by Sarah Gray
Despite the close proximity of the vampires Scrooge so feared, he found it charming to see how these girls danced for themselves, despite the number of spectators, including the king and queen. The young girls, while very glad to please the crowd, seemed to dance to please themselves (or at least you would have supposed so from the smiles upon their faces), and he could no more help admiring, than they could help dancing.
How they did dance! And Scrooge could not help but wonder how they had come to be in the vampires’ den, for they did not appear to be there against their will. But what human would enter a vampire’s lair of his or her own accord? Scrooge would certainly not have been there for a second visit in the same night, had he been given the opportunity to choose, and he most certainly would not be there with his current escort, an apparition as frightening as the man and woman on the dais. Could these pretty, light-hearted girls be minions like his wet nurse, Mrs. Grottweil, and his clerk, Disgut?
The girls who performed for the king and queen did not dance like opera dancers. Not at all. And not like Madame Anybody’s finished pupils. Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet dancing, nor even country-dance dancing. It was neither in the old style, nor the new style, nor the French style, nor the English style, though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which was a free and joyous one, deriving a delightful air of off-hand inspiration, from the chirping little castanets, nor was it the crude style recently brought from the Americas and finding followers among the higher clergy, which as far as Scrooge’s opinion, and he did not consider himself an expert on the art of dance, but knew what he liked and what he did not. The new style consisted of jumping up and down and howling gibberish to the sound of primitive drums, all the while waving wooden axes and wearing feathered head-dresses.
The merry maidens danced among the spectators and sometimes the dining tables, and down the center of the room before King Wahltraud and Queen Griselda and back again. They twirled each other lightly round and round; the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and spread, like an expanding circle in the water.
At last, the younger of the dancing girls, out of breath, and laughing gaily, threw herself upon the floor before the dais. The other leaned against an ivory-faced man wearing a green velvet coat, riding boots, and tiny bows in his hair. The music, a harp and fiddle played by two ghoulish-looking men, left off with a flourish, as if it boasted of its freshness, though the truth is, it had gone at such a pace, and worked itself to such a pitch of competition with the dancing, that it never could have held on, half a minute longer. The crowd raised a hum and murmur of applause, and then, in keeping with the cheer, Queen Griselda rose to her feet, clapping her slender, pale hands, encrusted with rings set with priceless gemstones, most of which, by coincidence or deliberate choosing, were blood-red rubies.
When Scrooge had last seen her in Christmas Present, minutes, hours, years ago, perhaps, the vampiress had been dressed in heavy black crepe to match her countenance, but today she wore a printed gown of the most beautiful colors money could buy beneath her black velvet cape, blue stockings, and fine leather shoes tied with blue silk ribbons. Her black hair fell down her back in thick waves, pinned in place with a sparkling crown of diamonds and rubies.
“Thank you so much, so much, indeed, all of you,” she cried regally, demonstrating an easy grace. “And of course you, my dearest husband, my sovereign king, I thank you most of all for the coming of this day.” She inclined her head toward King Wahltraud, who sat upon his throne, bearing his own crown, one even larger and more magnificent than hers, and a smile of satisfaction upon his face.
“This night has been many years in the making, and many of you have been instrumental in my success.”
“Has he agreed?” shouted a short man with stout legs.
“Yes, is he ours?” called another.
“Tonight will be the final step in our journey, a mere formality,” the beautiful queen assured her subjects.
“A toast,” someone shouted.
“A toast,” chimed others.
“You promised us a toast, Your Highness.”
Scrooge recognized the voice and turned to see his clerk, Lucius Disgut, peek from behind a pillar.
“And so I did.” She opened her arms to her subjects, then glanced over her shoulder. “Would you care to do the honor, my love?”
“It is yours, my love, for this is your accomplishment, not mine,” responded the king with an equally regal eloquence.
