Which it certainly was.Admiration was the universal sentiment,though some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.
"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment;and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"
"Well!Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't take it from me,but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart,that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return,and thanked them in an inaudible speech,if the Ghost had given him time.But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went,and many homes they visited,but always with a happy end.The Spirit stood beside sick beds,and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,and they were close at home; by struggling men,and they were patient in their greater hope;by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital,and jail, 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 taught Scrooge his precepts.
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 strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost."It ends to-night."
"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
"To-night at midnight. Hark!The time is drawing near."
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," 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 sorrowful 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.
"Oh, Man!look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged,scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too,in their humility. 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!are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit,looking down upon them. "And they cling to me,appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance.This girl is Want. Beware them both,and all of their degree,but most of all beware this boy,for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city."Slander those who tell it ye!Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words."Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not.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 IV: THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached.When it came near him, Scrooge bent 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.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him,and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread.He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?" said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not,but pointed onward with its hand.
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened,but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds,as if the Spirit had inclined its head.That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time,Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him,and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it.The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition,and giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this.It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror,to know that behind the dusky shroud,there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him,while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost,could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.