by Sarah Gray
“What place is this?” asked Scrooge.
“A place where miners who labor in the bowels of the earth live,” 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.
Outside, near the window, Scrooge spotted the silhouette of a man in a dark cloak, peering inside. It was not until the feeble light from inside reflected off the man’s pale face that Scrooge saw his glistening fangs.
“A vampire,” Scrooge whispered, for no matter how he tried to reason with reason itself, he could no longer argue that they did not exist. “Will it kill one of them?”
“I cannot say. It will try, certainly; the beast has a hungry air about him. The family has lost two of their young men this year, this family,” said the ghost. “And they still rejoice in the day, despite the dangers lurking at their very door, or rather, in this case, window.”
“Mining is dangerous,” Scrooge remarked. “But that is why it pays well. They know the risks.”
The spirit glanced down at Scrooge. “They did not lose their men to the mines, but to the vampires. Look at it watching them, drool leaking from the corners of its twisted mouth. The vampires grow bolder with each passing year. They have been seen down in the mines. In fact, it is thought they like the hunting ground, for it is always dark below, and as you know, they cannot abide the light of the sun.”
“I don’t know why you tell me these things.” Scrooge folded his arms over his chest. “What can I do? If my tenant is a vampire, do you suggest I go down, tap upon his door, and request that he cease feeding on the miners? He is liable to gobble me whole.”
“He will not feed upon you. Not now. The queen has too much invested in you.”
“I do not care for the way you say that,” Scrooge muttered, unable to meet the ghost’s gaze this time. “It bodes evil for me, and haven’t I had enough struggles in my life that I should throw myself into the fray between men and beasts at my age?” He caught his breath. “Have we further stops, or are we bound for my bedchamber at last?”
28
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. One of them, the elder, 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.
“Hmmm,” Scrooge said. “Safe enough there from vampires, I should guess.”
“But vampires are not the only threat,” said the spirit.
“Indeed?”
“The true threat is the inhumanity that settles upon men, men like yourself who could make a difference. Men who could fight for what is good and fair.”
Scrooge frowned, but said nothing.
29
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. They were 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. Each one 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, the threat of annihilation by vampires a possible reality. Suddenly the darkness seemed even more foreboding, for within its 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.
Scrooge was at once taken in by how pretty the room was, with simple paintings and minimal furniture, a grand fire blazing in the fireplace. But it was the Christmas tree that made the room, why, the people within, glow.
The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table on the far side of the room between windows that overlooked the street. The tree towered high above the heads of those inside the parlor and those who gazed at it from outside as they passed by. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers, and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls hiding behind the green leaves, and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs. There were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture, wonderfully made in tin, perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping. There were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in appearance than many real men—and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums. There were fiddles and drums, tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes. There were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels, baskets and pincushions in all devices. There were guns, swords, and banners. There were witches standing in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes, humming tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation cards, bouquet holders. There was real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf: imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises. There was everything, and more.
“What in heavens,” Scrooge managed. “How could my nephew afford all those trappings? What will he do with them all? Preposterous. A waste!” he declared.
“All bah humbug?” questioned the spirit.
“My thought exactly,” agreed Scrooge. “Such a waste of money for such a poor man.”
“Ha, ha,” laughed Scrooge’s nephew, Fred. “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, Fred’s wife, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
“Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
“Have they taken leave of their senses?” Scrooge questioned the spirit.
“I think not,” the Ghost of Christmas Present responded.
“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, Penny, indignantly. “I hope he can say the same one day when he comes nose to nose with the vampire that will suck him dry and leave him on a doorstep, to be used as a doormat.”
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. She had 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, had the girl an adequate training in housewifery and some measure of sense.
Penny reminded Scrooge of Belle in her younger years.
“My love, not on Christmas Day,” Fred admonished gently. “He’s a comical old fellow,” he continued. “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 one of the female guests. “At least Charles always tells me so.” She patted the arm of a young man seated beside her on the settee.
“Rich, indeed,” agreed Charles. His hair and whiskers were blacker and thicker, looked at so near, than even I had given them credit for being. A squareness about the lower part of his face, and the dotted indication of the strong black beard he shaved close every day, reminded Scrooge of the wax-work that had traveled the city once. This, his regular eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and brown, of his complexion—confound his complexion—made Scrooge think him, in spite of his misgivings, a very handsome man. No doubt the young lady on his arm thought so, too.
“And dangerous, if you ask me,” continued the guest. “The way the vampires keep their eye on him. It would not surprise me if he was one of them!”
“Me?” Scrooge turned to the spirit. “He thinks me a vampire? Has he ever seen me drink blood? Has anyone? Preposterous that anyone would make such a statement!”
The spirit looked down upon Scrooge with great sorrow. “It seems that unbeknownst to you, you have drunk blood,” he pointed out.
Scrooge hesitated, then recalling the scene from his birth and the words Queen Griselda had spoken, he made a face. “I was a babe. It was of the wet nurse’s doing and none of mine. Surely that cannot be held against me!”
“There are others who have given it to you, as well,” pointed out the phantom. “Would you care to have the Ghost of Christmas Past revisit and show you?”
Scrooge recoiled. “No. Certainly not.” The thought was beyond his comprehension, but he had no desire for any more truths than had already been thrust upon him, and so he returned his attention to the Christmas gathering.
“So what if he is rich?” said Scrooge’s nephew. “His wealth is of no use to him or anyone else, for that matter, poor soul. He doesn’t do any good with it; he gives no aid to any of the VS organizations. Not ours. Not anyone’s.”
“It’s no wonder of that,” muttered the pretty girl with Charles.
“He does not give to the church or the poorhouse,” Fred continued, polite enough to pretend he had not heard his guest’s remark. “He doesn’t even 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, for one, have no patience with him,” observed Penny. Her three 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 doesn’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,” he teased the young women.
Everyone laughed. “Ha ha ha ha.”
“So, what do you hear these days, Topper? I saw you quite intent in conversation with Bob Cratchit after the VSU meeting earlier in the week.”
“Now Bob, there is a fine man. And to think he must endure your Uncle Ebenezer’s company six days out of the week.” The man called Topper shook his head. “And not a better man to have at your side in a dark alley. He works a pike well for a man his age. And his son, the one they call Tiny Tim. What a brave lad. You know, he speaks often of the Scion of the Great Culling that was prophesied to come one day. Though many a good man has come to fear it will not come to pass, the boy is certain the Scion will be born and he swears his allegiance to the Great One.”
“But isn’t the boy sickly?”
Topper had clearly got his eye upon Penny’s sister, who spoke, 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 move on to a new topic, Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, clapping her hands. “He never finishes what he begins to say once he lays his gaze upon a pretty girl. He is such a ridiculous fellow.”
“I . . . I am able to . . . to s . . . speak,” managed Topper.
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.
Topper laughed with them, then. “Yes, yes, the boy is sickly. Some speak in whispers that he is not expected to live, for he seems to suffer more as of late. He grows paler and weaker, but even as his body seems to shrivel, I believe his heart grows truer. He knows the meaning not only of keeping the faith, but keeping good cheer.”
“Unlike my husband’s Uncle Ebenezer,” Penny pointed out.
“Back to that matter again, is it?” said Fred, winking at his wife. “Well, the consequence of my uncle 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 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 s
imple 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.
Had the vampires prevented him from hearing the tunes, truly hearing them? Or had he not taken the time and energy to listen? It’s common knowledge that many who are accused of deafness possess the physical ability to hear, but do not take the trouble to pay attention to what is said.
But Fred and Penny and their guests 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 blindman’s bluff. 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 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), on purpose, 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 blindman being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.