Ducklings! That's what we looked like; four little ducklings, all in a row. That was an analogy, and I was just a bit proud of myself for coming up with it. A year prior to that day, I would not have known or cared what an analogy was. Now I was using one to order my thoughts, which were still a little jumbled but becoming hopefully more rational over time. Boy, would Mary love to hear me say that!
My fellow ducklings and I had just been through a very trying year, with governesses and tutors and masters and lessons and music and drawing and dancing and deportment from dawn to dark and hardly any fun at all. We were only allowed into Meryton once a week, and closely supervised. We were allowed to the monthly assemblies, but Papa watched us like a hawk the entire time, and Mama was not allowed to speak to anyone on any subject that included one of us. After all of that over the course of a year complete, we basically had ducklings. Four little ducklings that all looked and acted and spoke and moved and behaved and comported just exactly as all ladies should. We were demure and polite, well‑spoken and kind, well‑dressed and elegant. We all had a few accomplishments to boast of, but we had all now been cut and measured and hammered and forged and doused and flattened and molded and filed into the shape of proper young ladies, such that I doubt a stranger could even tell us apart. If one of us happened to have a suitor, and we switched brides at the last moment, I am uncertain he would even notice, or be overly concerned if he did.
Out front naturally was Jane, as was right and proper according to the myriad rules of propriety and civility and decorum. Once the eldest, always the eldest! Jane could easily pass as the Mama Duck if she had a bit more assertiveness, but no casual observer would notice. She was calm and serene and gentle and kind just like she always had been, but she seldom truly smiled now. What fun she had in life had taken a terrible blow when the man I like to think of as 'Bingley the Bastard' (although a proper duckling would never say such a thing, or the even worse things I think but will not write), broke her heart. He and his pernicious sisters and his stick up the backside friend abandoned her without a word. I never knew if it was because of my shame, or if they were already planning to leave, but I believe the latter (another word I would not have used a year prior). To this day, I do not believe the Netherfield herd even knows what happened that terrible night. My father managed to mostly keep it hushed up, although he had to practically put a muzzle on my mother to accomplish it, and certain of the Netherfield servants required money to keep quiet, and threats to keep from asking for more money. I was not supposed to know that, but proper ladies are quiet as church mice, which makes us very adept at eavesdropping, should we decide to pursue the sport.
After the night of the ball and my shame, came Lizzy's terrible in every way marriage a few weeks later. I do believe that broke whatever was left of Jane's spirit. After that, she resembled a mirror more than anything else. She just reflected whatever the person talking to her wanted to see. In a full year, I did not see a single display of anything save amiability on her countenance, and I doubt anyone else could either. A stranger might see whatever quality attracted Mr. Bingley in the beginning, but it would not take long to see that her depth had been leeched out of her.
Mary followed Jane, and I had to sheepishly admit that the year of non-stop lessons had quite suited her. She now played the pianoforte beautifully, and we all truly enjoyed her talent; where before we had to mostly avoid it to maintain our ears and our sanity. Father banned Fordyce from the house, and I think in the end, after much cajoling, Mary was happy to have something to replace it. She certainly had more of Papa's attention now that Lizzy was gone; but whether that was a good thing in the end or not remained to be seen.
Papa had been changed by the ordeal, and nobody thought he had changed for the better. None would admit it, but I know he forced Lizzy to marry that horrid parson. Lizzy pretends all is well and tried to keep knowledge of it from us, but for the past year she had sent the blandest letters ever written and said nothing at all about anything at all. What more proof could you possibly want that something was terribly amiss than Lizzy losing every bit of her impertinence?
Next in our little line was Kitty. She got tarred with my brush at the Netherfield ball, and she suffered as much as I did though she was not nearly as guilty. In fact, she was not guilty of anything at all except for sisterly affection. At the time, I thought I was doing exactly as I ought to. I of course knew it went against the rules of society, and definitely against what Mary and Lizzy and Jane tried to teach me, but it was ever so much fun, and I was following exactly where my mother had been pushing me for my entire life, so what could be wrong? Why should I not marry a handsome, well‑mannered and gentlemanly officer?
