by Mike Ashley
To these and many other shops and stores and stalls and stands thronged the townspeople, rich and poor. Even the humblest had some money to spend upon this merry Christmas eve. A damsel of the lower orders might here be seen hurrying home with a cheap chicken; here another with a duck; and here the saving father of a family bending under the load of a turkey and a huge basket of good things. Everywhere were cheerful lights and warm hearthstones, bright and gay mansions, cosey and comfortable little tenements, happy hearts, rosy cheeks, and bright eyes. Nobody cared for the snow and ice, while they had so much that was warm and cheering. It was all the better for the holiday – what would Christmas be without snow?
Through these joyous crowds – down the hilarious streets, where the happy boys were shouting, and the merry girls were hurrying in and out of the shops – came a man who was neither joyous, hilarious, merry, nor happy. It was Stephen Skarridge, the landlord of many houses in that town. He wore an overcoat, which, though old, was warm and comfortable, and he had fur around his wrists and his neck. His hat was pushed down tight upon his little head, as though he would shut out all the sounds of merriment which filled the town. Wife and child he had none, and this season of joy to all the Christian world was an annoying and irritating season to his unsympathetic, selfish heart.
“Oh, ho!” he said to himself, as one after another of his tenants, loaded down with baskets and bundles, hurried by, each wishing him a merry Christmas; “oh, ho! there seems to be a great ease in the money market just now. Oh, ho, ho! They all seem as flush as millionaires. There’s nothing like the influence of holiday times to make one open his pockets – ha, ha! It’s not yet the first of the month, ’tis true; but it matters not – I’ll go and collect my rents to-night, while all this money is afloat – oh, ho! ha, ha!”
Now old Skarridge went from house to house, and threatened with expulsion all who did not pay their rents that night. Some resisted bravely, for the settlement day had not yet arrived, and these were served with notices to leave at the earliest legal moment; others paid up to their dues with many an angry protest; while some, poor souls, had no money ready for this unforeseen demand, and Stephen Skarridge seized whatever he could find that would satisfy his claim. Thus many a poor, weeping family saw the turkey or the fat goose which was to have graced the Christmas table carried away by the relentless landlord. The children shed tears to see their drums and toys depart, and many a little memento of affection, intended for a gift upon the morrow, became the property of the hard-hearted Stephen. ’Twas nearly nine o’clock when Skarridge finished his nefarious labor. He had converted his seizures into money, and was returning to his inhospitable home with more joyous light in his eyes than had shone there for many a day, when he saw Arthur Tyrrell and his son enter the bright main street of the town.
“Oh, ho!” said Stephen; “has he, too, come to spend his Christmas money? He, the poor, miserable, penniless one! I’ll follow him.”
So behind the unhappy father and his son went the skulking Skarridge. Past the grocery store and the markets, with their rich treasures of eatables; past the toy-shops, where the boy’s eyes sparkled with the delight which disappointment soon washed out with a tear; past the candy-shops, where the windows were so entrancing that the little fellow could scarcely look upon them – on, past all these, to a small shop at the bottom of the street, where a crowd of the very poorest people were making their little purchases, went the father and his son, followed by the evil-minded Skarridge. When the Tyrrells went into the shop, the old man concealed himself outside, behind a friendly pillar, lest any of these poor people should happen to be his tenants, and return him the damage he had just done to them. But he very plainly saw Arthur Tyrrell go up to the counter and ask for a mackerel. When one was brought, costing ten cents, he declined it, but eventually purchased a smaller one, the price of which was eight cents. The two cents which he received as change were expended for a modicum of lard, and father and son then left the store and wended their way homeward. The way was long, but the knowledge that they brought, that which would make the next day something more like Christmas than an ordinary day, made their steps lighter and the path less wearisome.
