Christmas Carol (3 page)

Why in heaven’s name didn’t all parents
insist that their daughters learn early in life how to do some kind
of useful work? Carol’s mother had been too busy with social life,
and her father too preoccupied with business and with earning vast
sums of money, to pay much attention to their child, and so Carol
had drifted through her girlhood and teen years with neither goals
nor ambition. All that was required of her by her parents was that
she look pretty, be polite, and not embarrass them. Being possessed
of light brown hair with a natural curl to it, clear gray eyes, a
nicely rounded figure, and a rather quiet personality, she had
never caused them any trouble.

“And I’m paying for all of that now,” she
muttered, staring into the soup bowl. “Until six years ago this
week, my life was just one long vacation. Now look at me. Oh, how I
wish I had a million dollars! No—ten million. Out of all the money
Dad made for himself and others, that wouldn’t be much.”

What would you do with it if you had
it
?

“What? Who said that?” She nearly spilled her
soup when she sat up straight to look around the familiar room. Of
course, there was no one to be seen. She hadn’t heard the words. It
was just the wind, sighing down the chimney. Carol sat back again,
pulling the lapels of her bathrobe closer to her throat. She dipped
her spoon into the soup bowl. If she didn’t finish it soon, the
soup would be cold, not to mention the chicken and vegetables still
awaiting her on the tray.

The wind
? Half an hour ago, the night
had been still and foggy with a gently drizzling rain. On such a
night, how could there be wind whistling down the chimney? Or
rattling her bedchamber door as it was doing now? Carol paused,
soup spoon suspended halfway between bowl and lips, wondering about
the sudden meteorological change. The wind howled again, shaking
the windowpanes and making the faded old curtains billow into the
room.

And then Lady Augusta stood before the
fireplace. At first, the figure Carol saw was semi-transparent.
Gradually Lady Augusta became more substantial, though Carol noted
that the firelight cast no illumination upon her. Whatever this
apparition might be, it was a creature of shadows, not of light.
Whether it was real or whether she was only imagining it, Carol
could not tell. Fascinated but not yet frightened, she stared at
the figure.

Lady Augusta looked much as Carol remembered
her from their first days together five and a half years
previously, when her employer had been old but not yet ravaged by
illness and the approach of death. Her gray hair, which was
surprisingly thick for a woman of more than 70 years, was pulled
into her customary knot at the back of her head. She was clothed in
pale lavender chiffon robes that flowed and drifted around her as
if blown by a gentle breeze.

“Good evening, Carol.” Lady Augusta’s voice
was the same as Carol remembered, yet there was a slight difference
to its timbre, a muting of its usual sharp querulousness.

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to
be dead.” Carol’s hand shook, spilling chicken broth onto her robe.
The soup was now entirely too cold to eat, so she put the bowl on
the tray, then looked back at the spot where Lady Augusta had
appeared. She was still there.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Carol said,
keeping her voice hard and steady. “Go away.”

“If you do not believe in me, then I am not
here,” Lady Augusta replied with indisputable logic. “If I am not
here, then I cannot go away.”

“All right then, you’re a figment of my
imagination or a message from my subconscious mind. Tell me what I
ought to know and then leave.”

“That is precisely what I intend to do.” To
Carol’s further amazement, Lady Augusta now sat down directly
across the fireplace from Carol’s own seat, in a spot ‘where there
was no chair. Lady Augusta simply bent her ghostly ectoplasm and
sat, disposing her lavender robes about her as if she were in her
elegant drawing room, taking her place upon one of the
silk-upholstered sofas. When she was finished, the hem of her gown
still rippled in the non-existent breeze. She leaned against the
back of the sofa that was not there. To Carol, the effect was most
unsettling.

“What—what do you want?” Carol did not sound
as assured as she intended, because her voice cracked. She
swallowed hard and tried again. “Are you really a ghost, or am I
dreaming?”

“Make up your mind, Carol. Am I a figment of
your imagination or a dream? Is your unconscious mind trying to
tell you something? Am I a ghost? Or am I real? I cannot be all of
those possibilities at once.” Lady Augusta inclined her head,
awaiting Carol’s answer.

