[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 39.]
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 in it. 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 favour 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 a-bed 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 chesnuts and the jug went round and
round; and bye and bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling
in the snow, from Tiny Tim; who had a plaintive little voice, and sang
it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome
family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being
waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and
very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But they were happy,
grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and
when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 40.]
sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon
them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as
Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the
roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was
wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a
cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the
fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn, to shut out cold and
darkness. There, all the children of the house were running out into
the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles,
aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on
the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome
girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped
lightly off to some near neighbour's house; where, wo upon the single
man who saw them enter--artful witches: well they knew it--in a glow!
But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to
friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to
give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house
expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high.
Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of
breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring,
with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before dotting the
dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the
evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed: though
little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a
bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast
about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread
itself wheresoever it listed--or would have done so, but for the frost
that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and
coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak
of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a
sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the
thick gloom of darkest night.
"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,"
returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced
towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a
cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and
woman, with their children and
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 41.]
[Illustration: Verso of original manuscript Page 42.]
their children's children, and another generation beyond that, all
decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that
seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was
singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was
a boy; and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely
as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud;
and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and
passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To
Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a
frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by
the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the
dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the
earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from
shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through,
there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to
its base, and storm-birds--born of the wind one might suppose, as
sea-weed of the water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they
skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that
through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of
brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough
table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in
their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all
damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old
ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea--on,
on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they
lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the
look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly
figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a
Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath
to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes
belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or
bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in
the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had
remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they
delighted to remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of
the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through
the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets
as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus
engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to
Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew's, and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his
side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability!
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 42.]
"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest
in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like to
know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his
acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while
there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the
world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When
Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his
head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions:
Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their
assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily.
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Scrooge's
nephew. "He believed it too!"
"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless
those women; they never do anything by halves. They are always in
earnest.
She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made
to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about
her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the
sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head.
Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but
satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory!
"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the truth;
and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their
own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."
"I am sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece. "At least
you always tell _me_ so."
"What of that, my dear!" said Scrooge's nephew. "His wealth is of no
use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself
comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking--ha, ha,
ha!--that he is ever going to benefit us with it."
"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece. Scrooge's
niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.
"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for him; I couldn't
be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself,
always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't
come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a
dinner."
"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's
niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have
been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and, with the
dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 43.]
"Well! I am very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I
haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do _you_
say, Topper?"
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's sisters,
for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no
right to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat Scrooge's niece's
sister--the plump one with the lace tucker: not the one with the
roses--blushed.
"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. "He never
finishes what he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!"
Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible
to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried hard to do it
with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously followed.
"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that the
consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with
us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could
do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can
find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his
dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether
he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he
dies, but he can't help thinking better of it--I defy him--if he finds
me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying Uncle
Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his
poor clerk fifty pounds, _that's_ something; and I think I shook him,
yesterday."
It was their turn to laugh now, at the notion of his shaking Scrooge.
But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they
laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in
their merriment, and passed the bottle, joyously.
After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and
knew what they were about, when they sung a Glee or Catch, I can
assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a
good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red
in the face over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and
played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing: you
might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to
the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been
reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this strain of music
sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind;
he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened
to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of
life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to
the sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley.
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while they
played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and
never
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 44.]
better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.
Stop! There was first a game at blindman's buff. Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had
eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him
and Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it.
The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an
outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the
fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano,
smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went
he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch
anybody else. If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did,
and stood there; he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize
you, which would have been an affront to your understanding; and would
instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She
often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not. But when
at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings,
and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence
there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his
pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to
touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by
pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her
neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it,
when, another blind-man being in office, they were so very
confidential together, behind the curtains.
Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party, but was
made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner,
where the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in
the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of
the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was
very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat her
sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper could have
told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old,
but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly forgetting in the
interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in
their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very
often guessed right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel,
warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge: blunt
as he took it in his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked
upon him with such favour that he begged like a boy to be allowed to
stay until the guests departed. But this the Spirit said could not be
done.
"Here's a new game," said Scrooge. "One half hour, Spirit, only one!"
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 45.]
It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think
of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to
their questions yes or no as the case was. The brisk fire of
questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was
thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a
savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and
talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live
in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse,
or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a
cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this
nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly
tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last
the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!"
"What is it?" cried Fred.
"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though
some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been
"Yes;" inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have
diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had
any tendency that way.
"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it
would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled
wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say 'Uncle Scrooge!'"
"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
"A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, whatever he
is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't take it from me, but may he
have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that
he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked
them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the
whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but
always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they
were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by
struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by
poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse,
[Illustration: Original manuscript of page 46.]
hospital, and jail, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his
little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the
Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his
doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be
condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange,
too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the
Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but
never spoke of it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party,
when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place,
he noticed that its hair was gray.
"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends
to-night."
"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near."
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge,
looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange,
and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a
foot or a claw!"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's
sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched,
abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet,
and clung upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish;
but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should
have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest
tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and
twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no
degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the
mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way,
he tried to say they were fine
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 47.]
children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a
lie of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they
cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This
girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of
all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching
out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it
for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last
time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last
stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob
Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and
hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.
[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 48.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Last of the Spirits
_London · Chapman & Hall, 186 Strand._]
[_This illustration is reproduced in full color on the inside back
cover._]
STAVE IV.
THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS.
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near
him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through
which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its
face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched
hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure
from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was
surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that
its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no
more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?" said
Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed downward with its hand.
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not
happened, but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued. "Is
that so, Spirit?"