CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
A week after their engagement, Bingley hosted the entire Bennet family—save the Wickhams who were, by then safely established in Newcastle—as well as his own sisters and Mr. Hurst, who was for the time being, recovered.
Having ordered with great anticipation and detail a meal which he was sure would delight and fascinate the entire party, he found himself rather embarrassed at the product Jensen sent up to the dining room. “No,”
slowly escaped his lips when the meal was presented.
Immediately he began to apologize.
“This is not quite what I had in mind:”
warm loaves of bread, topped in juice squeezed from tomatoes and thick slices of cheese.
“It is supposed to be… round and… flatter .”
His guests were gracious and, in all truth, even enjoyed the meal, but it was nothing of the glory he had experienced in Naples.
Later that evening, when Wilshere caught sight of what remained, he asked the cook the name of such a curious dish.
When he heard the answer, he took much of the staff aback by bursting out into bellowing laughter.
In the period shortly after their marriage, Bingley learned from Jane that her most fervent desire was to remain as close as possible to her sister, Elizabeth, rather than her parents.
And, as has been well-accounted for in other sources, the lovely Elizabeth Bennet was wed to Mr. Darcy of Pemberley.
After the new year, then, which they all spent at Pemberley, the newlywed Bingleys purchased a large swath of land within five miles of the Darcys.
Construction began on a home that spring, and by the following Easter, they were settled comfortably, and just in time for Jane to give birth to their first daughter.
The new estate was given the name Hope Park.
In the years to follow, Bingley’s sister Caroline, having relinquished Mr. Darcy as the object of her future hopes, was wed to a man of good wit and intelligence, not to mention fortune, from Merseyside.
His name was Duffy and was related by his mother’s side to the very Miss King who had been so fortuitously rescued from Mr. Wickham during his fortune-hunting days.
Mr. Duffy genuinely admired Caroline and went so far as to entertain her conceit and hubris with the exact degrees of gravity they merited (which, of course, was none at all).
In fact, his humour and indifference to all things vain, in addition to the failure of all her plans, had served to settle her with a dose of humility, however humble that dose might have been.
Mr. and Mrs. Duffy settled at his family’s estate near Stretton.
The next year, on the day after Christmas, it so happened that Sir John Walters of Northumberland was murdered while leaving Mrs. Younge’s establishment in the south of London in an apparent robbery attempt.
Less than a week later, Mrs. Younge herself met her end when she was robbed leaving the house with a large deposit of cash.
I can assure you most wholeheartedly, these instances were not the result of any whim, plot, or action of Mr. Bingley, nor any person associated with him.
Unfortunately, that same year brought further sickness to Mr. Hurst.
At first, he had bouts of illness including fevers, tremors, and vomiting which left him confined to bed for days or even weeks at a time, but as the condition progressed, his skin became jaundiced and itched incessantly.
His fingers became alarmingly clubbed at the tips and blood began to accompany his bodily excretions.
He saw doctors from York to London, not one of whom could offer a course of treatment that led to any substantial relief in his suffering.
One, in fact, prescribed two glasses of wine each night to help soothe the stomach.
This was, naturally, his favourite remedy offered by any doctor, but served to only worsen his symptoms.
Towards autumn, Louisa had him moved to Hope Park on the insistence of her brother, and over the last three months of Mr. Hurst’s life, he spent many hours in the company of Mr. Bingley, and was never in better spirits, despite his affliction.
Eventually, he slipped into a coma which lasted nearly three days and passed peacefully into the next life with his wife, sisters-in-law, and Mr. Bingley by his side.
After spending three months in mourning in Derbyshire, Louisa was taken in by Caroline and her husband and eventually lived on quite happily, herself having experienced something of an awakening after the death of her first husband.
It should be noted that Mr. Gallagher, the Cobbler-Constable, relocated with his wife and many children to a fashionable district in London and opened what would become one of the premier shoe shops in all of England, and perhaps even Europe, over the next decade.
His eldest son eventually inherited the shop and employed sisters and brothers and cousins and children and grandchildren alike for over a century.
Gallagher’s youngest son, however, became quite the success story in his own right as a founding member of the Metropolitan Police of London.
Though Mr. Bingley had invested one hundred percent of the capital which allowed Mr. Gallagher’s shop to open, advertise, and thrive, he never took a profit out of the business and even allowed himself to be bought out two decades later, and for far less than his shares were worth.
Most likely, the reader will be delighted to learn that Mr. Wilshere married in the years which followed this tale.
She was a fine lady from a respectable family in the village of Lambton.
He remained in Mr. Bingley’s service for another twenty-five years before his master forced him into early retirement.
Bingley’s aim in this was to take Mr. Wilshere’s son Daniel on as his steward and to take Mr. Wilshere himself on as a friend.
In his spare time, the retired steward took quite the fascination to blending his own whiskey, a hobby at which he eventually found a great deal of success.
His friends and family enjoyed the fruits of his labour for decades.
In time he bequeathed his prescription to Daniel whose own son would inherit it and pass it along down the generations.
