A Christmas Carol II--Contagion Read online

  AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO THE HON. Miss DOLTON AND Mr. PEREPELKIN OF WALTON-ON-THAMES, SURREY

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  VERSE I

  VERSE II

  VERSE III

  VERSE IV

  VERSE V

  VERSE VI

  THE FIRST APPARITION

  VERSE VII

  THE SECOND APPARITION

  VERSE VIII

  THE THIRD APPARITION

  VERSE IX

  AN EPILOGUE

  Copyright

  VERSE I

  Marley was still dead: to begin with. Of that, there cannot be the smallest morsel of doubt. He was quite as dead as a doornail. Deader, if that is possible, because having died he had gone so far as to appear to Ebenezer Scrooge as a ghost and there can surely be no better proof of death than that. If it is not possible, then the adage will have to do, and I will reiterate the simple fact that Marley was as dead as a doornail, and in his grave.

  Marley had first died on Christmas Eve and then several years later reappeared on Christmas Eve, and as it was that very day today it can hardly be considered surprising that, when Scrooge sat by his fireside for his early evening rest, his thoughts happened upon that man, and on to the haunting for which he had so much reason to be thankful.

  ‘I would be in my grave,’ he thought, ‘and unmissed. I would have no friends, least of all house guests (one of these, an American acquaintance, slumbered in the next room), and would not be sitting here in excited anticipation of Christmas Day, happiest of all feasts!’ In a contented reverie, his ruminations roamed wider as he slipped towards a semi-sleeping state until they lay scattered all around him like a vapour. At last he fell into a sleep which lasted only a moment, for he came suddenly awake to a terrible groaning sound.

  Such was Scrooge’s acquaintance with indigestion that he was accustomed to being awoken by a fragment of his lunch or dinner getting into an argument with his insides, and between them making an uproarious tumult. He clutched his stomach, and saw that the fire had died to a pile of scarcely glowing embers.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said regretfully, hearing a second deep rumbling. This was quickly followed by a sound like a heavy chair being dragged across the floor, and a most alarming sequence of squeaks and creaks. With his hands still to his side, Scrooge began to realize that he was in no physical discomfort, and that the noises were in fact coming from outside the room. A chilling supposition stole upon him. The noises grew still louder, and became an arrhythmic clumping as of someone dragging themselves up the stairs with a great exertion and clumsiness.

  ‘I was in this very chair,’ he whispered. ‘And it was on this very night. Not another visitation!’

  The noises stopped, as though whoever was there had reached the top of the stairs in a state of exhaustion, and paused to regain their strength. Unable to wait a moment longer to see what stood outside, with a great burst of energy Scrooge rushed to his door and pulled it open.

  Before him stood a figure hard to make out in the candlelight. No ghost, but a thing of flesh and bone, its thin and frail shoulders were slumped, its features as grey as dust, and rags hung from its legs. At first he did not know it, and thought a near-dead destitute had clambered in through a window. He took a step forward to address it, but hesitated. There was something in its gait unearthly, and yet recognizable. Scrooge’s first feeling of relief at not being once more confronted with Marley’s ghost sharpened to a fresher fear. He saw the decayed features before him were indeed those of his former partner, yet they were altogether more (or rather, less) ghastly than before – the flesh ashy and desiccated, no recognition in its eye or semblance of awareness in its shambling movement. Not Marley’s shade was this, but his decaying corpse. Scrooge knew this could be no ghostly warning, but only a more awful messenger from a dread and final place.

  ‘No!’ he cried, trembling. ‘It cannot be! Jacob, my old friend, have I not heeded your warning? Have I not changed myself, and become everything you asked me to be?’ He tumbled to his knees and looked up into the eyes of the dead man, but they showed no pity, nor any glint of human feeling.

