“Lizzy worked me into last night’s rage—”
Elizabeth gasped, but Jane raised a hand. “You need not prevaricate. I know when I am being manipulated, but I do not mind. In fact, I shall hold you responsible for my happiness.”
“Perhaps more detail might make things clearer.”
“Of course, but I shall need to explain your analogy. You see, Elizabethcorrectlyworked out that without any knowledge of how things might turn out, I would have takenthat man’sdeparture as a rejection of me personally. That would have set me on a course of melancholy that might have lasted for months, even without our mother fanning the flames. It is like a fire of stout oak that can burn for hours.”
Everyone nodded.
“Elizabeth decided to work me up into a rage, so she set about building a fire out of the same oak, but cut into the finest kindling and soaked in lamp oil. The same wood would burn so hot it might burn the whole village down, yet be gone in minutes, leaving you where you started. Does that make sense?”
Kitty said, “Like ripping a bandage off.”
Lydia helpfully added, “Lancing a boil,” and they were off to the races.
“Eating something disagreeable by stuffing your mouth full and swallowing it all at once.”
“Pulling a rotten tooth.”
Jane laughed gaily and pulled out Lizzy’s ballistic graph. “All right, all right. You understand me. Lizzy’s analogy was a cannon. You could point it horizontally and the cannonball would travel a long distance, which we took to mean a longtime… months, probably. If you point it almost straight up, it will go very high, then come down very quickly, close to where it started, so there would be stronger emotions but for less time. I used that one.”
Elizabeth asked, “So, where are we on the curve?”
Jane smiled. “The cannonball went up to the skies last night; it started down again while I thought through a good portion of the night. This morning, my metaphorical cannonball returned to the ground, crashed through a rotten door on an abandoned mine, and fell another mile underground. I am far happier than I have ever been, even during my ill-fated association withthat man, because I now have clarity of thought and purpose.”
Lydia cackled. “So, you have clarity! Does that mean you will abandon the sheep act and take revenge? I can hardly wait to hear your plans.”
Jane studied her while everyone else held their breath, but when she spoke, it was as gently as one would expect from Jane Bennet.
“Lydia, you speak truth, so I shall not chastise you, but it would not hurt to learn to speak it more gently from time to time. I was entirely in earnest last night when I said your behaviour could ruin all of us—even William and Mary, who have just promised to keep a roof over your head.”
Lydia gasped, thoroughly affronted, and snapped petulantly, “What do you mean? There is nothing wrong with my behaviour. Mama says so!”
Jane sighed in exasperation and surprised everyone by pouring two glasses of water and fetching an inkpot. “Watch this.”
She shook a few drops of ink into the water. Everyone stared in fascination as the ink dispersed, swirling beautifully as it spread, until the water turned black.
“This is our reputation.Allour reputations, which are as closely related as our family ties. It starts clean, but given the wrong actions, it can be tainted in almost no time. The inkpermanentlycolours the entire glass. That water will never be clean again.”
When everyone watched the ink disperse, she picked up the glass and swirled it, making the metaphorical stain on their reputations spread faster. “Swirling is gossip. It speeds the process but does not change the outcome.”
Jane set the glass down and tossed in a button. It splashed and sent ripples across the surface, then slowly sank.
“That button is a minor breach of propriety, the sort of thing Lydia and Kitty do all the time—bad, but not crippling. It leaves ripples for a while and clouds the water on the way down. People pay attention to the splash, but forget it later. Throw in a few, and they sit unnoticed on the bottom. Throw in a dozen, or throw them in too quickly, and the glass seems full of buttons.”
The younger sisters were perplexed, but at least they paid attention.
“Now imagine I dump dirt into the water. Lizzy and Mary have a funny story about that, but we will leave it aside for the moment. I do not have any dirt to demonstrate, but you are all intelligent. Think! What would happen?”
Jane waited patiently until Kitty said, “The whole glass would be muddy for a while, but if you leave it long enough, the dirt would all settle at the bottom. The water would never be entirelycleanagain, but it would not be especiallymuddy—unless you disturbed the mud on the bottom.”
“Well done, Kitty. That is how most propriety violations play out. The result depends on how much the glass is stirred by gossip and innuendo, and how much dirt you start with, but eventually you have a reputation somewhere between pristinewater and mud. Your three elder sisters’ reputations are nearly pristine—nothing but a few buttons and a little mud on the bottom. You and Lydia are throwing dirt in every day.”
“La, Jane. You are making something out of nothing. We are just having fun. We are buttons at worst.”
“Perhaps, and perhaps not. When everyone knew you, that was probably true, because our neighbours are accustomed to girls' silliness, and you were not all that much sillier than average. You may even be better than Lizzy was at 15. However, that changed with the arrival of the militia. I can assure you, some of the officers are inkwells disguised as buttons. They flirt because Mama invites them to eat. They eat a tenth as well at mess, and they cannot afford better. It is worth putting up with some prattle to be well fed and entertained.”
Lydia stared but said nothing.
