Disclaimer:
The story-line is mine. The rest of things are not. Is that enough of a disclaimer? I hope so.
Mrs Bennet, who has not though about the entailment or about marrying her daughter since Jane died, has just realized that it might have been her words what started it all. Her wailing about how she and her daughters will be living in the hedgerows if Mr Bennet was to predeceased them. Predeceased them. How ironic. Now if he predeceased her, she would have her dowry to rely on. What does it matter, either way? She would live without her family. Perhaps with her brother or her sister, or on her own house. It does not matter. Nothing matters.
Mr and Mrs Bennet live (or survive) in a house that has become a mausoleum. The rumour is now firmly stablished that the Bennets have been cursed, but nobody knows if the curse was just applied to the daughters or if the parents will also be subjected to it. Your guest is as good as mine at this point. Longbourn have become a reminder of a life that seems so long ago. Mr Bennet at this point only have turned to his port, cigars and literature. Mrs Bennet has turned to Laudanum and crying silently. Sometimes they share space and memories, and some other they dwell on their own sadness in separate rooms. They do this until Mrs Bennet cannot take it any longer. Her expression empty, her heart broken beyond repair, her eyes dry after too many tears, she visits the tombs of her daughters and kisses her husband goodbye before leaving to take care of her girls.
She is last seen in Dover. She has made herself known, and then jumped out a cliff. When her body is recovered, she carries a letter with instructions to bury her in Longbourn with her daughters. She donates to the poor all her and her daughters' earthy possessions. Her body is laid down as she instructed, and in Meryton much is commented about the tragic and fitting destiny of a mother who could not live without her offspring.
If anyone wonders about the fate of Mr Bennet, it would only be said that he did not see fit to follow his wife's way. He, feeling perhaps deserved of a punishment, kept living in Longbourn alone, and became slowly a hermit. With his books, port and cigars, barely standing the silence, he lived until the ripe age of 90. Most of his state production, that otherwise would have had gone to daughters' dowries or to keep a family of seven feed and dressed, went back to his tenants, with very little care for the main house itself, and to the poor.
The Bennets became a legend to be told in the wee hours to cause fright. The younger generations hardly believed that Mr Bennet existed, or that his wife was a human and not a banshee, or that he has ever had the five most beautiful daughters in the county. Fools them all.
