prepared for nothing; and consequently, when the bell struck one, and
no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five
minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came.
All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and center of a blaze
of ruddy light which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
hour, and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen
ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at,
and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be that very moment an
interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the
consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think--as you
or I would have thought at first, for it is always the person not in
the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would
unquestionably have done it, too--at last, I say, he began to think
that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the
adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine.
This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and
shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him
by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had
undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so
hung with living green that it looked a perfect grove, from every part
of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly,
mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light as if so many little
mirrors had been scattered there, and such a mighty blaze went roaring
up the chimney as that dull petrifaction of a hearth had never known in
Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone.
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese,
game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths
of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot
chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the
chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch,
there sat a jolly giant, glorious to see, who bore a glowing torch, in
shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its
light on Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know me better, man!"
Scrooge entered, timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was
not the dogged Scrooge he had been, and though the Spirit's eyes were
clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me!"
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or
mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the
figure that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be
warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the
ample folds of the garment, were also bare, and on its head it wore no
other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining
icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free--free as its genial
face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its
unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was
an antique scabbard, but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was
eaten up with rust.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Never!" Scrooge made answer to it.
"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family, meaning
(for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?"
pursued the Phantom.
"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have not. Have you
had many brothers, Spirit?"
"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, submissively, "conduct me where you will. I
went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is
working now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by
it."
"Touch my robe!"
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry,
brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch
all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the
hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning,
where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk
and not unpleasant kind of music in scraping the snow from the pavement
in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence
it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the
road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,
contrasting with the smooth, white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and
with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been
ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and
wagons--furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of
times where the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels
hard to trace in the thick, yellow mud and icy water. The sky was
gloomy and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half
thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of
sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one
consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts'
content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate of the town,
and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest
summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in
vain. For the people who were shoveling away on the housetops were
jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets,
and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball--better-natured
missile far than many a wordy jest--laughing heartily if it went right,
and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were
still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There
were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the
waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling
out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy,
brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of
their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in
wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at
the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples clustered high in
blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes made, in the
shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that
people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of
filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks
among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered
leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the
yellow of the oranges and lemons, and in the great compactness of their
juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in
paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set
forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
stagnant blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going
on, and to a fish went gasping round and round their little world in
slow and passionless excitement.
The grocers'! oh the grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters
down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone
that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that
the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters
were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the
raisins were so plentiful and pure, the almonds so extremely white, the
sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious,
the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make
the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it
that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
modest tartness from their highly decorated boxes, or that everything
was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all
so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they
tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker
baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came
running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like
mistakes, in the best humor possible; while the grocer and his people
were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they
fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside
for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they
chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and
away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and
with their gayest faces. At the same time there emerged from scores of
by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying
their dinners to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor revelers
appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge
beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the covers as their
bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And
it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were
angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he
shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humor was
restored directly, for they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon
Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was
a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their
cooking in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven, where the
pavement smoked as if the stones were cooking, too.
"Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?"
asked Scrooge.
"There is; my own."
"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?" asked Scrooge.
"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
"Because it needs it most."
"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder you, of all
the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these
people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment."
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day,
often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all," said
Scrooge, "wouldn't you?"
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You seek to close these places on the seventh day," said Scrooge, "and
it comes to the same thing."
"_I_ seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least
in that of your family," said Scrooge.
"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who
lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride,
ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are
as strange to us and all our kith and kin as if they had never lived.
Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
Scrooge promised that he would, and they went on, invisible, as they
had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable
quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that
notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any
place with ease, and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
gracefully and like a supernatural creature as it was possible he could
have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this
power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and
his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge's
clerk's; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his
robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch.
Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a-week himself; he pocketed on
Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost
of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!
Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in
a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a
goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda
Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master
Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
property, conferred upon his son and heir in honor of the day) into his
mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to
show his linen in the fashionable parks. And now two smaller Cratchits,
boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker's they
had smelt the goose and known it for their own, and basking in
luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced
about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while
he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire
until the slow potatoes bubbling up knocked loudly at the saucepan lid
to be led out and peeled.
"What has ever got your precious father then?" said Mrs. Cratchit. "And
your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha warn't as late last Christmas Day by
half an hour."
"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she spoke.
"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits. "Hurrah!
There's _such_ a goose, Martha!"
"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!" said Mrs.
Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and
bonnet for her with officious zeal.
"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and
had to clear away this morning, mother!"
"Well, never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs. Cratchit. "Sit ye
down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!"
"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits, who
were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at
least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down
before him, and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed to look
seasonable, and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore
a little crutch and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits,
for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come
home rampant; "not coming upon Christmas Day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only a joke, so
she came out prematurely from behind the closet door and ran into his
arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim and bore him off
into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the
copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had
rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his
heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful,
sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever
heard. He told me coming home that he hoped the people saw him in the
church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to
remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men
see."
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more
when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny
Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister
to his stool before the fire, and while Bob, turning up his cuffs--as
if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby--compounded
some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and
round and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter and the two ubiquitous
young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned
in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of
all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter
of course--and in truth it was something very like it in that house.
Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot
plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the
two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting
themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came
to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It
was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly
all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but
when she did, and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth,
one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle
of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was
such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness,
were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and
mashed potatoes it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;
indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet
every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were
steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being
changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous
to bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in
turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back
yard and stolen it while they were merry with the goose--a supposition
at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors
were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A
smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an
eating-house and a pastry-cook's next door to each other, with a
laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding. In half a minute
Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding,
like a speckled canon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half
a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck
into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he
regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of
flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or
thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have
been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at
such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted and
considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a
one, and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass: two
tumblers and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks,
while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
proposed: "A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob held
his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished
to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before,
"tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner,
and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows
remain unaltered by the future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my
race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be
like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and
was overcome with penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear
that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and
Where is it. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?
It may be that, in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less
fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh, God, to hear
the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his
hungry brothers in the dust!"
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling, cast his eyes
upon the ground. But he raised them speedily on hearing his own name.
"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the
feast!"
"The founder of the feast, indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. "I
wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and
I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."
"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas Day."
"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on which one drinks
the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr.
Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do,
poor fellow!"
"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."
"I'll drink his health for your sake and the day's," said Mrs.
Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A Merry Christmas and a Happy
New Year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!"
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their
proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but
he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The
mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not
dispelled for full five minutes.
After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from
the mere relief of Scrooge the baleful being done with. Bob Cratchit
told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which
would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two
young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man
of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from
between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular
investments he should favor when he came into the receipt of that
bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's,
then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she
worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning
for a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home.
Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how
the lord "was much about as tall as Peter"; at which Peter pulled up
his collars so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had
been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and
round, and by and by they had a song, about a lost child traveling in
the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it
very well indeed.