The queen leaned over her king and kissed his lips lightly. The crowd cheered, and some of the younger men began to stomp and whistle. Disgut came from behind the pillar, and Scrooge had a mind to march over and dismiss him from his employment at that very moment, but that, of course, was not possible. This was an event that would take place in the future; as in the scenes of Christmas past and present, those who surrounded him were obviously unaware of his presence. Disgut’s presence, however, made Scrooge no less angry.
What happened next, Scrooge was not entirely sure, for the scene seemed to burst all at once with too many things occurring at the very same instant, so frightening, so shocking, that he could not comprehend what he was seeing. One moment, the young girl who had danced was seated at the queen’s feet, the very next, Griselda had caught her by the throat, lifted her lithe body up, and sunk protruding fangs into the girl’s flesh.
The victim screamed, and her scream was echoed by her sister’s. The older of the two girls had enough sense to try to escape, but not the capability. The queen’s subjects fell upon the second dancer like rat terriers upon a rodent. Scrooge could have sworn he heard barking; most assuredly he heard grunting cries of delight, even as the girls struggled and cried out, fighting for their lives. Disgut was upon the very top of the heap, ripping the older girl’s flesh and howling with pleasure.
Blood spattered and Scrooge turned away, his specter escort the lesser of the evils at the moment. “Spirit!” he cried, fallen to the cold, earthy ground and covering his face. “Take me away. I beg of you!”
36
Perhaps the ghost took pity on Scrooge; perhaps he was only following his own pre-ordained schedule (did such a thing exist among spirits?). Scrooge did not attempt to think he understood or even cared to; all he knew was that he was somewhere beneath the city one moment, on a familiar street in the daylight the next.
Still shaking, Scrooge slowly rose from his knees, staring at his hands, at his nightdress, certain they must be covered in blood. There was no evidence of blood, but in his head, Scrooge could still hear the young girls’ screams.
“Take me where you must,” he murmured to the phantom that stood over him, “but for pity’s sake, take me far from that scene of evil.”
They went into an obscure part of the town where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognized its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow, the shops and houses wretched, the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offenses of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets, and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery. This place, at first glance, was worse than the tunnels beneath the city, infested by the vampires.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinize were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchers of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a gray-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without by a frowzy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line, and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the phantom came
into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle, a boy at her side, slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered when another woman, similarly laden, came in, too. The second woman was closely followed by a man in faded black who was no less startled by the sight of them than they were of him. After a short period of blank astonishment in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into laughter.
“Let the laundress be the first,” cried she who had entered first.
“B . . . be the f . . . f . . . first,” repeated the boy.
“My son and I will be the second, and let the undertaker’s man be the third. Look here, Old Joe, here’s a chance. If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it.”
“W . . . w . . . without m . . . m . . . meaning it,” said the boy.
Scrooge recognized the voice of the first woman, then the face of the boy who trotted behind her. “That’s my housekeeper!” he exclaimed to no one in particular, for the spirit did not seem to be interested in anything he had to say. “And her son!”
“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said the one she called Old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the parlor. You were made free of it long ago, you know, and the other two ain’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it shrieks. There ain’t such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe, and I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched. Come into the parlor. Come into the parlor.”
The parlor was the space behind the screen of rags, and smelled as bad as any sewer Scrooge had ever had the misfortune of encountering. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was so dark inside the hovel despite the light of day outside) with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.
While he did this, Gelda, Scrooge’s shiftless housekeeper, threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool. She pointed for her son to drop to the floor as if to protect their possessions, and crossing her elbows on her knees, she looked with a bold defiance at the other two.
“What odds then. What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the housekeeper.
“W . . . w . . . what o . . . o . . . odds,” echoed the son, drool dribbling from his crooked mouth.
“Every person has a right to take care of themselves,” said Gelda. “He always did.”
“A . . . a . . . always d . . . did.”
“That’s true, indeed,” said the laundress. “No man more so.”
“Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, woman. Who’s the wiser? The vampires, they care not. They’ve better to do tonight, I can promise you. No blood here, and no souls worth having, and that’s all they seek. None such as we need fear them. We must stick together, the likes of us. We’re not going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I suppose.”
