more fanciful set by an artist whose work he had seen at an exhibition, but on his way to visit the artist he had emptied his pockets to a destitute woman he met in the street (Scrooge often travelled by such streets as were likely to introduce him to such women) and so, having not a farthing with which to commission a fresh set of tiles, he had turned his wanderings in another direction, arriving home without having sought out the artist after all.
    Finding the tiles difficult to focus on in the dimness, Scrooge turned his attention to the one object in the room(besides, some would say, the Christmas tree) that might seem superfluous—a bell pull that hung in the sitting room and communicated for some purpose long forgotten with a chamber in the highest storey of the building. Rising from his chair, he grasped the pull and gently tugged it, knowing that more than the most tentative pressure would surely end what had been an extraordinarily long life for the threadbare pull. At first, the bell scarcely made a sound, but soon it rang loudly, and as if in sympathy, so did every bell in the house.
    â€œCome along, friend,” cried Scrooge, “show yourself! I’ve no wish to sit up all night, even on so short a night as this.”
    Straightaway a clanking began as heavy chains were dragged up the stairs. Satisfied that the bells had done their work, Scrooge settled back into his chair and waited for the arrival of the ghost (for it was none other than Marley’s ghost who dragged chains ever closer to Scrooge’s apartment). Scrooge had considered Marley no more than a business partner in life; he had come to think of Marley as his dear friend in death and had even taken to calling him by his given name. It was this name he uttered when a momentary flame leapt up in the grate, signaling the ghost’s arrival at his door.
    â€œDon’t keep a poor old man waiting, Jacob!” he cried with delighted anticipation. “Come in and take a seat.” Scrooge could never say exactly how Marley did come in—he did notfloat through the door nor seep under it nor ooze through the keyhole. One moment he was rattling his chains on the landing, and the next he was sitting in the chair opposite Scrooge, his boots propped up on the fender. The phantom brought with him a blast of chill air which would have been welcomed by anyone else in London that night but which had no more effect on Scrooge than the afternoon’s swelter had.
    Marley’s clothes had grown somewhat out of fashion in the years since his death—his pigtail, waistcoat, tights, and boots looked more like a stage costume than a proper