Epilogue 2
Longbourn, Hertfordshire
The carriage pulled to a stop in front of Longbourn, and Darcy, nearest to the door, pushed it open and climbed down onto the gravel drive.
Charles Bingley followed him, and William Collins descended last. The other carriage, carrying Kitty and Lydia’s husbands, along with Mr. Allen, who had performed the funeral service, had already arrived, and the gentlemen were doubtless already indoors.
The wooden knocker on the door was tied up in black crepe and the curtains drawn, but Darcy, when he stepped into the vestibule of his wife’s childhood home, was reassured to hear the sound of laughter emanating from the drawing room.
It was not perhaps entirely appropriate, but he did not think it right for the children to be forced to stay silent and somber even if their maternal grandfather had just been buried.
“Fitzwilliam, Charles, William,” Elizabeth said as she stepped into the room. The lady was dressed from head to foot in black, as befitted a daughter in mourning, and she was pale, but she managed a smile. “I expect you are all quite hungry. There is a cold collation set up for the mourners.”
“Thank you, Elizabeth,” Charles said, gesturing for William to precede him into the dining room.
With the death of Mr. Bennet, Longbourn was now the property of Mr. Collins, and thus it was appropriate that the man enter first. It said much for Collins’s improvement that, instead of rattling on endlessly, he was holding his silence in the face of his sister-in-law’s sorrow.
Darcy stayed behind, his eyes fixed worriedly on his wife’s face.
It had been a difficult year for Elizabeth.
In January, Mrs. Bennet had died after a brief illness, and Elizabeth had been unable to return to Hertfordshire due to a particularly harsh winter.
That had been painful, but then Mr. Bennet, to the surprise of everyone, went into a long decline, which had ended a week earlier in his death.
This time, Elizabeth and Darcy and their five children were able to rush to Hertfordshire to lay the patriarch of Longbourn to rest.
“Elizabeth?” Darcy asked, reaching his hands out to grasp his beloved’s hands in his own.
“I am all right,” she assured him, though the stricken look in her eyes belied her words. “I am glad you were able to attend the funeral, Fitzwilliam. It seems right that all my father’s sons-in-law were present to watch him buried next to my mother.”
He gazed at her worriedly, longing to comfort her but unsure of how to do so. It had been fifteen years since the death of his own father, but he still remembered the grief and pain of losing his last parent.
“Are you hungry, or would you be willing to go outside with me?” Elizabeth asked suddenly.
“My dear, I would be honored. Where are the children?”
“Playing with their cousins, or napping, or eating, depending on their ages and dispositions. Jane said she would ensure that they are looked after well.”
“Come along then,” he requested, and said to a maid nearby, “Mrs. Darcy and I will be outside.”
“Yes, sir.”
Darcy escorted his wife out the door and, impelled by memories, guided her toward the wilderness where he had asked for her hand in marriage more than a decade before.
She followed him absentmindedly, her eyes darting to and fro as if trying to imprint this day in her memory.
He held his silence, content to let her think and ponder, until he found a comfortable wooden bench next to a bed of peonies whose cheerful colors stood in sharp contrast to the Darcys’ somber mourning clothes.
“I never imagined that I would lose my father so soon,” Elizabeth said, sinking onto the wooden bench and staring blankly at a distant bank of puffy white clouds. “I cannot believe it.”
“I know, my love. It has been a terrible shock.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard and then said, “I am so thankful we visited him in March! At least he was able to meet little James, and Sarah and Anthony will, I hope, have some fond memories of their grandfather at the end of his life. He was not so terribly bad in March.”
“No, your father was lucid most of the time; indeed, we had a marvelous argument about the writing and character of Daniel Defoe. He seemed his old self.”
“Jane says that he was having bad spells even in March,” Elizabeth confessed, “but that he successfully hid them from us. I know that Jane and Charles, along with Kitty and her husband, carried the burden of his failing health and the oversight of Longbourn these last three months. I wish I had been here and yet, of course I could not be – not with our boys sick with scarlet fever in April.”
“No one can be in two places at once, Elizabeth, and the Bingleys and the Allens had each other to assist in the care of Mr. Bennet and the estate.”
“You are correct, of course,” Elizabeth said, wiping her face with a black trimmed handkerchief. “I know these feelings will pass with time, of course, but for now...”