It turned out everything could be wrong, and with one foolish act by one foolish girl on one foolish night, I destroyed all the hopes for all my sisters; not that they were all that wonderful to start with. Jane was now three and twenty, nearly as on the shelf as Charlotte Lucas, who was now eight and twenty. Jane had not had a serious suitor, or any suitor at all for that matter since Netherfield, and she seemed resigned to spinsterhood. Mama's constant lamentations had become completely nonsensical; for it did in fact seem to be the case that Jane could be so beautiful for nothing… all because of me.
I only hoped against hope that somehow I could redeem myself and my sisters, because my heart had been broken into tiny little pieces and crushed underfoot by Lizzy's misfortune and who knew if the rest of us would survive. We certainly would not if we depended on Papa, as he seemed to have lost whatever grip on his sanity he was keeping. I had managed to scratch out a few talents, including a surprisingly beautiful singing voice according to my sisters, and I think I need not be terribly embarrassed by my efforts at the quill.
Our sisterly connections had changed completely as well. Now Jane and I shared a room, and as like as not one or the other of us cried into our pillows from time to time. Kitty had quite blossomed under Mary's tutelage, and Mary came out of her shell to become someone I loved to be around; so in the end they had been good for each other. Kitty and Mary were as inseparable as Jane and I, and everyone was content with the arrangement. Two little pairs of ducklings! I had to wonder about our propensity to pair up (yet another new vocabulary word), and thought with nearly immeasurable sadness of how isolated Mary must have felt before Lizzy left; always the odd one out; always the overlooked one. Perhaps not everything about the previous year had been bad.
So there we were. Our little duck march came to a surprisingly quick end. It was only about half a mile from the stage stop to our eventual destination, so it took almost no time at all. Jane knocked on the door and waited… and waited… and waited. Once, twice, thrice she knocked, and yet we waited.
We finally decided to walk around to the other side of the building, and that's where we finally saw the thing we had all been hoping and praying and wanting and waiting and looking for over the last year. Our poor little duck governess in the sky I am sure looked at us in censure, because we did not care. We all let out very loud, bloodcurdling and most unducklike screams at the same time.
"LIZZZZZZZZYYYYYY"
We all saw her at the same time, and losing all that remained of our duckness, we hitched up our skirts and ran like little hoydens exiting a burning building being chased by wolves (perhaps I overdid the lesson on analogies).
When we first saw her, Lizzy was curiously enough feeding poultry with a basket on her hip, wearing what looked like a prosperous farmer's dress and an apron, with her hair in a simple bun and a very plain straw bonnet. She had chickens, ducks and geese and a pig as far as I could tell; and even a goat wandering about in the fields.
Lizzy dropped the basket unceremoniously on the ground and started running just like we were. We all met in the middle of her field like the clashing of two great armies, hugging and kissing and screaming and crying. Papa before Netherfield might well have chuckled and commented on the fact that no two words of sense were spoken together for many minutes. Papa after Netherfield would have scolded us and sent us back to our studies.
"Lizzy! Lizzy! Lizzy! Lizzy! Lizzy! Lizzy!"
"Jane, Mary, Kitty, Lydia! What are you doing here? This is so wonderful! We are all together again! How did this happen? Where are your things? What are you doing? Come inside! No wait, stand back and let me look at you! No wait! Wait! Oh, I shall go all distracted."
I have no idea what other nonsense we all managed to babble over the next five minutes. Her poultry put up quite a fuss, but they had nothing on our duck brigade in the way of squawking. We all started talking and crying and crying and crying and talking, and it was wonderful in every way. Finally, all the sisters were together again, and by the looks of things, we might be so for some time. What in the world was Papa thinking? For the moment, I cared not for his sanity. All of my sisters were together, and for the moment, all was right with the world.