While the ladies of Longbourn spent their day with the ladies from Netherfield, Mr. Collins spent the day with Mr. Bennet, which caused the patriarch of the family to speak at the breakfast table the following morning.
"Girls… Mr. Collins… I believe a good walk into Meryton would be beneficial for all of you. What say you?"
Lydia and Kitty jumped up and down in their seats a bit more than a true lady would and agreed immediately to the scheme.
Mr. Collins on the other hand replied, "My dear, Mr. Bennet. I could not possibly abandon you for the entirety of the morning. It would be most ungentlemanly, and how else am I to learn the workings of the estate? My noble patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, was most insistent that I become intimately familiar with all of the particulars of my future inheritance and…"
"No, Mr. Collins, fear not. We have plenty of time to learn the estate… some years in fact. Now it is time for you to learn something of the local village. They are not to be disdained if you are to ever take a place among them. Do you believe your Lady Catherine would recommend you visit the area and not even become familiar with the local terrain?"
"As you suggest, so shall I act, Sir. For as my benevolent patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh frequently informs me…"
"Yes, yes, Mr. Collins… I assure you a trip to the village is exactly what Lady Catherine would recommend."
"I thank you for your advice, Sir."
The elder ladies were not as enamored with the plan as their father, especially since they would be stuck with their cousin, but they dutifully arranged to meet Mr. Collins on the half‑hour.
When the appointed time came, the two youngest scampered off like a pair of squirrels and were nearly out of sight before Mr. Collins managed to get himself ready to commence walking. The three eldest ladies had quietly drawn straws upstairs. Mary drew the short straw, so Elizabeth took Jane's arm and set out for Meryton at a normal walking pace.
Mr. Collins followed behind walking beside Mary. He did offer his arm, but Mary avoided taking it through the simple expedient of pretending she did not see it. The first ten minutes were spent enduring a long‑winded soliloquy on the benefits of walking to one's good health. All the while, Mr. Collins started sweating, breathing hard and mopping his face with a none‑too‑clean handkerchief, thus forcing the pair to slow considerably. Jane eventually noticed the slow pace and slowed Elizabeth to await the pair. They entered Meryton some quarter hour after the youngest ladies.
As they came to a stop, Elizabeth asked, "Mary, where are you bound?"
"I will visit the circulating library, Lizzy. I believe they may have a new novel I have been waiting for. Would you care to join me Mr. Collins? We could work on improving your reading material."
The sweetness of the reply made it difficult for the man to take offense, and the sister of the woman that would be his helpmeet for the rest of his life was to be shown the greatest respect anyway, so the agreed to the scheme, and he turned to follow Mary towards the shop.
"Jane?"
"Mama wished me to look in at the butcher to discuss next week's order."
"Would you like assistance?"
"No, Lizzy. I can deal with it. I am no longer ill. You need not coddle me."
Elizabeth noticed a horse just walking into town, and with a smile, replied, "You are correct, Jane. I do not need to coddle, since I have someone to delegate the disagreeable task to."
Jane followed her eyes, and Elizabeth watched her face light up at the sight.
Mr. Bingley smiled and waved, then said, "Good morning Miss Bennet… Miss Elizabeth. I was just going to Longbourn to inquire after your health."
Jane found herself momentarily tongue-tied, so Elizabeth replied, "As you can see, she is tolerable, Mr. Bingley. Perhaps you would not mind escorting her to the butcher, just in case."
The gentleman jumped from his horse expeditiously, and replied, "It would be my pleasure. And you, Miss Elizabeth. Are you in good health?"
"I am always in good health, Mr. Bingley. Thank you for asking."
"Darcy was going to join me, but an important bit of correspondence arrived just as we were leaving. He may be along any minute, or he may be gone for a month."
Elizabeth laughed, and replied, "Well, he is always welcome. I will be off the haberdashery. Thank you for looking after my sister, Sir."
Elizabeth walked down to the haberdashery, not because she had any need for anything, but just for something to do. Her entire list of requirements for an occupation for the morning consisted of anything that avoided Mr. Collins. The Haberdashery had a quiet corner that was essentially invisible from anyone who did not know the shop well, so even if the gentleman should stumble inside, he would never see her. She was free at last.
After a half‑hour or so in the quiet and stillness of the haberdashery, Elizabeth found that she was not quite so ready to give up all human interaction and thought it might be proper to take a quick glance at the street to see where her sisters were.
Stepping out of the shop, what she saw made her blood run cold. Lydia and Kitty were engaged in what could not be termed anything short of the most shameless flirting with three officers, right in the middle of the lane. They were laughing and giggling way too boisterously for public display, and the rest of their manners seemed to have been thrown away entirely.