“You have forgotten another possibility,”
Carol said. “Your sudden appearance in my bedroom could be a nasty
trick that’s being played on me. Perhaps you are a holographic
projection of some kind.”

“Who would do such a thing to you?” asked
Lady Augusta. “The servants? They are too unimaginative. Besides,
they like you, although why they should I do not know. You are
almost as unfriendly to them as I was. No, Carol, in your heart of
hearts you know that I am real.”

“But are you really dead?”

“Oh, yes.” Lady Augusta smiled. Carol could
not recall ever seeing her smile while she was alive. Before Carol
could recover from this new amazement, Lady Augusta continued.
“Death is a most remarkable sensation. In some respects it is quite
delightful. I no longer feel physical pain and that is a great
relief to me.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I know your last few
days were awful.”

“There is something far more dreadful than
physical pain,” said Lady Augusta.

“I can’t think what that might be,” Carol
remarked absently. One part of her mind was still assessing the
ghostly appearance of her visitor in an attempt to discover exactly
how this remarkable trick was being played on her. For the life of
her, she could not think how it was done, but then Carol was not
well informed on the subject of electronics technology. Nor, as
Lady Augusta pointed out, did she know of anyone who might have
reason to do such a thing to her.

“Pay attention, Carol.” Lady Augusta had
raised her voice a notch, and Carol jerked her thoughts back to
what the ghost was telling her. “As I was saying, worse than any
physical pain is the unbearable anguish of knowing that I never
fulfilled the true purpose of my life. I let youthful
disappointments harden my heart against life and love, as you also
have done.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Carol
cried, grabbing at the arms of her chair and holding on tight. “You
never bothered to ask about my life before I came to work for you.
You were too glad to have a companion who was willing to take the
job for cheap wages to make any fuss over who I might be.” Carol
shut her mouth on the additional complaint she wanted to make,
about the way in which she had been treated in Lady Augusta’s
will.

“You poor, foolish girl,” said Lady Augusta,
shaking her head sadly. “Of course I had your past investigated. Do
you think that I, mistrustful character that I was in life, would
take the chance of hiring someone who might rob me or murder me in
my bed? Really, Carol, you are entirely too naive and, like your
father, you are much too weak-spirited to fight back when life
deals you a bad blow.”

“Don’t you dare insult my father! He was an
honest man!”

“Indeed he was, and he regrets his suicidal
weakness now.”

“
Now
? Have you met my father? In that—
that—wherever you are?”

“Where I am,” Lady Augusta responded, “all
motives are understood, all excuses pardoned, though earthly
mistakes must be exonerated. Yes, I have been in contact with your
father, and I know everything there is to know about your youthful
life. I do wish you had not allowed that selfish young man to take
such terrible advantage of your affection for him. He did not value
you properly, you know.”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” Carol was out of her
chair, standing over Lady Augusta as if to threaten her. “I won’t
talk about Robert.”

“Of course you won’t. You learned through sad
experience what a mistake it was to allow him so much of your
heart. Robert Drummond’s affection was not for you as a person but
for your father’s money and power. No man has ever loved you for
yourself.”

“Stop this!” Carol was shaking with rage. The
mere mention of Robert Drummond’s name was enough to chill her
blood, as though the shadow of his old betrayal could still cast
its blight over her life.

“I see that I have distressed you,” said Lady
Augusta. “Perhaps I was wrong to raise the subject at all. Some of
my former tactlessness remains with me, I fear. I must work on
improving that particular trait. Dear girl, do please sit down and
stop looking as if you would like to murder me. What do you think
you could possibly do to hurt me now?”

Still angry, and unappeased by what amounted
to a rare apology from her late employer, Carol put out her hand to
grab at Lady Augusta’s arm. Her hand went right through Lady
Augusta’s seated figure. With a frightened gasp Carol snatched back
her hand, which felt as if it had been plunged into ice water.

“You can’t be real,” Carol insisted.

