A Christmas Carol in Prose : Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.
Autograph manuscript signed, December 1843
Page 56
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1900
56
(which was not until after a long silence) appeared embarrassed how to answer.
"Is it good," she said, "or bad?"—to help him.
"Bad," he answered.
"We are quite ruined."
"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened."
"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry, but the first was the emotion of her heart.
"What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then."
"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep tonight with light hearts, Caroline!"
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's faces hushed, and clustered round to hear what they had so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man's death! The only emotion, that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.
"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said Scrooge; "or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever present to me."
The Ghost conducted him, through several streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house—the dwelling he had visited before—and found the mother and the children seated round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a Book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!
""And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the thresh-hold.
Why did he not go on!
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her face.
"The colour hurts my eyes!" she said.
The colour? Ah Poor Tiny Tim!
"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It makes them