EPILOGUE
B ingley proposed to Jane on the Sunday following Darcy’s own engagement, having called at Longbourn after church with an expression of such obvious purpose that Mrs. Bennet began exclaiming before he had properly commenced speaking.
Mr. Bennet received the intelligence in his library with the dry observation that he had expected the question since approximately the first week of November and considered Bingley’s timing somewhat leisurely.
Bingley accepted this with excellent good humour.
Mrs. Bennet declared it the happiest day of her life and then, upon recollecting Elizabeth’s engagement the previous week, amended the declaration to the happiest fortnight of her life before collapsing pleasantly upon the settee.
Two weddings, she informed every person willing to listen. Two daughters. She had always known matters would conclude precisely in this way.
The weddings took place on the first Saturday in April, at St. Mary church in Meryton. The neighbourhood attended in full force. Mrs. Bennet was heard repeatedly to observe that no wedding so distinguished had ever before occurred in Hertfordshire.
Darcy met the Gardiners properly for the first time during the wedding breakfast. He had already heard much of them from Elizabeth throughout their courtship and was eager to make their acquaintance.
Mr. Gardiner proved a gentleman of excellent sense and easy manners who shook Darcy’s hand with the air of one already disposed to think well of him and entirely satisfied to find himself justified in the opinion.
Mrs. Gardiner possessed precisely that quiet intelligence which reminded Darcy, in the most agreeable manner possible, of Elizabeth at her most perceptive.
He found himself still more impressed upon learning that she had been raised in Lambton, not far from Pemberley, and had known his mother during girlhood.
Lydia cried during the ceremony, which surprised everyone, Lydia herself included.
Kitty caught the flowers, which surprised no one at all, as she had determined well beforehand that she intended to do so.
Mary offered a brief reflection upon the sacred nature of marriage which Mr. Collins, seated beside Charlotte in the third row, appeared to receive as personal vindication of every opinion he had ever formed upon the subject.
He nevertheless expressed, in grumbling tones, his patroness’s disappointment regarding the union between Elizabeth and Darcy, though nobody present paid the slightest attention to what he actually said.
Mr. Bennet walked Elizabeth down the aisle and gave her away with the expression of a father performing a duty he considered at once entirely proper and profoundly inconvenient. Afterward he shook Darcy’s hand and instructed him to take proper care of his daughter.
Georgiana, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and the Matlocks attended as Darcy’s family. Their relief and happiness at seeing him restored once more to life and society revealed itself plainly in the warmth with which they received Elizabeth.
Mr. and Mrs. Holt came also, which Darcy had not expected and which affected him more deeply than he had entirely prepared himself to bear.
Elizabeth had quietly prevailed upon Colonel Fitzwilliam to extend the invitation, and Clara’s parents had accepted it.
Darcy shook Mr. Holt’s hand and discovered himself for a moment incapable of speech, a circumstance Mr. Holt appeared to understand perfectly well without explanation.
Mrs. Holt declared that Elizabeth might consider her a second mother if she wished it, as she herself still considered Darcy very much a son.
Mr. Collins, together with a strongly worded letter from Lady Catherine de Bourgh, made known the reasons her ladyship could never possibly reconcile herself to the marriage.
After showing the letter to Elizabeth, Darcy consigned it directly to the hearth.
Elizabeth watched it burn with more pleasure than she could describe with words.
Mrs. Hurst and Caroline Bingley attended the wedding with expressions of very pointed disappointment. Nevertheless, they attended for their brother’s sake, which Bingley appeared determined to consider sufficient.
Jane Bingley and her husband purchased Netherfield permanently within the year, to Mrs. Bennet’s complete satisfaction and only moderate astonishment, as she had spent months loudly predicting precisely such an outcome to anyone willing to hear it.
Bingley declared himself perfectly content in Hertfordshire, particularly as it placed him within easy distance of both Longbourn and Pemberley’s future visitors, while Jane appeared equally happy to remain near her family.
The Darcys arrived at Pemberley during the first week of May.
Elizabeth held Darcy's head against her bosom through much of the journey north. Though he had long since recovered from the worst of it, travelling with his new bride brought back unwelcome recollections of the accident in the summer of 1809.
Yet when the woods at last opened before them and Pemberley came into view beneath the soft light of May, Darcy looked not toward the road behind him but toward the future awaiting him there.
And Elizabeth, feeling him finally relax against her, thought she had never seen a house look more like home.
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