At last, after a period of wretched suspense, the news reaches Longbourn from Mr. Gardiner that he has discovered the couple. For Lydia’s sake, little as she has deserved it, they are married from Mr. Gardiner’s house. Certain stipulations have been made on Wickham’s part, that the bride shall in time inherit her share of her mother’s few thousand pounds; that her father shall allow Mrs. Wickham a hundred a year during his lifetime; that Wickham’s debts shall be paid, and a commission procured for him in “the regulars.” Withal, little real happiness could be expected from such a marriage. Wickham has only turned to Lydia when he was repulsed in other quarters. His debts have been the compelling cause of his flight from Brighton. Her fondness for him is made up of giddiness and a foolish passion on which she has put no restraint.
But Mrs. Bennet is as elated at having a daughter married at last, and married at sixteen, as if the marriage had come about in a more honourable way.
Mr. Bennet views the matter in a different light. He is satisfied that his brother-in-law has kept back the amount of money furnished by him to Wickham, which Mr. Bennet must somehow, sooner or later, repay.
Her father has told Kitty, in the driest of sore-hearted jesting, that no officer is to be allowed to enter his house again, or even to pass through the village. Balls are to be absolutely prohibited, unless she stands up with one of her sisters; and she is never to stir out of the house till she can prove that she has spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.
Kitty has received those threats in a serious light, and begins to cry.
“Well, well,” cries the incorrigible humourist, “don’t make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of them.”
At first, Mr. Bennet refuses to permit a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Wickham before he shall join his regiment in the North; but, on the earnest representations of his two elder daughters that to withhold the forgiving countenance of Lydia’s family from the young couple will be to lessen their slender chances of respectability, he allows the culprits to come for a short time to Longbourn, on their way to Newcastle.
The arrival of the Wickhams is in perfect keeping with what went before it, and is a splendid bit of serio-comedy. Jane blushes and Elizabeth blushes; but the cheeks of the two who cause their relations’ confusion suffer no increase of colour. Lydia is Lydia still, untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless. Wickham is not at all more distressed than herself; but his manners have always been so pleasing that, had his audience not known his character, the smiling ease and grace with which he claims their relationship would have delighted them all. Elizabeth had not before believed him quite equal to such assurance, but she resolves thenceforth to draw no limits to the impudence of an impudent man.
I hope I may be pardoned for drawing particular attention to the exquisite truthfulness of the couple’s behaviour. The correct definition of it is specially valuable at a time when slightly-altered versions of such conduct are classed differently, and passed off on inexperienced and thoughtless readers, to the grave detriment of their standards of good morals and good taste.
Lydia, in her total want of proper feeling and modesty, cries out, “Oh, mamma, do people hereabouts know I am married to-day? I was afraid they might not; and we overtook William Goulding in his curricle to-day, so I was determined he should know it, and so I let down the side glass next to him and took off my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window-frame, so that he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like anything.”