Now,it is a fact,that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door,except that it was very large.It is also a fact,that Scrooge had seen it,night and morning,during his whole residence in that place;also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the City of London,even including--which is a bold word--the corporation,aldermen,and livery.Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley,since his last mention of his seven-year's dead partner that afternoon.And then let any man explain to me,if he can,how it happened that Scrooge,having his key in the lock of the door,saw in the knocker,without its undergoing any intermediate process of change:not a knocker,but Marley's face.
Marley's face.It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were,but had a dismal light about it,like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.It was not angry or ferocious,but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look:with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead.The hair was curiously stirred,as if by breath or hot-air;and,though the eyes were wide open,they were perfectly motionless.That,and its livid colour,made it horrible;but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control,rather than a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon,it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled,or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy,would be untrue.But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,turned it sturdily,walked in,and lighted his candle.
He did pause,with a moment's irresolution,before he shut the door;and he did look cautiously behind it first,as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall.But there was nothing on the back of the door,except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on,so he said "Pooh,pooh!"and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder.Every room above,and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below,appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own.Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes.He fastened the door,and walked across the hall,and up the stairs,slowly too:trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs,or through a bad young Act of Parliament;but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase,and taken it broadwise,with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades:
and done it easy.There was plenty of width for that,and room to spare;
which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went,not caring a button for that:darkness is cheap,and Scrooge liked it.But before he shut his heavy door,he walked through his rooms to see that all was right.He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room,bed-room,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;and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge has a cold in his head)upon the hob.Nobody under the bed;nobody in the closet;nobody in his dressing-gown,which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.Lumber-room as usual.Old fire-guard,old shoes,two fish-baskets,washing-stand on three legs,and a poker.
Quite satisfied,he closed his door,and locked himself in;double-locked himself in,which was not his custom.Thus secured against surprise,he took off his cravat;put on his dressing-gown and slippers,and his night-cap;
and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed;nothing on such a bitter night.He was obliged to sit close to it,and brood over it,before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.The fireplace was an old one,built by some Dutch merchant long ago,and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles,designed to illustrate the Scriptures.There were Cains and Abels,Pharaoh's daughters,Queens of Sheba,Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds,Abrahams,Belshazzars,Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts;and yet that face of Marley,seven years dead,came like the ancient Prophet's rod,and swallowed up the whole.If each smooth tile had been a blank at first,with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts,there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
"Humbug!"said Scrooge;and walked across the room.
After several turns,he sat down again.As he threw his head back in the chair,his glance happened to rest upon a bell,a disused bell,that hung in the room,and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building.It was with great astonishment,and with a strange,inexplicable dread,that as he looked,he saw this bell begin to swing.It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound;but soon it rang out loudly,and 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 as they had begun,together.They were succeeded by a clanking noise,deep down below;as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar.Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound,and then he heard the noise much louder,on the floors below;then coming up the stairs;then coming straight towards his door.
