"I am _glad_ you said that to him!" cried Ewbert's wife, when he told
her of his interview with old Hilbrook. "That will give him something to
think about. What did he say?"
Ewbert had been less and less satisfied with his reply to Hilbrook, in
which it seemed to him that he had passed from mockery to reproof, with
no great credit to himself; and his wife's applause now set the seal to
his displeasure with it.
"Oh, he said simply that he could understand a younger person feeling
differently, and that he did not wish to set himself up as a censor. But
he could not pretend that he was glad to have been called out of
nonentity into being, and that he could imagine nothing better than
eternal unconsciousness."
"Well?"
"I told him that his very words implied the refusal of his being to
accept nonentity again; that they expressed, or adumbrated, the
conception of an eternal consciousness of the eternal unconsciousness he
imagined himself longing for. I'm not so sure they did, now."
"Of _course_ they did. And _then_ what did he say?"
"He said nothing in direct reply; he sighed, and dropped his poor old
head on his breast, and seemed very tired; so that I tried talking of
other things for a while, and then I came away. Emily, I'm afraid I
wasn't perfectly candid, perfectly kind, with him."
"I don't see how you could have been more so!" she retorted, in tender
indignation with him against himself. "And I think what he said was
terrible. It was bad enough for him to pretend to believe that he was
not going to live again, but for him to tell you that he was _afraid_ he
was!" An image sufficiently monstrous to typify Hilbrook's wickedness
failed to present itself to Mrs. Ewbert, and she went out to give the
maid instructions for something unusually nourishing for Ewbert at their
mid-day dinner. "You look fairly fagged out, Clarence," she said, when
she came back; "and I insist upon your not going up to that dreadful old
man's again,--at least, not till you've got over this shock."
"Oh, I don't think it has affected me seriously," he returned lightly.
"Yes, it has! yes, it has!" she declared. "It's just like your thinking
you hadn't taken cold, the other day when you were caught in the rain;
and the next morning you got up with a sore throat, and it was Sunday
morning, too."
Ewbert could not deny this, and he had no great wish to see Hilbrook
soon again. He consented to wait for Hilbrook to come to him, before
trying to satisfy these scruples of conscience which he had hinted at;
and he reasonably hoped that the painful points would cease to rankle
with the lapse of time, if there should be a long interval before they
met.
That night, before the Ewberts had finished their tea, there came a ring
at the door, from which Mrs. Ewbert disconsolately foreboded a premature
evening call. "And just when I was counting on a long, quiet, restful
time for you, and getting you to bed early!" she lamented in undertone
to her husband; to the maid who passed through the room with an
inquiring glance, to the front door, she sighed, still in undertone, "Oh
yes, of course we're at _home_."
They both listened for the voice at the door, to make out who was there;
but the voice was so low that they were still in ignorance while the
maid was showing the visitor into the library, and until she came back
to them.
"It's that old gentleman who lives all alone by himself on the hill over
the brook," she explained; and Mrs. Ewbert rose with an air of
authority, waving her husband to keep his seat.
"Now, Clarence, I am simply not going to _let_ you go in. You are sick
enough as it is, and if you are going to let that _awful_ old man spend
the whole evening here, and drain the life out of you! _I_ will see him,
and tell him"--
"No, no, Emily! It won't do. I _must_ see him. It isn't true that I'm
sick. He's old, and he has a right to the best we can do for him. Think
of his loneliness! I shall certainly not let you send him away." Ewbert
was excitedly gulping his second cup of tea; he pushed his chair back,
and flung his napkin down as he added, "You can come in, too, and see
that I get off alive."
"I shall not come near you," she answered resentfully; but Ewbert had
not closed the door behind him, and she felt it her duty to listen.