A Darcy Christmas Page 2

  Glancing up, he looked at the Spirit, whose jaw was again shut. “Father!” he asked. “Why do you trouble me?”

  “Fitzwilliam!” replied the Ghost. “Do you believe in me or not?”

  “I do,” said Darcy. “I must. Why are you here? Why do you come to me?”

  “It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the Spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness! And, my son, you are in danger of losing your spirit within.”

  Again the specter raised a cry and shook its chain, and wrung its shadowy hands.

  “You wear chains,” said Darcy, trembling. “Tell me why?”

  “I wear the chains I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made them link by link, and yard by yard; the gold, for all its length, is of no weight, for it is forged from the good I did during my life. However, this bit”—the Spirit touched the metal belt around his waist—“this bit of forged iron weighs heavily. For it is forged from those times when I acted without consideration for others and thought only of myself. Those times when I let pride and conceit bar the way to doing what is proper and just. I girded them on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

  Darcy nodded slowly, trying to make sense his father’s words.

  “Do you wish to know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the chains you bear yourself? They are even, Fitzwilliam, even, identical in length to each other. However, I have come to warn you. If you persist along your present course…”

  “What course?” interrupted Darcy.

  “If you persist along your present course, your chain of iron will grow stronger and heavier, and the gold chain will vanish and your soul will have gone with it,” the ghost continued, “you then will be condemned to wander through the world for eternity. This is not a fate I would wish for you, my son.”

  Darcy glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by fathoms of iron cable, but he could see nothing.

  “Father,” he said, imploringly. “Father, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Father.”

  “I wish that I could, my son, but at the moment I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Fitzwilliam, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all that is permitted to me. I cannot stay; I cannot linger anymore.”

  It was a habit with Darcy, whenever he became thoughtful, to fiddle with his signet ring. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes to the specter.

  The Ghost set up another cry and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night.

  “Many are captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “yet they do not know! They do not know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities missed!”

  “Life’s opportunities missed,” faltered Darcy, who now began to apply this to himself. Could the Spirit be talking of Elizabeth?

  Wringing its hands, the Ghost cried out, “Pemberley. The common welfare of its tenants—charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence—are all very easy at Pemberley. But elsewhere, Fitzwilliam? Have you shown these qualities elsewhere?”

  “I try, sir,” Darcy replied, shaken.

  “Did you try in Hertfordshire? Did you show charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence there, Fitzwilliam?” Darcy was forced to shake his head, for he had not.

  The spirit held up the iron chain and flung it down heavily.

  “Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.”

  “I will,” said Darcy. “But do not be too hard upon me, Father!”

  “How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.”

  It was an agreeable idea. Darcy had often wished for his father’s advice when making decisions.

  “That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the Ghost. “I have been watching you come to this precipice, and I am aware that part of it is my own doing and I must suffer for it. As a child, I taught you what was right, but I did not teach you to correct your temper. I gave you good principles but left you to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately, as my only son—for many years my only child—I spoilt you; allowed, encouraged, almost taught you to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond your own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with your own. That is why I wear this heavy chain. I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping your fate. A chance and hope not just of my procuring, Fitzwilliam, but of others’, who also have your welfare at heart.”

  “You are too harsh in your own criticism. You were always a good father,” said Darcy. “Thank you, for I do not believe that I said it during your life!”

  “You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits, all of whom will appear familiar to you, for that is their way.”

  Darcy’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.

  “Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Father?” he questioned in a faltering voice.

  “It is.”

  “I—I think I would rather not,” said Darcy.

  “Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path you now tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one.”

  “Could I not take them all at once and have it over, Father?” hinted Darcy.

  “Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and for your own sake, remember what has passed between us.”

  When it had said these words, the specter took its wrapper from the table and bound it round its head, as before. Darcy knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the bandage brought the jaws together. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arms.

  The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the specter reached it, it was wide open.

  It beckoned Darcy to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Old Mr. Darcy’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Darcy stopped, not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear, for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air: incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret, wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The specter, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. “Hear them, Fitzwilliam! Listen to their cries, for any one of them could be you!” said Old Mr. Darcy. “Look upon them!”

  Darcy followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

  The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Old Mr. Darcy’s Ghost; some few were covered completely in chains. Darcy had personally known many during their lifetime. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron chain attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had forever lost the power to do so.

  Whether these creatures faded into mist or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.

  Darcy closed the window and examined the door by which the
Ghost had entered. It was locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, he went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

  Chapter 2

  Christmas Past

  When Darcy awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of the bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his eyes when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters, so he listened for the hour.

  To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve, then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have gotten into the works. Twelve!

  He glanced at the clock that rested on the mantel. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve and stopped.

  “Why, it is not possible,” said Darcy, “that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It is not possible that anything has happened to the sun and this is twelve at noon!”

  The idea being such an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could see anything, and even after that could see very little. All he could make out was that it was still very foggy and extremely cold. It was a great relief that there was no noise of people running to and fro or making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off day and taken possession of the world.

  Darcy went to bed again, thought about it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought of his father’s Ghost. It bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after much mature inquiry, that it had all been a dream, his mind flew back to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked through: Was it a dream or not?

  Ding, dong!

  “A quarter past,” said Darcy counting.

  Ding, dong!

  “Half past!” said Darcy.

