Nature and Art Part 22

CHAPTER XLV.

As Henry and his son, after parting from the poor labourer, approached the late bishop's palace, all the charms of its magnificence, its situation, which, but a few hours before, had captivated the elder Henry's mind, were vanished; and, from the mournful ceremony he had since been witness of, he now viewed this n.o.ble edifice but as a heap of rubbish piled together to fascinate weak understandings, and to make even the wise and religious man, at times, forget why he was sent into this world.

Instead of presenting themselves to their nephew and cousin, they both felt an unconquerable reluctance to enter under the superb, the melancholy, roof. A bank, a hedge, a tree, a hill, seemed, at this juncture, a pleasanter shelter, and each felt himself happy in being a harmless wanderer on the face of the earth rather than living in splendour, while the wants, the revilings of the hungry and the naked were crying to Heaven for vengeance.

They gave a heartfelt sigh to the vanity of the rich and the powerful; and pursued a path where they hoped to meet with virtue and happiness.

They arrived at Anfield.

Possessed by apprehensions, which his uncle's funeral had served to increase, young Henry, as he entered the well-known village, feared every sound he heard would convey information of Rebecca's death. He saw the parsonage house at a distance, but dreaded to approach it, lest Rebecca should no longer be an inhabitant. His father indulged him in the wish to take a short survey of the village, and rather learn by indirect means, by observation, his fate, than hear it all at once from the lips of some blunt relater.

Anfield had undergone great changes since Henry left it. He found some cottages built where formerly there were none; and some were no more where he had frequently called, and held short conversations with the poor who dwelt in them. Amongst the latter number was the house of the parents of Agnes--fallen to the ground! He wondered to himself where that poor family had taken up their abode. Henry, in a kinder world!

He once again cast a look at the old parsonage house: his inquisitive eye informed him there no alteration had taken place externally; but he feared what change might be within.

At length he obtained the courage to enter the churchyard in his way to it. As he slowly and tremblingly moved along, he stopped to read here and there a gravestone; as mild, instructive conveyers of intelligence, to which he could attend with more resignation, than to any other reporter.

The second stone he came to he found was erected _To the memory of the Reverend Thomas Rymer_, Rebecca's father. He instantly called to mind all that poor curate's quick sensibility of wrong towards _himself_; his unbridled rage in consequence; and smiled to think; how trivial now appeared all for which he gave way to such excess of pa.s.sion!

But, shocked at the death of one so near to her he loved, he now feared to read on; and cast his eyes from the tombs accidentally to the church.

Through the window of the chancel, his sight was struck with a tall monument of large dimensions, raised since his departure, and adorned with the finest sculpture. His curiosity was excited--he drew near, and he could distinguish (followed by elegant poetic praise) "_To the memory of John Lord Viscount Bendham_."

Notwithstanding the solemn, melancholy, anxious bent of Henry's mind, he could not read these words, and behold this costly fabric, without indulging a momentary fit of indignant laughter.

"Are sculpture and poetry thus debased," he cried, "to perpetuate the memory of a man whose best advantage is to be forgotten; whose no one action merits record, but as an example to be shunned?"

An elderly woman, leaning on her staff, now pa.s.sed along the lane by the side of the church. The younger Henry accosted her, and ventured to inquire "where the daughters of Mr. Rymer, since his death, were gone to live?"

"We live," she returned, "in that small cottage across the clover field."

Henry looked again, and thought he had mistaken the word _we_; for he felt a.s.sured that he had no knowledge of the person to whom he spoke.

But she knew him, and, after a pause, cried--"Ah! Mr. Henry, you are welcome back. I am heartily glad to see you, and my poor sister Rebecca will go out of her wits with joy."

"Is Rebecca living, and will be glad to see me?" he eagerly asked, while tears of rapture trickled down his face. "Father," he continued in his ecstasy, "we are now come home to be completely happy; and I feel as if all the years I have been away were but a short week; and as if all the dangers I have pa.s.sed had been light as air. But is it possible," he cried to his kind informer, "that you are one of Rebecca's sisters?"

Well might he ask; for, instead of the blooming woman of seven-and-twenty he had left her, her colour was gone, her teeth impaired, her voice broken. She was near fifty.

"Yes, I am one of Mr. Rymer's daughters," she replied.

"But which?" said Henry.

"The eldest, and once called the prettiest," she returned: "though now people tell me I am altered; yet I cannot say I see it myself."

"And are you all living?" Henry inquired.

"All but one: she married and died. The other three, on my father's death, agreed to live together, and knit or spin for our support. So we took that small cottage, and furnished it with some of the parsonage furniture, as you shall see; and kindly welcome I am sure you will be to all it affords, though that is but little."

