STAVE III: THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so thickly hung with living greenery that it looked like a perfect grove, and bright, gleaming berries glistened from every part of it. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe and ivy reflected the light, as if countless little mirrors had been scattered there. And a fire was roaring up the chimney with such a mighty blaze as that dull, stony hearth had never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many, many winters before. Heaped up on the floor to form a kind of throne were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, suckling pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies and plum puddings. There were barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense Twelfth Night cakes, and steaming bowls of punch that made the room hazy with their delicious vapor. Seated at his ease on this couch was a jolly Giant, glorious to see. He carried a glowing torch, shaped rather like the horn of Plenty, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge as he came peeping around the door.

“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in, and know me better, man!”

Scrooge entered timidly and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the stubborn Scrooge he had been, and though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look at me!”

Scrooge did so reverently. The Spirit was dressed in one simple green robe, or mantle, trimmed with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure that its broad chest was bare, as if it scorned to be protected or hidden by any artifice. Its feet, visible beneath the ample folds of the robe, were also bare, and on its head it wore nothing but a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free: as free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheerful voice, its relaxed manner and its joyful air. Around its waist was an antique scabbard, but there was no sword in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten away with rust.

“You have never seen anything like me before!” exclaimed the Spirit.

“Never,” Scrooge answered.

“You have never walked out with the younger members of my family? I mean, since I am very young, my elder brothers born in these recent years,” the Phantom went on.

“I don’t think I have,” said Scrooge. “I’m afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?”

“More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost.

“A tremendous family to provide for!” muttered Scrooge.

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.

“Spirit,” said Scrooge submissively, “take me wherever you wish. I went out last night against my will, and I learned a lesson that is working in me now. Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me profit by it.”

“Touch my robe!”

Scrooge did as he was told and held on to it tightly.

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit and punch all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the reddish glow and the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning. The weather was harsh, and the people were making a rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music as they scraped the snow from the pavement in front of their homes and from the tops of their houses. The boys were wildly delighted to see it come plumping down into the road below and burst into little artificial snowstorms.

The fronts of the houses looked black enough, and the windows even blacker, in contrast with the smooth white sheet of snow on the roofs and the dirtier snow on the ground. That lower layer had been plowed up into deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons. Where the great streets branched off, the furrows crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times, making intricate channels that were hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked with a dingy mist, half thawed and half frozen. Its heavier particles came down in a shower of sooty specks, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had caught fire by common agreement and were blazing away to their hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful about the climate or the town. And yet there was an air of cheerfulness about that the clearest summer air and the brightest summer sun might have tried to spread in vain.

For the people shoveling away on the rooftops were jovial and full of glee. They called out to one another from the parapets and now and then exchanged a playful snowball, a far more good-natured missile than many a wordy joke. They laughed heartily if it hit its mark, and no less heartily if it missed. The poultry shops were still half open, and the fruit shops were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors and tumbling out into the street in their bloated abundance. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-waisted Spanish onions, shining in their fatness like Spanish friars. They winked from their shelves with mischievous slyness at the girls as they went by and glanced demurely at the mistletoe hanging overhead. There were pears and apples piled high in blooming pyramids. There were bunches of grapes, hung by the kindly shopkeepers from conspicuous hooks, so that people’s mouths might water for free as they passed. There were piles of hazelnuts, mossy and brown, whose fragrance recalled long-ago walks in the woods and pleasant shuffling ankle-deep through withered leaves. There were Norfolk Biffins, squat dark-red baking apples, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons. In the great compactness of their juicy bodies, they urgently begged and pleaded to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. Even the goldfish and silverfish, set out in a bowl among these choice fruits, seemed to know that something was going on, though they belonged to a dull and sluggish-blooded race. Every last fish went gasping round and round its little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The grocers’! Oh, the grocers’! Nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one, but what glimpses through those gaps! It was not only that the scales coming down on the counter made a merry sound, or that the string parted from its roller so briskly, or that the tins were rattled up and down like a juggler’s tricks. It was not even that the mingled scents of tea and coffee were so pleasing to the nose, or that the raisins were so plentiful and so fine. Nor was it that the almonds were so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, and the other spices so delicious. Nor was it that the candied fruits were so caked and spotted with melted sugar that they made the coldest onlookers feel faint and then queasy. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed with modest tartness from their highly decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas finery. It was that the customers were all in such a hurry, and so eager for the hopeful promise of the day. They tumbled into each other at the door, wildly crashing their wicker baskets together, and left their purchases on the counter, and came running back to fetch them. They made hundreds of mistakes like these, in the best possible humor. Meanwhile the grocer and his staff were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts fastening their aprons behind might have been their own. They might have been wearing them on the outside for everyone to inspect, and for Christmas jackdaws to peck at if they liked.

But soon the church steeples called all good people to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their happiest faces. At the same time, from dozens of side streets, lanes and nameless turnings, there emerged countless people carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops to be cooked. The sight of these poor merrymakers seemed to interest the Spirit very much. He stood in a baker’s doorway with Scrooge beside him, and as their bearers passed, he took the covers off their dinners and sprinkled incense on them from his torch. And it was a very unusual kind of torch. Once or twice, when angry words broke out between dinner-carriers who had bumped into each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humor was restored at once. For they said it was a shame to quarrel on Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!

