Don't be fooled by the title, this is NOT a happy story. It's not even uplifting. It's dark and high angst.
Happily ever after. It was the one thing that everyone searched for in life, regardless that it was so vague; so unobtainable. How did one even go about reaching it? Some people tried to find it through power, others through wealth and some through self-improvement. But there were those who sought their happy ending through love and they were the most foolish of all.
I do not mean to say that love does not exist; it does. But love—true love—is a rarity and, even when felt, it is not often that the lovers may be together. Those who sought love were foolish because they spent their lives chasing a dream that, when realized, could bring them nothing but pain.
To be a dreamer, as those who dream of love are, is to live a life of pain. They could numb it and pretend to be content or even happy in their dreams, but every time reality encroached into their world, it cut and bit at them, draining away their will to live. Yet, dreamers still continued to dream, for the idea of love was much nicer than the reality.
Lydia Wickham nee Bennet was one of those fools, blinded by the idea of love. In the stories and fairy tales Elizabeth and Jane had told her as a child, it was the poor, handsome soldiers and men who had the purest hearts and greatest capacity for love. In the end it was forever the same, the hero and heroine would live happily ever after. This was always the way. What use was fortune when one had love?
As Lydia examined the supper she had made that night, she pondered a new question. What good was love, insubstantial and painful as it was, when one had no food to put on the table? Indeed, she had made all the food there was to be found, but it amounted to nothing more than a small slice of meat and a few pieces of bread. With a sorrowful sigh she looked down at the meager offerings.
"George. Sophia." Lydia hardly raised her voice above a normal tone. She did not need to. Their home was small enough that she would be heard.
Obediently the eight-year-old boy came, leading his younger sister by the hand. They took the food they were given and ate it without complaint. This was not the first time food had been scarce, and it would not be the last. The intelligent eyes of the young boy saw that his mother wasn't eating and, if this was all she could give to her children, he knew she had not eaten at all. He took his sister off to bed, freeing his mother of the chore.
Mrs. Wickham fell back on her bed that lay in the same room as her makeshift kitchen, her eyes anxiously watching the door. He would be coming home soon. Her husband.
Perhaps he would not come tonight or even tomorrow, but it was near the time for him to return. And, until he had come and gone, she could not rest easy.
Whenever her husband came home he had expectations of her. Expectations she had once taken such pleasure in fulfilling that now filled her with disgust and dread. She would do what he wanted because he was her husband and he had the right to force it from her if she did not comply, but she would never willingly accept him. At least he did not come so often as he used to. Indeed, he only came when Elizabeth sent money. Four times a year, every three months. Every time the money came, so did her husband. Lydia would wake the morning after to find the money gone with only a small sum left to keep her and her children alive. The rest he took to spend in bars or brothels. He also left the notes Elizabeth persisted in writing.
Lydia always anticipated and feared these notes and every time she debated the merits of opening them for hours. In the end she always opened them, but she only ever read them once before they were banished to the floor and forgotten.
The accounts of Elizabeth and Jane were too painful in their happiness to bear. Tales of Kitty and Mary were easier, but still her heart could not pity them for it had lost that emotion long ago. She had lost many of her emotions in the pain that her foolish love had caused.
Love inspires many forms of pain, and the Bennet family had felt them all.
Mrs. Bennet had never known love. She could hardly even love her daughters. They were liked or disliked at certain times, but Lydia had never truly believed they had been loved.
Mr. Bennet faced the pain of having loved a woman who in disposition and talents least suited him. He could neither love nor respect his wife and grew more cynical and careless as the years passed.
Jane, though happy now, had faced the pain of jealousy and the torment of being separated from the one she loved. For many months she had been assured of his indifference.
Elizabeth could be said to have faced the least pain of the family, but she faced pain of a different kind. She suffered as Jane had, assured that the man she loved would never feel for her again, but the pain could be only worse as it was through her own actions she had lost him.
Mary's heart had been broken in the agony of an unrequited love. For years did she languish and waste away, but the love was always unrequited.
Kitty had fallen in love with her own officer and he with her, but it was not a month after their wedding that he died overseas. He was struck with Spanish influenza and died days before he was to return, killing her heart as well.
