Chapter 16. Epilogue
The wedding of Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy was celebrated at the Gardiner family church.
When the Gardiner’s carriage arrived, the bride and her uncle visited the graveyard with a bundle of flowers appropriate for a maid of honour to carry in the service.
After a moment beside Jane’s gravestone, Mr Gardiner turned Elizabeth toward the church, and they joined Mrs Gardiner at the door; the flowers remained behind with Jane as Elizabeth took her place beside Fitzwilliam Darcy at the altar.
As planned, the couple remained in London until April and then travelled north to Pemberley where they remained until September.
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After the turn of the year and publication of the details of the simple wedding of Fitzwilliam Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, Caroline Bingley’s anger boiled over and one evening in the parlour of the Hurst home, she slapped Louisa.
When she entered the dining room the next morning to break her fast, she found no food prepared or servants in that part of the house.
When she attempted to enter the kitchens, Mr Hurst appeared and offered her the use of his carriage that morning to move to one of three reputable homes that took ‘boarders’.
As Hurst handed Caroline a paper with the list of addresses, Hurst promised, “But if you are here after the noon hour, the footmen will remove your trunks to the street and then bar the door to you.”
Furious, Caroline stomped above stairs and ordered her maid to pack.
Warned ahead of time by the housekeeper, the girl had already begun the task and just before noon, Caroline Bingley left her brother-in-law’s house.
Relatively safe in a ‘room’ in the first respectable house on the list, Caroline plotted to marry a gentleman…
any gentleman. After just a month, with the banns read at a local church, she married Albert Belmont, her attorney.
However, Mr Belmont failed to disclose that his practice lost the best client and its reputation in the last year and was collapsing.
Thereafter, Caroline’s life revolved around a husband who drank and gambled.
In ten years, she was penniless and forced to take work as a lady’s companion.
Despite Louisa’s prayers, she never heard from Charles during the remainder of her life, though she heard from Caroline frequently with requests for money or shelter.
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Before spring, Mr Darcy was informed that Lady Catherine de Bourgh moved into her brother’s London home.
Mr and Mrs Lincoln returned from their honeymoon and the arguments with Lady Catherine began almost immediately.
The older woman refused the notion of moving into the dower house and her son-in-law eventually ordered the footmen to ‘remove Lady Catherine’ from his house.
Mr Darcy was called to Matlock House to help resolve the issue of where Lady Catherine would settle.
That day the Earl of Matlock argued with his sister, castigated her for thinking that all men would bow before her bluster, and offered her a room within his home for the remainder of her life.
The woman became a recluse and seldom saw the three children born to Mr and Mrs Lincoln in Kent.
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Longbourn saw few happy days in the coming years.
Each of the three daughters at home married and left Meryton, with infrequent visits and few letters ever exchanged.
Mary married a pastor in Northampton and maintained correspondence with Mrs Collins and Mrs Darcy over the years.
Kitty and Lydia both married officers and followed their husbands on campaign.
Kitty died when dysentery swept through the army while on the continent.
After the wars with Napoleon ended, Lydia spent the balance of her life in India.
She never wrote to her family and vanished from their lives.
In another ten years, the legacy left by Mr Gardiner’s mother grew to be a substantial sum of money. Equal portions were given to Elizabeth and Mary, and then to the Gardiner children when they married and started their lives.
Mrs Bennet preceded Mr Bennet in death and the gentleman lived alone in the manor house for seven years before dying in late winter.
Without any problems, Mr and Mrs Collins took possession of Longbourn at Easter and moved their three sons into the house as farmers began to sow the fields with grain.
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Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy spent many happy years together and welcomed four children during the first ten years of their marriage: three boys and one girl. The only daughter, Jane Darcy, was the youngest and she grew up much loved by her doting parents.
On Gracechurch Street, Charlie Gardiner grew tall and strong in his loving family. He attended the best schools and with the aid of his cousin’s husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy, he attended university and became a respected attorney in London.