Elizabeth marched over towards them and arrived just in time to see something that horrified her even worse. Lydia had, sometime in the recent past, remade her dress with a much lower bodice than was proper for anything other than a lightskirt, and there was a new officer she had never seen before staring right down at her with hungry eyes. Lydia had hidden it with a fichu before they left home and removed it sometime after they separated. Now, the new 'gentleman' practically had his nose buried in her sister's chest.
Elizabeth marched over to the pair, but before she could begin, Lydia laughed and said entirely too loudly.
"Oh Lizzy, there you are. Come and meet Lieutenant Willoughby. He has just joined the regiment, and is he not the handsomest officer you have ever seen?"
Not to be outdone, Kitty added, "And you remember Lieutenants Carter and Sanderson, Lizzy? Gentlemen, may I present my second eldest sister, Miss Elizabeth Bennet."
Mr. Willoughby was tall, and Elizabeth guessed might be considered handsome by some, but the amount of time it took him to pull his eyes from Lydia's décolletage to look at her, and the blank, hungry look on his face told the lady all she needed to know. To be truthful, he might have looked both handsome and harmless to her before Ramsgate, but here and now, with her sister practically throwing herself at him, he just reminded Elizabeth of 'GW' He even had the right last initial.
The 'gentleman' bowed deeply, and replied quite properly as it turned out, "An honor to meet you, Miss Bennet."
Lieutenants Carter and Sanderson looked harmless. Neither was more than a boy in regimentals, and neither looked any more dangerous than a week‑old puppy, so Elizabeth did not worry about them.
Mr. Willoughby though was an entirely different breed - a much nastier one. Perhaps, Elizabeth thought, she might be worrying about nothing, but the first vision that came to her mind was a picture of Georgiana Darcy laying on the ground at Ramsgate, but with Lydia's face and the regimentals on GW's body. It completely unnerved her to the point where her heart was pounding in her chest and it felt like someone was squeezing it in their fist.
Elizabeth tried to be polite. She tried her very best and gave it her utmost effort.
"Likewise, Lieutenant Willoughby."
The man stood up to his full height, puffed his chest out a bit, and looked down at her with what she thought was yet a hungrier look, like a wolf eyeing a group of lambs, trying to decide if he could mange more than a dozen for dinner.
Elizabeth took the look for about a quarter-minute, when she had enough. Without worrying overly much about politeness, she spoke.
"Gentlemen, we apologize from delaying you from your duties. My sisters and I have pressing business elsewhere, so we shall bid you good day."
Lydia let out a whine, and said, "But Lizzy, we just got here, and the officers tell us they have no required duties for the next hour."
Elizabeth tried to be calm, and said, "Perhaps they have no necessary duties, or mayhap they are just being polite. Whether they have urgent items to tend or not, we do! Come with me, Now!"
The last little bit of the exclamation was probably not anywhere near polite, but Elizabeth had just about endured all she could stand, and her patience was nonexistent. She could see Lydia working her way up to mouthing an excuse, so she raised her hand up to about waist level where she knew Lydia could see it and pinched her forefinger with her thumb until her hand felt like the tongs at the blacksmith shop. She squeezed until her hand turned white, hoping Lydia would get the message, which she finally did. The message was simple, 'come with me or I will grab your ear and drag you away'. Elizabeth had literally done that a few times, but not for a while. Lydia wisely decided not to test her luck.
Not to be trifled with, Elizabeth curtsied and replied, "Gentlemen, we must bid you good day."
The officers walked away, and Elizabeth turned around and marched purposefully over to a small alleyway between the blacksmith shop and the White Horse Inn, just daring the girls to not follow.
When the ladies arrived in a place where they could not be overheard, Elizabeth rounded on Lydia with some venom, and asked, "Just what in the world was that unseemly display all about?"
Lydia did not like to be chastised, so replied, "La, Lizzy! You sound worse than Mary. We were in the middle of the lane, talking to handsome officers. What are you complaining about? We were being perfectly decorous."
She planted her feet and stared at her sister with an intimidating look that always worked with Jane and Mary and worked sometimes with Lizzy. This did not turn out to be one of those times.
Elizabeth, felt her heart racing just like it had just before she picked up the walking stick in Ramsgate, turned her eyes down at Lydia's entirely overexposed bosom, and said asked, "And is this the dress of a decorous young lady? Were you dressed like this when you left Longbourn? Should I ask Mr. Collins his opinion, or better yet, should I drag you into Father's study and ask his?"
Lydia, never one to give up without a fight, said, "Lizzy, if it were up to you, nobody would ever have any enjoyment in life at all. I used to think Mary was the most priggish person I know, but now I would take her over you any day."
Elizabeth, still seething asked, "Lydia… Kitty… What do you think happens to girls who act like that? What is your expected outcome? Why do you think we have the rules of propriety in the first place?"
Lydia was just as worked up, and she replied, "Just to make life dull and uninteresting, that is why. You have forgotten what it is like to enjoy yourself Lizzy, but I have not!"
