Marley

“ Eyes—no woman ever had any like them—big and round and wide, with a peculiar violet tinge to them, and lids that had a trick of closing down with a little hesitating flutter like a girl trying to flirt with you.
But what's the use! Marley, piecemeal, would never look like the short-stepping, springy-walked, foreshortened, arms-flopping Marley with the greasy black peaked cap pulled over his forehead, the greasy jumper tucked into greasier overalls who sold his hybrid services to the Transcontinental for the munificent sum of a dollar ten a day. ”

“ They reviewed their old dreams, and now they could laugh at their defeated wish to live, even in an humble way, in Macochee.
“It was funny, wasn’t it?” said Marley. “I was very young then,—nothing, in fact, but a kid.”
“Are you so very much older now?” asked Lavinia with a slight hint of teasing in her tender voice.
“Well,” Marley replied, with a seriousness that impressed him, at least, as the ripe wisdom of maturity, “I am not much older in years, but I am in experience, and in knowledge of life. You see, dear, you can measure time by the calendar, but you can’t measure life that way. ”

“ When she had done so, she dropped her sewing suddenly into her lap, and looking up, said:
“He thinks everything of you, doesn’t he?”
“I believe he likes me,” Marley said, as modestly as he could put it.
“Who could help it?”
Lavinia looked at Marley, and he leaned over, and took her hands.
“I am glad you can’t, sweetheart,” he said.
“Do you know,” she went on, “I think it is because you have been kind and good to him—just as you are kind and good to every one. His life is lonely; he is an outcast, almost; no one cares for him, and he appreciates your goodness.” ”

“ Marley never moved, just licked his lips with his tongue and his face grew whiter. Queer, the way he acted? Well, perhaps. Never a move to catch the frail, tottering figure, never a word to soothe the pitiful grief. He stood like a man listening as a judge pronounces his doom. Oh, yes, queer, if you like. Marley, whatever else he was, was a contradictory specimen.
It was Regan who caught the old lady in his arms, and led her gently into her bedroom off the parlor.
"You mustn't give way like that, Mrs. Coogan," he said kindly. "Just lie down for a. spell and you'll feel better. ”

“ They knew Marley at last, and they liked him less than ever; but, also, they imbibed a very wholesome respect for the welfare of their own skins. A man with arms whose strength is the strength of derrick booms is to be approached with some degree of caution.
Marley himself said nothing. Carleton and Regan got him on the carpet and tried to get his version of the story, but for all they got out of him they might as well have saved their time.
A pathetic enough looking figure, in a way, he was, as he stood in the super's office the afternoon of the fight. ”

“ He paused directly in front of the door and spoke with solemnity: "A man might as well be dead."
Scarcely had the words passed his lips when I almost jumped out of my skin, for directly before us on the other side of the wall arose the very noise which announced to Scrooge the approach of Marley's ghost—a dismal clanking and rattling of chains. Had Marley's transparent figure walked straight through the wall and up to the Dickensian character at my side, I would have been less surprised than I was by what actually happened. ”

“ At their feet lay the little fields, in the distance they could see a man plowing with two white horses; off to the right lay the water-works pond, gleaming in the afternoon sun.
“What are you thinking of?” Marley said.
“I was thinking that it would be nice to live in the country.”
“I was thinking that very thing myself!” exclaimed Marley. Their eyes met, and they thrilled over this unity in their thoughts. It was marvelous to them, mysterious, prophetic.
“Some day I could buy a farm,” Marley said; “out that way.”
“Yes,” Lavinia replied, “away off there, beyond those low trees. Do you see?” ”

“ After he had looked a while he gazed off across the street, drumming with his finger-tips on the arm of his chair. Presently, without turning, and still gazing abstractedly into the distance—and in that instant Marley remembered that he had seen the judge stare at the ceiling of the court room in exactly the same way while sentencing a culprit—he began to speak.
“Lavinia is yet very young, Mr. Marley,” he said, “with no knowledge of the world, and, perhaps, little of the state of her own mind. You too, are young, very young, and as yet without an occupation. ”

“ Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pig-tail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cashboxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent: so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind. ”

“ Marley could not bear their joy, any more than he could bear the joy of the dancers, and he looked away from them. Glancing along the wall he saw a girl, sitting alone. It was Grace Winters; she was older than the others, and she sat there sullenly, her dark brows contracted under her dark hair. Marley felt drawn toward her by a common trouble, and he thought, instantly, that he might appear less conspicuous if he went and sat beside her. ”

“ But Marley whirled his chair around toward Powell.
“I am in love,” he said. “I’ve wanted to tell you, but I—you know who she is.”
“Lavinia Blair?”
“Yes. And that’s what’s troubling me,” Marley went on. “I want to get married, and I can’t. I can’t,” he repeated, “the law’s too slow; I’ve realized it for a long while, but I tried to keep the fact away, I tried not to see it. But now I have to face it. Why,” he said, rising to his feet, “it’ll take a thousand years to get a practice in this town, and I’m not even admitted yet.” ”

“ He felt nothing but a cool though intensely savage determination to subdue this burly brute, to defend his position and title, though it cost him his life.
"There can be only one boss here," he said coldly, as Marley hesitated before him. "If you are not satisfied who it is, go to your cabin [Pg 90] and get your six-shooter, and we will settle it here on the dump." ”

“ Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. ”

“ She held back the screen door and Lavinia whisked excitedly into the hall. Mrs. Blair led the way to the parlor and sent Lavinia for a match. Then, turning to Marley, waiting there in the darkness, she said:
“She has told me, Glenn.”
Marley felt something tender, maternal in her voice; the way she spoke his name affected him.
“But she is young, very young; she is just a girl. We wish, of course, for nothing but her happiness, and you must be patient, very patient. It must not be, if it is to be, for a long time. ”