They reached the cottage and opened the door. There, by a rushlight on a table, sat the mother and the little girl, arranging greens wherewith to decorate their humble home. To the mute interrogation of the mother’s eyes the father said, with something of the old fervor in his voice:
“Yes, my dear, I have brought it;” and he laid the mackerel on the table. The little girl sprang up to look at it, and the boy stepped back to shut the door; but before he could do so, it was pushed wide open, and Skarridge, who had followed them all the way, entered the cottage. The inmates gazed at him with astonishment; but they did not long remain in ignorance of the meaning of this untimely visit.
“Mr Tyrrell,” said Skarridge, taking out of his pocket a huge memorandum-book, and turning over the pages with a swift and practised hand, “I believe you owe me two months’ rent. Let me see – yes, here it is – eighty-seven and a half cents – two months at forty-three and three-quarters cents per month. I should like to have it now, if you please,” and he stood with his head on one side, his little eyes gleaming with a yellow maliciousness.
Arthur Tyrrell arose. His wife crept to his side, and the two children ran behind their parents.
“Sir,” said Tyrrell, “I have no money – do your worst.”
“No money!” cried the hard-hearted Stephen. “That story will not do for me. Everybody seems to have money to-night; and if they have none, it is because they have wilfully spent it. But if you really have none” – and here a ray of hope shot through the hearts of the Tyrrell family – “you must have something that will bring money, and that I shall seize upon. Ah, ha! I will take this!”
And he picked up the Christmas mackerel from the table where Arthur had laid it.
“ ’Tis very little,” said Skarridge, “but it will at least pay me my interest.” Wrapping it in the brown paper which lay under it, he thrust it into his capacious pocket, and without another word went out into the night.
Arthur Tyrrell sank into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. His children, dumb with horror and dismay, clung to the rounds of his chair, while his wife, ever faithful in the day of sorrow as in that of joy, put her arm around his neck and whispered in his ear, “Cheer up, dear Arthur, all may yet be well; have courage! He did not take the lard!”
Swiftly homeward, through the forest, walked the triumphant Skarridge, and he reached his home an hour before midnight. He lived alone, in a handsome house (which he had seized for a debt), an old woman coming every day to prepare his meals and do the little housework that he required. Opening his door with his latch-key, he hurried upstairs, lighted a candle, and seating himself at a large table in a spacious room in the front of the house, he counted over the money he had collected that evening, entered the amount in one of the great folios which lay upon the table, and locked up the cash in a huge safe. Then he took from his pocket the mackerel of the Tyrrell family. He opened it, laid it flat upon the table before him, and divided it by imaginary lines into six parts.
“Here,” said he to himself, “are breakfasts for six days – I would it were a week. I like to have things square and even. Had that man bought the ten-cent fish that I saw offered him, there would have been seven portions. Well, perhaps I can make it do, even now – let me see! A little off here – and the same off this – so –”
At this moment something very strange occurred. The mackerel, which had been lying, split open, upon its back, now closed itself, gave two or three long-drawn gasps, and then heaving a sigh of relief, it flapped its tail, rolled its eyes a little, and deliberately wriggling itself over to a pile of ledgers, sat up on its tail, and looked at Skarridge. This astounded individual pushed back his chair and gazed with all his eyes at the strange fish. But he was more astounded yet, when the fish spoke to him. “Would you mind,” said th
e mackerel, making a very wry face, “getting me a glass of water? I feel all of a parch inside.”
Skarridge mumbled out some sort of an assent, and hurried to a table near by, where stood a pitcher and a glass, and filling the latter, he brought it to the mackerel. “Will you hold it to my mouth?” said the fish. Stephen complying, the mackerel drank a good half of the water.
“There,” it said, “that makes me feel better. I don’t mind brine if I can take exercise. But to lie perfectly still in salt water makes one feel wretched. You don’t know how hungry I am. Have you any worms convenient?”
“Worms!” cried Stephen, “why, what a question! No, I have no worms.”
“Well,” said the fish, somewhat petulantly, “you must have some sort of a yard or garden; go and dig me some.”
“Dig them!” cried Stephen. “Do you know it’s winter, and the ground’s frozen – and the worms too, for that matter?”
