Austen Variations 2025 Advent Calendar

Welcome to the 2025 Austen Variations Advent Calendar, where our amazing authors will bring you a new gift every day from now until today, December 24th.

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Lady Catherine’s Christmas Carol

Part One. The Ghost of Christmas Past.

It was Christmas Eve, and Lady Catherine was in a hurry. A lady, of course, never hurries,” she admonished herself, thereby worsening her already cross mood by the reflection. “Never mind,” she told herself, “a very little in the way of haste, if well judged, is surely allowable when a lady is in the act of doing Good for others.” That lucky thought was a soothing one, and she walked more moderately the rest of her way home from the Collins rectory.

For there surely was a great deal to do in any English parish on Christmas Eve, and of course, it was Lady Catherine’s duty to see that Mrs. Collins did it. Mr. Collins was quite properly in his study, working on his sermon for tomorrow, and Lady Catherine had certainly taken her proper part in attending to that, for had not most of the the conversation in their regular twice-a-week dinner meetings, for the last month, been devoted to her ordering in much detail, what he was to say? Not only that, but they had entirely given up cards for the month of December, so that she might tactfully suggest – she would not characterize it as “dictating” – ideas to the idealess rector; and in the time left over, dictate lists (they were not suggestions) of the appropriate seasonal duties for Mrs. Collins to carry out.

This afternoon had been taken up in praiseworthy fashion by Lady Catherine’s meticulously questioning the rector’s wife on every detail of her ordered tasks. As well, she conscientiously watched Mrs. Collins, overseeing her bringing comforts to parishioners sick and in need, making and dispersing gallons of soup, and diligently rendering the entire house spick and span for the expected stream of visitors and supplicants. Charlotte Collins was usually a calm person, almost to the point of being phlegmatic, but attending to those offices, and to the cross-questioning of her patroness, had given her a harassed appearance. At least, so a person might have said, who was ignorant of her devotion to her duty, and to her mistress.

“I regret to say, Mrs. Collins, I was most surprised, when I took just a little peek into the church,” (Lady Catherine had spent more than an hour on her inspection) “to see that the flowers were – all wrong.”

“Wrong!” Charlotte put down her soup ladle, disconcerted. “What can you mean, Lady Catherine? I assure you I spent most of yesterday morning arranging the holly boughs that you sent – most generous of you, and very choice ones they are,” she remembered to add hastily.

“Yes, yes,” said Lady Catherine impatiently, though somewhat mollified by the praise. “But they were erroneously distributed. The hollies were meant for the chancel, not merely for general decoration, outside the pews. You, as the rector’s wife, ought surely to have known the religious connotations.”

“I am so sorry, Lady Catherine, I shall go back immediately and rectify the matter,” said Charlotte humbly enough, though looking ever so slightly wild-eyed.

Lady Catherine lifted a gracious hand, allowing her rings to sparkle in the waning sunlight. “No need for that,” she assured the younger woman. “A lady never hurries. You may go back and rearrange the hollies after all the soup has been duly served.”

“It will be too dark,” said Charlotte faintly.

“That is well thought of. Yes, you are right, you had better go now,” decided Lady Catherine, and marched away, nodding with satisfaction.

Lady Catherine was of a strong constitution, and lived in a style of life which required little exertion that was not satisfactory to herself (fortunately for her, ordering other people about was what gave her the greatest satisfaction), yet even she felt herself to be ever so slightly fatigued as she approached her own door. And if she did not mistake – was not there something hanging on that very selfsame door – something odd? She stopped a distance of a few feet away and squinted through the gloom. Was it not – it looked like a face. A head. Something untoward and out of the way. Perhaps it was something of an impertinence, she thought indignantly. A mischief. She really should have brought Jenkinson or some other trusted person with her. It was a good thing Anne was not strong enough to accompany her on a tiring afternoon’s work, and would be spared this out-of-the-way sight, whatever it proved to be. She stepped a little closer to the object. It was indeed a face, yes, a head. A whole head. Her own felt a bit dizzy for a moment, as if it was spinning. Was the thing real? Was it an image? She looked again, incredulous, and then yet again. No, she could not be mistaken.

