the fruit and candy, two of the men laughingly disappeared from the
room, and on their return, brought between them a huge California
pumpkin, which measured five and one-half feet around its
circumference. This had previously been prepared into what they called
a "Christmas box," the top had been cut smoothly off, and into it had
been fastened the handle of a bucket. The lower part had been hollowed
out, washed, and dried; the pumpkin seemed almost large enough to have
served as a carriage for Cinderella. It was placed at Margaret's feet,
and the top lifted off amidst shouts of laughter and the clapping of
hands. Each guest present had stored away in it some loving little
gift, of no value whatever so far as the world considers value, but
rich indeed to one who prizes a gift according to the loving thought
which it shows. One woman had pasted upon several sheets of writing
paper some rare ferns and mosses which she had brought from the
mountains of New Mexico years before, and had sewed them together in
the form of a book. Another had embroidered Margaret's initials upon a
Chinese silk scarf, which had been one of her treasures in the days of
greater prosperity. Another had rounded off and polished a pin-cushion
of Yoca wood, sawed from a stalk in the higher mountain districts. The
fourth had made her a shell-box, of shells gathered on some past trip
to the Cataline Islands. A fifth had heard her express a desire to make
a collection of the different kinds of wood which grew in the
neighborhood and had brought carefully sawed and neatly polished
specimens of a half-dozen varieties, and so on; each showing that her
taste had been remembered, some wish expressed at an odd moment had
been recalled, or some pleasant surprise anticipated.
Margaret's eyes filled with tears as one by one she unfolded these
gifts of love; then, realizing that such a time as the present needed
more joy than anything else, she laughingly brushed away the unshed
tears and proposed that they should all enter into some games together.
This was heartily agreed to by the others, and the evening ended in
almost a romp. Hands were shaken, good bys were said, the last joke
uttered, and wagon and gig and buggy drove away.
Margaret, Mrs. Brown, and I remained to help put the children to bed
and somewhat straighten up the little house. Then bidding the
happy-faced old woman "Good by," we started out, alone, for a quiet
walk across the hill, under the Christmas stars. As we prepared for bed
Margaret exclaimed, "What a happy, happy day we have had!" I looked
into her radiant face, and said, softly, to myself: "_Blessed be
motherhood, even if it must be the mothering of other women's
children_!"
VI.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
STAVE ONE.
MARLEY'S GHOST.
[We hardly know of anything better to recommend than the following
exquisite masterpiece of Dickens, for hearts that have grown dull
to the real joy of Christmas tide.]
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.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his
sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even
Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he was
an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and
solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started
from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly
understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to
relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died
before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his
taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning
out after dark in a breezy spot--say Saint Paul's churchyard, for
instance--literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years
afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was
known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business
called Scrooge, Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both
names. It was all the same to him.
Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old
sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck
out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an
oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his
thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty
rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He
carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his
office in the dog-days, and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could
warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than
he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain
less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The
heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the
advantage over him in only one respect--they often "came down"
handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My
dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars
implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was
o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to
such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared
to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners
into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though
they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his
way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep
its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.
Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,
biting weather, foggy withal, and he could hear the people in the court
outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their
breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.
The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark
already--it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring in the
windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable
brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and key-hole, and was
so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the
houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come
drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that nature
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his
eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank,
was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's
fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he
couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room;
and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master
predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the
clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the
candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he
failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It
was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that
this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this
nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and
handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean
that, I am sure."
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be
merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."
"Come, then," returned the nephew, gayly. "What right have you to be
dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said
"Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug!"
"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "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," said
Scrooge, indignantly, "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!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way,
and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it," repeated Scrooge's nephew, "but you don't keep it."
"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you!
Much good it has ever done you!"
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I
have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew, "Christmas among
the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when
it has come 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!"
The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately
sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the
last frail spark forever.
"Let me hear another sound from _you_," said Scrooge, "and you'll
keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful
speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go
into Parliament."
"Don't be angry, uncle. Come dine with us to-morrow."
Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the
whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that
extremity first.
"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
"Because I fell in love."
"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only
one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good
afternoon!"
"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why
give it as a reason for not coming now?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be
friends?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"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!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
"And a happy New Year!"
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He
stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the
clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
them cordially.
"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge, who overheard him: "my
clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking
about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people
in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with
their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their
hands, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring
to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr.
Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died
seven years ago, this very night."
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving
partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous
word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the
credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman,
taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make
some 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."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in
operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they
were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very
glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of
mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us
are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink,
and means of warmth. We choose 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?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "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."
"Many can't go there, and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population. Besides--excuse me--I don't know
that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to
understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's.
Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the
gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved opinion
of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about with
flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in
carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a
church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge
out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the
hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards
as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold
became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some
laborers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in
a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered,
warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture.
The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly
congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops
where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows
made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades
became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to
impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had
anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion
House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as
a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he
had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and
bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his
garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good
Saint Dunstan had but nipped the evil spirit's nose with a touch of
such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant
young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed
by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a
Christmas carol; but at the first sound of
"God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer
fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial
frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an
ill will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the
fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his
candle out, and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to
stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be
bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill used when I pay a
day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his greatcoat to the chin. "But I
suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning."
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.
The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends
of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no
greatcoat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of
boys, twenty times, in honor of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran
home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at
blindman's-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and
having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening
with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which
had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of
rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little
business to be that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run
there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other
houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and
dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms
being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge,
who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and
frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house that it seemed
as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
threshold.
Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the
knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact
that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy
about him as any man in the city of London, even including--which is a
bold word--the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne
in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his
last mention of his seven-years' dead partner that afternoon. And then
let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge,
having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its
undergoing any intermediate process of change--not a knocker, but
Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects
in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster
in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge
as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its
ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or
hot air; and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
motionless. That, and its livid color, made it horrible; but its horror
seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a
part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of
a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy,
would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,
turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He _did_ pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door;
and he _did_ look cautiously behind at first, as if he half-expected to
be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the
hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws
and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, "Pooh, pooh!" and closed
it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above,
and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a
separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be
frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall,
and up the stairs, slowly too, trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight
of stairs, or through a bad young act of Parliament; but I mean to say
you might have got a hearse up that stair-case, and taken it broadwise,
with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the
balustrades, and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and
room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a
locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen
gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,
so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and
Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through
his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of
the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under
the table; nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and
basin ready; and the little sauce-pan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in
his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet;
nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious
attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old
shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in;
double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured
against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and
slippers, and his night-cap, and sat down before the fire to take his
gruel.