It has been established between the Gardiners that Mrs. Gardiner will take aside Mrs. Bennet and explain to her what the situation was, while Mr. Gardiner would perform the same service for Mr. Bennet. They did not have great expectations to effect changes at Longbourn, but taking the girls one by one, with money for some dresses and piano lessons, would go a long way in disposing of them all in comfortable marriages.
Their plan was good. Their eldest daughter was already rather proficient for a child of 8 and there was talk to hire a governess. Mrs. Gardiner herself had started to teach her children as soon as they were able to sit still, but something more was needed now. Some of Mr. Bennet's funds could cover part of a piano master's pay and everybody would benefit from it.
The Gardiners, unlike the Bennets, were not going to put all their hopes for their children's future into one basket and forget all about it.
Fanny Bennet had great hopes that her beautiful daughters would marry into riches, but that was never going to happen, as far as the Gardiners could tell. They were good girls and luckily they were also pretty, but without a dowry they were destined to quit the sphere into which they were born.
Mr. Bennet was going to hear the entirety of the plan, while Mrs. Bennet would only hear the details that would interest her most: each daughter was to go to London in turn and be outfitted with a new wardrobe in the hopes that she would attract a husband.
Once in London the plan was to explain to the girls that they have a year to select a husband. They would be introduced to suitable acquaintances of Mr. Gardiner's and they would have to get on with it.
Because of a terrible miscalculation on their side, neither one of the Gardiners made their way downstairs early enough. Mr. Bennet was out to see to a tenant dispute and could not be applied to, so Mr. Gardiner found a journal to entertain himself. Mrs. Gardiner was seeing to the packing and planning for the trip back home.
-`o´-
Downstairs Mrs. Bennet was entertaining some of the worst gossips in the neighbourhood when Mrs. Gardiner finally arrived in the parlour.
The ladies wanted to know if Mrs. Bennet overcame her ailment of last evening and hoped to cheer her if she did not. Instead they found her in high dudgeon and she soon enlightened them as to the cause.
Apparently that snake, Mr. Wickham, had prevented Mr. Denny from proposing to dear Lydia! Oh, it was such a shame, Lydia had so many favourites among the officers and she dearly loved a red coat.
"He took advantage of us!" Mrs. Bennet was proclaiming loudly, "He was made welcome in our homes and at our tables and this is how he repays us our hospitality?"
Lady Lucas nodded her head, although it was not certain if she approved or merely wanted to hide a smile at the thought that yet another suitor was lost to the beautiful Bennet girls.
"But sister, is it certain?" enquired Mrs. Phillips, eager to understand more of how they came to such knowledge.
"It is absolutely certain, I heard it with my own ears! Oh, such a wicked young man," continued Mrs. Bennet, focused solely on one man, neatly forgetting that all the other officers were in agreement. "I would not be greatly surprised to know he did the same to Mr. Darcy!"
Mrs. Bennet was rather pleased with herself. It was plain to her that Mr. Wickham was the kind of person who would repay goodness with wickedness. Mr. Darcy was not her favourite, but then Mr. Darcy had never done her wrong either, his insult to Elizabeth notwithstanding.
"How so?" asked Mrs. Goulding, entirely confused by the jump from the officers to Mr. Darcy.
"Mama!" Elizabeth tried to interfere, "we should not talk so!"
"I'm sure the Darcys welcomed him just like us and then he turned around and repaid their kindness with spite. I'm sure it must be so!" proclaimed Mrs. Bennet and nobody dared contradict her.
"Mr. Bingley did say that from his own information on the matter, his friend was entirely blameless of any misfortune that befell Lt. Wickham," Jane added.
"Did he, Jane?"
"Of course ma'am, you might remember we have talked about it before."
"So we did, so we did. Well then, it must be true! And now he meddled with our dear Lydia's prospects and Mr. Denny jilted her!"
-`o´-
Before the morning it might have been possible to salvage Lydia's reputation and, by extension, that of her family. That was not the case anymore. Too many people have heard, too many people were quite willing to gossip about it all.
The one good thing, if it could be called so, was that Lydia finally seemed to understand the gravity of her situation.
Seeing all of Mrs. Bennet's friends cluck their tongues and hearing them conjecture on what might happen next was exactly the shock Lydia needed. She had been out for enough months and had participated in enough gossip herself to know that she stood no chance at all in Meryton.
Once you were seen as jilted, you might as well be dead, as far as she was concerned.
Lydia Bennet was angry, although it was hard to say what most provoked her: her mother's willingness to make her the laughing stock of the entire neighbourhood, Wickham's instigation of the whole episode, or Denny's stupidity in thinking himself good enough for her.
-`o´-
Enough had been said and done by the time Mr. Bennet was back and available to talk matters through with Mr. Gardiner, that the only thing they could determine was the necessity to remove Lydia to London.
Mr. Bennet asked his brother if he did think he could take both Jane and Lydia and offered to keep Jane at home, but Mr. Gardiner wanted to move along with his and his wife's plan. It was easy to ask for rather more funds than he would have otherwise felt possible. Conscientious of what his wife would say should he not provide enough funds for dresses and baubles, Mr. Bennet agreed, although not without chagrin.
He excused himself to his brother Gardiner and called on Mr. Hill to attend to him. He had no need for his butler, but did not want to spend more time with his relatives. It was such a picture of doom and gloom they painted, one would believe the sky was about to fall!
He had one question for Mr. Hill: did Col. Foster come to speak to him while he was out?
He was very puzzled when Hill answered in the negative. He had counted on teaching the colonel a lesson by choosing that very morning to visit his tenants, but the man was probably busy and his lesson was lost.
-`o´-
Col. Foster pondered the prudence of a hasty visit to Longbourn and in the end he decided against it. He would go the next day.
He resented having to go at all, but Mr. Bennet was one of the principal landowners in the area and he could not afford to antagonize him. Hopefully the man would understand that Foster had enough demands on his time to not consider the matter as being of great import.
Mr. Bennet himself coming to see him in the afternoon would be a clear sign of how he felt about the whole sorry business.
Should there be talk of reparations, he was more than willing to press Denny into offering for his chosen Bennet girl. In spite of what his men thought, he himself liked Miss Lydia well enough, and knew no ill of her or of her sisters.
By the end of the day nobody heard or seen anything of Mr. Bennet and Foster congratulated himself on his superior strategic reasoning.
-`o´-
Next chapter: Elizabeth thinks about her father and Wickham, a mini Hunsford of sorts, and Jane and Lydia have a talk in the carriage on their way to London.
-`o´-
Author note:
Thank you all for the comments, I love them all and they help a lot to clarify my own thoughts.
Several Guests pointed out that since Lydia is out somebody will have to explain her what's what.
I would like to explain something about this Lydia: she's thick as mince, as the English saying goes. The original Lydia, after all was said and done, was not repentant, had no notion of the anguish she caused her family and didn't care anyway when it was pointed out to her. So I believe it's fair to say that any progress she'll make will be slow. The situation as it stands is simply not so dire - as far as she can grasp - to make a sudden transformation feasible.
I love stories in which something momentous happens to shift everybody's point of view, but again, I'm afraid Lydia would just dismiss everything she doesn't care for as nonsense.
Lastly, no person in this story will be made to marry before their 18th birthday.