As they aged, Wilshere, Bingley, and Darcy shared more and more evenings enraptured by the delights of good cigars, home-made whiskey, and each other’s society.
For many years, Mr. Bennet would often be found in their company.
Mr. Maitland distinguished himself in his schooling and went on to practice law under Mr. Philips, the brother-in-law of Mrs. Bennet.
Over the course of just a few years he became rather prominent and had plans to establish his own practice in Birmingham—only one thing stood in his way.
It was a rather unremarkable day when finally, Maitland proposed to and was accepted by Miss Catherine Bennet, with whom he had fallen in love years earlier during his work on behalf of Mr. Bingley in Meryton.
Kitty had matured marvellously during that time, though she still had a penchant for all things ridiculous, which happened to be one of the traits her new husband found most endearing.
In an oddly unsuspected, but perhaps peculiarly natural turn of events, three days after her twenty-first birthday, Miss Georgiana Darcy was wed to her cousin Colonel—or should we say, Field Marshall —Fitzwilliam.
The match might not have been particularly advantageous as far as her prospects were concerned, but she had become convinced that the General was the most handsome and the kindest man she had ever known, admittedly, save her brother and his excellent friend.
Darcy, for his part, was exceedingly pleased with the match, if for no other reason than to share in the happiness of two people for whom he cared so dearly.
It also so happened that, for his bravery and proficiency during the Battle of Waterloo where he served directly under the Duke of Wellington, Fitzwilliam was awarded a substantial estate in neighbouring Nottinghamshire, so Darcy and his sister were never apart more than fifty miles of good road.
Speaking of the Field Marshall, years down the line through a lengthy chain of events which would, perhaps, constitute a novel in and of themselves, Fitzwilliam came to learn of the identity of the man who arrested the traitor Mr. Trippier, and also of the role Lord Bertram St. John played in the scheme to manufacture faulty weapons for profit on the behalf of the French.
When he inquired after the attorney, Mr. Maitland, he was informed after being sworn to secrecy that his good friend Mr. Bingley was, in fact, the responsible party.
You might imagine the shock he experienced at hearing this news.
By this time, Lady St. John was deceased of natural causes, and due to some rather murky legal circumstances surrounding what heirs had claim to the title, it had gone vacant for a number of years.
In light of this, Field Marshall Fitzwilliam recommended Mr. Bingley for the title, and after Mr. Maitland worked tirelessly to clear what hurdles stood as encumbrances, it so happened in the year 1826 King George IV granted the request, making Mr. Charles Bingley the Earl of Canterbury.
Lord and Countess Canterbury set about donating most of the estate of Lord St. John to charity, even turning the house in Kent into a hospital for children and the poor.
They invested the profits of the estate in various ventures but were purposeful to use the large majority of the funds to help those in need.
The new Lord Canterbury even had the St. John house in Brighton razed to the earth and in its place erected houses for destitute families.
The Darcys and the Bingleys lived side-by-side the rest of their lives and raised many children between them.
Of those children and grandchildren and on down the line, many became titans of industry, as well as titans of charity.
Among their progeny might be counted Members of Parliament, surgeons and doctors, writers and painters, revolutionaries who secured women’s suffrage, as well as conservatives who fought against it.
Their offspring included soldiers and sailors, a farmer and a pub owner, a cellular telephone executive, and even a professional footballer, who might just have plied his trade in North London under a certain professorial Frenchman, while earning the moniker of “Invincible.”
The truth is, though some, or all, or not a scrap of this tale might be factual, what is important is that for those of us who care to close our eyes and imagine ourselves within the majestic parks of Netherfield or Hope or Pemberley, the Darcys and the Bingleys abide in all of us—all of us who desire justice, happiness, and love in the world.
For us, their legacy thrives as we take the next steps toward the creation of such a world, where people are judged not upon first impression, but on the quality of their character—a world where we are free not only to speak our minds, but to change them.
In one last note— and I confess, I cannot conceive how this important episode escaped my mind till now —
Mr. Collins was induced to consider a clergy position that happened to be open in Lambton.
Some have said this was because Mrs. Darcy herself missed her dear friend Charlotte.
Either way, Lady Catherine was in no mood to lose such a servile— oh, that’s not the word —vicar, that she sent the Reverend Mr. and his wife Mrs.
Collins on a holiday to Naples, one of her favourite European cities, in hopes of inducing them to stay on in her employ.
Whilst Mrs. Collins enjoyed her time there immensely, by course of an unfortunate event, her husband was prohibited from entering at all.
For one reason or another, the name of an Englishman William Collins was flagged at every point of entry to the city on suspicion of a double homicide nearly a decade earlier.
Though he spent nearly three weeks in a Neapolitan jail, Mr. Collins was released, one stone lighter but without a scratch, after Lady Catherine sent proof of his presence in Hunsford at the time of the murders.
He was pardoned just in time to join his wife for their departure back to England.
By great coincidence, a cook from a small enterprise in the city’s waterfront departed on that very same vessel, bound eventually for Derbyshire, where he had been hired by a great Lord to ply his trade.
—Fin.