Books: Nature and Art
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Mrs Inchbald >> Nature and Art
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The malicious joy with which the peasant told this story made Henry
believe (more than all the complaints the man uttered) that there
had been want of charity and Christian deportment in the whole
conduct of the bishop's family. He almost wished himself back on
his savage island, where brotherly love could not be less than it
appeared to be in this civilised country.
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
noble 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
passion!
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 passed 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 assured 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 passed 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 constituted 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 mass 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 fortitude 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
passions 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 associated 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."
"The worst is," said Rebecca, "the poor have not always enough."
"Who has enough?" asked her husband. "Had my uncle? No: he hoped
for more; and in all his writings sacrificed his duty to his
avarice. Had his son enough, when he yielded up his honour, his
domestic peace, to gratify his ambition? Had Lady Bendham enough,
when she staked all she had, in the hope of becoming richer? Were
we, my Rebecca, of discontented minds, we have now too little. But
conscious, from observation and experience, that the rich are not so
happy as ourselves, we rejoice in our lot."
The tear of joy which stole from her eye expressed, more than his
words, a state of happiness.
He continued: "I remember, when I first came a boy to England, the
poor excited my compassion; but now that my judgment is matured, I
pity the rich. I know that in this opulent kingdom there are nearly
as many persons perishing through intemperance as starving with
hunger; there are as many miserable in the lassitude of having
nothing to do as there are of those bowed down to the earth with
hard labour; there are more persons who draw upon themselves
calamity by following their own will than there are who experience
it by obeying the will of another. Add to this, that the rich are
so much afraid of dying they have no comfort in living."
"There the poor have another advantage," said Rebecca; "for they may
defy not only death, but every loss by sea or land, as they have
nothing to lose."
"Besides," added the elder Henry, "there is a certain joy of the
most gratifying kind that the human mind is capable of tasting,
peculiar to the poor, and of which the rich can but seldom
experience the delight."
"What can that be?" cried Rebecca.
"A kind word, a benevolent smile, one token of esteem from the
person whom we consider as our superior."
To which Rebecca replied, "And the rarity of obtaining such a token
is what increases the honour."
"Certainly," returned young Henry, "and yet those in poverty,
ungrateful as they are, murmur against that Government from which
they receive the blessing."
"But this is the fault of education, of early prejudice," said the
elder Henry. "Our children observe us pay respect, even reverence,
to the wealthy, while we slight or despise the poor. The impression
thus made on their minds in youth is indelible during the more
advanced periods of life; and they continue to pine after riches,
and lament under poverty: nor is the seeming folly wholly destitute
of reason; for human beings are not yet so deeply sunk in voluptuous
gratification, or childish vanity, as to place delight in any
attainment which has not for its end the love or admiration of their
fellow-beings."
"Let the poor, then," cried the younger Henry, "no more be their own
persecutors--no longer pay homage to wealth--instantaneously the
whole idolatrous worship will cease--the idol will be broken!"
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