It was in the fervor of their first married years that the Ewberts came
to live in the little town of Hilbrook, shortly after Hilbrook
University had been established there under the name of its founder,
Josiah Hilbrook. The town itself had then just changed its name, in
compliance with the conditions of his public benefactions, and in
recognition of the honor he had done it in making it a seat of learning.
Up to a certain day it had been called West Mallow, ever since it was
set off from the original town of Mallow; but after a hundred and
seventy years of this custom it began on that day to call itself
Hilbrook, and thenceforward, with the curious American acquiescence in
the accomplished fact, no one within or without its limits called it
West Mallow again.
The memory of Josiah Hilbrook himself began to be lost in the name he
had given the place; and except for the perfunctory mention of its
founder in the ceremonies of Commencement Day, the university hardly
remembered him as a man, but rather regarded him as a locality. He had,
in fact, never been an important man in West Mallow, up to the time he
had left it to seek his fortune in New York; and when he died, somewhat
abruptly, and left his money, as it were, out of a clear sky, to his
native place in the form of a university, a town hall, a soldiers'
monument, a drinking-fountain, and a public library, his
fellow-townsmen, in making the due civic acknowledgment and acceptance
of his gifts, recalled with effort the obscure family to which he
belonged.
He had not tried to characterize the university by his peculiar
religious faith, but he had given a church building, a parsonage, and a
fund for the support of preaching among them at Hilbrook to the small
body of believers to which his people adhered. This sect had a name by
which it was officially known to itself; but, like the Shakers, the
Quakers, the Moravians, it early received a nickname, which it passively
adopted, and even among its own members the body was rarely spoken of or
thought of except as the Rixonites.
Mrs. Ewbert fretted under the nickname, with an impatience perhaps the
greater because she had merely married into the Rixonite church, and had
accepted its doctrine because she loved her husband rather than because
she had been convinced of its truth. From the first she complained that
the Rixonites were cold; and if there was anything Emily Ewbert had
always detested, it was coldness. No one, she once testified, need talk
to her of their passive waiting for a sign, as a religious life; if
there were not some strong, central belief, some rigorously formulated
creed, some--
"Good old herb and root theology," her husband interrupted.
"Yes!" she heedlessly acquiesced. "Unless there is something like
_that_, all the waiting in the world won't"--she cast about for some
powerful image--"won't keep the cold chills from running down _my_ back
when I think of my duty as a Christian."
"Then don't think of your duty as a Christian, my dear," he pleaded,
with the caressing languor which sometimes made her say, in reprobation
of her own pleasure in it, that _he_ was a Rixonite, if there ever _was_
one. "Think of your duty as a woman, or even as a mortal."
"I believe you're thinking of making a sermon on that," she retorted;
and he gave a sad, consenting laugh, as if it were quite true, though in
fact he never really preached a sermon on mere femininity or mere
mortality. His sermons were all very good, however; and that was another
thing that put her out of patience with his Rixonite parishioners--that
they should sit there Sunday after Sunday, year in and year out, and
listen to his beautiful sermons, which ought to melt their hearts and
bring tears into their eyes, and not seem influenced by them any more
than if they were so many dry chips.
"But think how long they've had the gospel," he suggested, in a pensive
self-derision which she would not share.
"Well, one thing, Clarence," she summed up, "I'm not going to let you
throw yourself away on them; and unless you see some of the university
people in the congregation, I want you to use your old sermons from this
out. They'll never know the difference; and I'm going to make you take
one of the old sermons along every Sunday, so as to be prepared."