“I do not know,” said Darcy.
“Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because,” said Darcy, “alcohol affects them. I do not usually indulge in the grape as much as I did this evening. I am sure there is more of the cask than of the casket about you, whatever you are!”
Darcy was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention and keeping down his terror, for the specter’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Darcy felt, the very deuce with him. It was as if he again were but twelve years old and about to be punished for some childish misdeed. There was something very awful too in the specter’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.
At this, the Spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise that Darcy held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling off of it. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom took off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, and its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Darcy placed his elbows on his knees, and clasped his face in his hands, as if to banish the specter. There was silence in the room, but Darcy could still feel the Spirit.
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.
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!”