  ‘This is it, then,’ Scrooge said, looking at the floor. ‘My hour has come and they have sent you, most reproachful of spirits, to collect me. O wretched, worst and most abject of all deaths, how worthy I tried to make myself, and how your countenance tells me I have failed!’ He threw himself to the floor and lay there trembling from head to foot in a transport of supernatural terror, waiting for the awful hand to take hold of him, and drag him away.

  ‘Scrooge,’ came a weary voice from behind him, ‘look out.’

  Ebenezer stared up in confusion and saw a spade swing above him and smash into the apparition’s face. There was the wet gravelly crunch of bones, and Marley’s whole head twisted round on its neck, the features flattened and distorted, and emitting a low, startled groan. Under the weight of the blow, the body swayed on the top step for a moment before crashing back down the length of the stairwell, bouncing in a most elastic and ridiculous manner, and coming to rest in a heap on the rug in the hallway, with one of its legs sticking over its shoulder. Next to Scrooge on the top step stood his American house guest and business acquaintance, Mr Dwight Tacker, spade in hand.

  ‘How extraordinary,’ said Scrooge quietly, dusting himself down and feeling as though he had rather made an exhibition of himself. ‘You can see Marley, and touch him too?’

  ‘Seems that way,’ said the American, walking past him down the stairs to examine the body. He poked it with his boot and the head flopped from side to side.

  ‘What was this spade doing hanging on the wall in my bedroom?’

  ‘HOW EXTRAORDINARY,’ SAID SCROOGE, FEELING AS THOUGH HE HAD RATHER MADE AN EXHIBITION OF HIMSELF

  Scrooge replied without taking his eyes off the (now indisputably corporeal) body of Marley. ‘It was used to bury – well, to bury him!’ he pointed downwards. ‘When he was first buried. I hung it as an emblem of the burying of my former self, and a reminder not to return to my miserly ways.’

  ‘Okay, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Tacker, yawning. ‘You have any whisky? I could kind of do with a drink.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Scrooge. ‘That’s probably a good idea.’ The explanation of how an American gentleman came to be standing in Ebenezer Scrooge’s house and in a position to rescue him from the grasp of a macabre apparition is best accomplished by a brief account of Ebenezer Scrooge himself, in the years which had passed since the events recorded in a former history.

  Jacob Marley’s first appearance in Scrooge’s chambers – that is, after his death – had provoked in Scrooge a most remarkable change of character. Everyone who knew him (which was not, it must be admitted, a very great number) remarked upon it in the strongest terms, because he had turned, over the course of a single night, from a very bad man into a very good one.

  Before that Christmas Eve, he had been a morose, avaricious, squeezing, grasping man with no notion of generosity to any fellow soul upon the earth. And now he was open, kind and well mannered, with never a thought for himself when he could be doing good to others. It was the utter completeness of this change that his acquaintances remarked in him, and their remarks were so frequent that in due course Mr Scrooge became quite a celebrity for his well-known patience and good humour. Indeed, his fame spread first through the local populace and then abroad to other cities, so that to be a ‘scrooge’ became a much-used phrase to denote any man unduly welcoming, trusting and generous. People who had never previously known of his existence would cross the road to meet him, or visit his office
under the feeblest pretext, in order to shake the hand of this celebrity, known formerly to have been the most miserable man in existence.

  One unexpected result of his new notoriety was that Mr Scrooge found his small firm busier, and more profitable than ever – adding to his great bonhomie – and in due course he was forced to expand both his workforce and the sphere of his trade. From a mere counting house, the firm of Scrooge and Marley bought out some other local concerns which by great prudence of management (and scrupulous fair-dealing) grew each in their own right, so that within a few years his portfolio showed him to be one of the most profitable businessmen in his part of the city.

  As soon as he became known as a wealthy man, certain of his peers had attempted (through invitations to dine at their clubs, and the application of grouse, fine brandy and obsequious praise) to inveigle him into their rapacious schemes. Scrooge always declined politely and walked home reflecting on the sad knowledge that his former self would have fallen on these opportunities with a slavering hunger.