As she was saying this, she led him through the clover field towards the cottage. His heart rebounded with joy that Rebecca was there: yet, as he walked he shuddered at the impression which he feared the first sight of her would make. He feared, what he imagined (till he had seen this change in her sister) he should never heed. He feared Rebecca would look no longer young. He was not yet so far master over all his sensual propensities as, when the trial came, to think he could behold her look like her sister, and not give some evidence of his disappointment.

His fears were vain. On entering the gate of their little garden, Rebecca rushed from the house to meet them: just the same Rebecca as ever.

It was her mind, which beaming on her face, and actuating her every motion, had ever const.i.tuted all her charms: it was her mind which had gained her Henry's affection. That mind had undergone no change; and she was the self-same woman he had left her.

He was entranced with joy.

CHAPTER XLVI.

The fare which the Henrys partook at the cottage of the female Rymers was such as the sister had described--mean, and even scanty; but this did not in the least diminish the happiness they received in meeting, for the first time since their arrival in England, human beings who were glad to see them.

At a stinted repast of milk and vegetables, by the glimmering light of a little brushwood on the hearth, they yet could feel themselves comparatively blest, while they listened to the recital of afflictions which had befallen persons around that very neighbourhood, for whom every delicious viand had been procured to gratify the taste, every art devised to delight the other senses.

It was by the side of this glimmering fire that Rebecca and her sisters told the story of poor Agnes's fate, and of the thorn it had for ever planted in William's bosom--of his reported sleepless, perturbed nights; and his gloomy, or half-distracted days; when in the fullness of _remorse_, he has complained--"of a guilty conscience! of the weariness attached to a continued prosperity! the misery of wanting an object of affection."

They told of Lord Bendham's death from the effects of intemperance; from a ma.s.s of blood infected by high-seasoned dishes, mixed with copious draughts of wine--repletion of food and liquor, not less fatal to the existence of the rich than the want of common sustenance to the lives of the poor.

They told of Lady Bendham's ruin, since her lord's death, by gaming. They told, "that now she suffered beyond the pain of common indigence by the cutting triumph of those whom she had formerly despised."

They related (what has been told before) the divorce of William, and the marriage of his wife with a libertine; the decease of Lady Clementina, occasioned by that incorrigible vanity which even old age could not subdue.

After numerous other examples had been recited of the dangers, the evils that riches draw upon their owner; the elder Henry rose from his chair, and embracing Rebecca and his son, said--"How much indebted are we to Providence, my children, who, while it inflicts poverty, bestows peace of mind; and in return for the trivial grief we meet in this world, holds out to our longing hopes the reward of the next!"

Not only resigned, but happy in their station, with hearts made cheerful rather than dejected by attentive meditation, Henry and his son planned the means of their future support, independent of their kinsman William--nor only of him, but of every person and thing but their own industry.

"While I have health and strength," cried the old man, and his son's looks acquiesced in all the father said, "I will not take from any one in affluence what only belongs to the widow, the fatherless, and the infirm; for to such alone, by Christian laws--however custom may subvert them--the overplus of the rich is due."

CHAPTER XLVII.

By forming a humble scheme for their remaining life, a scheme depending upon their _own_ exertions alone, on no light promises of pretended friends, and on no sanguine hopes of certain success, but with prudent apprehension, with fort.i.tude against disappointment, Henry, his son, and Rebecca (now his daughter), found themselves, at the end of one year, in the enjoyment of every comfort with such distinguished minds knew how to taste.

Exempt both from patronage and from control--healthy--alive to every fruition with which Nature blesses the world; dead to all out of their power to attain, the works of art--susceptible of those pa.s.sions with endear human creatures one to another, insensible to those which separate man from man--they found themselves the thankful inhabitants of a small house, or hut, placed on the borders of the sea.

Each morning wakes the father and the son to cheerful labour in fishing, or the tending of a garden, the produce of which they carry to the next market town. The evening sends them back to their home in joy: where Rebecca meets them at the door, affectionately boasts of the warm meal that is ready, and heightens the charm of conversation with her taste and judgment.

It was after a supper of roots from their garden, poultry that Rebecca's hand had reared, and a jug brewed by young Henry, that the following discourse took place.

"My son," said the elder Henry, "where under Heaven shall three persons be met together happy as we three are? It is the want of industry, or the want of reflection, which makes the poor dissatisfied. Labour gives a value to rest which the idle can never taste; and reflection gives to the mind a degree of content which the unthinking never can know."

"I once," replied the younger Henry, "considered poverty a curse; but after my thoughts became enlarged, and I had a.s.sociated for years with the rich, and now mix with the poor, my opinion has undergone a total change; for I have seen, and have enjoyed, more real pleasure at work with my fellow-labourers, and in this cottage, than ever I beheld, or experienced, during my abode at my uncle's; during all my intercourse with the fashionable and the powerful of this world."