It was her sister. Lady Georgiana Darcy, dead these five and twenty years!

Who could have fashioned such an image, to frighten her? And why? And above all things, how? For it was certainly an infernal and false object, placed for a vile purpose. Of that she was sure. Not a pious manifestation, but one with positive deviltry behind it. Who could have done such a thing? She had no enemies of course, and there had been no travellers or beggars reported in the neighborhood recently. She looked for a stick to knock it down, but thought better of it. No, she would summon some of the men to get rid of the thing. Accordingly, she reached out her hand toward the heavy door knocker, but was arrested by a frightful sound.

The image spoke, in a ghastly hollow tone. “Catherine: I have come.”

Lady Catherine found her own voice, and spoke with some measure of self-possession, she did not know how. “I see you have, Georgiana. But how could you?”

“Let me in, Catherine. I can see and hear you, but I am incorporeal, and cannot open a door. Do you let me in and I shall tell you all.”

As if she had no will of her own, Lady Catherine pushed open the heavy door. The incorporal being floated inside, gliding ahead of her. In the dark hallway Lady Catherine could vaguely perceive that the image of her sister was not only a face, but a transparent body, that floated into the reception-room. “Let us be seated,” it intoned. “I have not much time, and very little power to summon up what I have to say.”

“I see who you are – but what are you?” ventured Lady Catherine. “Are you a ghost – a spirit? Are there really such things? Are you a dream? But I am not in my bed. Have I fallen and hurt my head and not known it?”

“Do not waste my time with idle questions. You are awake, and I, like many souls who have had to leave life with tasks uncompleted, am forced to wander through time and space. It takes years of summoning up power to utter even so little, so I must tell you at once that I am here because you, my sister, are at a crossroads in your life: you may be condemned to wander to no purpose for all eternity, or you may be able to repair some of the damages you have caused. There is still a chance, a small chance, that you may yet do some good in the world.”

“I – cause damage?” exclaimed Lady Catherine incredulously. “I have done nothing in my life but good, I am sure! There are not many people who could say such a thing, but I – “

“Stop!” intoned the spectre. “You will be visited by Three Spirits, and then you will know the truth. You must watch well, and do not speak.”

As she watched, Lady Catherine saw the spectre change, become softer, younger looking, dressed in a light summer gown, such as Georgiana wore in girlhood. She was surrounded by other young girls, in what looked like a schoolroom. The room was decorated suitably for the Christmas holidays, and the other girls were commiserating with Georgiana, who was crying.

“It is too bad, Georgy, that you are to remain at school alone all the holidays, and not go home for Christmas delights, with the rest of us,” one said.

“I wish you would let us speak up for you,” begged another. “You should not be left to take the blame for what your sister did, and be punished in her stead.”

“And it was such a dreadful thing. Bearing false witness. Letting Headmistress think you must be punished, and not taken out with her for a treat by your father, Lord Fitzwilliam. Why, Catherine must be at home already, and you left behind. Do let us try to right the situation with Miss Carstairs and have you go home, as you should!”

“No, you are very good, but I beg you will not. For it would mean that I would have to relate to Miss Carstairs that it was Catherine who was behind the false tale-telling designed to expel girls who were her enemies – those whom she had done wrong. No, I cannot bear that. Better they think it was me. Catherine will have a bad time enough at home herself, with her ill nature, her jealousy, and the burden she must always carry, that knowledge of having done wrong.”

“Oh, Georgiana! How can you be so good!”

“It is better, it is right. Catherine has enough to suffer and struggle with, with her unfortunate nature. Kindness is the best way to deal with her, the only way she will ever take a turn, and do right. To that end, we must ensure that what she has done, does not come out and become known. Then, my family will continue to love her. At least I hope so. As best they can,” Georgiana added, bowing her head. “Do go, please. I will be all right.”

