Their Glory Continues

Part VII – The Years Go By (Epilogue)

To the disappointment of Mrs. Winters, as well as Mrs. Reynolds, the housekeeper at Pemberley, the Darcys did not announce their impending parenthood until just prior to their first wedding anniversary. While they did not have twenty children, they did have four – two boys and two girls. Not a lonely one in the bunch as they were always about their Bingley cousins, two girls and a boy, or their six Fitzwilliam cousins. Yes, Colonel Fitzwilliam produced five girls before he finally got his heir but more about him later. And let us not forget Georgiana Darcy Marwick and her three boys to add to the fray.

While not truly cousins to the Darcys, the Hurst children were counted as such because of their kinship to the Bingley siblings. Louisa and Samuel had a girl and a boy. Their first child was a girl whom they named Elizabeth in honor of the woman who had saved their marriage. They called her Bess, however, to appease Louisa’s sister, Caroline, who had not gotten over the fact the Elizabeth Bennet Darcy had stolen Mr. Darcy from her, as she believed.

As the five families lived an easy distance from each other, the children were almost constantly together. There was much laughter, playing, being mischievous, sharing secrets, and all those things that attend a normal, happy childhood and the camaraderie built in those formative years extended into adulthood.

Both the housekeepers had no cause to repine because when all the cousins got together, they filled the halls with laughter and footsteps and chaos and when everyone went back to their own homes, dealing with just four Darcy children was more than enough work for them.

Yes, the Colonel, who did he marry? Well, as mentioned in the beginning of this story, Fate likes to arrange things in certain ways. In the Colonel’s case, it was quite an ironic twist of fate that led him to his wife.

A few months after the Colonel’s intrusion on the Darcys found him again at their table. A guest at that dinner party was none other than Elizabeth’s younger sister, Katherine or Kitty as she was called. Kitty was in Town staying with her older sister, Jane, and her husband, Charles Bingley.

Kitty had always had a fondness for a man in a red coat and was quite infatuated with the Honorable Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam.

The Colonel was quite taken in by the pretty face and playful manners of a young lady who was paying him particular interest. Why he felt quite the young buck again!

The next few weeks saw the Colonel and Kitty attending the same social functions and that initial attraction grew into a serious regard. It did not take long before their affection for one another had turned into love. Kitty found that beneath the handsome man in a red coat, was an honorable and respectable man. A man she could esteem and have as her partner for the remainder of her life.

The Colonel found that Kitty was not only a pretty girl but was smart and sensible and willing to live a life with him regardless of a red coat or not. In fact, she was even willing to live life on an Army Officer’s pay as she did not care about wealth but only about him.

We all know that the course of true love never runs smoothly and that was true with this couple. They had a dragon sitting directly in their path -- Darcy and Fitzwilliam’s aunt, Lady Catherine De Bourgh. Lady Catherine had it in her mind that Mr. Darcy was to marry her only daughter, Anne. That did not come to pass as Mr. Darcy chose Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Be that as it may, Lady Catherine’s anger at that betrayal of her daughter had set a fissure in the family, at least between Lady Catherine and her nephew. The rest of his family found Elizabeth charming and witty and very good for the stoic and severe Mr. Darcy. When her nephew was snatched from her grasp by that lowly Bennet baggage, Lady Catherine soon set her sights on another nephew for the honor of her daughter’s hand. Colonel Fitzwilliam!

When Richard Fitzwilliam decided to ask for the hand of Miss Katherine Bennet, he called a conference with his father, Lord Matlock, and his cousin Darcy, to discuss how to overcome the obstacle of Lady Catherine. They all agreed that her rage at having another nephew betray her daughter would be fierce and such ‘betrayal’ would involve another Bennet girl would make life in England quite difficult for the Colonel and his bride for quite awhile.

Lord Matlock agreed to inform his sister, Lady Catherine, of the sad news. He and his wife were delighted with their future daughter-in-law so it was agreed that particular piece of news would not be passed along until after the wedding and the couple was safely out of the country. Mr. Darcy contribution to the plan was to provide a year long honeymoon in Italy complete with a villa on the coast.

