“The main blessing is that you are home, Lydia,” Jane said.
“Oh, Jane! You are so very good. I think I have never appreciated you enough,” Lydia said, warmly.
It was Jane who was the first sister to go to Lydia and hug her hard. The others followed in turn, Kitty hugging Lydia while whispering that she had known all along that Lydia was not dead; Elizabeth whispering that it was her fault for not telling what she had known about Wickham, and finally Mary, who gave Lydia a brief hug but said nothing at all.
The tea tray arrived and Jane busied herself handing around cups and plates, but her eyes were teary.
Finally, Mr. Bennet said, “I think we must now hear your story, Lydia.”
Lydia told it all again, sparing herself not at all. She admitted quite freely that she had been a very great fool, and it was only by the grace of Heaven that she had been rescued.
“You really worked as a maid, Lydia?” Kitty was astonished.
“Look at my hands, Kitty; they tell the tale.” She held them up for her sisters’ inspection.
Jane winced. “It looks painful, Lydia.”
“It is, Jane, but they will heal once I am no longer scrubbing floors!” Lydia was able to laugh at herself. But she sobered quickly, adding, “Mama would have hated seeing them; you know how particular she always was about ladies’ hands.”
“She would have given you her cream – oh! Wait here!” Kitty dashed away, returning some minutes later with a glass jar. “Here is her hand cream. She would want you to have it, Lydia.”
“I cannot believe that Mama is –“ Lydia’s voice broke. “Will someone tell me what happened?”
Elizabeth turned to Jane. “I was not here, so I cannot tell of it; will you?”
“But where were you, Lizzy?” Lydia asked.
“I was in Derbyshire, but that is a story for a different time,” Elizabeth said.
Jane then spoke, in a soft voice, about how Colonel Forster had come in the middle of the night with the news of Lydia’s elopement, how Mama had taken to her room and refused to come out, and how just a few days later, Jane had found her cold in her bed.
“So it really is my fault that she is dead,” Lydia said, dully.
“It is, I think,” Mary said.
“Mary!” Kitty and Jane spoke together.
“And I think it all my own fault for not telling everyone about Mr. Wickham, which Mr. Darcy had confided in me, and Kitty thinks it her fault for not telling about your letters, and Papa thinks it his fault for letting you go to Brighton,” Elizabeth said,impatiently. “I had hoped we were done with this discussion about faults, but evidently not.”
“You would like to be done with it because of your own feelings of guilt, Lizzy,” Mary fired back.
“And you, of course, as a perfect daughter, would like to rehearse all these faults every day!” Kitty said, heatedly.
“Is this how it has been since I left?” Lydia asked. “Everyone arguing about whose fault it was that I was so stupid?”
There was a brief silence in the room.
“Sometimes, yes,” Kitty said, at last. “I did rather think we were done apportioning blame, but I suppose we were just waiting for your reappearance to bring it all back. It is true that Jane and Mary are the only Bennets who did not contribute in some fashion to your disappearance.”
Mr. Bennet huffed in exasperation. “Congratulations, Mary,” he said. “Is that what I am supposed to say? Well done, dear! There, I have said it. Let this be the end of it. For now that Lydia has returned, we can leave off our Deception!”
Mary scowled, but did not respond.
“What deception?” Lydia asked.
“Oh, Kitty has been kept very busy writing letters from you to us,” Elizabeth said, grinning. “We call it the Deception, with a big capital ‘D.’ “
“Aunt Gardiner did mention that. How very clever!”