The girls vanished. Lady Catherine covered her face. “I knew those girls,” she said hoarsely. “I did not know that Georgiana – had behaved in such a way. I cannot bear it. Go away, cannot you, Ghost? Do not torment me.”

“So it is torment,” observed the voice. “That is well.”  Lady Catherine uncovered her face and saw that the being had resumed its ageless spectral form. A faintness such as she had never known came over her and she collapsed on a divan and knew no more.

Part Two. The Ghost of Christmas Present.

Lady Catherine stirred on her divan, and abruptly awoke. The moonlight was streaming in at the window, and illuminated the pale white spectre who was patiently waiting for her to awake. Lady Catherine sat up, rubbed her eyes, and peered at the image. It had changed, and was another being now, or the ghost of one.

“Well? Who are you now, pray tell?” she demanded crossly. “My sister was here, last I looked. What have you done with her?”

“She has fulfilled her mission and gone home to her rest,” evenly intoned the spectre, who was another female figure. “She was the ghost of the past – I am of the present. Do you not know your own daughter?”

“What? But, how can this be? Has anything happened to you?” Her Ladyship wrung her hands in agitation. “But you never liked wearing white. Tell me you are not dead?”

“No, certainly not. Anne is asleep in her bed. And I, her dream if you will, am free to roam, and to warn you.”

“Warn me? Of what? Tell me quickly, you incorporeal idiot, or I will – “ Lady Catherine stopped, not at all knowing what to say.

“What will you do?” With a ghostly smile the creature contemplated her. When Lady Catherine did not speak, the spectre raised a transparent hand and ordered, “Come with me.”

Lady Catherine found herself looking down into the drawing-room at Rosings, where her daughter was seated dejectedly, not working, but staring into space. Her companion, Mrs. Jenkinson, looked over at her, worried. “Now my dear young lady, do not take it so hard. It is not like you to be so idle, and to mope.”

It was in fact exactly like Anne, and the girl sighed. “Come now, help me with these dresses for the new baby in the gardener’s cottage,” Mrs. Jenkinson urged her.

“I have not the heart. How can I think of any one’s baby when I have nothing in life to look forward to myself,” she lamented.

“Miss Anne, it is wicked to say so. You know you will marry, one day or other, and have a beautiful house and babies of your own. Your mother will see to that.”

Anne’s eyes looked haunted. “Oh Mrs. Jenkinson, it is not so. You must know by this time that my mother never wishes me to marry.”

“What a thing to think! Why, she takes you to town every season, does she not, and you have all the eligible dancing partners.”

“I never have them. You are not there and do not see. None of the gentlemen want to dance with me, because I am so little and plain, and have nothing to say to them. I am only asked when my mother demands a favor. It is so humiliating. They never ask me for another dance. And then we come back home, and I pass six months without seeing another young man. No, my mother only wants me to be her companion and slave, not even a paid one as you are.”

“You know that is not true. Did she not try her very hardest to make your cousin Darcy take you?”

“Her management of that only made him more determined against me. It was the same with my cousin Fitzwilliam, who gave her no opportunity and would only come here once a year, on direct orders.”

“They say cousin-marriages are unhealthy,” mused Mrs. Jenkinson.

“But you do not understand. I l-loved Mr. Darcy,” burst out Anne, a choke in her throat.

“I never saw any sign of that,” the other lady was bewildered.

“Of course you never did. It is just what could not be shown. And he was so handsome, and clever, I could never say a word. My mother always said I was a silly, and dull, and could never please an intelligent man, and it was so. And now I am thirty, and there is no hope for me!”

“If this is true, i was very badly done of Lady Catherine,” muttered Mrs. Jenkinson, almost to herself, biting off a thread.

