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.