  Ding, dong!

  “A quarter to it.” Darcy suddenly remembered that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was past; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.

  The quarter was so long that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

  Ding, dong!

  “The hour itself,” said Darcy triumphantly, “and nothing else!”

  He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and a hand drew the curtains of his bed aside. Not the curtains at his feet nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. Darcy, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them.

  It was a not a stranger’s figure. Her hair was white, as if with age, swept up with loose tendrils falling, curls framed the face that had not a wrinkle in it, and a tender bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and feminine, her hands the same. Her feet, most delicately formed, were encased in delicate white slippers. She wore a gown of the purest white and round its high waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. She held a branch of fresh green holly in her hand; and, in singular contradiction of this wintry emblem, had her dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about her was that from the crown of her head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible.

  Darcy looked at it with increasing steadiness.

  “Mama?” Darcy said somewhat indistinctly, for the face resembled that of Lady Anne Darcy. “Are you the Spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Darcy.

  “I am!” The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

  “Who are you?” Darcy demanded.

  “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

  “Long past?” inquired Darcy

  “No. Your past,” replied the ghostly Lady Anne, her hand reaching out to brush a curl off Darcy’s forehead.

  “Mama,” Darcy repeated softly. “Are you truly here?”

  The ghost seemed about to nod, hesitated, then shook her head and repeated, “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

  “What brought you here?” Darcy asked, greatly disappointed.

  “Your welfare!” said the Ghost.

  “I am very much obliged,” Darcy thanked her.

  “And your reclamation. Take heed of what you shall see!” She put out her hand as she spoke and clasped him gently by the arm. “Rise and walk with me!”

  It would have been in vain for Darcy to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad, but lightly in his shirtsleeves. The grasp, though gentle, was not to be resisted. He rose, but finding that Lady Anne made towards the window, clasped his waistcoat in supplication.

  “I will fall,” Darcy remonstrated.

  “I would not let such a fate come to pass. Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this!”

  As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either side. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground. “Good Heavens,” Darcy exclaimed. “It is Pemberley.”

  Lady Anne gazed upon him mildly. Her gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to Darcy’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts and hopes and joys and cares long, long forgotten.

  They walked along the drive, Darcy recognizing every gate and post and tree. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with a young Fitzwilliam (perhaps five or six years old) and his cousins, Edward and Frederick upon their backs, who called to their parents, riding in country gigs. Both parties were in great spirits, and shouted and laughed to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music that the crisp air laughed to hear it.

  “These are but shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “They have no consciousness of us.”

  The travelers passed on. Darcy and the Ghost followed them. The cart and ponies came to a stop on a large, snow-covered hill. A sled or two was removed from the back of the cart. Darcy watched as his younger self went sliding down the hill with a laugh. Darcy and his cousins continued in this amusement for some time.

  “Look there,” said the Spirit, as she pointed to Darcy’s parents and his aunt and uncle.

  “I do not see why children should be the only ones to have fun, my dear,” the Countess remarked to her Earl. “And I do recall a time or two when you boasted of your prowess at building a snowman.”

  “I see that I shall live to regret those confessions, my love. I have not built a snowman in years,” the Earl responded to his wife’s teasing, but happily complied with her request.

  The adults of the party began building a snowman and time slipped by quickly, for almost before the snowman was begun, he was finished.

  “He looks lonely,” said Lady Anne. “He needs a mate.”

  “And what is a more proper mate for a snowman, than a snowwoman?” asked the Countess, ready to start
again.

  “I fear he will have to wait for another day before he gets a partner. I fear my toes have frozen completely. I have been longing for a nice hot toddy for the past half hour,” stated the Earl.

  “But will we have time on another day? Catherine will be here soon, and other Christmas activities will take up a great deal time,” Mr. Darcy questioned. “Perhaps we’d best do it now if it is going to be done. Who knows when we will have another opportunity?”

  The matter was debated, with Mr. Darcy, Lady Anne, and the Countess arguing good-naturedly against the Earl and his cold feet. The argument was abandoned when a groom brought word that Lady Catherine had arrived at Pemberley and was awaiting their presence. The outing was over.

  “They never did get the opportunity to make a mate for the snowman. He melted away come spring, all alone during that long winter,” commented the Ghost, as she and Darcy stepped into the entry hall of the little Church at Lambton. Darcy had no notion how they got there.

  Parishioners dressed in their best were leaving the building after the Christmas sermon. In the general melee of greetings, wishes of Merry Christmas, laughing children, and departing carriages, few noticed a tall man dressed in a gray cloak heading toward a young woman seated on a stone bench before an ancient yew tree that grew beside the church. Young Darcy was one of the few, and decided to follow.

  “It is Mr. Annesley, my tutor,” Darcy informed the Spirit, “and that is Miss Gordon, the vicar’s daughter.”

  Mr. Annesley sat beside the young woman. He was smiling broadly and his eyes were shining. The only barrier between his present and future happiness lay in the ensuing answer to the most important of questions, although he felt reasonably secure of a favorable outcome.

  “Miss Gordon,” Mr. Annesley began as his face took on a serious demeanor, “if you could but spare me a few minutes of your time, there is a matter of great import that I wish to discuss with you.”

  “Of course, Mr. Annesley,” Miss Gordon replied with a slight smile and happy light in her eyes.