The pudding, Scrooge thought sourly. His friend had died in this very room and here they worried about puddings. Life, invariably went on, but Scrooge wasn’t quite sure how that was accomplished or why one would want to. He was filled with a great deal of jealousy accompanied by resentment as 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 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.
“This,” observed Scrooge with a mixture of feeling, “is the first truly happy scene we have beheld all night.” It was no real wonder, with his clerk there to lead the brood. All those years ago, it had been Cratchit to finally defeat the creature.
With Marley down, gurgling as he passed from this life to the next, Scrooge launched himself at the creature and once again found himself thrown back upon his head. This time the creature advanced towards Scrooge and reached with taloned fingers to squeeze the life out of him, or worse. Over the cries of the children and his own rasping breath, Scrooge heard a distant voice calmly imploring on the Savior for mercy and forgiveness.
“Please Lord, forgive him his trespasses, for he has trespassed against us. And in his unnatural state, he is still a creature of Yours and therefore your will…” The words washed over Scrooge, and he was briefly unsure if the man prayed for himself, for the creature or for Marley. The creature knew though, because the divine hand, as if reaching down from heaven, plucked its strength and the creature moaned in terror. Scrooge found his breath returned to him as the creature released his neck and let out a second groan of equal unearthly sound. The creature retreated slowly to the darkest corner in the room, as if the praying man emitted a heavenly light that it could not bare upon its skin.
Regaining his feet, Scrooge gestured for the man to continue as he stalked towards the creature. Arming himself with a sturdy knife from the good wife’s kitchen, he determined the best way to put an end to the thing would be to relieve it of its head. Scrooge struck and the blow glanced off its head, as if it were made of some bedeviled ironworks. The creature snarled and snapped as Scrooge struck again, this time hitting true. The knife snicked into the creatures neck and it whimpered as it flailed, it’s limbs hitting about in discord; but as if animated by foul magic, the creature refused to give up its borrowed claim on the vestiges life.
“What kind of man are you?” he barked at the praying man.
“Sir?”
“Are you a good man? A righteous one?”
“Aye, sir. I suppose.”
The creature twitched again, attempting some semblance of coordination. “Keep praying, man. Don’t stop.”
“What is it?”
Scrooge thought furiously as he racked his brain for that very answer. The thing had been a sailor, that was verified by the tattered remains of its clothes, but certainly not a Wendigo, who would have perished by iron inlayed with silver. He leaned forward to inspect the creature as it huddled, twitching away from the prayers. There was something vaguely Eastern about it’s hair and eyes, though what region, Scrooge would not venture a guess. It did tickle a memory though.
“Jikininki, I’d hazard. They are fairly well invincible against weapons, but the sacred words from a honorable man will end them.”
It was then, when Scrooge tore his eyes away from the foul creature, that he realized the ominous silence in the rooms. The good wife, having roused from her swoon, had taken up the injured baby and barricaded herself with the other children in yonder room and was industriously comforting them all. His eyes fell on Marley, who, having wheezed his last breath, had left this life and would hunt no more.
“Does the babe live?”
The man paused in his prayers, “He does. I have every reason to hope he will continue. After this, we will owe you everything.”
Those words echoed in Scrooge’s mind as he watched Cratchit’s wife and children exercise in their festivities. Unlike his nephew’s home, Scrooge found he could not join their merriment and so sat stone like observing the dischargement of the Christmas duties. 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 indulging in a sudden morbid wondering, “was it truly a Jikininki that slew Marley?”
“Aye,” replied the Ghost.
“And what, do you know, creates such a creature?”
The Ghost smiled smugly, as if Scrooge had asked the very question it had been desiring of him. “I think you know.”
Scrooge nodded to himself. “A selfish man.”
“Greedy and impious,” the Ghost agreed. “Cursed in thought by every soul wronged, every person stepped over, ignored, torn asunder. Eventually the Spirits take notice of a vacancy in the soul, a corrupted spot so rotted that any sort of parasite could take up residency and continue after the first inhabitant has passed from his mortal life.”
Scrooge hung his head to hear these words for they tickled a familiarness he cared not to admit. Looking upon Cratchit’s family, a great weight, which might have been the drag of guilt, pulled him down so as his shoulders felt as if they should be on 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, 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. “We owe him much.”
