Elizabeth spoke with soft incredulity. “Lydia?”
Lydia looked up. Her face had been happy as she entertained Mrs. Gardiner’s children, but now it was suffused with joy. “Lizzy? Oh, Lizzy, have you come?” She stood up and came forward. “And Jane? Oh, but how wonderful!”
Both her older sisters, with their frayed nerves and exercised feelings, burst into tears as they took turns first embracing, then pushing Lydia away to examine her, only to embrace her once again. “Lydia, my dearest!” said Elizabeth as she wiped her eyes. “You horrible, horrible girl! You have so disturbed us I very nearly took after Mama and had a spasm! How could you?”
“Lizzy!” Jane chided, after blowing her nose.
“Jane, you mustn’t scold Lizzy,” Lydia said. “I knew that, of anyone, she would berate me as I deserve, and so I told Mr. Darcy. Oh, Lizzy, I have wanted to tell you a hundred times at least, that you were so right about Brighton. I never should have gone!”
“But you did, and I do not know what you have endured, but I know how we have been in agony for you, you wretched child! Oh, let me look at you. How very pretty you look to me!”
“And you to me, Lizzy. But you will make me weep again, and really, I have cried enough. Let me kiss your cheeks, both of you. Can you ever forgive me? Such a terrible sister I have been!”
Mrs. Gardiner who had been standing to the side and watching this reunion decided to intervene. “I have the tea things ready if you would send the children upstairs.” Their aunt seemed to have made up her mind that no one would be served by a long rehashing of the events that had befallen Lydia. She managed them all so expertly in this regard that it was not until they retired for the night that Elizabeth and Jane had a chance to question their sister.
By mutual and unspoken agreement, the sisters congregated in Elizabeth’s room, and it was then that the state of Lydia’s hair became apparent, for they had always brushed out one another’s curls before bed. Jane gasped when she saw her sister’s shorn head, while Lydia blushed and looked downcast.
“Lydia, what happened to your hair? Do they cut it off as a rule in a workhouse?” Elizabeth asked gently.
“Oh no,” she said. But there was reluctance in her answer as if she wanted to say more but felt some constraint.
“You must be free to tell us anything, you know.”
“But you have so often told me not to speak of unpleasant things, Lizzy. Almost everything I want to tell you strikes me as unpleasant.”
“If I have condemned your conversation in the past, it is only because I did not like the sentiment behind it. You have sometimes expressed opinions that seemed designed to render your listeners shocked, dismayed, or convinced of your disregard for good manners. And while I do not want to encourage you to talk unthinkingly in company, there is nothing you could say to us privately that will offend us. We want to hear it! Come and sit between us in bed as you used to when you were little.
And so, beginning with the reason for her close-cropped hair, Lydia poured forth her story. She careened from the topic of lice, to Wickham and Scoot’s barley field, and to the man in the curricle that drove around her. And then she was in the workhouse emptying the slops, and then standing in front of a Carthusian monk and being sent away, and then back to Wickham emptying her purse in the faint light of the postilion’s lamp. Elizabeth and Jane heard about Bill-the-donkey and about the brutal killing of a rabbit that, Lydia was ashamed to say, tasted very good. Mr. Parch was lionized and the cook at the Red Lion condemned, and then they were treated to a patchwork of stories from the workhouse. Carver, Dora, Maggie, and Sally were described in detail, as was the daily routine and the matron’s arbitrary notion of rules. Lydia, throughout, wove such a picture for her sisters that they listened in silent fascination, particularly when she spoke of the advantages of her upbringing and determination to conduct herself as a gentleman’s daughter.
“I had some notion of becoming a lady’s companion or of gaining employment at a girl’s school,” Lydia said with a yawn.
“Employment? Surely, you knew we would look for you!”
Lydia curled up, closed her eyes, and said, “Can I sleep with you, Lizzy? I am not used to sleeping alone.”
Chapter 24
Once again on the Hertford Road…
Lydia sat on the rear-facing seat of Mr. Bingley’s coach and looked across at her sisters Jane and Elizabeth. They both dozed, and she was much struck by how, even in sleep, they were still very much themselves. Jane was so ladylike, even with her lips parted and her features slack. She sat nearly upright with her head resting gently against the squabs. Meanwhile, Lizzy made no bones about her sleeping. She had thrown off her bonnet, curled up like a cat and settled her head on Jane’s lap. Lizzy, Lydia realized with a start, was passionate about everything, even sleep.
If I were sleeping, Lydia wondered,how would I look? Would I be sprawled out with my legs helter-skelter, snoring loudly?Before she went to Brighton, she most certainly would have done just that, she mused. She had often forced her four sisters to squeeze together on the opposite bench when she was young, having whined and cried that she must have a place to lie down unencumbered. Now she was prone to sleeping in a protective ball. This stream of thinking led her to wonder who she really was anymore and to further admitting to herself that she suffered a little dread of returning to Longbourn.
After a little while in which her vision was turned inward, Lydia became aware that Lizzy’s eyes were open and watching her. Her sister sat up and slipped to the rear-facing seat next to Lydia and whispered, “What is it that troubles you?”
Lydia had no long practice expressing intangibles, and so she shrugged and replied in a whisper, “I do not know what to wear anymore, Lizzy.”
Her sister took this in and seemed to comprehend the whole of it. She put her arm around Lydia, pulled her close, and said in a low murmur, “We shall contrive, dearest.”
***
The homecomingwasa trial. Lydia was overborne by the effusions of joy and never-ending descriptions of how her family worried for her. After they settled from the tumult of her arrival, Papa seemed distant, and she had a stupid notion he was even shy of her as he solemnly said, “I am glad to see you are well, Lydia.”
Kitty was also shy of her, as if she were guilty of the whole debacle and did not want to be reminded of it, and Mary cornered her for a sermon about how fortunate she was to have escaped perdition. All of this was unsettling of course, but when her mother came down on Mrs. Hill’s arm and enveloped her in an embrace of perfume and lace flounces and then shrieked at the state of her hair when she saw it, Lydia began to feel a little ungrateful to Mr. Darcy for her rescue.
“My poor Lydia! I know you have recently beendisappointed,”her mother eventually said with a furtive glance at Mr. Bennet. “But I daresay we shall find you someone to marry in no time at all! Why, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy must have young gentleman friends who might do for you, and your sisters will present you in town I am sure. But what are you wearing, Lydia? Oh, do go to your room and put on your yellow muslin. Kitty can put your hair in papers so it won’t look so very bad, and you can have a silk ribbon in your short curls.”
“I do not want to wear yellow,” Lydia replied, retreating from the suffocation of her mother’s endless embraces.
