Christmas Carol (19 page)

Before Carol could offer any excuse to stay
where she was, the scene around her changed. With Lady Augusta by
her side, she was propelled out of Marlowe House and into the
streets of London by the same remarkable process that earlier had
moved her in the blink of an eye from her bedroom to the kitchen.
Though it had been nighttime while she was observing the servants’
Christmas dinner, Carol saw that it was now bright daylight.

“It is the afternoon of this year’s Christmas
Eve,” Lady Augusta explained, as if she could read Carol’s mind.
“As in the servants’ quarters at Marlowe House, so here, no one we
pass will be able to see or hear us. You cannot be permitted to
change the present until you yourself are changed.’

“What if I don’t want to change?” asked Carol
with grim resistance.

“That is but the last vestige of your old
self speaking,” said Lady Augusta. “You are too intelligent not to
change once you know all you are meant to know.”

“I wish you would stop talking in riddles,”
Carol muttered. “I already know more than I want to know, and
everything I’ve learned has only made me more unhappy than I was
before you came back from the dead.”

“I have not come back,” remarked her
companion. “The Lady Augusta whom you once knew is dead for all
eternity.”

“So is Nicholas.” The words slipped out
before Carol could stop herself.

“Nicholas,” Lady Augusta repeated, her
eyebrows raised. “Carol, you disappoint me. Surely your experience
with me has taught you that the spirit never dies.”

“You just said yourself that you are dead. So
is Nicholas dead.” Carol shook her head in disgust at what appeared
to her to be a senseless conversation. “Lady Augusta, you are
speaking in riddles again.”

“No, I am telling you a simple truth, which
you are still too blind, and too impatient, to comprehend. Ah, here
we are.”

They had reached an old church located not
far from Marlowe House.

“I know this place,” Carol said. “It’s Saint
Fiacre’s Church. The rector read your funeral service.”

“The Reverend Mr. Lucius Kincaid,” said Lady
Augusta. “He is a fine man.”

“Really? I didn’t notice.” Carol grimaced,
remembering the rector and his fashionably dressed wife. “He
accosted me at your funeral and tried to get a donation out of
me.”

“And of course you refused.” Lady Augusta
sounded amused. “So would I have refused, once upon a time. I know
better now.”

As she had previously observed, while she was
with Lady Augusta, Carol was able to pass through walls or move
along streets in the same way as her companion and with no effort
on her own part. Thus they moved through Saint Fiacre’s Church,
which was solidly built of ancient stones, and out the back to a
tiny garden dedicated to the patron saint. In one corner of the
garden stood a statue of Saint Fiacre, leaning on his shovel while
he contemplated the winter-bare flower beds at his feet.

“Poor old St. Fiacre.” Carol paused to look
more closely at the statue. “After so many centuries, who can be
sure what crisis in your life sent you off into the wilderness to
live as a hermit? I have done something similar myself, so I had no
right to criticize you the other day. I am sorry for what I said
about you.”

“I am glad to hear you speak kindly of him,”
said Lady Augusta. Then she added more sharply, “However, your
regrets cannot help St. Fiacre now. You would be wiser to save your
concern for the living.”

An instant later Carol and Lady Augusta
passed through the stone garden wall and into a brightly lit,
though shabby and unappealing, hall. This appeared to be a building
of great age, for the plaster of the high ceiling was
smoke-blackened and the walls were cracked and in need of a fresh
coat of paint.

A series of metal tables was set up in the
middle of this hall. Paper cloths decorated with Christmas motifs
covered the tables and cheap metal folding chairs were drawn up to
them. A few red and green bells were hung in the doorways, the
ceiling being too high for such decorations. An artificial tree
stood to one side, its ornaments of macaroni sprinkled with
multicolored sparkles, painted clay angels with lopsided wings, and
bright chains made of construction paper loops all attesting to the
loving industry of Sunday school students.

“Where are we?” Carol asked. “I smell turkey
again.”

“This is the enterprise for which the
Reverend Mr. Kincaid solicited your donation,” Lady Augusta
responded. “While you refused him, others did respond. Six turkeys
were given just yesterday. At the Christmas season the public
responds most generously, though these good people need help all
year long.”

