Chapter 41: Much Ado About Spring Break
There's only a week left until the army regiment gets re-stationed, and Kitty and Lydia just won't stop being sad sacks about the impending loss of merriment—not at all helped by their mother, who was pretty much the same way when she was their age and who never really grew out of it. Normally Elizabeth would just laugh at the idiocy, but she starts thinking about the objections Mr. Darcy had to her family and she realizes, man, he's right, they actually do totally suck.
But then Lydia gets an invite from the wife of the colonel to come with and hang out for a while.
So Lydia is bouncing off the walls like she just won the lottery (completely unconcerned about how devastating this is for Kitty, who didn't get an invite). This is pretty much the final straw for Elizabeth, who appeals to Mr. Bennet to step in and prevent Lydia from going, telling him, hey, the girl's only sixteen and she's already kind of an embarrassment to us, and if she follows the officers she's pretty much going to be completely unsupervised the whole time, so she'll just settle into her ways and end up being a hussy the rest of her life. And if she doesn't learn any sense then you know Kitty won't either because she just does whatever Lydia does.
But Mr. Bennet tells Elizabeth, look, it's not like Lydia's behavior is chasing any potential boyfriends away from you and Jane, right? Anyway, our only hope with her is really for her to publicly humiliate herself and realize what an inconsequential idiot she is, and it's better for her to do that somewhere far away where people don't know us. Plus, she's too poor to attract anybody's attention anyway, so she can't possibly get into too much trouble. And before you say anything else, Lizzie, just know this is my chance to get Lydia out of my house for a couple weeks, so don't you fucking ruin this for me.
Well, I tried, Elizabeth figures, and washes her hands of it.
The officers dine with the Bennets on their final night in town. Mr. Wickham is present, and now that the girl who won the lottery is out of the picture now, he starts hitting up Elizabeth again. However, she's no longer in any mood for his shenanigans, and she teases him throughout dinner, saying, oh yeah, Darcy and his cousin came out while I was staying with the Collinses, and I was flirting with his cousin for like three weeks, and actually I have to say Darcy even kind of grows on you a bit once you get his whole deal.
This throws Wickham off his game, but he eventually plays it off by suggesting that Darcy was probably just on his best behavior while he was visiting Lady Catherine. Either way, he sees that this avenue isn't worth pursuing anymore, which pretty much closes the book on Elizabeth and Mr. Wickham.