Regardless of all the pain love had caused her family, Lydia had been hurt the most. While the rest of her family suffered emotional pain exclusively, she underwent physical, mental and emotional pain. And not only did she face the searing pain of reality, but all her dreams had been shattered, leaving her nothing to numb the pain.
Yes, Lydia had been a dreamer, expecting her prince to one day come and sweep her off her feet. She had always envisioned that to be the start to her own happily ever after. It had never occurred to her, as it did now that perhaps she was never meant to have a happily ever after at all. Did they even exist?
"Mama?" Her little George had entered the room, holding a single slice of bread in his hands. Lydia turned to look at him. There were no signs of her inner grief. She had cried the last of her tears long ago. "You didn't eat." He tried to hand his mother the bread, but she wouldn't take it.
"It is for you. There wasn't enough for you to eat as it was." George shook his head at her and offered the bread to her again more determinedly. "I will save it and if there is money tomorrow I promise to eat it. Otherwise it must go to you and your sister." George would not be satisfied until he had placed the food into his mother's hands. In return for his concern, she awarded him one of her rare smiles and an affectionate hug. After this she sent him to bed.
Now Lydia was alone once more and her eyes fell again on the door. How differently she felt now than a few years ago! After her marriage she hated the time when her beloved George had to leave her. She had not realized at then how lucky she was for having friends to pass the time with.
They had moved several times as her husband's gaming debts and seductions grew too numerous. They would start over in a different place, a new regiment, but Lydia eventually noticed that she was gradually being cut out of his life. Now he had simply left her in the seedy backstreets of London to fend for herself while he continued his life of idleness and dissipation. He was no longer a part of her life and she was glad of it.
Once she had pined for him every moment he was not at her side, but now she prayed to the God that she no longer believed in that he would not come tonight.
Her vigil of the door gave way to sleep an hour later.
The next morning Lydia woke and her first thoughts were those of relief. He had not come this night. At least she would be free of him for one more day.
She got up from her threat-bare bed and walked to their supply of water. Her stomach twanged painfully and she gulped a few handfuls of water to quiet it. They could spare no more water. Their only source came from a hole in the roof where rainwater would fall through.
As the surface of the water calmed, Lydia caught a glimpse of her reflection. Her eyes were dull and glazed over almost as if dead and her hair hung limply down around her face as it had not been washed. There were bags under her eyes and strong wrinkles on the rest of her pale and sunken face. At the age of twenty-four, Lydia looked much closer to her mother in age. She simply looked at herself with indifference, having little reason to care anymore.
It was only when her eyes fell on their small table that any emotion was stirred within her. There was an envelope as well as several various coins and bills. It appeared that her husband had indeed come last night, but left her alone. She wouldn't have wished it any other way.
She took the money and left the envelope where it was. Her first priority was to get food for her family. She could worry about the news from her sister later.
As she walked through the dark and dirty streets, her eyes were often drawn down the roads she knew would take her to the nicer parts of town where her sisters lived. It would not be hard to take her children and just leave the horrid life she led. She had thought of it many times. But she would never do it. She could not stand to face Jane's pity. Lydia had enough pride left to prevent her from suffering through that, especially since it appeared that Jane had given up on her. There had not been a letter from anyone in her family, other than Elizabeth, in many years.
Lydia would not go to Elizabeth for help either. There too would she encounter pity, but what was worse, there would forever be a silent triumph in Elizabeth's eyes as she understood that she had been right all along; right about Wickham. But she wasn't right; Lydia's husband was in every way worse than Elizabeth could have thought.
And, there was nothing Lydia could say before she arrived. She had not responded to even one of Elizabeth's letters, and, could she afford paper, she still would not have. Once, when she had truly hated her husband, she had thought to write to Elizabeth and tell her to stop sending money. Her sense quickly caught up with her and she understood that if she provided Wickham with no money, he had no reason to keep her alive and would have left her to starve in the backstreets of London.
She had nothing left now, not even her emotions. There were no longer feelings of disgust as she passed the rats scurrying freely across the road, nor fear as she passed suspicious-looking men swaying drunkenly or gazing at her with sharp, cruel eyes. She felt very little and the emotions she did feel were weak.
She found it hard at times to even hate her husband. She was just indifferent to him. Yet, despite the pain he had caused her and continued to cause her, she knew she still loved him. And that was what hurt her most of all.