“Help for what? Is that a buffet table set up
at the back of the hall? Is this a party? If so, where are the
guests?”

“They will be invited to enter in a few
minutes,” said Lady Augusta. “Welcome to Saint Fiacre’s Bountiful
Board, Carol.”

“It’s a soup kitchen,” Carol said, finally
understanding. “The people who run this place are feeding the
poor.”

She now became aware of a great bustle of
activity in a room off the back of the hall. By the smells coming
from it, Carol deduced that this was the kitchen. Out of this
kitchen now filed a little band of people, some of whom Carol
recognized. The similarity to the servants’ procession and feast at
Marlowe House was unmistakable, for the same spirit of Christmas
cheerfulness in the face of harsh economic reality permeated both
events.

As Carol and Lady Augusta watched, the
Reverend Mr. Kincaid and his wife appeared, each carrying a cheap
aluminum tray heaped with slices of roast turkey. Two elderly
ladies hurried into the hall with pans of stuffing. More volunteers
brought in the rest of the meal. Even three small
Kincaids—distinguishable by their close resemblance to their blond,
bhie-eyed mother—had been pressed into service, each child bringing
some portion of the feast to the buffet table.

Three or four men who were present tended to
the lighting of alcohol burners under the trays of food, which were
intended to keep the food hot. The men then took up positions in
front of the table as if they were standing guard to prevent the
expected rush of hungry folk from upsetting the table and setting
the hall on fire. The elderly women stationed themselves behind the
platters and bowls of food, serving spoons in hand.

“Now,” said the Reverend Mr. Kincaid to his
helpers, “I do believe we are ready to open the doors.”

“Thank heaven it is warm enough for people to
wait outside without freezing,” remarked Mrs. Kincaid. “There is
always so much confusion until everyone has a plate.”

Mrs. Kincaid was for this occasion clad in a
bright red ankle-length skirt and an equally bright green
turtleneck sweater. Each of the little Kincaids wore a red or a
green garment, and all were freshly scrubbed and neatly brushed.
The Reverend Mr. Kincaid regarded his family with justifiable
pleasure.

“How grateful I am to have all of you by my
side,” he said to his wife, who responded by laughing and kissing
his cheek. The elderly ladies who were waiting to dish up the meal
smiled and nodded their approval at this sign of domestic
bliss.

“Mrs. Kincaid sure doesn’t worry about
spending money for clothing,” Carol noted to Lady Augusta in a sour
tone. “I’ll bet she could make a sizeable donation to this soup
kitchen if she weren’t so concerned about fashion.”

“You know nothing at all about the Kincaids’
situation, Carol.” Lady Augusta sounded remarkably sad, considering
the joyful atmosphere in the hall. “Clergymen do not earn large
salaries, especially those who accept assignments to parishes once
fashionable but now fallen upon hard times. In Lucius Kincaid’s
case, he turns more than a tithe back to the parish so that he can
carry out his charitable work.

“Abigail Kincaid buys almost all of her
clothing, and her children’s clothing, from rummage sales. She
cleans and patches and irons every piece of clothing herself. What
she cannot buy in that way, she sews. If she and her children
appear to be dressed in the latest style, perhaps it is because she
has inherited her fashion sense from ancestors who were once almost
as poor as she is today. It may also be that she imagines a good
appearance on her part will cheer her hardworking husband and thus
bolster his self-esteem and happiness. You might be interested in
knowing more about Mrs. Kincaid.”

“She does sound like an admirable woman,”
Carol admitted. “From what you have told me, it seems I judged her
too hastily.”

“And misjudged her husband, too.” Lady
Augusta broke off, watching the activity in the hall. The front
doors of the building were now thrown open and a line of people
surged forward toward the buffet table. Carol stared in amazement
as a steady stream of men, women, and children, black, white, and
East Indian, were served plates of food and shown to places at the
tables in the middle of the hall. There was no pushing or shoving.
Everyone was polite, but the sheer mass of hungry people did create
the confusion Mrs. Kincaid had mentioned.

“I had no idea there were so many poor people
in this area of London,” Carol remarked. “A lot of them are old,
and some are just teenagers or little children.”