“I don’t care anything for all that,” said the mackerel. “Go you and dig some up. Frozen or thawed, it is all one to me now; I could eat them any way.”
The manner of the fish was so imperative that Stephen Skarridge did not think of disobeying, but taking a crowbar and a spade from a pile of agricultural implements that lay in one corner of the room (and which had at various times been seized for debts), he lighted a lantern and went down into the little back garden. There he shovelled away the snow, and when he reached the ground he was obliged to use the crowbar vigorously before he could make any impression on the frozen earth. After a half-hour’s hard labor, he managed, by most carefully searching through the earth thrown out of the hole he had made, to find five frozen worms. These he considered a sufficient meal for a fish which would scarcely make seven meals for himself, and so he threw down his implements and went into the house, with his lantern, his five frozen worms, and twice as many frozen fingers. When he reached the bottom of the stairs he was certain that he heard the murmur of voices from above. He was terrified. The voices came from the room where all his treasures lay! Could it be thieves?
Extinguishing his lantern and taking off his shoes, he softly crept up the stairs. He had not quite closed the door of the room when he left it, and he could now look through an opening which commanded a view of the whole apartment. And such a sight now met his wide-stretched eyes!
In his chair – his own arm-chair – by the table, there sat a dwarf, whose head, as large as a prize cabbage, was placed upon a body so small as not to be noticeable, and from which depended a pair of little legs appearing like the roots of the before-mentioned vegetable. On the table, busily engaged in dusting a day-book with a pen-wiper, was a fairy, no more than a foot high, and as pretty and graceful as a queen of the ballet viewed from the dress circle. The mackerel still leaned against the pile of ledgers; and – oh horror! – upon a great iron box, in one corner, there sat a giant, whose head, had he stood up, would have reached the lofty ceiling!
A chill, colder than the frosty earth and air outside could cause, ran through the frame of Stephen Skarridge, as he crouched by the crack of the door and looked upon these dreadful visitors, while their conversation, of which he could hear distinctly every word, caused the freezing perspiration to trickle in icy globules down his back.
“He’s gone to get me some worms,” said the mackerel, “and we might as well settle it all before he comes back. For my part I’m very sure of what I have been saying.”
“Oh, yes,” said the dwarf; “there can be no doubt about it, at all. I believe it, every word.”
“Of course it is so,” said the fairy, standing upon the day-book, which was now well dusted; “everybody knows it is.”
“It couldn’t be otherwise,” said the giant, in a voice like thunder among the pines; “we’re all agreed upon that.”
“They’re mighty positive about it, whatever it is,” thought the trembling Stephen, who continued to look with all his eyes and to listen with all his ears.
“Well,” said the dwarf, leaning back in the chair and twisting his little legs around each other until they looked like a rope’s end, “let us arrange matters. For my part, I would like to see all crooked things made straight, just as quickly as possible.”
“So would I,” said the fairy, sitting down on the day-book, and crossing her dainty satin-covered ankles, from which she stooped to brush a trifle of dust; “I want to see everything nice, and pretty, and just right.”
“As for me,” said the mackerel, “I’m somewhat divided – in my opinion, I mean – but whatever you all agree upon, will suit me, I’m sure.”
“Then,” said the giant, rising to his feet, and just escaping a violent contact of his head with the ceiling, “let us get to work, and while we are about it, we’ll make a clean sweep of it.”
To this the others all gave assent, and the giant, after moving the mackerel to one corner of the table, and requesting the fairy to stand beside the fish, spread all the ledgers, and day-books, and the cash, bill, and memorandum books upon the table, and opened each of them at the first page.
