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"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?
Young William, though a very dutiful son, was amazed when he heard of Henry's project, as "the serious and settled resolution of a man." Lady Clementina, Lord and Lady Bendham, and twenty others, "wished him a successful voyage," and thought no more about him.
Rymer either pray or preach again; he had not conducted himself with proper dignity either as a clergyman or a father; he should have imitated the dean's example in respect to Henry, and have turned his daughter out of doors." Lord Bendham was less severe on the seduced, but had no mercy on the seducer "a vicious youth, without one accomplishment to endear vice."
But Miss Sedgeley was too much subjected to the power of her uncle and aunt to have a will of her own, at least, to dare to utter it. She received the commands of Lady Bendham with her accustomed submission, while all the consolation for the grief they gave her was, "that she resolved to make a very bad wife."
About the time that Henry and William quitted college, and had arrived at their twentieth year, the dean purchased a small estate in a village near to the country residence of Lord and Lady Bendham; and, in the total want of society, the dean's family were frequently honoured with invitations from the great house.
The wages of a labouring man, with a wife and half a dozen small children, Lady Bendham thought quite sufficient if they would only learn a little economy. "You know, my lord, those people never want to dress shoes and stockings, a coat and waistcoat, a gown and a cap, a petticoat and a handkerchief, are all they want fire, to be sure, in winter then all the rest is merely for provision."
Among the rest, Lord and Lady Bendham, strenuous opposers of vice in the poor, and gentle supporters of it in the rich, never played at cards, or had concerts on a Sunday, in the village, where the poor were spies he, there, never gamed, nor drank, except in private, and she banished from her doors every woman of sullied character. Yet poverty and idiotism are not the same.
Immediately after the dean had expressed to Lord and Lady Bendham his son's "sense of the honour and the happiness conferred on him, by their condescension in admitting him a member of their noble family," Miss Sedgeley received from her aunt nearly the same shock as William had done from his father.
"I beg your pardon my uncle looks displeased I am very ignorant I did not receive my first education in this country and I find I think so differently from every one else, that I am ashamed to utter my sentiments." "Never mind, young man," answered Lord Bendham; "we shall excuse your ignorance for once. Only inform us what it was you just now called the greatest hardship of all."
Lord Bendham, besides a good estate, possessed the office of a lord of the bed-chamber to his Majesty. Historians do not ascribe much importance to the situation, or to the talents of nobles in this department, nor shall this little history.
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