“I am real,” her ghostly visitor countered,
“but real in ways that you will not be able to comprehend for many
years yet. Sit down, Carol, and allow me to explain why I have been
sent to you.”

“Sent?” Carol sat without taking her eyes off
Lady Augusta.

“As I was saying, I wasted my life on earth
in miserliness, and in anger and willful misunderstandings, when I
might have known love and spent my wealth in bringing happiness to
others.”

“Sure,” Carol replied with considerable
cynicism. “I know all about it. If you have money and you are
willing to spend it, everybody loves you. I found that much out
before I turned twenty-one. But it’s not real love. People just
pretend, the way Robert did, because they are hoping to get their
hands on your money. I admired you, Lady Augusta, because you never
let that kind of parasite take advantage of you.”

“I can see you have a lot to learn.” Lady
Augusta regarded her sadly. “Not everyone is interested solely in
money. You need to learn that the heart and the spirit are what
matter, not earthly possessions. Carol, have you never wondered why
you have always been so unhappy?”

“I know why,” Carol told her, “and since you
claim to know all about my life, I shouldn’t have to explain it to
you. By the way, you are partly to blame.”

“Because I did not leave you any money in my
will?” Again Lady Augusta smiled her ghostly smile. “Yes, in that
document I was entirely too miserly toward all who were in my
employ. I am paying for it now.”

“Good,” said Carol in a nasty tone of voice.
“Serves you right. You were grossly unfair to me.”

“Will you be silent and listen to me, or
not?” asked Lady Augusta.

“Go ahead.” Carol tried to repress the anger
she could still feel simmering inside her, threatening to burst
forth once more. “Say what you want to say.”

“Thank you.” Lady Augusta inclined her head
with all the graciousness of a grand duchess. “Because of the
unloving way in which I misspent my life, I am now doomed to wander
the earth for all eternity, observing happiness that I cannot
share, witnessing need that I am no longer able to alleviate.”

“Alleviating the needs of others never
bothered you much when you were alive,” Carol observed, “so it
shouldn’t upset you now.”

“But it does. You see, the passage from your
dimension of life to my present state changes one deeply.”

“I should think it would,” Carol said,
intrigued by this unique point of view in spite of herself.

“The heart that once was hard and uncaring is
now transformed,” Lady Augusta went on, “so that I ache with
unfulfilled love. But I have no one upon whom to lavish it. I see
poverty and injustice that I want to lighten, but I am no longer in
your world and cannot use my wealth for good. The opportunity has
passed me by.”

“You should have left your money to
charity—and to your employees,” Carol said. “That might make you
feel better. But it’s too late now for you to change your
will.”

“Precisely.” Lady Augusta nodded approvingly.
“I am glad you understand. It is too late for me, but not for you.
I do not want you ever to suffer as I am suffering now.
Furthermore, you, dear Carol, are my means to everlasting
bliss.”

“What are you talking about?” Carol
demanded.

“I have been assigned to you,” Lady Augusta
said. “If I can convince you to change your hardhearted ways, to
open yourself to love and charity and beauty—if I can, in short,
change you as I was never able to change, into a kind and generous
and loving person—then I will be permitted to give up this eternal
wandering and take my proper place in the other life.”

“Whoa,” Carol said, putting up a hand to stop
the eager flow of Lady Augusta’s words. “I’ve seen this plot before
in an old movie. And I read something similar once in a Christmas
story. This is some kind of a put-up job, isn’t it? Who planned
this, anyway? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

“From whom do you think the creators of those
old movies or books received the plot lines, if not from the
Greatest Planner of all?” asked Lady Augusta. “Such stories linger
in the hearts of ordinary folk because those good souls recognize
the eternal truth in them. This is no game, Carol, nor is it a
trick. What I tell you is but a truth too simple and obvious for
your closed and earthbound mind to grasp. In time, left to
yourself, you will understand as I have come to understand, that
love and charity and goodwill toward all whom you know are the most
important qualities required of any soul. But by then it will be
too late for you to alter your earthly life. In any case, you
cannot stop what will happen next.”