Page 26 of Reckless, Headstrong Girl (Pride and Prejudice Variations #5)
ONCE AGAIN ON THE HERTFORD ROAD
L ydia 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 realised 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 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 homecoming was a trial. Lydia was overborne by the effusions of joy and lengthy 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 been disappointed,” 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.
“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 learnt 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 towards Netherfield.
They passed the first stile and climbed over the second, heading around a group of freehold farms and making their way, willy-nilly, towards 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 my troubles, as everyone wants to call it.”
“Well, it was a 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 realise 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 neighbours! 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.”