Pride and Prejudice and Superheroes

6. BINGLEY'S ARRIVAL AT LONGBOURN HOUSE

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Mrs Bennet in a familial alliance with her five daughters, tried every method of interrogation Regency England afforded them to draw from Mr Bennet a sufficient description of Mr Charles Bingley. They attacked him in various ways with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises. However, he eluded the insistence and skill of them all. Until, at last, they were obliged to accept the second-hand intelligence of their neighbours, Lady Lucas and her husband, Sir William Lucas.

The reports of the Lucases were highly favourable, and they had been more than delighted with him. According to them, Bingley was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the upcoming Meryton Ball held at the high-ceilinged, convivial spacious assembly rooms of the Meryton Assembly building with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful. To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love; and consequently, the five Bennet sisters entertained very lively hopes of winning Bingley's heart.

"If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield Park," said Mrs Bennet to her husband, "and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing left to wish for."

It was but a few days later that Bingley returned Mr Bennet's visit, and it was Kitty who noticed him first from the upstairs windows where the five Bennet young ladies were gathered awaiting a first glimpse of his arrival.

"Here he comes!" exclaimed Kitty, with a sharp gasp followed by a quick cough or two. "Doesn't he look the perfect gentleman? So handsome. So refined. And his clothes are highly fashionable, don't you think? Such a beautiful blue coat. I'd say he is quite the horseman too. He rides that black horse as if he is in perfect symbiosis with it."

"Where? Oh where, Kitty?" queried Lydia. "There's no one in sight!"

"You see him, Jane, don't you?" asked Kitty of her eldest sister.

"I see him not," answered Jane, curtly.

"Oh Kitty," said Mary, "you are such a silly girlish tease. Why vex us so?"

"But is he not there!" insisted Kitty, pointing at far away fields.

"He most decidedly is not!" rebuked Mary. "But it seems your cough is riding with him, as you have forgotten to cough this last minute."

"I only cough when I have little choice, is all." Kitty looked hurt by the remarks of her bookish sister. "You will see I have little choice over my eyesight too, in one minute more." This remark was followed by a louder than unusual succession of coughs.

"Kitty!" said a frowning Jane. "You are particularly ridiculous and attention seeking this fine day."

Kitty removed a handkerchief from a dress pocket and dabbed her reddening eyes. "You'll see," she said in a croaky sobbing voice.

"Look!" cried Lizzy, pointing more or less in the same direction Kitty had just pointed. "There's something slowly wending its way along the country road. See the small plume of dust in its wake?"

"No. I can't," said Mary.

"I see it now," said Jane. "And it does look like a blue dot ahead of the dust plume. If this turns out to be the scenario Kitty described, then she must have two telescopes for eyes."

Slowly, steadily, inexorably Kitty's description of Bingley became real. The man in a blue coat could clearly be seen by all the young ladies, galloping at great speed on his black-coated trusty steed.

Bingley took a short cut jumping over hedges and fences with consummate ease.

When he was at last walking his steed into the courtyard, the young Bennets ran down to the reception room to announce his arrival.