_The Second of the Three Spirits_
Awakening in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore and sitting up
in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be
told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he
was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the
especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger
despatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But, finding
that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of
his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one
aside with his own hands, and lying down again, established a sharp
look-out all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on
the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by
surprise and made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being
acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the
time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure
by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a
tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without
venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling
on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange
appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would
have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means
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 centre 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 at
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 deep-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.
Girdled 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 learned 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 snowstorms.
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
plowed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons;
furrows that crossed and recrossed 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 or 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 rare, 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, clashing 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. And 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 with 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 its 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 dinner 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 smelled 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 let 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 in 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 the
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 younger
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 witness--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 cannon-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 elbows 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 reechoed.
"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 it is. 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 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 fully 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, fully 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.
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
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, parlors, and all sorts of rooms, was
wonderful. Here the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for
a cozy 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 neighbor's house; where, woe 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 labor 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
toward 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 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
vigor 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 seaweed clung to
its base, and storm-birds--born of the wind one might suppose, as
seaweed 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
lookout 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 recognize 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.
"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-humor. 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 offenses
carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."
"I'm 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.
"Well! I'm 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 reveled 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 moldy 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 sang 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 better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child
himself. Stop! There was first a game at blind-man'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
endeavoring 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 quite 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 favor 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 is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half-hour, Spirit, only
one!"
It is 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, 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 shriveled 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 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 toward 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, toward him.