Richard soon gained acceptance of his proposal by the fair Miss Bennet and then proceeded to explain the problem they faced and plans for the surprise wedding began. A surprise wedding! What was the need in that? It was only a surprise for the bride-to-be’s mother. Mrs. Bennet was quite the gossip and the news of a daughter marrying the son of an Earl would have spread around the county faster than a fire in a hayloft. The fact that Lady Catherine had ears in the neighborhood of the Bennets made the “surprise” for the bride’s mother essential. Lady Catherine’s parson had married Charlotte Lucas, the daughter of a family that was particularly close to the Bennet family and everyone knew that news of a Bennet daughter marrying in the Lady’s family would not be long in reaching her.

The plans were to have a small family wedding at Pemberley. The Colonel resigned his commission, bid a final adieu to his widows, and settled into an estate from Lady Matlock’s dower near Derby that his parents had gifted him and his bride in celebration of their wedding.

On the guise of a summer visit to Pemberley, the Bennets arrived two days before Kitty’s wedding. As expected, Mrs. Bennet was both in rapture at her daughter having secured the son of an Earl and quite disappointed in not being allowed to participate in the wedding planning.

After the wedding, the groom whisked his bride away to Italy. While waiting for the ship to sail, the couple ensconced themselves in the best suite in the best inn the port town had to offer.

During that short wait for their departure, Richard found just how lucky he was in his choice of bride. Kitty showed herself to be quite a passionate woman with a zeal for her duties in the marital bed that left her husband both happy and exhausted. It was with reluctance that the couple left their suite to board the ship. Once out on the open sea, they found that the pitch and roll of the boat added to their conjugal congresses as witnessed by the fact that they rarely left their stateroom.

It seemed that the Fitzwilliam men were not the only ones with a tendency to an overactive libido. The Bennet girls seemed to match them quite well – quite well indeed!

By the time they reached port in Italy, the couple was hesitant to give up their sea legs for terra firma but they went to settle into their leased villa. Kitty and the Colonel had planned many sightseeing tours of the ancient country before their marriage. While they visited a few of their planned destinations, they found that viewing dusty museums, cruising down a smelly canal, or hiking among ancient ruins did not offer the excitement of the privacy of their own villa. So during their year in that country, they were only away from that quiet and very private hideaway a grand total of two months.

When the two Fitzwilliams arrived back in England, they found they were now two and a half Fitzwilliams. Thus began Richard Fitzwilliam’s quest to populate his homeland with his progeny.

As an aside to the Fitzwilliams story, it must be noted that upon the announcement they were expecting a sixth child, Mrs. Winters immediately went to Mr. Darcy with a complaint.

“Mr. Darcy!” said the housekeeper.

“Yes, Mrs. Winters, what can I do for you?” was his reply.

“Why can you not be more like your cousin, the Colonel?” she commanded.

“In what way, Mrs. Winters?” he queried.

“Why he will soon have six children and you have but four!” she complained.

“But, Mrs. Winters, it is not from lack of trying.” He smiled at his housekeeper.

With a stern look, she had her say, “Try harder!” With a wink, she left the Master to what he was doing as she went to find Mrs. Darcy to inform her that her husband wished to see her in his study.

With the transformation of Samuel Hurst and the restoration of the Hursts marriage, the Darcys re-evaluated their previous impressions of the couple. With both couples having such a close relationship with the Bingleys, it was not long before the Hursts and Darcys were good friends.

Several years after the Darcys’ wedding, Louisa Hurst was finally able to explain her mysterious ‘Thank you’ that was offered on that call the morning after the Darcys’ debut at the theatre. With the intimacy that the two couples had developed, Louisa also related the confirmation by Mr. Darcy of exactly what happened behind those closed curtains.