“I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,” said Mrs. Cratchit, “ not for his. Your ideas of those long ago events are not mine; he probably brought that creature to our doors. No, any debt you felt to him should have been discharged long ago.” She took a deep swig and fiercely toasted Scrooge before upending her cup for final, “Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy New Year! He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!”
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the family.
The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for 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-by they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sent shivers up old Scrooge’s spine.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawn-broker’s. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier despite the 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 full 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 were beacons to mark the divide between white drifts and black sky. 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 blinds 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. How the Ghost exulted in the goings on! How it bared its breadth of breast, and grinned those terrible teeth, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its dangerous mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamp-lighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, cried out loudly as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamp-lighter that he had any company but the Spirit.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end diverted. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they swooned; on foreign lands, and they were apt to do war upon their neighbours; by struggling men, and they were short of temper in their plight. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, 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 reaped the misery.
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 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: A strange transformation had undertaken the Spirit. While Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew younger, clearly younger. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth-Night party that had broken up in fisticuffs, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its cheeks had filled out and there was a hale glow about its countenance, which had been utterly absent before. In fact, the Spirit looked quite lively and passing Christmas revelers glanced in their direction, as if the two were visible, before hurrying on into the night.
“I suspect I have been misled. Did you not introduce yourself as a Ghost?” asked Scrooge.
“Aye, of Christmas Present,” replied the Ghost. “That ends to-night.”
“To-night!” cried Scrooge. “You have grown strong since our knowing each other. What will become of you then?”
“To-night at midnight I transform. Hark! The time is drawing near.”
The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that moment.
“Forgive me but I do not like the sound of that. And, pressing my point,” 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 malicious 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.
“These are the children born of our labours! You have witnessed their making tonight through the depravity of men!” exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; utterly wild and snarling. 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! Why?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s punishment,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, as the General standing before the transformation. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. They will bare my standard and go forth from this place to wreak havoc in my name.”
“You are not a Ghost truly, but a Wraith, causing discord and feeding on the result. These children of yours will feed you greatly.”
The Wraith, for that is what it truly was, leaned towards Scrooge, his eyes gleaming with hate. “You could be one of my children too.”
Scrooge could not recollect making the decision to fight this creature and it’s two miss-begot offspring, but fight he did. Out came Old Marley’s fob watch, disinterred from Scrooge’s robes one moment and swinging around the next, hissing wherever the metal touched skin. The two children, unsheathed wings, which up until that moment had been folded cleverly out of sight, and took to the air only to descend again baring their nails and teeth in turns. The Wraith laughed a booming taunt, as Scrooge struggled to hold off his tormentors.
The girl was the first to falter, lingering too long about her business of scratching and biting, thus Scrooge took hold of her ankle and swung her with great force upon the ground. There was a satisfying snap where the wing connected, followed by a high-pitched shriek. The boy cared not a whit for her and continued to pester Scrooge, taunting and
molesting him by turns. Then the Wraith was there, grabbing Scrooge up by the lapels of his robes and breathing in deeply, nay sucking the very air and essence of Scrooge up into its terrible body. In a moment of terror, Scrooge realized the thing was trying to suck out his very soul.
Distantly, a bell began to toll. Scrooge threw his head back, trying to escape the Wraith’s grasp and found himself bound tight. He reached up to push it away by the face, scratch it’s eyes, do any damage he could to loosen its grip and realized that the chain of the fob watch was still wrapped tightly around his hand. He fumbled down the chain until he found the watch itself and then, taking care of a good grip, shoved the watch whole into the Wraith’s sucking mouth. The results were instantaneous. The Wraith dropped Scrooge; a shriek was cut off with a choke, its hands going around its neck where a red light began to pulse through the skin, as if there was a red-hot coal there trying to burn its way out. The Wraith, with a furrow of its brow, backhanded Scrooge and the world went temporarily orange and hot as he flew backward.
The bell struck Twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Wraith and its spawn, and saw only ash. 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.
STAVE FOUR
THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him, Scrooge used the gravity of the apparition as a pretext for bending down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible, save one outstretched hand. But for this, it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
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