  It was on his return from one such meeting that he noticed the appellation ‘Marley’ rather brought to mind the less pleasant epoch of the company when he had toiled under his former character. At this point the sign painter was called out, and asked to erase it, the firm afterwards trading simply under the name ‘Scrooge & Co.’.

  As his influence grew, it followed in due course that foreign interests prevailed upon Mr Scrooge to invest in them, and choosing to do so he found that these shores were no barrier to his success. It afforded him great pleasure to buy his first company on American soil, and to reflect that business under the name of Scrooge now stretched clean across one of the great oceans of the world.

  In recent years, accepting that he was far from a young man and wanting to devote as much of his remaining energies to charitable works as he could, he had deputed most of his responsibilities to his trusted lieutenant Bob Cratchit. Under the auspices of this sound man the business’s growth did not falter and soon the day came when the childless Scrooge finally had the honour and pleasure of accepting Mr Cratchit as a partner.

  Thus, the sign painter was called out again, and invited to over-paint the name Marley (which despite his best offices had never been rendered truly invisible, but had remained in outline, much as his spectre had appeared in Scrooge’s rooms) with the name Cratchit. The firm of Scrooge and Cratchit was formed.

  Shortly after this Scrooge learned that his agent in New York was to visit London on business of his own, and at Christmas time too. On hearing this, Scrooge wrote back insisting that the man be his guest over the festive season, as it would be his great pleasure to play host and show him the finest English Christmas that was to be sought. Thus it was that the aforementioned Mr Dwight Tacker came to be in Scrooge’s house (he is in Scrooge’s kitchen as we rejoin him), pouring a tumblerful of whisky for himself and his host, and sniffing suspiciously at his own glass.

  ‘This isn’t bourbon?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Scrooge. ‘Nor rye, I’m sorry to say – they are hard to come by in this country. The Scottish and Irish kinds are universally drunk. I did try to – what is that?’

  Tacker was holding up a large rifle, pointing it at the ceiling and staring along the barrel. ‘It’s partly what I wanted to talk to you about while I’m in London, Scrooge,’ he said. ‘And I’m mighty glad I brought it, if we’re to be attacked by the awakened dead. Here, have a try.’

  He handed it over and Scrooge took it cautiously, his hands still shaking after his earlier scare. He rested it in his arms like a baby.

  ‘Not like that,’ said Tacker. ‘Lift it to your shoulder.’ Scrooge did so. ‘That’s right. Now, put your cheek to the barrel and look along it. See that picture over the fireplace?’

  ‘That’s my mother,’ said Scrooge, his mouth squeezed against the gun’s stock.

  ‘Like her much?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Okay, aim at that then. Now curl your finger around the trigger. Line up the sight – that’s the little feller on the end of the barrel, see? Line that up with the tip of your mother’s nose.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Now squeeze the trigger gently. No sharp movements or you’ll miss.’

  Scrooge smiled at the role-play they were enacting and then jumped backwards in his seat as an enormous report filled the room, echoing deafeningly between its close walls. The picture burst from the wall, its empty frame fell to the floor and the rest of its contents showered over them in burnt fragments. Scrooge stood up, holding the gun and staring at it, speechless.

  ‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’ asked Tacker, just as a high-pitched scream came from behind them. Both men turned to see a young man dressed in the solemn attire of a footman, white-faced and staring ahead of himself in shock.

  ‘It’s another one!’ said Tacker. ‘Scrooge – hand me the gun!’

  ‘No! No!’ screeched the man, waving his arms and shutting his eyes tight. ‘Please! I’m not!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tacker, this is my manservant, Damble.’ Scrooge now turned to address his employee, and a minutely discernible change came over his countenance. His hands tightened around the rifle and an unwonted severity came into his tone. ‘Damble, I was under the impression that part of your job was to answer the door.’

  The man nodded without opening his eyes, still terrified out of his wits.

  ‘Then explain to me if you will how the creature at the bottom of the stairs came to be standing outside my bedchamber with every intention of scaring me to death?’

