Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [51]
“I do,” I replied. “I was struck most particularly by that of Mr. Scrooge’s former partner. Mr. Marley’s ghost seemed to me a most unpleasant—ah . . .”
“Apparition?”
“Yes, a fearful apparition if I may say it. You . . .” I was seized by a cough.
“Marley was a most unpleasing person,” Miss Landon confided. “I am somewhat different, or so I hope. Three spectres visited Mr. Scrooge subsequently. Can you name them?”
“Not precisely, perhaps. There was the Ghost of the current Christmas, by which I mean that of the Christmas we were then celebrating.”
“And the others?”
“One who returned, if I may so phrase it, Mr. Scrooge to Christmases he had celebrated many years ago. After him, I believe there came a third ghost who vouchsafed him a view of a Christmas that had not yet been.”
“Excellent!” Her smile warmed me. “We ghosts are constrained by certain laws; you know of that, for I have already explained a pair of those to you. We are freed, however, from the domination of certain others. You living are permitted only one specific time: the present. You can act in the present, or you cannot act. To plan to act in the future is not to act but only to intend it. As for the past, it is beyond your reach.”
I nodded. “There is much there that I would change if I could.”
“You have only the present,” she repeated. “This moment, and nothing more; for us there is Eternity.”
I said, “I don’t believe I understand that, Miss Landon.”
“Understand Eternity, Brooks? Why, neither do I! No one understands it, nor ever will. It is the place outside all time, and the place that surrounds all time. Because we are there, we can observe all time, and even visit any time we wish.”
“Can you tell me whether I shall ever marry? And to whom, if I shall?”
“I could learn these things, but I will not. They are kept from you for good reasons—”
The great clock downstairs had begun to toll the hour of twelve, and so silent was the house at that hour, and so silent the night itself, that the measured strokes of its steel hammer upon its sounding gong were distinctly audible in my garret.
“I must go.” Miss Landon hastened to my window. “You need not throw up the sash for me, Brooks. You are a most estimable man. I shall see you anon, and you shall have your reward.”
After that, as may well be believed, I did all that I could conceive of to learn all that I could regarding Miss Landon. She was, it transpired, the only daughter of a physician who had in addition three stalwart sons, her older brothers. Dr. Landon practiced in Windermere and owned a town house there; he had also, by inheritance, a country house built by his father at the edge of the fells and by him styled Cauldwell Grange. I never learned the reason, assuming that one existed, for this appellation; nor did I make any great effort to do so.
Several descriptions I had of Miss Landon, all more or less accurate. There would be little point in giving them here, since I was soon to see her for myself. She was at that time of marriageable age but not greatly sought after; such suitors as she had were said to be tradesmen’s sons and the like. This last I had from my master’s father’s man, Peter Hugh, who added that Sir Walter thought Miss Landon rather too forward. “As for me,” Hugh added with a shrug, “I think her daft.”
Naturally I endeavoured to learn the basis for this opinion, but he would say no more upon the topic.
It was the very next day, I believe, that my master consulted me regarding a gift for his mother. “The old girl’s birthday,” he told me, “will be upon us before we know it, and I must not neglect my duty towards her. The old chap means to invite all manner of guests. How would it look if everyone showers her with silks and laces and all manner of nonsense, while I give her nothing?”
I acknowledged that it would look very bad indeed, thinking furiously all the while.
“Can’t you suggest something, Brooks? I gave her a picnic hamper last year, and she liked it or said she did; but I can scarcely give her another.”
By that time I had hit upon an idea.