A Darcy Christmas Page 6

  “Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed. “I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear your company and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”

  She gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

  “Lead on!” said Darcy. “Lead on! The night is waning fast and time is precious to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”

  The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Darcy followed in the shadow of her dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.

  They scarcely seemed to enter the room, for the room rather seemed to spring up about them and encompass them of its own accord. But there they were, in the heart of Bingley’s London mansion.

  The Spirit stopped beside one little chair. Observing that the hand was pointed to the room’s occupants, Darcy advanced to listen to their talk.

  “No,” said Mr. Hurst, now a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I do not know much about it either way. I only know she’s dead.”

  “When did she die?” inquired Louisa.

  “Last night, I believe.”

  “Why, what was the matter with her?” asked Caroline.

  “God knows,” said Mr. Hurst, “a fever of some sort.”

  “I hope that it is not contagious?” asked Louisa.

  “I haven’t heard,” said Mr. Hurst.

  “It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said Caroline, “for upon my life I do not know why anyone would want to go to it. I suppose we must make some show of support for her family? I have a black dress I have never worn—the workmanship was too shoddy, but it will do for her.”

  “I do not mind going, as long as lunch is provided,” observed Mr. Hurst.

  “Well, it is the most uninteresting way for you to pass the day,” said Caroline. “But I will go and comfort the sisters. That way, I can see for myself that she is truly gone!”

  Their conversation then turned to another subject altogether. Darcy looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.

  The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Darcy listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.

  He knew these men, also.

  “How are you?” said Sir William.

  “How are you?” returned Mr. Phillips.

  “Well!” said Sir William. “I am sorry to hear of your loss. Heaven has received another angel?”

  “So I believe,” returned Mr. Phillips. Not wishing to speak of it, he changed the subject. “Cold, isn’t it?”

  “Seasonable for Christmas time.”

  “Something else to think of. Good morning!”

  Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

  Darcy was at first surprised by the conversations; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be.

  Darcy tried to think of anyone immediately connected with himself who might also be the subject of both conversations. Caroline and Mrs. Hurst kept much different company than Sir William and Mr. Phillips. The only common connection was Jane, and by extension, the Bennet family. The loss of Jane would devastate Bingley, the loss of a relation would wound Elizabeth grievously, and the loss of Elizabeth was not a thought Darcy was willing to contemplate.

  He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed on which, beneath a sheet, there lay someone covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.

  The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Darcy glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed and on it was the body of a woman.

  Darcy glanced towards the Phantom. Her steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the mere motion of a finger upon Darcy’s part, would disclose the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it, but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the specter at his side.

  “Spirit!” he said. “This is a fearful place. Let us go!”

  Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.

  “I understand you, I know what you wish,” Darcy returned, “and I would do it if I could. But I cannot, Spirit. I have not the power.”

  Quiet and dark, beside him stood false Lady Catherine, with her outstretched hand. Her eyes were looking at him keenly. They made him shudder and feel very cold.

  The Phantom spread her dark dress before her for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, they were before his house in Mayfair. His carriage pulled up and a somewhat older self exited. Darcy noticed that his face was careworn and depressed, though he was still quite young. How odd it is to see oneself in but a few years time. It is like in a mirror, but a flawed one, he thought as he and Lady Catherine made their way inside. He watched himself vanish upstairs.

  The door to a parlor opened, and Caroline Bingley stood there. Not Bingley, Darcy noted, for she fiddled with a wedding ring. Darcy knew with an awful certainty that he was the husband. His stomach roiled in shock. “How can this be?” he demanded of the Spirit.

  He turned to view this wife of the future. She walked up and down the room and wondered how everything she had ever coveted had been in her grasp, and somehow she had lost it all or perhaps dreams had never met her preconceived expectations. How Darcy knew all this was unclear, but the knowledge came to him like the vision before him.

  Caroline started at every sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock; and tried, in vain, to settle. That she was expecting him and was waiting with anxious dread was obvious. At length the long-expected footsteps were heard on the stairs. She faced the door and met her husband.

  “Madam,” he ground out, but could say no more. It was clear that he was furious. He began to pace the room in a vain effort to relieve some of the anger. Finally, stopping before Caroline, he began to question her in a harsh voice, “Why, Caroline? Why did you not summon me earlier? Why must I learn from your brother that my son was ill? And what do I find when I arrive at your home? That not only was he very ill, but dying.”