“My dear Elizabeth, you have lost both father and mother in the last six months. It is normal, natural, and entirely right that you are grieving.”
Elizabeth nodded and leaned over to rest her head against her husband’s comforting bulk. He wrapped his arm around her, and for a full ten minutes, they sat in comforting silence.
Elizabeth finally broke the stillness by remarking, “At least he died easily. Jane said he was never in pain; he just grew increasingly weak.”
“That is good indeed.”
“I think he missed our mother more than we ever thought he would. I suppose that even though they were not very compatible, they were used to one another.”
“They both lived good lives, my dear.”
“Yes, they did. I think too that my parents drew closer in the last decade. Mother was far calmer once we older girls were well married, and she also seemed to find more comfort and peace in God.”
“Mrs. Allen assisted in that endeavor, I believe.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed fondly. “It was, of course, very sad that Joshua Allen’s first wife died, but he and Kitty seem to be doing marvelously well together, and Mrs. Allen is a wise and comforting relation to us all.”
Silence fell again, and Elizabeth’s eyes grew heavy.
The last week had been entirely exhausting, from the moment an express had arrived announcing Mr. Bennet’s death, to the arrangements to depart on short notice, to the days-long journey from Pemberley to Longbourn.
It had been a wearying trip with five children in two carriages, though both Sarah and Anthony had done their best to help entertain their five year old twin brothers, Matthew and Luke, and two year old Rachel.
The Darcys’ peaceful interlude was abruptly broken by the sudden sound of rushing feet and youthful voices from the lawn next to the hermitage.
Elizabeth tilted her head to listen and then rose to her feet.
With Darcy in tow, she walked over to an elm tree, from which vantage point they could observe the gamboling children who were now jumping and rolling about on the green lawn of Longbourn with various fathers and servants in attendance.
“Shall I?” Darcy asked, and Elizabeth chuckled and pushed him gently toward their elder four children, who were eagerly surrounding two spaniel puppies, both of whom were jumping about and licking their admirers’ faces and hands.
Elizabeth watched as her beloved husband hurried quickly over to supervise his children’s interactions with the dogs, and then her eyes drifted to William Collins, who was sitting on a bench in the shade with his eight year old twin daughters on either side of him.
Collins had improved remarkably since Lady Catherine had been deposed from Rosings and forced to live in the Dower House.
Mary herself had enjoyed her time as mistress of the Hunsford parsonage, though the birth of two daughters and two sons had limited her ability to minister to the local women of Hunsford as much as she wished.
Now the Collinses would oversee Longbourn, and Elizabeth was confident that with the assistance of Bingley and Mary, William would prove a reasonably competent master of the estate.
Her gaze shifted to Charles Bingley, who was arranging a game of battledore and shuttlecock for the older children.
Charles had proven a faithful and kind husband and father to Jane and their four children; more than that, he had matured in his ability to hold the line with his sisters and his tenants.
Jane, too, while a gracious lady, had developed a core of steel, the nascent sliver of which had formed the day Jane had learned of Wickham’s attack on her beloved Elizabeth.
The side door to Longbourn opened again and Kitty, Georgiana, and Lydia exited, all dressed in mourning, all escorting their own small children.
Kitty, who had taken on the role of mother to Joshua Allen’s two children from his first marriage, had given birth to little Elias Allen two years ago and was expecting another child.
Georgiana and Lydia, who had come out in London society the same year, had fallen in love with a pair of brothers.
Lydia, married to the eldest son of the Earl of Greenstoke, was now a member of the nobility, which had pleased Mrs. Bennet enormously.
Georgiana, married to a mere second son, was not ennobled, but Elizabeth knew it mattered not.
Both her youngest sister and her dear sister by marriage had sought respect and love in their marriages, which pleased Elizabeth enormously.
Both had birthed sons three years previously, and both were expecting children again.
There would be a host of new babies in the next year.
For a moment, Elizabeth felt a stab of sorrow that these new children would never know their maternal grandparents, but then, at the sight of so many happy, laughing children, at the sight of her dear Fitzwilliam on the ground now despite the effect on his clothes, her spirits lifted.
Her parents were gone, yes, but they left behind happy, healthy families, and an estate which would survive and thrive through the next generation.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
The End