“I . . . I s . . . suppose,” reiterated the boy.
“An annoying habit,” commented Scrooge to the spirit. “The boy, repeating what his mother says. But I suppose he cannot help himself,” he added thoughtfully.
“No, indeed,” said the laundress and the man together.
“We should hope not,” continued the laundress. “Got what they want, I s’pose.”
“Very well, then,” cried the housekeeper. “That’s enough. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.”
“D . . . dead man, I . . . I s . . . s . . . suppose.”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. She ignored the boy, for apparently she knew of his affliction and tolerated it well.
“It’s not like he had need to keep them after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued Gelda. “Why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.”
“I heard he was engaged to be married once,” put in the undertaker’s man.
“I don’t believe it. Not that one. He was too sour. Too mean.”
“T . . . t . . . too m . . . m . . . mean,” offered the boy.
His mother wiped his mouth with the cuff of her sleeve.
“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke, Tag, boy,” said Mrs. Dilber with a nod of her chin. “It’s a judgment on him. Him bein’ left to die alone in his own puddle!”
“I’d rather have the life sucked out of me by the vampire that lives under the eaves than die that way,” said Old Joe thoughtfully, “or even the tall thin one that do hide in the chimney. But I guess you’d not feel the same, workin’ for ’em the way you do.” He looked pointedly at Gelda.
“Not my fault!” the housekeeper snapped. “It was that or give ’im my Tag. And us, we don’t have more than a sip here or there. Not like some.”
“N . . . not l . . . like s . . . s . . . some.”
“I only wish it was a little heavier judgment,” continued the housekeeper. “And it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, Old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.”
“The b . . . b . . . bundle, J . . . J . . . Joe.”
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow this, and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised by Old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each, upon the wall and added them up into a total when he found there was nothing more to come.
“That’s your account,” said Joe. “And I wouldn’t give another sixpence if I was hung and fed upon for not doing it. Who’s next?”
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said Old Joe. “That’s your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of being so liberal and knock off half-a-crown.”
“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” urged Gelda.
“J . . . J . . . Joe,” cried the boy enthusiastically. Again, the string of drool.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening the bundle, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. “What do you call this?” he asked. “Bed-curtains?”
“Ah,” returned Scrooge’s housekeeper, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. “Bed-curtains.”
“B . . . b . . . bed-curtains!”
“You don’t mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe with a slap to his thigh.
“Yes, I do,” she replied. “The master said ‘take what you want, ’twas owed to you.’ Why not?”
“W . . . why n . . . n . . . not?”
“You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.”
“I certainly shan’t hold my hand when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe,” returned Gelda coolly. “It’s his fault I had to do the vampires’ biddin’ in the first place. Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now, and ruin ’em.”
“R . . . ruin ’em!”
Gelda smiled at her boy and patted his head.
“His blankets, too?” asked Joe.
“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the housekeeper. “He isn’t likely to take cold without them, I dare say.”
“D . . . dare s . .
. say.”
“I hope he didn’t die of anything catching. Eh?” said Old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman. “I ain’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah. You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one, too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.”
“B . . . been f . . . for Mum!” the boy volunteered.
“What do you call wasting of it?” asked Old Joe.
“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied Gelda with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico ain’t good enough for such a purpose, it ain’t good enough for anything. It’s quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier than he did in that one.”
The boy opened his mouth to speak and his mother clamped her hand over it, drool and all, and Scrooge, for one, was thankful.
“Told to leave ’im, you know,” said the undertaker’s man.
“Leave him?” asked Old Joe. “Whatcha mean?”
“Mr. Martin, my employer, he said I wasn’t to begin the embalming.”
Old Joe scowled. “Not embalm him?”
“Why ever not?” demanded Gelda.
“N . . . not?” squeaked Tag from beneath his mother’s hand.
“Not my part to ask,” replied the undertaker’s man. “Though I have my suspicions who gave the word.”