“Of course it is true. She has always hated me, because I have no strength and spirit, as she has herself. She says I am hopeless, and can never live without her. I shall be a withered old maid, and die by her side!”

Mrs. Jenkinson had not a word to say.

Lady Catherine felt a sickness rising, and urgently addressed the spectre. “But I cannot have done – all that! Can I? I have always wanted the best for my daughter.”

“Is that so?” asked the spirit, raising an invisible eyebrow. “Yet you need her to be with you, ever at your bidding, and you permit her to have no will or gumption of her own. It is yourself, and no one else, who has made her this way.”

“Will she die unwed? Oh, say it is not so. Surely it is not too late to change my method. I shall go to her, and tell her she shall have every chance to marry – somebody. Anybody. I can still make it happen, I know I can!”

“It may be too late for Anne,” the spectre said in a monotone. “But is it too late for you?” It glided away, leaving Lady Catherine alone.

 

Part Three. The Ghost of Christmas Future.

Lady Catherine sat in the dark, not knowing how much time had passed. The church bells rang. It was six o’clock on Christmas Eve.

Presently the ghostly light glimmered again, and Lady Catherine stood to meet whatever form the spectre would take this time. She was utterly confounded to be face to face with none other than Mr. Collins.

Not, naturally, the stout, robust, living Mr. Collins, but an incorporeal image, as if the young rector had lost fifty pounds in weight and covered his face with gauze. His costume finished off with the last word in absurdity, a little lace halo.

“Mr. Collins, what is this?” said Lady Catherine indignantly. “You are supposed to be writing your Christmas sermon. You do not have time to be dead.”

“Of course I have finished that,” he replied hastily. “You do not think I would desert my duty? I have touched up last year’s version – thought of some very pretty new little sayings, but there is not time for you to approve them just now, alas. A superior duty calls us.”

“Mr. Collins, you have truly astonished me. What possible duty could come above a Christmas sermon? I say nothing about my efforts in improving your work, but your decision to lay it aside, certainly does you no credit. And why are you decked out in that lace shroud? You had better have some very good explanation for all this.”

Mr. Collins trembled in his bare white feet, but he stood his ground. “The very best. Allow me to explain. Yes, you perceive rightly, Mr. Collins is not dead. He is still living in the world that you know, but because the dead Mr. Collins is in the future, it is allowable for him to assume the spectral role. Allow me to introduce myself, therefore, as the Spirit of Christmas Future.”

“So if I go back over to the Rectory I would still see Mr. Collins writing his sermon?”

The spectre cleared its throat. “Ah, well, no, not quite that. I fear he has fallen asleep, in front of the fire.”

Lady Catherine compressed her lips. “I see. I shall have words with him about that.”

“But first, I beg, you need have words with me. For I have come to show you a sight that you must see.”

“Must I? You say must, to me?  Where is it?”

“We have not far to go. Here at Rosings. We need only go downstairs.”

Lady Catherine followed the ghost, but stopped at the top of the stairs, looking down.

“Why! The house is full of people! Is it a Christmas Eve gathering?”

“Not quite. It is a funeral.”

Lady Catherine gasped. “Who – who has died?”

“See if you can tell yourself.”

The coffin had been placed in the entrance, with the most impressive drapery, but it was closed, and she could not see the deceased. But she recognized the people standing all around. Oddly they did not seem to be suffering much from grief. They were greedily helping themselves at a buffet table laden with very fine looking funeral meats, and imbibing several different kinds of wine. She saw the Darcys, their whole family, with Colonel Fitzwilliam, and the Bingleys, the Bennets, the Collinses, and many of the most important neighboring families to Rosings. They seemed in almost jovial spirits. But of whom were they speaking?

“I dare say you cannot find it in you to regret the late lamented very much, Darcy,” said one county neighbor.

“I cannot pretend grief that I do not feel,” he replied seriously, “yet it is always a sad thing when the life ends, even of a person who has done so little good for anyone else, or for herself.”