“ We're arranging to get her into an institute—a home for the blind somewhere."
"I thought you would"—Marley's voice was monotonous. "That's what she was talking about, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Regan.
Marley wagged his head with a judicial air.
"That'll kill her," he remarked, as though stating a self-evident, but commonplace, fact. "That'll kill her."
"I'm afraid it will," the master mechanic admitted gravely. "But there's nothing else to do. It's impossible for her to stay here. She's got to have some one to look after her, and she has no money. ”

“ Marley, with her fingers knitted, embracing her knees, and looking stonily before her, 'you must say as how Winnie is accustomed always to call that low thing her mother, because she has not known any other, though that creature is not worthy of her; but you may also say that the nurse loves her'—Jane's eyelids flickered and her voice became less harsh—'loves her and worships the very ground on which she walks. ”

“ Marley. 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. My 234spirit never walked beyond the counting-house. Mark me! in life my spirit never moved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me. Scrooge. Seven years dead, and travelling all the time! You travel fast. Marley. On the wings of the wind. Scrooge. You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years. Marley. ”

“ He just stopped in here for a sup of beer."
"You saw what happened to him outside?"
"Suppose I did?"
"How long before was it that he entered your place?"
"Tin minutes, mebbe—mebbe not more nor five."
"And you don't know him?"
"I do not. I tould ye that before."
"And how about the old woman in the worsted hood that entered this place a moment before this man came out? Who was she, and where is she now?"
"That? Oh, that was Mrs. Marley," replied the saloon-keeper, with the air of a man relieved to be questioned on a point upon which he could answer freely at last.
"And who is Mrs. Marley?" ”

“ You can report at noon, Marley, and make yourself generally handy around. I reckon you'll find enough to do."
"Thanks, sir," said Marley again, as he turned away.
Regan, leaning on the turntable push-bar in front of the roundhouse, followed with his eyes as the other crossed the tracks in the direction of the town, then he spat profoundly again.
"Queerest looking specimen that ever blew into the mountains, and we've had some before that were in a whole class by themselves at that," he remarked, screwing up his eyebrows. "Makes you think of a blasted gorilla the way he's laid out, what? ”

“ Sort of general assistant, assistant section hand, assistant boiler washer, assistant anything you like to everybody—Marley's duties, if nothing else, were multifarious.
Physically, he was a queer card. He was built on plans that gave you the impression Dame Nature had been doing a little something herself along the lines of original research and experimentation—and wasn't well enough satisfied with the result to duplicate it! Anyway, as far as any one ever knew, there wasn't but one Marley produced. Maybe nature, even, isn't infallible ”

“ Marley laughed and said that if Fred liked fat ladies he need not go so far from home.
"You're not fat, Mother!" Polly protested indignantly.
Pretty Mrs. Marley laughed again and declared that if she wasn't, it was not Mrs. Williamson's fault.
"For she will persist in giving us berry short-cakes, and I cannot refuse them," said Mrs. Marley regretfully. "Well, chicks, I suppose we'll have to go over and see this wonderful carnival some day."
"They don't stay very long in one place," hinted Artie. ”

“ The tone of Marley’s letters now became more cheerful; it was evident to Lavinia that he was finding an interest in life, and in his descriptions of his daily work and the places all over Chicago it took him to and the people of all sorts it brought him in contact with, she found a new interest for her own life. ”

“ One ray of the rising sun is said to be worth a dozen of the rays of the sun when setting. Are you better, Mrs. Marley? There is more colour in your cheeks; and let me give you a comb and brush and you shall do up your hair. You look like a wild woman. As to Captain Rattenbury—it is all nonsense. If you like it you may come here, but I suspect he knows when he is well off, and he will not find anywhere a woman more handy, frugal, and clean to keep house for him. The old man is failing. He has led a rough life, and that tells in the end.'
Jane Marley rose. ”

“ Marley did most of the talking, and all he said was about himself, though he did not realize that this was so. He had already told her of his life in the towns where his father had preached before he came to Macochee, and of his four years in college at Delaware. He tried to give her some notion of the sense of alienation he had felt as the son of an itinerant Methodist minister; for him no place had ever taken on the warm color and expression of home. He explained that as yet he knew little of Macochee, having been away at college when his father moved there the preceding fall. ”

“ Coogan tackled Regan on Marley's behalf.
The master mechanic scratched his head in perplexity, but his reply was prompt and hearty enough.
"Sure. Sure thing, Mrs. Coogan," he said. "Send him down to me. I'll find him something to do."
To Marley he talked a little differently.
"I ain't quite sure I like the looks of you," he flung out bluntly enough, taking in the new man from head to toe. "There's no job for you, but I'll give you a chance."
Marley's eyes came down in a flutter. ”

“ Inscribing it to deathless memory.”
—Chapman’s Third Sestiad to Marlowe’s Hero and Leander.
20 “Unhappy in thine end,
Marley, the Muses’ darling for thy verse,
Fit to write passions for the souls below,
If any wretched souls in passion speak.”
—George Peele “Prologue to the Honour of the Garter.”
21 “The impression of the man that hath been dear unto us, living an after life in our memory, etc.” ”

“ The fall worked a new energy in Marley, and, with the assurance that his labors were now soon to bear fruit, he found that he could study better than ever before. He worked faithfully over his books every morning, and he worked so hard that he felt himself entitled to a portion of each afternoon. He would leave the office at four o’clock. Lavinia would be waiting for him, and they would try to get out of sight before Connie returned from school. She might be expected any moment to come slowly down Ward Street entwined with one of her school-girl friends. ”