“The poor we have always with us,” noted Lady
Augusta.

“That’s hardly an original thought,” Carol
said, adding, “Tell me more about Mrs. Kincaid. From what I’ve seen
while we have been standing here, it looks to me as though she is
the one who organizes these meals.”

“You are correct,” said Lady Augusta. “Her
husband is the spiritual force behind their efforts to feed the
poor, but it is Abigail Penelope Kincaid’s practical mind that
arranges and directs these affairs so well that they never
degenerate into chaos.”

“Penelope?” Carol stared at Mrs. Kincaid,
noticing familiar features she had missed in her first scrutiny of
the woman.

“I wondered how long it would take you to see
the family resemblance,” said Lady Augusta. “Like you, Mrs. Kincaid
is a descendant of Lady Penelope Hyde, and thus is your distant
cousin. Very distant, I must admit. But then, all the world is
related, if you care to trace ancestors back far enough.”

“I never would have guessed if you hadn’t
told me. I wasn’t really seeing her that first time we met. I was
too involved with my own feelings to pay attention to her or to
hear what she was saying to me.” Carol bit her lip, watching
Abigail Kincaid take the plate of an old woman at the buffet table
and offer the woman her arm to lean upon as, with a smile and a
cheerful word, she helped the woman to find a seat at one of the
dining tables.

“A generous heart would seem to be a family
trait,” Lady Augusta noted.

“Not on my side of the family,’ Carol said.
“I was deliberately rude to her, and to her husband.”

“You can rectify your previous behavior,”
Lady Augusta said. “An apology coupled with an offer of help will
surely be accepted.”

“I could donate some time, at least until I
find another job here in London, or decide whether I am going to
return to New York or not. Why don’t you make me visible right now,
so I can talk to her?”

“As I have explained to you, Carol, you may
not take any action that would change the present until all of your
lessons are learned.”

Carol did not have a chance to make any
objection, for the scene around her changed again and she
discovered that she and Lady Augusta were back inside Saint
Fiacre’s Church. The candles were all lit, dozens of them in old
brass candlesticks that were a legacy from the days when the church
could boast of wealthy patrons who could afford to make such gifts
in memory of dead relatives, or to commemorate a recovery from
serious illness, or in thanksgiving for the birth of a long-awaited
child.

By the golden candlelight Carol could see
that the church held a finely carved walnut reredos screen behind
the altar, and there was a matching pulpit. Both of these
furnishings gleamed from a recent polishing by the ladies of the
altar guild, and the rest of the church was swept and neat. The
linen on both altar and credence table was spotless and crisply
ironed. But the poverty of the parish was evident in the few
evergreen branches that decorated the altar in place of flowers,
and in two places along the nave there were boards covering the
holes where stained-glass windows once had been set. Carol could
feel in the damp coldness the absence of an adequate heating
system.

“This must have been a lovely little church
once,” she said.

“And could be again,” added Lady Augusta.
“All it needs is some decent restoration work.”

“Restoration takes money,” Carol replied.
“These people don’t have any to spare, and if they did have extra
cash they would probably use it to feed more of the hungry.”

Lady Augusta did not speak again, for the
midnight service was about to begin. Mrs. Kincaid arrived with her
sleepy children in tow and took her place in the second pew. The
smallest of the children, who looked as if he would fall asleep as
soon as he dared, curled up on the wooden seat next to his mother.
She put a loving arm around his shoulders while his brother and
sister found their places in the hymn book.

There were only six people in the choir, and
three of them were drawn from among the poor folk who had eaten
their holiday dinner in the hall a few hours earlier. Their choir
robes were darned and patched here and there, but were freshly
washed and ironed in honor of the occasion. After what Lady Augusta
had told her about Abigail Kincaid’s industriousness, Carol
suspected that this was her distant cousin’s doing.

All the members of St. Fiacre’s little choir
sang out at the top of their voices as they marched into the church
behind the youthful crucifer who carried an antique and ornate
brass cross, and every one of them sang on key without the help of
an organ. The three dozen or so souls who made up the congregation
added their own volume to the old hymns until the sweet, joyful
sounds rose to the very roof.