Page 25 of Reckless, Headstrong Girl (Pride and Prejudice Variations #5)
GRACECHURCH STREET
G iven the multiple upsets both Elizabeth and Jane had endured in a period of twenty-four hours, and taking into account what they expected to find, they could not be blamed for being dumbstruck upon seeing their fallen sister.
Upon entering the parlour, they caught a glimpse of the table in the breakfast room.
There sat Lydia with her little cousins all around her as she entertained them with an elaborate cat’s cradle.
She wore a simple, grey, Dutch-style cap that covered her whole head, a plain dark dress, and a white linen fichu folded neatly up to her neck.
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, intervened. “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 postillon’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 lionised 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.”