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Authors: Sarah Gray

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BOOK: A Vampire Christmas Carol
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25
H
olly, 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 ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground, which last deposit had been plowed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons. There were furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half-thawed, half-frozen, whose heavier particles descended in shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in vain.
For the people who were shoveling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half-open, and the fruiterers’ 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 apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water
gratis
as they passed. There were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shuffling, ankle-deep, through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on, and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
The grocers’, oh the grocers’! Nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one, but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee and nutmeg and ginger were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress, but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humor possible; while the grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas jackdaws to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker’s doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humor was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was. God love it, so it was.
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up, and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven, where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking, too.
“We saw no vampires,” Scrooge remarked. “If this is present day and vampires are roaming the streets of London, surely we should have—”
“It is daylight. They are below ground until darkness falls.”
“Below ground?”
“In their tunnels. Dug under the city an entirely other city. There are entrances everywhere. There is one in your cellar.”
“My cellar?” murmured Scrooge. “Upon my word! In my cellar? I do not believe you.”
“Look yourself one day,” said the spirit. “If you dare.”
Scrooge gave a little shiver, cleared his throat, and searched for a safer topic of conversation. The thought that vampires might have slept beneath his own floors, beneath his own bed-chamber, vampires with their bloodstained fingers and foul breath caused by a singular diet and less than sanitary hygiene customs, was one that he did not wish to dwell on. “Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?”
“There is. My own.”
“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.
“To any kindly given. To a poor one most. Or to one who has given refuge or aid to those who battle the vampires. Often they are one and the same.”
“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.
“Because it needs it most.”
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.”
“I,” cried the spirit.
“You would deprive them of their means of dining 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 seek to close these places on the Seventh Day,” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.”
“I seek?” exclaimed the spirit.
“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge.
“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
Scrooge promised that he would, and they went on, invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the baker’s), that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with ease and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a super-natural creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good spirit had in showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s hovel, for there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe, and on the threshold of the door the spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinkling of his torch. Think of that. Bob had but fifteen bob a week himself he pocketed on Saturdays, but fifteen copies of his Christian name, and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house.
Then up rose a woman, dressed out, but poorly, in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence which might deceive the casual eye. She laid a cloth upon their rickety table.
“Mrs. Cratchit?” asked Scrooge. “Bob Cratchit’s wife? I have not had the . . .
pleasure
, of making her acquaintance.”
“That is not Mrs. Cratchit. It is her sister Maena, a childless widow, who lives here and cares for the Cratchit children since their mother’s death three years ago.”
“Cratchit’s wife died three years ago?” Scrooge looked at the ghost, genuinely startled. “I do not recall that event. He must not have spoken of it.”
“He asked to take a day’s leave from your employment to bury her. You denied him his request.”
“Did I?” Scrooge could not, for the life of him, recall the incident. Surely, Cratchit had not explained the severity of his situation, for what employer, no matter how shrewd in the ways of business, could not see his way through to permit at least a half-day’s leave, without pay, of course, for a clerk to bury his poor, dead wife? Scrooge considered questioning the ghost further, certain the phantom had his information incorrect (for surely even spirits cannot be right all the time), but the look on the ghost’s face suggested that line of questioning might not be pleasing to him. Instead, he chose a different topic.
“What did she die of? Childbirth?” Scrooge chuckled at his own small jest as he looked down on the many Cratchit children spilling into the tiny room that served as kitchen, parlor, and bedchamber to some of the children as well, apparently. There seemed to be dozens of them; perhaps twenty or more, much alike in appearance, and all bearing the same pitiful appearance of their father.
“She was killed by vampires while coming home from the grocer one evening when Mr. Cratchit was working later than usual.” The spirit eyed him, the look upon his face clearly accusatory. “Two of the girl children barely escaped. It was only Mrs. Cratchit’s brave struggle that gave the wee ones time to run away and saved them.”
“Surely you don’t think me responsible for her death? Killed by vampires, indeed. Is Cratchit certain she didn’t just run off to find a better life than this miserable one?” And who could blame her, he thought. Bedlam must be calm compared to the Cratchit household of a Monday morning. He could not even fathom what the cost in porridge must run his clerk to feed so many hungry mouths.
“She was not dead upon the attack. Cratchit brought her home to die in this very room. She bled to death . . . much as I believe your mother did.”
Scrooge looked at the spirit, hesitated, and then turned to take in the scene in the Cratchit kitchen as it unfolded.
Belinda, the second of Cratchit’s daughters, also brave in ribbons, gave her aunt assistance, while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the pitifully small saucepan of potatoes, considering the multitude that would assault the table, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Cratchit’s private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honor of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own, and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan lid to be let out and peeled.
“What has ever got into your father then?” said the sister-in-law to Cratchit. “And your brother, Tiny Tim? That they should not be home by now on this day of all days?”
“Mayhap he stopped at the VSU meeting on the way home from church,” Belinda suggested.
“A waste of time, foolery,” said Maena. “What with us all here waiting on him. What difference does it make, these meetings, the patrols? It didn’t save my dear sister’s life, did it? They cannot eradicate them.” She smoothed the wrinkled tablecloth. “We’d be better off to try to reconcile with them. Get along. It’s what the good Lord taught us, is it not?”
“She has a point,” Scrooge observed, crossing his arms over his chest. “If there are vampires out there—which I am not utterly convinced of—perhaps we should all try to make peace. My tenant, Mr. Wahltraud, is an excellent businessman. Perhaps—”
BOOK: A Vampire Christmas Carol
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