Again it seemed to look upon him.
“If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge quite agonized, “show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!”
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and, withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and two children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked out from the window’ glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of the children at their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was care-worn and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression on it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner which had been hoarding 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 bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creature 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.”
This scene always appealed to ME, but I guess it’s wrong to introduce new characters so late in the story. In any case, only two versions bother with Caroline and her husband, and only Stewart does much about them.
Haddrick demands, “But is there no one in this city who feels some emotion for this poor man? If there is, show me that person, I beseech you!” But the Spirit takes him to the Cratchit house.
Stewart asks “Is there no one who feels emotion at this man’s death?” The Ghost raises one arm; the scene comes out of his sleeve. A thin woman carries a baby along a poor street and stops before a door. Seeing a shabbily-dressed young man approach, she turns; they converse on the doorstep. Their dialogue follows the text from “Is it good or bad?” to “He is dead.” She then asks to whom their debt will be transferred, and he gives most of the textual reply. Her face slowly brightens, and when he has finished, declares, with shaking voice, “I never thought a death could bring such happiness!” All tears and smiles, she falls against the man’s shoulder. Scrooge shakes his head. “No no. Show me some tenderness connected with a death!”
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