  “That is not true.”

  “It is true. Our marriage has long been over, but I am still his father. You stole what time I could have spent with Charles by keeping his illness from me. I do not believe I can forgive you for that.”

  “Darcy, it was not like that. I did not know the seriousness of his illness at first…”

  “But when you did, you still kept quiet. I do not believe you intended to inform me at all. I expect you planned to send a note stating ‘Charles cannot come to Pemberley this spring. He is dead. Madame Bertine’s bill has not yet been paid, could you see to it?’”

  “That was vicious,” Caroline felt her own anger rising over the heart-stopping grief. “I will not justify my actions now. I am Charles’s mother; I did what I thought best for him. Now I wish to see my son.”

  Darcy block her way, “No, you cannot see him. Not now. I will not have you contaminate the room where he lies.”

  Caroline felt shattered. All the dreams and fantasies she had still cherished of what it meant to be Mrs. Darcy broke to pieces like fragile glass. It angered her; in fact, everything angered her: her shattered schemes, the illness that ate away at her son, the man before her. Caroline looked him in the eye and spoke quietly, “You wish to know why? I was jealous. You called for her in your sleep, not once but many times. You should have married her when you had the chance. My disposition does not take well to being second best, so that my regard for you diminished as my jealousy grew. But I triumphed over her, because I had your child. A feat she could not accomplish. I am his mother, Darcy, and I did everything within my power to see that he would be well again.
I had no wish to bring you and your ghost back into my life at such a trying time. Now, I am going to attend my son.” With these words she left him alone. The slam of the door echoed in Darcy’s ears.

  Darcy seated himself before the fire and lingered there for some time before he went upstairs into his child’s bedchamber above. The Spirit and Darcy followed. The room was lighted cheerfully and hung with the trappings of Christmas. Thankfully, Caroline was no longer there. A chair was set close beside the child. His other self sat down in it and gently reached for the child’s hand while Darcy and the Spirit watched from the opposite side of the bed. When he had composed himself, Darcy looked down on the little face. It was a face that he had never seen before, yet it seemed intimately familiar and dear. He felt a lump rise in his throat and his eyes were suddenly scratchy and wet.

  The child looked up at Darcy, “Papa, I wanted to go home for Christmas.”

  “Next year, my boy, when you are well again.”

  “Can I have a puppy and a pony?” he asked.

  “Without a doubt. And what will you call them?”

  “Chestnut and Pudding,” came the reply after some thought.

  “Very good names, I am sure, but which is for the pony and which is for the puppy?” Darcy asked.

  “How will I know until I see them?” young Charles reasoned. The Spirit laid a bony hand on the child’s brow, and he began to cough. Darcy watched as his older self and Caroline took turns looking after the boy. Days seemed to pass before his eyes. Every so often the Spirit touched the child and his conditioned worsened. Finally, Darcy could take no more and cried out, “Cease tormenting the child.”

  The Spirit looked at Darcy and grinned. She laid an emaciated hand on the child’s chest and the breathing ceased.

  “No!” both Darcys cried in unison.

  The future Darcy broke down. He couldn’t help it. Over the last several days he had watched his son die before his very eyes and felt totally helpless.

  Darcy turned angrily on the Spirit and spoke through gritted teeth. “How could you? I did not want the child to die. Am I to blame for his passing now?”

  The Spirit remained silent, as if his questions were of no account. Instead, she moved them into the study to witness another form of death.

  His other self sat behind a desk. A pale Caroline, dressed in severe black, sat across from him and asked him faintly, “What is it that you wish of me?”

  “I will make the funeral arrangements,” Darcy answered in a choked voice. “After it is over, I wish you to leave. I do not care where you go. You will be attended to, wherever it is you settle. If I never see you again it will be too soon, Caroline!”

  “Then I will leave your life for good. Strange how it is only now that I realize how much time I have wasted on what might been.” And she walked out of the room.

  “Spirit, I wish to leave here now.” She nodded in agreement. He was grateful when he and the Spirit left the scene and went into the small kitchen of some unknown house.

  Sitting by a fireplace was a grey-haired man, nearly seventy years of age, smoking his pipe.

  Darcy and the Phantom came into the presence of this man; a woman came into the room, carrying a bundle, but she had scarcely entered when another woman came in too and a man in black closely followed her.

  “What is the world coming to, Joe?” Mrs. Dilber asked the old man. “The missus is dying and her brother won’t come, even though she asks and asks!”

