Chapter 39

It was the second week of May. The three young ladies set out together from Gracechurch Street and traveled toward a town in Hertfordshire. They were coming near the inn where Mr. Bennet's carriage was to meet them. The coachman was on time, so they soon saw Kitty and Lydia looking out of an upstairs dining-room window. The two girls had been there for more than an hour. They had passed the time happily, looking at a milliner's shop across the street, watching a sentinel on duty, and cutting up salad greens and cucumbers.

When they welcomed their sisters, the two girls proudly showed them a table set with the cold meat that inns usually served from their pantry. They cried, "Is this not nice? Is it not a pleasant surprise?"

Lydia added, "We are going to treat everyone. But you must lend us the money. We have just spent all of ours at that shop." Then she showed them what she had bought. "Look, I bought this bonnet. I do not think it is very pretty. But I thought it was better to buy it than not to buy anything at all. As soon as we get home, I am going to pull it all apart and see if I can make it prettier."

Even when her sisters said the bonnet was ugly, Lydia did not mind at all. "Oh, there were two or three at the shop that were much uglier than this one. I will buy some prettier satin and trim it again, and then it will look well enough. Besides, once the militia leaves Meryton, it will not matter much what we wear this summer. They are leaving in two weeks."

"Is that true?" Elizabeth cried, very pleased.

"They are going to camp near Brighton. How wonderful it would be if Papa took us all there for the summer! It would be such a delightful plan. It would hardly cost anything at all. And Mama wants to go more than anything in the world! Just think how dreadful the summer would be otherwise!"

'Yes,' Elizabeth thought. 'It would be a delightful plan indeed. It would ruin our whole family in one stroke. Good heavens! We already lose our heads over one militia regiment and the monthly balls at Meryton, and now a whole camp full of soldiers at Brighton as well!'

When they all sat down at the table, Lydia said, "I have some news for you. Guess what it is. It is very good news, about someone we all like."

Jane and Elizabeth looked at each other. Then they told the waiter he might leave now. Lydia laughed and said,

"Oh, you two are always so proper and so careful. Did you think the waiter should not hear? What does he matter! He has probably heard far worse things than what I am about to say. But he really is an ugly man! I am glad he is gone. I never saw such a long chin in my life. Anyway, let me tell you the news. It is about dear Wickham. It is too good a piece of news for the waiter to hear, is it not? There is no more danger of Wickham marrying Mary King. Is that not surprising! Mary has gone down to her uncle's house in Liverpool. She is going to stay there. Wickham is safe now."

Elizabeth added, "And Mary King is safe too! As far as her fortune goes, she has escaped a very reckless marriage."

"If she liked him, it was very foolish of Mary to leave."

Jane said, "Still, I hope neither of them liked the other very deeply."

"On Wickham's side, I am sure it was not. I promise you, he never cared for her, not even as much as three straws. Who could like such an unpleasant, small, freckled thing?"

Elizabeth was shocked. She herself could never have said something so harsh. But the thought itself was not so different from what she herself had felt not long before. At the time, she had believed such a thought to be generous.

When they had all finished eating and the sisters had paid the bill, they ordered the carriage to be made ready. After some arranging, the whole party found seats in it. Trunks, sewing bags, and parcels were all loaded in, along with the unwelcome things Kitty and Lydia had bought.

Lydia cried, "It really is packed in so neatly! I am glad we brought the bonnet along, if only for the fun of fitting in one more box! Now let us sit close and comfortable, and talk and laugh the whole way home. First, let us hear what happened after you left. Did you meet any nice men? Did either of you have a love affair? I really did hope that one of you would get a husband before you came back. Jane will soon be quite an old maid. She is almost twenty-three! Goodness! How ashamed I should be if I were not married by twenty-three! Aunt Philips wants you to get husbands more than you could ever imagine. She says Lizzy would have done better to accept Mr. Collins. But I do not think that would have been any fun at all. Goodness! I want to be married before either of you! Then I could take you both to every ball and look after you. Oh, something very funny happened at Colonel Forster's the other day! Kitty and I were to spend the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the evening. Oh, Mrs. Forster and I are such close friends! So she invited the two Harrington girls too, but Harriet was ill, so Pen had to come alone. Do you know what we did? We dressed Chamberlayne up in women's clothes and made him pretend to be a lady. How funny it was! No one knew but Colonel and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me. Only our aunt knew, because we had to borrow a dress. You cannot imagine how fine he looked! Denny and Wickham and Pratt and two or three other men came in, and they did not know him at all. Goodness, how I laughed! Mrs. Forster laughed too. I thought I would die laughing. That was what made the men suspect something was wrong, and then they soon found out what it was."

While Kitty added things she remembered and gave her hints, Lydia tried to entertain her companions the whole way to Longbourn with stories of such parties and funny tricks. Elizabeth listened as little as she could. But she could not avoid hearing Wickham's name come up again and again.

At home, they were welcomed very warmly. Mrs. Bennet was glad to see that Jane's beauty had not faded in the least. During dinner, Mr. Bennet spoke to Elizabeth more than once, without being asked.

"I am glad you are back, Lizzy."

Almost all of the Lucas family came to welcome Maria and hear the news. The dining room was full of people, and everyone was talking about something different. Lady Lucas asked Maria, across the table, how her eldest daughter and her chickens were doing. Mrs. Bennet was busy doing two things at once. She listened to the latest fashions from Jane, who sat a little way off, and repeated every bit of it to the young Lucas girls. Lydia, a little louder than anyone else, caught hold of whoever would listen and poured out every pleasure of that morning.

Lydia said, "Oh, Mary, I do wish you had gone with us. It was such fun! On the way, Kitty and I pulled down all the window blinds and pretended there was no one in the carriage. We would have kept it up the whole way, only Kitty felt sick. When we reached the George Inn, I think we behaved very handsomely. We gave the other three the finest cold lunch in the world. If you had gone, we would have treated you too. Leaving was such fun too! I thought we would never all fit into the carriage. I thought I would die laughing. How merry we were the whole way home! We talked and laughed so loudly that we must have been heard ten miles away!"

Mary answered very solemnly, "My dear sister, I would never wish to look down on such pleasures. No doubt they suit the minds of most women very well. But I must admit they hold no charm for me at all. I would much rather read a book."

But Lydia did not hear a word of that answer. She rarely listened to anyone for more than thirty seconds. She paid no attention at all to what Mary said.

When afternoon came, Lydia kept begging her other sisters to walk to Meryton with her, to see how everyone was doing. But Elizabeth firmly refused. She could not bear to have people say that the Bennet girls had gone chasing after the officers before they had been home even half a day. There was another reason too. She was afraid to meet Wickham again. She was determined to avoid him for as long as she could. The fact that the regiment would soon leave was a comfort to her beyond words. They were leaving in two weeks. Once they were gone, she hoped that Wickham would no longer trouble her at all.

Before she had been home many hours, she learned that her parents often talked over the Brighton plan Lydia had hinted at, back at the inn. Elizabeth soon saw that her father had not the least intention of giving in. But his answers were so vague and double-meaning that her mother, though often discouraged, never gave up hope of getting her way in the end.