Mr. Darcy's Christmas Carol by Carolyn Eberhart

Author:Carolyn Eberhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2012-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Christmas Future

Now Lady Catherine was draped in a black gown, with a hooped skirt and bodice cut low, exposing too much bony bosom. Her head was ringed by sausage curls, looking grotesquely girlish against a face that seemed to consist of little more than flesh covering bone. There was no life in her face. There was no life in her eyes. She seemed to glide towards him in a most unnerving manner.

He felt her come beside him, and her mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread.

“Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” asked Darcy.

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,” Darcy pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”

The Spirit inclined her head. That was the only answer he received. It was doubly chilling, this lack of voice in the body of one usually so verbal.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Darcy 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, observing his condition, and gave him time to recover.

But Darcy was all the worse for this. It filled him with a vague uncertain horror to know that there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him.

“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.

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