“It is a woman,” whispered Lady Catherine.

“No, one wishes to be charitable, but she had the least charitable nature herself, and the most pestilential temper,” agreed Colonel Fitzwilliam. “There was no love in her heart, for anyone.”

“Oh, surely, Colonel,” protested Mrs. Bingley, “I am sure she loved her daughter.”

“Jane, really, you are too good. You do not know how poor Anne was treated,” contributed Mrs. Darcy.

“I am convinced, myself, that Lady Catherine killed her,” said Mrs. Collins calmly.

“My dear – you do not know what you are saying,” interposed Mr. Collins anxiously. “She was our patroness, remember, and we owe her our duty.”

“Do you, Mr. Collins?” asked Mr. Darcy ironically. “And what did she ever do for you, may I ask?”

“She gave me my living, sir. I owe her respect for that.”

“You deserved no less than your situation, and she worked you to the bone for it. Made a bounden slave of your wife.”

“And of her own daughter,” put in Mrs. Darcy.

“What happened to Anne? I never heard the story,” asked Mrs. Bennet curiously.

“Thwarted her every chance of a match, until the poor girl pined away, and sickened and died in the end, of a trifling cold,” Mr. Bennet told his wife succinctly. “Was it not so, Lizzy?”

“Too true,” Elizabeth nodded.

Mrs. Bennet let out a disapproving breath. “Oh then, she was not a good mother. Fancy! With all that money, and power, and influence, she could not have found the meanest little popinjay for that poor girl. Not like the marriages I have found for mine,” she finished complacently.

“For the most part you have,“ agreed her husband, “but I should have preferred if Wickham had taken Anne rather than our Lydia. Wickham would then have all the money he ever wanted, and Lydia would not have disgraced herself.”

“Never mind, Papa, we can none of us rewrite the past,” Elizabeth reminded him. “Though I wonder if Lady Catherine would, if she could.”

“Yes! Yes! Oh how I would!” cried Lady Catherine, gripping the balustrade, though unheard and unseen by the party below. “I promise I will! Oh, say it is not too late for me, Ghost of the Future! Please give me another chance!”

The happy funeral party faded away. So did the ghost. There was no more to say. Lady Catherine found herself standing there at the top of the stairs, alone, tears running down her face. She had never felt such a sensation before. It was Christmas morning.

Wiping her face, she hurried downstairs, where the servants were preparing a fine festal breakfast. Anne was up and dressed, ready to receive the few neighbors and tenants who would take Christmas breakfast with them.

“Anne! Every one! Stop what you are doing! Merry Christmas to you all!” came a commanding voice.

They all stared at Lady Catherine in surprise. “Why, happy Christmas, Mama, to be sure, but why are we to stop our preparations?” inquired Anne.

“Because we shall not stay here, Anne. Oh, go ahead, lay the feast, and let every body be merry. But after that, the servants may finish the food, and distribute a great deal more; every one shall have a holiday, and you and I, Anne, shall go to Pemberley!”

“But we do not go to Pemberley for Christmas, as a rule, mother. You do not care to see Mrs. Darcy’s family ruling the place there, you always say.”

“But every thing is different now, Anne, do you see? We shall go to see them all – our family. And stay through the holidays, and make ourselves pleasant. They have such good company, and such fine friends, I am sure you will make some new friends yourself, Anne. Will not it be delightful?”

“If you say so, Mama,” her daughter said dubiously.

“I do! I do! And any one who likes to come with us, as part of the party, must make ready at once. You would like to go see your friend Elizabeth, would you not, Charlotte?”

“Why, yes, I would, if Mr. Collins says so.”

“It shall be as you wish, Lady Catherine,” he said with a bow, “but I fear we will have to start a little later in the day. I must preach my Christmas sermon first, you know.”

“Of course,” nodded Lady Catherine. “But make it short. We do not have much time.”

The breakfast was served and eaten, the holly rearranged, the sermon duly read and endured, and Lady Catherine and her party were on the road, in her large barouche, with four strong horses. They made such speed that only two days later they swept down the tree lined avenue into the grand carriage entrance of Pemberley House.

There they were greeted with general astonishment, and as cordial a welcome as a large family gathering not altogether pleased by the arrival of Lady Catherine, could muster.

As she bustled around the entry way, proffering parcels and decorations for the tree, and smilingly asking the servants to unpack the hams, turkeys and fruit pies she had brought, wondering looks passed among her hosts.

“What can this be?” Elizabeth whispered to her husband. “Can your aunt have had a stroke? She is not at all herself.”

“I think not,” he replied slowly. “At any rate not a paralytic one. I have never seen her so active. She might be thirty years younger.”

“And this good humor is most uncharacteristic, to say the least,” Colonel Fitzwilliam, whispered into Darcy’s other ear. “Is it possible that she has gone mad? Entered a second childhood?”

“If a second childhood changes meanness into benignity, old age will be nothing to be feared,” Elizabeth observed.

Lady Catherine burbled and frothed with merriment and good humor for most of an entire hour. But as the afternoon wore on, she began to feel her spirits lagging. The effort to be kind, and nice, and generous, wore on her, and the Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future began to fade in her memory. As Ghosts do.

The dinner was long and the company grew increasingly merry. As Christmas songs and jokes went round the table, and the children present left their seats and began to play noisily with their presents, it became unendurable to Lady Catherine.

“Darcy!” she demanded, in quite her old tone. “Is this the way you conduct a dinner party in company?”

“I beg your pardon, Aunt? Is anything wrong?”

Mrs. Darcy looked up with concern. “The room is rather warm. Would you like some iced water, Lady Catherine?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Lady Catherine waved the suggestion away feebly, and subsided into silence for a few minutes, while the guests looked surreptitiously at her.

“The dinner is all very well, Darcy, you always did lay a good table. But there is this intolerable babel…”

“It is a little noisy, Mama,” ventured Anne, uncertainly. “Would you like to lie down? I will walk you to your room.”

“You have the Red Room in the library wing for your own,” said Elizabeth kindly. “You know that one is always very quiet.”

“I am not a tired child, I would have you know!” Lady Catherine emphasized her words by tapping her spoon on the table. Every one who had not been watching her, looked up now, in some alarm. “I tell you that this is intolerable . The children must be sent to bed at once, and all spirits removed – I do believe most of the gentlemen present are affected and,” she nodded her head with its feathered cap vigorously, “some of the ladies too, I’ll be bound.”

“My dear aunt, we do not pretend to keep a dry table at Pemberley. A little wine – “

“Changes men into beasts and sots.”

“Aunt Catherine, that is strong language,” chided Mrs. Darcy.

“You! You dare to say that to me, you mannerless upstart! The degeneration of this family is due entirely to you. Your sinful sister, your puling children, the weak spineless creature you have made of your husband – “

“Mama!” pleaded Anne, unable to help herself. “Please do not go on so. This is no way to requite the hospitality we have scarcely deserved!”

Lady Catherine rose up. “You! How dare you speak to me in that way, my girl. You are naught but a despicable worm, who could not win a husband of her own if you came accompanied by fifty thousand pounds tied up in a holly bush.”

Anne burst into tears. “Oh, Mama, you are too cruel.”

Several meters up in the air, peering through the roof of Pemberley as if it was made of glass, the spectral apparitions of Lady Georgiana Darcy, Anne de Bourgh, and Mr. Collins sighed in unison.

“Did you think she could keep it up?” asked the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“I did have some hope – a little,” confessed the Ghost of Christmas Present.

“I never did have any hope at all. Not in the least,” said the Ghost of Christmas Future flatly.

 

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Happy Christmas! We hope you enjoyed our 24 days of gifts, and we wish you peace and love this holiday season.

To see each day so far, visit austenvariations.com/2025-advent-calendar/