By Charles Dickens
Stave 3: The Second Of The Three Spirits
Awaking 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
dispatched 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 timeof-
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 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 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
demeanour, 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 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 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 endeavoured to
diffuse in vain.
For, the people who were shovelling 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 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 humour
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 bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable
people, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these
poor revellers 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 humour 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 flavour 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.’
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 sprinkling 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 honour 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 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 vigour; 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 flavour, 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 pastrycook’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 shovel-full 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 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. 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 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-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
water-proof; 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, 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, 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 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 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.
‘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 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 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 amsure 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
better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child
himself. Stop.
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 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 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 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.’
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 Scrooge!’
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 grey.
‘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 a 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 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 abide 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.
