“Not want to wear yellow! Do not be silly! You look the prettiest of my girls in yellow, and charming as a jonquil. Did not Mr. Wi—Mr. Denny compliment your sunny looks over and over? Oh, how I long for the militia to come back! But Mr. Bennet says they will not return.”
The tea tray arrived and rescued the family from talk of the militia, and Lydia thought she might recover her equilibrium. But by some unfortunate chance, the tea tray contained a plate of Mrs. Hill’s lemon cream biscuits, and she instantly remembered regaling her ward mates with descriptions of them. Her throat closed up to think of her friends, and yet she knew she belonged with her family. Once again she felt lost, belonging neither in a workhouse nor at Longbourn, talking of muslin.
But Lydia had learned a little reserve in all her travels, and she managed to pantomime a degree of complacency until, eventually, her mother’s conversation turned to Jane and Elizabeth. It struck Lydia after a while that they were speaking of trunks and silks and of— “A wedding breakfast? But who is to marry?” she blurted out, interrupting her mother.
“Oh!” Lizzy exclaimed in dismay. “Did we not say? How could we have forgotten? But I suppose we were so anxious to see you and to bring you home.”
“But—oh, I see! Mr. Bingley has come back. Of course. Jane, are you to marry Mr. Bingley?”
Her older sister blushed prettily and confirmed it, and then Kitty said, “And Lizzy is to marry Mr. Darcy. Can you imagine anything more horrible?”
“Mr. Darcy! You are to marry Mr. Darcy, Lizzy? But how wonderful! I think the world of him! He was very kind to Sally, and he went over all of West Sussex three times to find me. But how can this be? You do not like him!”
“I shall tell you all about how I came to like him very much, Lydia, but let us go to your room. Would you like to rest? Or perhaps you would like a walk?”
Lydia wanted a walk, and so she and Lizzy struck off down the drive to the lane and turned toward Netherfield. They passed the first stile and climbed over the second, heading around a group of freehold farms and making their way, willy-nilly, toward a wooded ground owned by Mr. Cargill. Along the way, they saw congregations of sparrows at the edge of the rye fields and a pair of hawks floating above the horizon. The afternoon was neither too warm nor too cool, the breeze was glorious, and the light was turning from the harsh glare of summer to the golden and slightly hazy glow of early autumn. Lydia half expected to see halos around the trees.
“How beautiful it all is!” she said in wonder. Except for excursions to the workhouse muck pit, she had not been out of doors for weeks.
“Why do you think I am always walking here?” Elizabeth said. “Are you feeling stout? Would you like to take in the whole valley?”
“Up to Oakham Mount, do you mean?”
“You have never wanted to walk so far.”
“I would like to see it. Am I equal to it, do you think?”
Elizabeth laughed. It was a sound that Lydia had heard all her life, one that she had taken for granted and sometimes resented. But no one laughed as charmingly as her sister Elizabeth. “After what I have heard of your adventures, I think you are equal to anything!”
“Adventures? I like that idea much better than mytroubles,as everyone wants to call it.”
“Well, itwasa rather incredible adventure, and since you have come through none the worse for wear, I do see no reason to think of it otherwise, do you?”
“No. Listen, Lizzy. I want to tell you about the yellow dress.”
As they climbed a gently sloping path that wound up the mount, Lydia unburdened herself and told Elizabeth of the meaning of the yellow dress in the workhouse. “And the girls who are unwed but carrying a child are put into red,” she explained feelingly. “I cannot help thinking what a horrible thing to have been imposed upon, and sometimes it happens violently, Lizzy! And then to realize that you must bear a child after everything. And the final, awful thing is you must be shamed for it into the bargain!”
Elizabeth stopped cold and turned to her. “But how dreadful! I did not know.” She stood silent for a moment before they began walking again. “But then the world is bursting with things that are awful and unfair, and we have only to turn in any direction to see some form of cruelty. I can only be more grateful than ever that I, a woman, am not poor and alone, for without means and protection, we are like a man’s cattle and have been since ancient times. We have only our wits to sustain us, and we must move about with circumspection lest we get caught in circumstances that are little better than slavery. Oh, Lydia! I am so thankful you are restored to us!”
“Well, I did not speak of it to upset you, Lizzy, only I do not feel much inclined to wear yellow.”
“No, of course you do not. But you cannot be dressed forever as a Quaker without everyone remarking on it and thinking you have disgraced yourself. Lord, I do not know why we must be plagued with neighbors! I would love nothing better than to thumb my nose and flout convention, but I cannot stand to think of what would be said of you or to see Jane sinking under the weight of their suppositions. What about your green dress?”
“The one I have always hated?”
“Yes, that one. Why did you buy that cloth, I wonder, if you never liked it?”
She sighed and said, “To be contrary, of course, because everyone said it was a depressing shade. But I shall put it on when we get home and see how it looks.”
“And you should let one of us put your hair in papers, you know. A short coiffure is all the rage in London, I am told.”
“Oh? Who told you?”
“Well, no one really. But you have set a fashion in the workhouse, and you may just as well set a fashion in Hertfordshire, so long as you do not carry yourself as if you are ashamed of anything.”
They were forced to forego conversation as the path became steeper and they summited the top with breathless relief. There, lying in quiet, late afternoon repose all around them were the endless fields and scattered farmhouses of their home. Lydia looked keenly at everything, delighting in the recognition of Ross Farms, the Baker’s piggery, and the scrubby little riparian rope where the stream flowed so casually toward the River Ver. She was struck with how little she knew of where she lived and of the county and even of the wider world in general, and again the sense that she did not belong rose up faintly inside to plague her.
“Will Jane live at Netherfield then?” she asked, seeking to relieve herself of gloomy feelings.
