After uttering this reflection which had preyed upon his mind, he sat down on the road side to rest his agitated limbs before he could proceed farther. His son reasoned with him—gave him courage; and now his hopes preponderated, till, after two days’ journey, on arriving at the inn where an answer from the bishop was expected, no letter, no message had been left.
“He means to renounce us,” said Henry, trembling, and whispering to his son.
Without disclosing to the people of the house who they were, or from whom the letter or the message they inquired for was to have come, they retired, and consulted what steps they were now to pursue.
Previously to his writing to the bishop, the younger Henry’s heart, all his inclinations, had swayed him towards a visit to the village in which was his uncle’s former country-seat, the beloved village of Anfield, but respect to him and duty to his father had made him check those wishes; now they revived again, and, with the image of Rebecca before his eyes, he warmly entreated his father to go with him to Anfield, at present only thirty miles distant, and thence write once more; then again wait the will of his uncle.
The father consented to this proposal, even glad to postpone the visit to his dignified brother.
After a scanty repast, such as they had been long inured to, they quitted the inn, and took the road towards Anfield.
CHAPTER XLIV.
It was about five in the afternoon of a summer’s day, that Henry and his son left the sign of the Mermaid to pursue their third day’s journey: the young man’s spirits elated with the prospect of the reception he should meet from Rebecca: the elder dejected at not having received a speedy welcome from his brother.
The road which led to Anfield by the shortest course of necessity took our travellers within sight of the bishop’s palace. The turrets appeared at a distance; and on the sudden turn round the corner of a large plantation, the whole magnificent structure was at once exhibited before his brother’s astonished eyes. He was struck with the grandeur of the habitation; and, totally forgetting all the unkind, the contemptuous treatment he had ever received from its owner (like the same Henry in his earlier years), smiled with a kind of transport “that William was so great a man.”
After this first joyous sensation was over, “Let us go a little nearer, my son,” said he; “no one will see us, I hope; or, if they should, you can run and conceal yourself; and not a creature will know me; even my brother would not know me thus altered; and I wish to take a little farther view of his fine house, and all his pleasure grounds.”