“I missed you every day that you were away Andrew. Welcome home big brother,” Elizabeth said as she planted kisses on his cheeks.
“Who is this old lady and what have you done with the sprite that I left here when I departed?” Andrew teased his sister.
“It is me silly,” came the indignant reply.“Where is Lord Perry?” she asked after not seeing Andrew’s friend emerge from the conveyance.
“We sailed directly to Newcastle. Perry took a coach directly to Longfield Meadows to be with his family and as you see, I came to Snowhaven,” Andrew explained.
He lowered Elizabeth to the ground and then hugged Anne and lastly gave Richard a massive bear hug that was returned with equal fervour.“Should we go inside?” his mother reminded the family. As happy as she was that Andrew was returned home for her birthday, Elizabeth was also sad, because in a matter of weeks her brother would move to his own home at Hilldale; Snowhaven would no longer be his home.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Caroline Bingley had the worst year of her life at the Greenlake School for Troubled Girls. Her hands were calloused like those of a servant; her nails were kept short so they would not break off while she cleaned and scrubbed. Through all of this, she still stubbornly held onto her belief that she was the aggrieved party and that all of her dreams of taking her rightful place as a member of the first circles would be realised.
She had turned sixteen that year, but there had been no party or cake. No acknowledgement at all. She did not receive letters from her family, and she was not aware that her vitriol and threat-laced missives had never left the headmistress’s office. Rather, they had provided evidence of what her parents had always feared; their daughter had a mental deficiency that no amount of punishment or school would change.
In letters between themselves and the headmistress, they had reluctantly accepted that there was no choice but to commit Caroline to an asylum for the rest of her natural life. They agreed that she was a danger to herself, and others, and they could not understand why her hatred seemed to be aimed especially at Lady Elizabeth Fitzwilliam. Yes, they could see that she was jealous of the social status that the young girl lived with, but that still did not explain the absolute hatred and desires to make Lady Elizabeth suffer before she killed her that Caroline wrote about in her letters.
On the fifteenth day of June in the year 1801, the defiant young lady was led into Mrs Johnson’s office.“As you have not been willing or able to amend your behaviour and see the culpability that you alone bear for the situation you are in, you will be leaving us today,” the headmistress informed Caroline with no preamble.
“Is my family ready to apologise to me and take me home?” the delusional young lady asked.
“No, Miss Caroline, that is not what is happening. You are being committed to the Hesperia Asylum for incurable hysteria on this island where you will be cared for the remainder of your life.” It took Caroline a few moments to understand what the woman had just told her.
“NO! I order you to send me home this instant!” she screeched. Mrs Johnson signalled two waiting footmen who took the screeching Caroline by the arms and carried her up to her chamber to pack what she had into her small trunk. By the time that she had packed her trunk while the footmen waited for her in the hall, she was almost in a catatonic state. She followed the footman who carried her trunk down the stairs to the same cart that had brought her to the nightmarish place while the other man followed behind her.
As she seemed calm, she was not bound and sat in her stupor in the cart as it jerked forward and exited the big doors in the wall of the building. The cart was half way to the lowered drawbridge when Caroline stood and jumped from the cart and ran with all the speed that she was able to toward the cliff and the sheer drop to the rocks below. In her mind she saw herself running toward the welcoming arms of Fitzwilliam Darcy. The last thing that Caroline Bingley knew in her short and wasted life was that she was falling, and then there was nothing.
The footmen arrived at the edge of the cliff just as she fell onto the rocks below and the angry waves pulled her body, and soon nothing was left of the young lady as the sea claimed her body.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Mr and Mrs Bingley had considered every option that they could think of, they had consulted with the Bennets and other friends in the neighbourhood, hoping against hope that there would be a suggestion different than the one that they had to make, but in the end, it came back to the fact that their daughter was mentally unstable and there was no other option other than to have her committed to the asylum on the Isle of Man. At least they comforted themselves that unlike a place like Bedlam, the inmates were treated humanely and not put on display for the sport of the public.
It was almost a fortnight after the date that they knew that their daughter would be moved to the asylum that the letter arrived. Oscar Bingley almost collapsed when he read the missive and dropped it like it had seared his hand. His wife picked it up and read it.
15 June 1801
Greenlake School for Troubled Girls
Mr and Mrs Bingley,
It is my sad and solemn duty to inform you that your daughter Caroline took her own life…
Martha dropped the letter and collapsed into a sobbing heap on the closest settee. Her husband joined her, and they held each other and commiserated together, both feeling crushing guilt that their daughter’s life had ended thus at the tender age of sixteen.
It was like this that Louisa and Charles discovered their parents a little later when they both missed the midday meal. Louisa was extremely concerned as she saw her parents’distress; Charles picked the missive from the floor and read it silently.
“It is all my fault that my daughter is dead,” Martha wailed as her husband held onto her.“If I had never put those wrongheaded ideas into Caroline’s head…”
Louisa was in shock as Charles silently handed her the offending letter and she too read it.“Mama,” Louisa took one of her mother’s hands as she sat down next to her.“I heard the same words as my sister did and yet I chose to amend my way and change the path I was on. You could not control the fact that Caroline refused to hear anyone’s council but her own anymore that you could order the weather.”
“That may be true, Louisa,” Oscar responded sadly as he wiped tears from his eyes,“but as parents we are responsible for our children.”
“Did you and Mama not do everything that you could to get Caroline to amend her ways?” Charles asked firmly.“Yes, parents are responsible for their children, but how do you control one’s mind?”
“I agree with my brother, Mama and Papa,” Louisa added,“as sad as I am that Caroline took her own life, her life was driven by her own decisions, right up until shedecidedto run over the edge of a high cliff with rocks at the bottom. None of us imagined or desired this outcome; it was my late sister and she alone that chose this result.”
“Yes,” Charles agreed,“this is a tragedy and a waste of my sister’s life, but she was always determined that everything must be done her way and her way alone. In the end my sister’s tragic end was authored by none but herself!”
