CHAPTER XVIII
The first week of their return was soon gone. The second began. It was the last of the regiment's stay in Meryton, and all the young ladies in the neighbourhood were drooping apace. The dejection was almost universal. Jane and Mary alone were still able to eat, drink, and sleep, and pursue the usual course of their employments. Very frequently were they reproached for this insensibility by Kitty and Lydia, whose own misery was extreme, and who could not comprehend such hard-heartedness in any of the family.
'Good Heaven! What is to become of us! What are we to do!' would they often exclaim in the bitterness of woe. 'How can you be smiling so, Edward?'
Their affectionate mother shared all their grief; she remembered what she had herself endured on a similar occasion, five and twenty years ago.
'I am sure,' said she, 'I cried for two days together when Colonel Miller's regiment went away. I thought I should have broke my heart.'
'I am sure I shall break mine,' said Lydia.
'If one could but go to Brighton!' observed Mrs. Bennet.
'Oh, yes!—if one could but go to Brighton! But papa is so disagreeable.'
'A little sea-bathing would set me up for ever.'
'And my aunt Philips is sure it would do me a great deal of good,' added Kitty.
Such were the kind of lamentations resounding perpetually through Longbourn-house. Edward tried to be diverted by them; but all sense of pleasure was lost in shame. He felt anew the justice of Mr. Darcy's objections; and never had he before been so much disposed to pardon his interference in the views of his friend.
But the gloom of Lydia's prospect was shortly cleared away; for she received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the colonel of the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton. This invaluable friend was a very young woman, and very lately married. A resemblance in good humour and good spirits had recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of their three months' acquaintance they had been intimate two.
The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs. Forster, the delight of Mrs. Bennet, and the mortification of Kitty, are scarcely to be described. Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless ecstacy, calling for every one's congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever; whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repining at her fate in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish.
'I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask me as well as Lydia,' said she, 'though I am not her particular friend. I have just as much right to be asked as she has, and more too, for I am two years older.'
In vain did Edward attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane to make her resigned. As for Edward himself, this invitation was so far from exciting in him the same feelings as in his mother and Lydia, that he considered it as the death-warrant of all possibility of common sense for the latter; and detestable as such a step must make him were it known, he could not help secretly advising his father not to let her go. He represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia's general behaviour, the little advantage she could derive from the friendship of such a woman as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the temptations must be greater than at home. Mr. Bennet heard him attentively, and then said,
'Lydia will never be easy till she has exposed herself in some public place or other, and we can never expect her to do it with so little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present circumstances.'
'If you were aware,' said Edward, 'of the very great disadvantage to us all, which must arise from the public notice of Lydia's unguarded and imprudent manner; nay, which has already arisen from it, I am sure you would judge differently in the affair.'
'Already arisen!' repeated Mr. Bennet. 'What, has she frightened away some of your lovers? Poor Edward! But do not be cast down. Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity, are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of pitiful fellows who have been kept aloof by Lydia's folly.'
'Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It is not of particular, but of general evils, which I am now complaining. Our importance, our respectability in the world, must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark Lydia's character. Excuse me—for I must speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that ever made herself and her family ridiculous. A flirt too, in the worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person; and from the ignorance and emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. In this danger Kitty is also comprehended. She will follow wherever Lydia leads. Vain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrouled! Oh! my dear father, can you suppose it possible that they will not be censured and despised wherever they are known, and that we will not be often involved in the disgrace?'
Mr. Bennet saw that his whole heart was in the subject, and said in reply,
'Do not make yourself uneasy, Edward. Wherever you and Jane are known, you must be respected and valued; and you will not appear to less advantage for having a couple of—or I may say, three very silly sisters. We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to Brighton. Let her go then. Colonel Forster is a sensible man, and will keep her out of any real mischief; and she is luckily too poor to be an object of prey to any body. At Brighton she will be of less importance even as a common flirt than she has been here. The officers will find women better worth their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that her being there may teach her her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow many degrees worse, without authorizing us to lock her up for the rest of her life.'