While Elizabeth took great amusement in the fact that her husband, though quite unknowingly, had admitted such, Mr. Darcy did not find it quite as amusing especially when the next day Mr. Hurst located him for a ‘private’ word of thanks and also to express his high regard of Mr. Darcy for perpetrating such an audacious act.

What was Miss Caroline Bingley’s fate? Fate is capricious and no less so with Miss Bingley.

When Caroline was a young lady about to debut into society, she made a list of attributes to be considered in accepting a husband. First, he must be wealthy; there was no negotiating on this item. Second, he must be a gentleman with good connections; a title was preferred but could be set aside if the wealth was sufficient. Upon her introduction to her brother’s good friend, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, she found someone who met both those qualifications and there was no need to look further. The marriage of Mr. Darcy to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, however, did not stop her quest. But the failure of her efforts to dissolve the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, evidently did

As Caroline made her way in society, she secretly added a third qualification to her list. It was secret as she did have sense enough to know that she would never meet a man who would qualify. The undisclosed third item was that she be spared the horror of having marital relations with her spouse.

With the example of lusty couples around her, Caroline should have been curious and eager to enter into the world of erotic pleasure. But that was not the case as Caroline had lived with her sister, Louisa, and her husband, Samuel, during the disappointing years of their marriage and the thought of intimate relations with a man, with that example before her, was not amenable to her. Then there were the conversations she unintentionally, on purpose, overheard of society matrons discussing their marriage and the disgust and degradation that they were submitted to before producing the required heir and then sending their husband off to a mistress, thereby leaving them in peace.

Caroline was practical and knew that part of being a wife was to produce an heir for her husband and while she did not liked to think about it, she resigned herself to the knowledge that she would have to submit, hopefully for only a short time, to her husband’s baser instincts until she could conceive a child. After such she would send her husband to his mistress and resume the life she had envisioned for herself.

The reconciliation of Louisa and Samuel Hurst weighed heavily on her mind. Her dear sister, Louisa, had deserted her for that man and she was sure that Mr. Hurst held some dreadful information or other such thing over Louisa’s head to make her submit to such horrors. Miss Bingley had begged and pleaded with her sister to denounce her husband and live a life away from him, to the point that the Hursts sent Caroline to live with her brother, Charles, much to Caroline’s dismay and disgust. However, living with the Bingleys proved to be a bad decision because of their close relationship with the Darcys. Therefore, the only other solution Miss Bingley’s brother and sister had to alleviate themselves of the aggravation that she brought to their lives was to provide her with her own establishment.

With the Darcy marriage and her sister’s desertion, Caroline was filled with bitterness and scorn, especially towards Elizabeth Darcy. It did not help that Mrs. Darcy became the toast of the ton and that Caroline’s disparaging remarks about her caused many to lose favor with Caroline. So the invitations that she so desired were no longer coming her way and the few she did receive were to functions that included those people of equal or lesser standing than she. Before she realized that she had been her own worst enemy, she was labeled ‘on the shelf’ and expected to live the life of a spinster. At this point in her life, Caroline was desperate and her list of attributes for a husband had been thrown in the fire.

Many thought that Caroline Bingley deserved what fate had dealt her and perhaps she did deserve it but fate took pity on Miss Bingley and delivered to her a man.

One of the few invitations Miss Bingley received that season was to a ball. Never mind that the ball was hosted by her brother, it was a reason for Caroline to dress in the latest of fashion and be with people she aspired to have as friends. The one caveat to the invitation was that Miss Bingley be on her best behavior. Caroline’s loneliness, and need to be back in society, caused her to accede to the request.

Soon after arriving at the ball, Miss Bingley was requested, by her brother, for a dance. Afterward, there seemed to be no other gentlemen eager to partner with her and she went to sit by the wall with the other flowers. Soon Mr. Charles Bingley approached his sister with a gentlemen seeking to make her acquaintance. Mr. Horace Crenshaw proceeded to invite Miss Bingley to dance.