Kitty was too frightened to enter into the engagement, so she just stood mutely watching the sisters have it out.
Lydia, sensing some perceived weakness asked, "What gives you the right to control us, Lizzy. Answer me that. Why should I listen to you!"
"Because I have SEEN it, LYDIA! I saw it with my own eyes, right in front of me."
Though they were still well away from the street and probably safe, the conversation had gone well beyond the bounds of what should be discussed publicly, but two young ladies with their blood up were unlikely to moderate their tone. Elizabeth's reply had come out at nearly a shout without thinking, followed by just a whisper.
The shout had at least shut her sisters up, but she once again found her heart pounding in her chest and her breath coming in short gasps, while all over her body, she felt chills as if it was the middle of winter.
All she could see was all her fears coming true, right there in front of her eyes, in the lane of her own village. This was worse than the fear of being caught over Ramsgate. This felt like she was barely holding on by a thread from keeping the same thing from happening all over again, but this time being unable to save the victim. It had not gotten completely out of hand yet, but Elizabeth could well see the that it could, and well imagined that if she did not intervene, that it would.
The shout had gotten the younger girl's attention. Elizabeth gave both girls an icy stare that chilled them to the bone and continued in almost a whisper.
"I saw it Lydia! I saw it with my own eyes! A naïve young girl no older than you. She broke just one rule more than you were breaking right there, and the whole course of her life changed in minutes. I can assure you, the new path was no improvement. She was almost completely ruined, and only escaped it by the tiniest thread. That is what will happen if you carry on as you are, Lydia. You too Kitty. That man you were cavorting with is a hunter. I have seen his like before. It is in his manner. He is eyeing you up as prey. You heard Colonel Forster. These men cannot afford wives, but they can afford to ruin naïve girls wherever they go and make them take the consequences. Do you truly wish to end up shunned, or high in the belly, or with your entire family ruined?"
For perhaps the first time in her memory, both of her sisters were struck entirely dumb. They stared at her open‑mouthed, unable to say anything, unable to even think.
Elizabeth was so caught up in reliving the pain, misery, shame, fear and heart-pounding excitement of Ramsgate, that for a good several minutes, she was entirely caught in her own inner world and completely oblivious to her companions.
Lydia was still stunned senseless, when Kitty some minutes later began timidly, "Is that what happened to you last summer, Lizzy?"
By this time, Elizabeth had started to shake, and she was also required to take her handkerchief to her eyes, and simply nodded.
Kitty continued, "Did you… did you… did you…"
She could not finish the thought, so Elizabeth finally took pity on her.
"Yes, Kitty. I helped her. I… I… I… intervened. It was awful… It was terrible… They were the worst moments of my life."
Lydia finally found her tongue, and asked, "Can you tell us, Lizzy?"
Finally getting a small bit of her wits back, Elizabeth replied, "No, Liddy I cannot… I cannot… I… just… cannot… You understand, I hope?"
The last was a bit of a forlorn hope, but Kitty surprised her.
"We understand Lizzy. If you told us, it would pain you and damage the girl's reputation… and maybe even yours."
Elizabeth stared at both girls, hard, until they both swallowed, and replied, "Worse than that, sisters. It could damage yours as well. Just as you continuing as you have been could devastate me and the rest of your sisters. It is tremendously unfair, but it is the way of the world. Shame follows families. People believe one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel."
None of the sisters knew what to say, but Elizabeth finally came back to her senses.
"You both know you can never tell anyone this, I hope? Not anyone. Not your friends. Not our parents. Not even Jane or Mary. I should never have told you and would not have given any choice at all. Swear to me a vow of silence."
Both girls nodded in agreement, not certain they could tell anyone
Elizabeth continued, "I will say this and then no more. Only the greatest stroke of good fortune saved that girl from her folly. Half a minute one way or the other and her entire life would be completely and irreparably ruined. I beg you… do not put yourselves in a position where I cannot save you."
Both younger ladies seemed to have finally listened, and Elizabeth looked at them carefully until she was certain they would not do anything stupid.
"Now, you need time to put yourselves together. You do understand I am doing this out of love, not out of malice."
"Of course, Lizzy."
"Go home. Talk amongst yourselves on the way home but be certain nobody overhears, and then put it behind you. When you get home, be done with it. Put your fichu back on. Fix your dresses to be proper. Learn to tell the wolves from the sheep, but until you do, be sure you always act with decorum and always stick together. Always protect each other. A man worthy of the catching will be a man who respects your desire to act properly. Any man who wishes you to act improperly is not worth winning."
The girls nodded, Lydia pulled her fichu out of her reticule and put it on quickly, and then the girls turned and started back to Longbourn. Elizabeth could not stand the thought of having to discuss Ramsgate with them again, so she decided to stay behind and go check on Jane.