With this answer Edward was forced to be content; but his own opinion continued the same, and he left his father disappointed and sorry. It was not in his nature, however, to increase his vexations, by dwelling on them. He was confident of having performed his duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of his disposition.
Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of his conference with his father, their indignation would hardly have found expression in their united volubility. In Lydia's imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of earthly happiness. She saw with the creative eye of fancy, the streets of that gay bathing place covered with officers. She saw herself the object of attention, to tens and to scores of them at present unknown. She saw all the glories of the camp; its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and to complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once.
Had she known that her brother sought to tear her from such prospects and such realities as these, what would have been her sensations? They could have been understood only by her mother, who might have felt nearly the same. Lydia's going to Brighton was all that consoled her for her melancholy conviction of her husband's never intending to go there himself.
But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed; and their raptures continued with little intermission to the very day of Lydia's leaving home.
Edward was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. Having been frequently in company with him since his return, agitation was pretty well over; the agitations of formal partiality entirely so. He had even learnt to detect, in the very gentleness which had first delighted him, an affectation and a sameness to disgust and weary. In Wickham's present behaviour to himself, moreover, he had a fresh source of displeasure, for the inclination the gentleman soon testified of renewing those intentions which had marked the early part of their acquaintance, could only serve, after what had since passed, to provoke him. He lost all concern for him in finding himself thus selected as the object of such idle and frivolous gallantry, and while he steadily repressed it, could not but feel the reproof contained in his believing, that however long, and for whatever cause, his attentions had been withdrawn, his vanity would be gratified and his preference secured at any time by their renewal.
On the very last day of the regiment's remaining in Meryton, Wickham dined with other of the officers at Longbourn; and so little was Edward disposed to part from him in good humour, that on his making some inquiry as to the manner in which his time had passed at Hunsford, Edward mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam's and Mr. Darcy's having both spent three weeks at Rosings, and asked him if he was acquainted with the former.
Wickham looked surprised, displeased, alarmed; but with a moment's recollection and a returning smile, replied, that he had formerly seen him often; and, after observing that he was a very gentlemanlike man, asked Edward how he had liked him. His answer was warmly in his favour. With an air of indifference Wickham soon afterwards added, 'How long did you say he was at Rosings?'
'Nearly three weeks.'
'And you saw him frequently?'
'Yes, almost every day.'
'His manners are very different from his cousin's.'
'Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves on acquaintance.'
'Indeed!' cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape him. 'And pray may I ask?' but checking himself, he added in a gayer tone, 'Is it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to add ought of civility to his ordinary style? for I dare not hope,' he continued in a lower and more serious tone, 'that he is improved in essentials.'
'Oh, no!' said Edward. 'In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was.'
While he spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to rejoice over his words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a something in Edward's countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive and anxious attention, while he added,
'When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that his mind or his manners were in a state of improvement, but that from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood.'
Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated look; for a few moments he was silent; till, shaking off his embarrassment, he turned to him again, and said in the gentlest of accents,
'You, who so well know my feeling towards Mr. Darcy, will readily comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is wise enough to assume even the appearance of what is right. His pride, in that direction, may be of service, if not to himself, to many others, for it must deter him from such foul misconduct as I have suffered by. I only fear that the sort of cautiousness, to which you, I imagine, have been alluding, is merely adopted on his visits to his aunt, of whose good opinion and judgment he stands much in awe. His fear of her, has always operated, I know, when they were together; and a good deal is to be imputed to his wish of forwarding the match with Miss De Bourgh, which I am certain he has very much at heart.'
Edward could not repress a smile at this, but he answered only by a slight inclination of the head. He saw that Wickham wanted to engage him on the old subject of his grievances, and he was in no humour to indulge him. The rest of the evening passed with the appearance, on Wickham's side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no further attempt to distinguish Edward; and they parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.
When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to Meryton, from whence they were to set out early the next morning. The separation between her and her family was rather noisy than pathetic. Kitty was the only one who shed tears; but she did weep from vexation and envy. Mrs. Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter, and impressive in her injunctions that she should not miss the opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible; advice, which there was every reason to believe would be attended to; and in the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more gentle adieus of her brother and sisters were uttered without being heard.
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