The evening could not have gone better for Miss Bingley. Spending a considerable amount of time with Mr. Crenshaw talking and dancing had given Caroline hope for her future. So the very next morning she was camped out in her brother’s study to gather any information she could about Mr. Crenshaw. After all, when one goes after prey, it is best to be well informed about said prey.

Mr. Horace Crenshaw was in his mid-forties and up until a few years ago, had spent his entire waking hours working. The result of all this hard work was that he was a very wealthy man. On reaching the age of forty, he took stock of his life and decided he had more money than he knew what to do with so he retired to live the life of a gentleman. He purchased an estate in the country and a large house in town. As all gentlemen need something to occupy their time, Mr. Crenshaw chose to invest his wealth. He had an uncanny knack of knowing what would make money and what would not. So each year after his retirement, his wealth increased significantly. Now his annual income was quadruple what it was several years ago. So on meeting Miss Bingley, Mr. Crenshaw was a wealthy gentleman, an obscenely wealthy gentleman.

Having worked so diligently in his youth, Mr. Crenshaw had no time for the ladies. Also, Mr. Crenshaw had a small problem that made him shy and reluctant to enter into an association with a lady. A tree climbing accident in his youth had left Mr. Crenshaw unable to produce an heir. Not only that but he was unable to have marital relations with his wife – if you cannot get it up, you cannot get it in.

When Mr. Crenshaw beheld Miss Bingley on the dance floor, he was immediately smitten. After introductions were made, he found her charming and it did not hurt that her attentions to him rather inflated his ego. The courtship began.

After several weeks of paying constant court to Miss Bingley, Mr. Crenshaw wanted to propose marriage but realized that marriage to him may be a disappointment to his amour, he felt a bit guilty by raising her expectations if it was all to come to naught. He decided that he was willing to take the risk for a lifetime of happiness with Miss Bingley or, if that failed, try to remain her good friend.

One afternoon on arriving to call on Miss Bingley, he requested a private audience.

Caroline was ecstatic. A gentleman who meets two of her requirements of a husband was requesting a private tête-à-tête with her. It could only mean one thing – a marriage proposal. She was quite beside herself at the prospect.

Once their privacy was assured, Mr. Crenshaw took a deep breath and began his prepared speech, “Miss Bingley, I have come to have a tender regard for you and wish to spend the rest of my life making you happy. Before we go any further, however, I must relate to you a problem that may stand in our way for a happy future…”

Caroline’s excitement at the beginning of his speech soon dampened. Yet, here was a chance at obtaining a husband--possibly her last chance--and she was not going to let some insignificant problem stand in her way. To encourage him, she said, “Mr. Crenshaw, I have developed a tender regard for you as well and I am sure there is no problem that we cannot overcome to ensure our happiness.”

Mr. Crenshaw lowered his head and stated what he feared would be a problem that could not be prevailed over, “Miss Bingley, I am not a whole man. I cannot father a child nor can I participate in marital relations with my wife.”

Caroline’s joy was overflowing. She had finally found a man who met her third requirement. Making sure he would not slip from her grasp, she stated, “Mr. Crenshaw that indeed is not a problem. I believe that the happiness we can share is paramount to having a child together. It would give me no greater pleasure than to be your wife.”

It did not take long for things to be settled between these two. Once the engagement was announced, only three weeks passed before the nuptials were performed. After all, they were not getting any younger.

Mrs. Caroline Crenshaw believed herself to the happiest woman to have ever lived. Her husband provided her the funds to outfit herself in the latest fashions, their homes were decorated in the latest styles, and their dinners, soirees, and balls were lavishly executed. In fact, in later years, an invitation to the Crenshaw’s was ‘the invitation’ to receive.

After twenty years of marriage, Mr. Horace Crenshaw passed away leaving a very wealthy widow who had become the hostess of London. Some years later, Mrs. Crenshaw followed her husband still wealthy and happy she was still a virgin.

So you see our characters found a lot of Glory in their lives and where better to end this story.

Finis

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