  “That’s true, indeed!” said Mrs. Launders. “No man is more stubborn than he. Disowned the missus when she married the master, God keep his soul. He wasn’t good enough for their fine bloodstock.”

  “Nor was he rich enough neither,” said the man in black.

  “No, indeed, Henry! Not good enough for the likes of him,” said Mrs. Dilber.

  “He will be the worse for the loss of a sister,” Henry informed them.

  “Indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber in complete agreement.

  “He wanted to keep ’em apart, the master and the missus. He is a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman. “Why isn’t he more natural? If he was, he’d be here to look after his sister when she is struck with Death. Instead she is all alone, except for us.”

  “It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said Mrs. Dilber. “It will be a judgment on him.”

  “I hope he does get his just deserts,” said old Joe, stopping in his task and looking up at them.

  “Me too,” returned the woman. “I ain’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about looking for him, but if he does come my way, well then, I shall certainly give him what for.”

  Mrs. Launders picked up the bundle and shook it out. “Ah, you may look through this dress till your eyes ache, but you won’t find a hole in it nor a threadbare place. It’s the best she had, and a fine one too.”

  “So it is,” said old Joe.

  “She is to be buried in it, to be sure,” replied the woman with a sob.

  Recovering, Mrs. Launders spoke again. “This is not the end of it, you’ll see! He will frighten everyone away from him and then he will end up all alone. Serves him right, I say. I just wish I knew what is to become of young Freddy.”

  “Spirit!” said Darcy, shuddering from head to foot. “Merciful Heaven, what is this about?” For Darcy was again in the drawing room of his London mansion. But now the room was made horrible by obvious neglect. The wallpaper was peeling, the furniture was undusted, the windows grimy, the curtains torn and tattered.

  Darcy gasped as he saw the owner of the house sitting by a meager fire. It was himself; he knew it was himself, though he aged at least thirty years!

  A young man came into the room. “A Merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Darcy’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

  “Bah!” said Darcy. “Humbug!”

  This nephew-to-be of Darcy had a face that was ruddy and handsome. He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost that his eyes sparkled from the exercise. He reminded Darcy of his cousin Fitzwilliam.

  “Christmas a humbug, Uncle!” said Darcy’s nephew. “You do not mean that, I am sure.”

  “I do mean it,” said Darcy. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason do you have to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

  “Come now, I am not a pauper by any means. My mother saw that I was provided for; if not rich, I am certainly comfortable,” returned the nephew gaily. “I might ask what right have you to be so dismal and morose? You’re rich enough.”

  Darcy, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again and followed it up with “Humbug.”

  “Do not be cross, Uncle,” said the nephew.

  “What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools who believe in a Merry Christmas? And I suppose you believe in Father Christmas too.”

  “Oh, without a doubt, Uncle, I believe.”

  “I say, out upon Merry Christmas. What is Christmas time to you but a time for frittering away money on needless things; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour wiser? If I could work my will,” said Darcy indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”

  “Uncle!” returned the nephew. “What a singularly unpleasant thought.”

  “Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly. “Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

  “Keep it!” repeated Darcy’s nephew. “But you do not keep it.”

  “Let me leave it alone then,” said Darcy. “Much good may it do you. Much good it has ever done you!”

  “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew, “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought that, apa
rt from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, Christmas Time is a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

  A servant in the hall involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he entered the room with a wine decanter and one glass.

  “Let me hear another sound from you,” said Darcy addressing the servant, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation.” Turning to his nephew, he said, “You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir. I wonder you do not go into Parliament.”

  “Politicians certainly put believing to the test. Please do not be angry, Uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.”

  “Why did you get married?” said Darcy.

  “Because I fell in love.”

  “Because you fell in love!” growled the elder Darcy. “There is only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a Merry Christmas and it is love. And you are fool if you believe otherwise. Why should I subject myself and ruin my digestion to view the mockery that is a love match.”

  Darcy was astonished to hear these words come from his mouth. In fact, every word he heard spoken from the time he entered the room with the Spirit shocked him greatly. He could not believe the sentiments he was expressing as they were so far from those he felt now, as to be totally alien.

  “But, Uncle, you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now? I can assure the meals are much better than when I was a bachelor, so there really is no need to worry about your tender stomach,” his nephew offered cheekily.

  “Good afternoon,” said Darcy, creakily getting up from his chair.

  “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?”