Then the dwarf climbed up on the table and took a pen, and the fairy did the same, and they both set to work, as hard as they could, to take an account of Stephen Skarridge’s possessions. As soon as either of them had added up two pages the giant turned over the leaves, and he had to be very busy about it, so active was the dwarf, who had a splendid head for accounts, and who had balanced the same head so long upon his little legs that he had no manner of difficulty in balancing a few ledgers. The fairy, too, ran up and down the columns as if she were dancing a measure in which the only movements were “Forward one!” and “Backward one!” and she got over her business nearly as fast as the dwarf. As for the mackerel, he could not add up, but the fairy told him what figures she had to carry to the next column, and he remembered them for her, and thus helped her a great deal. In less than half an hour the giant turned over the last page of the last book, and the dwarf put down on a large sheet of foolscap the sum total of Stephen Skarridge’s wealth.
The fairy read out the sum, and the woeful listener at the door was forced to admit to himself that they had got it exactly right.
“Now, then,” said the giant, “here is the rent list. Let us make out the schedule.” In twenty minutes the giant, the dwarf, and the fairy – the last reading out the names of Stephen’s various tenants, the giant stating what amounts he deemed the due of each one, and the dwarf putting down the sums opposite their names – had made out the schedule, and the giant read it over in a voice that admitted of no inattention.
“Hurrah!” said the dwarf. “That’s done, and I’m glad,” and he stepped lightly from the table to the arm of the chair, and then down to the seat, and jumped to the floor, balancing his head in the most wonderful way, as he performed these agile feats.
“Yes,” said the mackerel, “it’s all right though to be sure I’m somewhat divided –”
“Oh! we won’t refer to that now,” said the giant; ‘let by-gones be by-gones.”
As for the fairy, she did not say a word, but she made a bounce to the top of the day-book which she had dusted, and which now lay closed near the edge of the table, and she danced such a charming little fantaisie that everybody gazed at her with delight. The giant stooped and opened his mouth as if he expected her to whirl herself into it when she was done; and the mackerel was actually moved to tears, and tried to wipe his eyes with his fin, but it was not long enough, and so the tears rolled down and hardened into a white crust on the green baize which covered the table. The dwarf was on the floor, and he stood motionless on his little toes, as if he had been a great top dead asleep. Even Stephen, though he was terribly agitated, thought the dance was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. At length, with a whirl which made her look like a snowball on a pivot, she stopped stock-still, standing on one toe, as if she had fallen from the sky and had stuck upright on the day-book.
“Bravo! bravo!” cried the dwarf, and you could hear his little hands
clapping beneath his head.
“Hurrah!” cried the giant, and he brought his great palms together with a clap that rattled the window-panes, like the report of a cannon.
“Very nice! very nice, indeed!” said the mackerel. “Though I’m rather di –”
“Oh, no, you’re not!” cried the fairy, making a sudden joyful jump at him, and putting her little hand on his somewhat distorted and certainly very ugly mouth. “You’re nothing of the kind, and now let’s have him in here and make him sign. Do you think he will do it?” said she, turning to the giant. That mighty individual doubled up his great right fist like a trip-hammer, and he opened his great left hand, as hard and solid as an anvil, and he brought the two together with a sounding whang!
“Yes,” said he, “I think he will.”
“In that case,” said the dwarf, “we might as well call him.”
“I sent him after some worms,” said the mackerel, “but he has not been all this time getting them. I should not wonder at all if he had been listening at the door all the while.”
“We’ll soon settle that,” said the dwarf, walking rapidly across the room, his head rolling from side to side, but still preserving that admirable balance for which it was so justly noted. When he reached the door he pulled it wide open, and there stood poor Stephen Skarridge, trembling from head to foot, with the five frozen worms firmly grasped in his hands.
“Come in!” said the giant, and Stephen walked in slowly and fearfully, bowing as he came, to the several personages in the room.
“Are those my worms?” said the mackerel. “If so, put them in my mouth, one at a time. There! not so fast. They are frozen, sure enough; but do you know that I believe I like them this way the best. I never tasted frozen ones before.”
By this time the dwarf had mounted the table, and opening the schedule, stood pointing to an agreement written at the bottom of it, while the fairy had a pen already dipped in the ink, which she held in her hand, as she stood on the other side of the schedule.