"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
a-bed 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 chesnuts and the jug
went round and round; and bye 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 offences 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."