Old Scrooge: A Christmas Carol in Five Staves.

STAVE ONE

SCENE I. —Christmas Eve. Counting house of Scrooge & Marley. Set fireplace with small grate fire L. Centre door in flat, thrown open, showing a small inner chamber and desk, at which Bob Cratchit is discovered seated, endeavoring to warm his hands over the candle. Small desk, L. C., at which Scrooge is discovered busy at figures.

Scrooge. And six makes twenty-eight pounds, four shill – What do you want in here?

Bob. My fire is nearly out, sir, and I thought I would take one or two lumps of coal, and —

Scro. You think more of your personal comforts than you do of your business and my interest.

Bob. The room, sir, is very cold, and I —

Scro. Work sir, work! and I'll warrant that you'll keep warm. If you persist, in this wanton waste of coals, you and I will have to part. (Bob retires to his desk, puts on his white comforter, and again tries to warm his hands. Scrooge resuming). Four shillings and ninepence —

Enter Fred'k Merry, C. D., saluting Bob as he passes him.

Fred. A Merry Christmas, uncle. God save you.

Scro. Bah; humbug.

Fred. Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don't mean that, I'm sure?

Scro. I do. Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.

Fred. Come then. What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.

Scro. Bah; humbug.

Fred. Don't be cross, uncle.

Scro. What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon Merry Christmas! What's Christmas-time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should.

Fred. Uncle!

Scro. (sternly). Nephew, keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.

Fred. Keep it! But you don't keep it.

Scro. Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you. Much good it has ever done you.

Fred. There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time, when it came round – apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that – as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And, therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it. (Cratchit applauds, but observing Scrooge, endeavors to be intent on something else.)

Scro. (to Bob). Let me hear another sound from you, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! (To Fred). You're quite a powerful speaker, sir, I wonder you don't go into Parliament.

Fred. Don't be angry, uncle. Come, dine with us to-morrow?

Scro. I'd see you in blazes first.

Fred. But why? Why?

Scro. Why did you get married?

Fred. Because I fell in love.

Scro. Because you fell in love! The only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. Good afternoon.

Fred. Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?

Scro. Good afternoon.

Fred. I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?

Scro. Good afternoon!

Fred. I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle.

Scro. Good afternoon!

Fred. A merry Christmas.

Bob. The same to you, and many of them.

Scro. There's another fellow, my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a Merry Christmas. I'll retire to the lunatic asylum.

Mr. Mumford. Scrooge & Marley's. I believe (referring to paper). Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?

Scro. Mr. Marley his been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago this very night.

Mr. M. We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner. (Presents list. Scrooge frowns, shakes his head, and returns it.) At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.

Scro. Are there no prisons?

Mr. M. Plenty of prisons.

Scro. And the union work-houses – are they still in operation?

Mr. M. They are. I wish I could say they were not.

Scro. The tread-mill and the poor law are in full vigor, then?

Mr. M. Both very busy, sir.

Scro. Oh! I was afraid from what you said at first that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course. I'm very glad to hear it.

Mr. M. Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude, a few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We chose this time because it is a time, of all others, when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?

Scro. Nothing.

Mr. M. You wish to be anonymous?

Scro. I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, 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, and those who are badly off must go there.

Mr. B. Many can't go there; and many would rather die.

Scro. If they had rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides, excuse me, I don't know that.

Mr. B. But you might know it.

Scro. It's not my business. It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen.

Mr. M. It is useless, we may as well withdraw. [Exeunt. As they go out Bob is seen to hand them money.]

Scro. (Seizes ruler and makes a dash at the door.) Begone! I'll have none of your carols here. (Makes sign to Bob, who extinguishes his candle and puts on his hat and enters.) You'll want all day to morrow, I suppose?

Bob. If quite convenient, sir.

Scro. It's not convenient, and its not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound? (Bob smiles faintly.) And yet you don't think me ill-used when I pay a day's wages for no work.

Bob. It's only once a year, sir.

Scro. A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December. (Buttoning up his great coat to the chin.) But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning. (Exit C.)

Bob. I will, sir. You old skinflint. If I had my way, I'd give you Christmas. I'd give it to you this way (Dumb show of pummelling Scrooge.) Now for a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of Christmas Eve, and then for Camden Town as hard as I can pelt. (Exit C., with sliding motions, closing doors after him.)

SCENE II. —Scrooge's apartments. Grate fire, L. 2, Window, R. C. Door, L. C. in flat. Table, L. 4. Spoon and basin on table. Saucepan on hob. Two easy chairs near fire. Lights down.

Scro. Pooh! pooh! Marley's dead seven years to night. Impossible. Nobody under the table, nobody under the couch, nobody in the closet, nobody nowhere (Yawns). Bah, humbug! (Locks door R. and seats himself in easy chair; dips gruel from saucepan into basin, and takes two or three spoonsful. Yawns and composes himself for rest.)

[One or two stanzas of a Christmas carol may be sung outside, at the close of which a general ringing of bells ensues, succeeded by a clanking noise of chain.]

Enter Jacob Marley's ghost. R., with chain made of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, purposes, etc. Hair twisted upright on each side to represent horns. White bandage around jaws.

Scro. It's humbug still! I won't believe it. [Pause, during which Ghost approaches the opposite side of the mantel.] How now. What do you want with me?

Ghost. Much.

Scro. Who are you?

Gho. Ask me who I was.

Scro. Who were you then? You're particular, for a shade.

Gho. In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.

Scro. Can you – can you sit down?

Gho. I can.

Scro. Do it, then.

Gho. You don't believe in me?

Scro. I don't.

Gho. What evidence do you require of my reality beyond that of your senses?

Scro. I don't know.

Gho. Why do you doubt your senses?

Scro. Because a little thing affects them. 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 under-done potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are. You see this tooth-pick?

Gho. I do.

Scro. You are not looking at it.

Gho. But I see it, notwithstanding.

Scro. Well! I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of gobblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you; humbug. (Ghost rattles chain, takes bandage off jaws, and drops lower jaw as far as possible.)

Scro. (Betrays signs of fright.) Mercy! dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?

Gho. Man of the worldly mind, do you believe in me, or not?

Scro. I do. I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?

Gho. It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide, and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world – oh, woe is me – and witness what it can not share, but might have shared on earth, turned to happiness. [Shakes chain and wrings his hands.]

Scro. You are fettered; tell me why?

Gho. I wear the chain I forged in life; 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? Or would you know 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 pondrous chain!

Scro. Jacob, old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.

Gho. I have none to give. It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers to other lands of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all that is permitted to me. I can not rest, I can not stay, I can not linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting house, mark me! – in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me.

Scro. You must have been very slow about it, Jacob.

Gho. Slow?

Scro. Seven years dead. And traveling all the time.

Gho. The old time. No rest, no peace. Incessant tortures of remorse.

Scro. You travel fast?

Gho. On the wings of the wind.

Scro. You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years, Jacob.

Gho. (Clinking his chain.) Oh! captive, bound and double-ironed, not to know that ages of incessant labor by immortal creatures; for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, 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 opportunity misused. Yet, such was I. Oh, such was I!

Scro. But you were always a good man of business Jacob.

Gho. Business! [wringing his hands and shaking chain.] 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. [Holds up chain at arm's length, and drops it.] At this time of the rolling year I suffer most. Why did I walk through 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 houses to which its light would have conducted me? Hear me! my time is nearly gone.

Scro. I will; but don't be hard upon me. Don't be flowery, Jacob, pray.

Gho. 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. That is no light part of my penance. I am here to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.

Scro. You were always a good friend to me. Thank 'er.

Gho. You will be haunted by three spirits.