  ‘I’m sorry sir,’ said Damble, taking deep breaths to steady himself. ‘As you are accustomed to take rest at this hour I took the liberty of going to fetch ingredients for the Christmas breakfast.’

  ‘Which is cook’s job,’ said Scrooge.

  ‘Please sir, cook’s ill. Her daughter sent message she is taken with the fever that’s been all round the streets. I was planning to make the breakfast myself, sir, if it pleases you.’

  At this explanation Scrooge’s fierceness died like a snuffed flame, and the more accustomed look of gladness and understanding took its place. ‘Of course, Damble, of course. It was very thoughtful of you to do so. Please excuse my harsh tone. Sheer bad luck this thing got into the house while you were out. Unfortunately it has left a hideous mess in the hall which my American guest Mr Tacker (‘How d’ye do, son?’ said that gentleman) kindly dealt with for me. Would you please drag it into the coal shed and we will deal with it more appropriately on Boxing Day. And when we’ve gone out you can clean up this room as well. I had an accident with the gun.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said Damble, gaining possession of himself with difficulty, and leaving the men alone.

  Scrooge watched at the door as it closed. Tacker looked pleased. ‘That’s more like it, Scrooge. I took you for a pasty little English fag, but with a gun in your hands you act like a man.’

  Scrooge leant the weapon carefully against the table. ‘I’ve never spoken to him like that before,’ he said. ‘It is most unlike me. He is a nervous young man and deserves better treatment.’

  Tacker wasn’t listening, but gulping the last of his whisky and refilling his glass. Scrooge sat down and sipped his with perturbation. Holding his right hand out and regarding it, he saw it trembled still, but for a different reason than before. It was the tremor of excitement and power from the explosion of the gun which had galvanized his nerves. He had never felt anything like it.

  ‘What was that thing, anyway?’ asked Tacker.

  ‘In a strictly literal sense, it was my former business partner, Marley. He used to live in this house before I did,’ replied Scrooge. ‘But no trace of that man remains in the thing we killed. Or re-killed. He died more than ten years ago.’

  ‘Is that true?’ asked Tacker idly, filling his glass once more. ‘Well, he’s not very good at being dead, if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, that’s an understatement,’ said Scrooge
. ‘Perhaps it was some electric disturbance of the nervous system. Maybe his grave was struck by lightning. I hear the damp clay of London graveyards preserves corpses hardly decayed, even after a score of years. But this is no conversation for Christmas Eve. I fear any further attempt to rest before supper is now futile – let us dress instead, and I shall have Damble call us a cab.’

  ‘Good. This killing has given me an appetite,’ said Tacker, walking to the stairs and stepping over Marley’s remains. Scrooge walked round them and stopped on the second step, looking down at the blasphemous, twisted thing. Its appearance ignited disgust and loathing, but for a brief moment that thrilling pulse he had felt at the exploding of the gun returned. Then he turned and ascended wearing an air of perplexity.

  At length the men returned in evening wear to find the mess disposed of, and a cab waiting outside. Both mentioned their ravenous hunger, and as they climbed into the box Scrooge assured Tacker of the delicious repast that awaited them.

  ‘One thing,’ Scrooge said as the cab moved away into the fog. ‘What did you mean by the word “fag”?’

  ‘Let me explain,’ said Tacker. ‘Take your man Damble, for instance …’

  VERSE II

  Gibson’s Chop House was a discreet establishment, tucked away from the bustling thoroughfare of the Strand down a side street otherwise bereft of interest or landmark, and due to the secrecy of its location and the excellence of its fare all the more cherished by its regular patrons. In the cold weather its glowing windows presented a very picture of cosy contentment and Scrooge knew the food more than bore out this impression, so it was with a delicious anticipation that he held open the door for his new friend, and barely a minute later they were sitting opposite each other at a small table in the window, each sipping a glass of Madeira.

  ‘Mr Tacker, may I ask your first impressions of our country?’ asked Scrooge complacently.