At length the long-expected knock was heard.
She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a
man whose face was careworn and depressed,
though he was young. There was a remarkable
expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of
which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to
repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been
boarding for him by the fire; and when she asked
him faintly what news (which was not until after a
long silence), he 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 a bad fortune indeed to find so
merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep
to-night 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 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 threshold. 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 weak by candle-light; and I wouldn't
show weak eyes to your father when he comes
home, for the world. It must be near his time."
"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his
book. "But I think he has walked a little slower than
he used, these few last evenings, mother."
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and
in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faultered
once: