She was shown to her room, which was tiny even by Longbourn standards, and she had to share with another girl. Her roommate was sixteen-year-old Miss Helen Jacobson from a small estate in Surrey. They had one small sized cupboard to share and a dresser that provided two drawers each. There was a small dressing table with a cracked mirror and a basin with two towels hanging on the wall.
Her roommate, Helen, had reacted very badly when her mother passed a year earlier, had acted out and become nigh on uncontrollable, which had led her father to place her at Dark Hollow. At first, she had rebelled. After none too many stiff punishments, which included a four-week stint as a scullery maid, Miss Jacobson had started to realise that she needed to amend her behaviour.
The headmistress and teachers had helped her deal with her grief in acceptable ways. After six months, she emerged from her mourning. She had visited her father at the estate briefly and begged his forgiveness for her childish and unacceptable displays. With her older brother at Oxford, being home was a very depressing experience as her father was much altered since his beloved wife passed. Helen had returned to school determined to be the best example possible to other girls, and thus she was gifted with her new roommate.
“La, how are we to live like this, what a joke! They will not keep me here. I will be gone soon enough and find a man to take care of me,” Lydia stated with false bravado that she tried to make others accept as truth.
Helen Jacobson looked at the brash and foolish girl who was now her roommate and shook her head. “I was just like you. My life used to revolve around fun, flirtation, and my own selfish needs until I almost ruined myself and my family after Mama passed,” she shared calmly.
“What has that to do with me?” Lydia asked with a sniff of disdain.
“You have two choices here, Miss Bennet. You can adapt and learn, and in so doing your life will be relatively pleasant, or you can fight the rules and your life will be very harsh until you learn to behave like a lady. I too tried to run and only made it out of the kitchen door before I was caught and returned. My punishment was to work as a scullery maid for a month complete. If that is what you want, then by all means carry on with your stupid plans. You will learn one way or another.” Even as she offered this sage advice one had once offered her; Miss Jacobson was sure that she was wasting her breath on the hard-headed girl standing defiantly before her with a pinched look on her face. She decided to save her breath to cool her porridge.
All new girls at the school were placed with a roommate of at least one year’s residence at Dark Hollow. In addition, the girl had to be one that followed the rules and could be counted on to try to influence the new girl to amend her behaviour. It was easy to see that Lydia Bennet was determined that she would be the one to escape this hellish place.
It was just after two o’clock in the morning when Lydia slipped out of her room with her small valise. She felt that she had been very clever acting as if she was tired after dinner and the required time that all the girls spent in the music room afterwards. When she returned to her room with that know-it-all Helen whatever her name is, she had changed into a night shift and was soon feigning sleep. When she heard the clock strike two, she was certain that no one else in this God forsaken place was awake. She quietly dressed herself and made her way to the front door. Her childish mind refused to hear what she had been told about the school being guarded at all times.
Luck was on her side. The front door was not locked. She opened it, fearing that it would make a sound, but to her relief it opened silently. Feeling much more confident, she strode outside and had made it all of ten steps when she froze as she heard a voice far closer than she ever expected.
“Now wheres does you thinks that you are off to, young miss?” The question came from a man sitting quietly against the side of the building with an alert dog at his side that was just staring at Lydia without moving as he awaited an order from his master. “You not runnin’ aways now, are you miss?”
“If I give you a kiss will you let me go?” asked Lydia as she batted her eyelashes coquettishly, employing all of what she considered to be her considerable charms. Her attempted bribery did not produce the result that she intended. The man began to chuckle, which soon became a full-throated belly laugh. He wiped tears of mirth from his eyes, and once under good regulation, he again focused on her.
“Does you thinks that you be the first miss who’d try’s to use her ‘charms’ to escape? Come along young un,’ the ‘eadmistress will be wanting to talk to you.” He couldn’t help but chuckle at her surprise at not getting her way.
With that, he clamped a rather large hand on Lydia’s arm, and no matter how much she protested, bargained or cajoled, he ignored her. For the second time in twelve hours, Lydia stood in front of the intimidating Mrs Hesperia Gilbert, who was sorely piqued to have to deal with a wayward girl in the early hours of the morning. She dismissed the guard who took up a post in the hall outside her office door.
Without preamble and giving Lydia a withering look Mrs Gilbert locked eyes with Miss Lydia Bennet. “Did or did not Miss Jacobson warn you what would happen if you took it upon yourself to attempt the impossible and try and run away? How much money do you have to travel? Even had you made it the five and twenty miles to the nearest town, what was your plan? Your father told me that you are one of the silliest girls in England, to that I will add that you are a stupid, stupid girl.”
“I hate you; I hate my father, I hate everyone! They are all jealous of me and are trying to stop me from having fun. If they had not interfered, I would have eloped with the handsome Mr Wickham and would have been the first of my sisters to marry!” Lydia cried petulantly as she stamped her foot. Lydia jumped out of the chair and bolted for the door, where the same man that had caught her outside was waiting. He lifted her off the ground, and as her limbs were uselessly flailing, she was unceremoniously dropped into the chair in front of the waiting woman who was drumming her fingernails on the surface of her desk. The footman took up station right behind an infuriated and snivelling Lydia.
“You have just added to your punishment, young lady! You are naught but a child in a young woman’s body.You think of no one but yourself!” The normally unflappable woman raised her voice a number of decibels at the crying girl in the throes of a tantrum. “Calm yourself now or I will have to slap you, is that what you want?”
“DO NOT TOUCH ME!” Lydia screeched, but forced herself to calm down. “You are jealous of me, just like my family and everyone else is because I can charm any man!”
“Mr Black,” the headmistress looked past Lydia to address the footman, “how did Miss Bennet’s ‘abundant charms’ work on you?” she asked with a too knowing smile and Lydia cringed as she heard the question, willing the man not to answer, her stomach sinking when the footman let out a healthy guffaw.
“A child she is, off’red to kiss me so’s I would let ‘er go. No ‘eadmistress, only a man’s lookin’ for an easy girl wants the charms that she ‘as.” He chuckled. Lydia hung her head in mortification. Not only had Mr Black not been charmed by her, but he laughed at her and called her a loose woman!
“Thank you Black, you may wait outside. I believe that this child will not try and run again for a couple minutes at least,” Mrs Gilbert surmised. The footman returned to stand in the hall as the headmistress turned back toward the wayward girl and gave her a withering look. “What is anyone jealous of? That you were put back in the school-room? That all of your sisters and your mother acquired new wardrobes from the best modiste in the country and you did not? That they know how to behave and are not determined flirts who want to ruin themselves and their family? Tell me Miss Lydia Bennet,whois jealous of you? I would say no one. I believe that you are jealous of them and you act out to try and draw attention to yourself.”
“B-b-but Mr Wickham said…” Lydia for the first time was not so sure of herself.
“Yes, your father told me all about that seducer and profligate, George Wickham. Did you wilfully ignore every word that your father spoke about the lack of character of the man? Marryyou? You truly are a child if you believe that. The fact is, just like tens if not hundreds of women before you, he would have taken what he wanted and left you ruined as he did not know your family’s true wealth,” she scoffed.
“N-n-no h-he w-w-w-would not…” Lydia stammered with tears streaming down her cheeks, aghast at the thought.
“It is time for you to hear the unvarnished truth about the man that you believe held you in esteem. Theonlything he saw was a girl that was senseless and would be an easy conquest for him. The dissolute seducer has no less than five natural children. Would you have liked to have provided the sixth and be left dishonoured and having to take care of it alone?” Mrs Gilbert challenged. Lydia’s mouth was flapping open and closed as the words started to sink in, but before she could utter a word Mrs Gilbert continued. “Do you have any idea what devastation that the man had wrought in Meryton near your estate? I am sure you have no idea, and mind you, this was only what he did inONEtown.
“He ruined a number of girls, two or three I believe while he was priming you as one of his next, and ran up massive debts with the honest hardworking trades people in the town, with no intention of ever paying them. On top of that he had a mountain of debts of honour to his fellow officers. Did you ever consider that a penniless officer would have no way to afford a wife?” Without waiting for the girl to answer she did so herself. “No, of course you did not! You only thought about your own selfish wants and that pathetically petty desire to be married first when you should never have been out in the first place!
“Anhonourableman does not suggest an elopement. He courts you in the open for all to see after approaching your father for permission. Mr Wickham did none of that, for he is one of the most dishonourable men in England.”
As the full force of her folly hit her, Lydia Bennet experienced another first for her, a very foreign feeling, and its name was regret. She was overwhelmed with a deep and abiding regret and all-encompassing shame as tears flowed freely down her face. She waited, focused on the woman behind the desk as she concluded her speech.
“He will never again harm anyone. He was flogged with forty lashes in the centre of Meryton while the populace watched, and all of the lies that he oft told, which were many, including those about a Mr Darcy, were revealed to all. He was stripped of his commission, then clapped in irons and transported to Southampton where as a private he was placed in an infantry brigade that left for the continent already.” Mrs Gilbert hammered the girl with the truth, shattering her certainty and hoping that this was proof that Lydia Bennet was finally seeing truth versus her own skewed view.
“H-how st-stupid and si-lly I have been. P-papa was c-c-correct, I am ind-indeed the si-silliest girl in the k-k-kingdom,” Lydia managed to get out between sobs.
