It was some time after the Ewberts had given up expecting him that old
Hilbrook came to return the minister's visit. Then, as if some excuse
were necessary, he brought a dozen eggs in a paper bag, which he said he
hoped Mrs. Ewbert could use, because his hens were giving him more than
he knew what to do with. He came to the back door with them; but Mrs.
Ewbert always let her maid of all work go out Sunday evening, and she
could receive him in the kitchen herself. She felt obliged to make him
the more welcome on account of his humility, and she showed him into the
library with perhaps exaggerated hospitality.
It was a chilly evening of April, and so early that the lamp was not
lighted; but there was a pleasant glow from the fire on the hearth, and
Ewbert made his guest sit down before it. As he lay back in the
easy-chair, stretching his thin old hands toward the blaze, the delicacy
of his profile was charming, and that senile parting of the lips with
which he listened reminded Ewbert of his own father's looks in his last
years; so that it was with an affectionate eagerness he set about making
Hilbrook feel his presence acceptable, when Mrs. Ewbert left them to
finish up the work she had promised herself not to leave for the maid.
It was much that Hilbrook had come at all, and he ought to be made to
realize that Ewbert appreciated his coming. But Hilbrook seemed
indifferent to his efforts, or rather, insensible to them, in the
several topics that Ewbert advanced; and there began to be pauses, in
which the minister racked his brain for some new thing to say, or found
himself saying something he cared nothing for in a voice of hollow
resolution, or falling into commonplaces which he tried to give vitality
by strenuousness of expression. He heard his wife moving about in the
kitchen and dining room, with a clicking of spoons and knives and a
faint clash of china, as she put the supper things away, and he wished
that she would come in and help him with old Hilbrook; but he could not
very well call her, and she kept at her work, with no apparent purpose
of leaving it.
Hilbrook was a farmer, so far as he was anything industrially, and
Ewbert tried him with questions of crops, soils, and fertilizers; but he
tried him in vain. The old man said he had never cared much for those
things, and now it was too late for him to begin. He generally sold his
grass standing, and his apples on the trees; and he had no animals about
the place except his chickens,--they took care of themselves. Ewbert
urged, for the sake of conversation, even of a disputative character,
that poultry were liable to disease, if they were not looked after; but
Hilbrook said, Not if there were not too many of them, and so made an
end of that subject. Ewbert desperately suggested that he must find them
company,--they seemed sociable creatures; and then, in his utter dearth,
he asked how the old dog was getting on.
"Oh, he's dead," said Hilbrook, and the minister's heart smote him with
a pity for the survivor's forlornness which the old man's apathetic tone
had scarcely invited. He inquired how and when the old dog had died, and
said how much Hilbrook must miss him.
"Well, I don't know," Hilbrook returned. "He wa'n't much comfort, and
he's out of his misery, anyway." After a moment he added, with a gleam
of interest: "I've been thinkin', since he went, of what we talked about
the other night,--I don't mean animals, but men. I tried to go over what
you said, in my own mind, but I couldn't seem to make it."
He lifted his face, sculptured so fine by age, and blinked at Ewbert,
who was glad to fancy something appealing in his words and manner.
"You mean as to a life beyond this?"
"Ah!"
"Well, let us see if we can't go over it together."
Ewbert had forgotten the points he had made before, and he had to take
up the whole subject anew, he did so at first in an involuntarily
patronizing confidence that Hilbrook was ignorant of the ground; but
from time to time the old man let drop a hint of knowledge that
surprised the minister. Before they had done, it appeared that Hilbrook
was acquainted with the literature of the doctrine of immortality from
Plato to Swedenborg, and even to Mr. John Fiske. How well he was
acquainted with it Ewbert could not quite make out; but he had
recurrently a misgiving, as if he were in the presence of a doubter
whose doubt was hopeless through his knowledge. In this bleak air it
seemed to him that he at last detected the one thing in which the old
man felt an interest: his sole tie with the earth was the belief that
when he left it he should cease to be. This affected Ewbert as most
interesting, and he set himself, with all his heart and soul, to
dislodge Hilbrook from his deplorable conviction. He would not perhaps
have found it easy to overcome at once that repugnance which Hilbrook's
doubt provoked in him, if it had been less gently, less simply owned. As
it was, it was not possible to deal with it in any spirit of mere
authority. He must meet it and overcome it in terms of affectionate
persuasion.
It should not be difficult to overcome it; but Ewbert had not yet
succeeded in arraying his reasons satisfactorily against it when his
wife returned from her work in the kitchen, and sat down beside the
library table. Her coming operated a total diversion, in which Hilbrook
lapsed into his apathy, and was not to be roused from it by the
overtures to conversation which she made. He presently got to his feet
and said he mast be going, against all her protests that it was very
early. Ewbert wished to walk home with him; but Hilbrook would not
suffer this, and the minister had to come back from following him to the
gate, and watching his figure lose itself in the dark, with a pang in
his heart for the solitude which awaited the old man under his own roof.
He ran swiftly over their argument in his mind, and questioned himself
whether he had used him with unfailing tenderness, whether he had let
him think that he regarded him as at all reprobate and culpable. He gave
up the quest as he rejoined his wife with a long, unconscious sigh that
made her lift her head.
"What is it, Clarence?"
"Nothing"--
"You look perfectly exhausted. You look worried. Was it something you
were talking about?"
Then he told her, and he had trouble to keep her resentment in bounds.
She held that, as a minister, he ought to have rebuked the wretched
creature; that it was nothing short of offensive to him for Hilbrook to
take such a position. She said his face was all flushed, and that she
knew he would not sleep, and she should get him a glass of warm milk;
the fire was out in the stove, but she could heat it over the lamp in a
tin cup.