In time the bells stopped, and the bakeries closed. And yet a cheerful sign of all these dinners and how their cooking was going remained in the thawed, wet patch above each baker’s oven, where the pavement steamed as if its stones were cooking too.

“Is there a special flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge.

“There is. My own.”

“Would it work on any kind of dinner today?” asked Scrooge.

“On any that is kindly given. On a poor one most.”

“Why on a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.

“Because it needs it most.”

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I’m surprised that you, of all the beings in the many worlds around us, should wish to restrict these people’s chances of innocent enjoyment.”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You would deprive them of their means of eating a proper dinner every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You want to close these bakeries on the Sabbath?” said Scrooge. “And that comes to the same thing.”

“I want that!” exclaimed the Spirit.

“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in your family’s,” said Scrooge.

“There are some on this earth of yours,” replied the Spirit, “who claim to know us, and who commit their deeds of passion, pride, ill will, hatred, envy, bigotry and selfishness in our name. Yet they are as strange to us and all our kin as if they had never lived. Remember that, and blame their doings on themselves, not on us.”

Scrooge promised that he would, and they went on, invisible as before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost, which Scrooge had noticed at the baker’s, that despite his gigantic size he could fit himself into any place with ease. He stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully, and as much like a supernatural creature, as he could possibly have done in any lofty hall.

Perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit took in showing off this power of his. Or perhaps it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature and his sympathy with all poor men that led him straight to the home of Scrooge’s clerk. For there he went, taking Scrooge with him, holding on to his robe. On the doorstep the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s home with the sprinkling of his torch. Think of that! Bob earned only fifteen “bob,” or shillings, a week himself; every Saturday he pocketed just fifteen copies of his own first name. And yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four-room house!

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, poorly dressed in a gown that had been turned inside out twice, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a fine show for sixpence. She laid the cloth, helped by Belinda Cratchit, the second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons. Meanwhile Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and got the corners of his monstrous shirt collar into his mouth. The collar was Bob’s private property, handed over to his son and heir in honor of the day. Peter was delighted to find himself so splendidly dressed, and longed to show off his linen in the fashionable parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, a boy and a girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker’s they had smelled the goose and known it for their own. Basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion stuffing, these young Cratchits danced around the table and praised Master Peter Cratchit to the skies. He, meanwhile, not proud, although his collar nearly choked him, blew on the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbled up and knocked loudly on the saucepan lid to be let out and peeled.

“Whatever has happened to your precious father?” said Mrs. Cratchit. “And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha wasn’t this late last Christmas Day, not by half an hour!”

“Here’s Martha, Mother!” said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

“Here’s Martha, Mother!” cried the two young Cratchits. “Hurrah! There’s such a goose, Martha!”

“Why, bless your heart, my dear, how late you are!” said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times and taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with fussy enthusiasm.

“We had a lot of work to finish last night,” replied the girl, “and had to clear up this morning, Mother!”

“Well! Never mind, as long as you’re here,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit down in front of the fire, my dear, and get warm, Lord bless you!”

“No, no! Father’s coming,” cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. “Hide, Martha, hide!”

So Martha hid, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of woolen scarf, not counting the fringe, hanging down in front of him. His threadbare clothes had been darned and brushed to look fit for the season, and Tiny Tim was on his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he carried a little crutch, and his legs were supported by an iron frame!

“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit, looking around.

“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit.

“Not coming!” said Bob, with a sudden drop in his high spirits, for he had been Tim’s racehorse all the way from church and had come home prancing. “Not coming on Christmas Day!”

Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, even as a joke, so she came out early from behind the closet door and ran into his arms. Meanwhile the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim off into the washhouse, so that he could hear the pudding singing in the copper boiler.

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had teased Bob for being so easily fooled, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in church, because he was a cripple. He thought it might be pleasant for them to remember on Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”

Bob’s voice trembled when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and healthy.

His busy little crutch was heard on the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool in front of the fire. Bob turned up his cuffs—as if, poor fellow, they could possibly be made any shabbier—and mixed some hot drink in a jug with gin and lemons. He stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer. Meanwhile Master Peter and the two young Cratchits, who seemed to be everywhere, went to fetch the goose, and soon returned with it in a grand procession.

Such a bustle followed that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds, a feathered marvel compared with which a black swan was nothing special. And in truth, in that house it was something very like that. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy, which was ready beforehand in a little saucepan, hissing hot. Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor, Miss Belinda sweetened the applesauce, and Martha dusted the hot plates. Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table. The two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard at their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths so that they would not shriek for goose before their turn came to be served. At last the dishes were put on the table, and grace was said. It was followed by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it into the breast. But when she did, and the long-awaited gush of stuffing poured out, a murmur of delight arose all around the table. Even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife and feebly cried, “Hurrah!”

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there had ever been such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, its size and its cheapness, were the subjects of universal admiration. Eked out with applesauce and mashed potatoes, it made a sufficient dinner for the whole family. Indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight, surveying one tiny scrap of bone on the dish, they hadn’t eaten it all after all! Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were steeped in sage and onion up to their eyebrows! But now, while Miss Belinda changed the plates, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear any witnesses—to take the pudding out and bring it in.