Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits (continued)

`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.'