The time had come when the minister must seek refuge and counsel with
his wife. He went to her as a troubled child goes to its mother, and she
heard the confession of his strange experience with the motherly
sympathy which performs the comforting office of perfect intelligence.
If she did not grasp its whole significance, she seized what was perhaps
the main point, and she put herself in antagonism to the cause of his
morbid condition, while administering an inevitable chastisement for the
neglect of her own prevision.
"That terrible old man," she said, "has simply been draining the life
out of you, Clarence. I saw it from the beginning, and I warned you
against it; but you wouldn't listen to me. _Now_ I suppose you _will_
listen, after the doctor tells you that you're in danger of nervous
prostration, and that you've got to give up everything and rest. _I_
think you've been in danger of losing your reason, you've overworked it
so; and I sha'n't be easy till I've got you safely away at the seaside,
and out of the reach of that--that _vampire_."
"Emily!" the minister protested. "I can't allow you to use such
language. At the worst, and supposing that he has really been that drain
upon me which you say (though I don't admit it), what is my life for but
to give to others?"
"But _my_ life isn't for you to give to others, and _your_ life _is_
mine, and I think I have some right to say what shall be done with it,
and I don't choose to have it used up on old Hilbrook." It passed
through Ewbert's languid thought, which it stirred to a vague amusement,
that the son of an older church than the Rixonite might have found in
this thoroughly terrestrial attitude of his wife a potent argument for
sacerdotal celibacy; but he did not attempt to formulate it, and he
listened submissively while she went on: "_One_ thing: I am certainly
not going to let you see him again till you've seen the doctor, and I
hope he won't come about. If he does, _I_ shall see him."
The menace in this declaration moved Ewbert to another protest, which he
worded conciliatingly: "I shall have to let you. But I know you won't
say anything to convey a sense of responsibility to him. I couldn't
forgive myself if he were allowed to feel that he had been preying upon
me. The fact is, I've been overdoing in every way, and nobody is to
blame for my morbid fancies but myself. I _should_ blame myself very
severely if you based any sort of superstition on them, and acted from
that superstition."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid!" said Mrs. Ewbert. "I shall take care of his
feelings, but I shall have my own opinions, all the same, Clarence."
Whether a woman with opinions so strong as Mrs. Ewbert's, and so
indistinguishable from her prejudices, could be trusted to keep them to
herself, in dealing with the matter in hand, was a question which her
husband felt must largely be left to her goodness of heart for its right
solution.
When Hilbrook came that night, as usual, she had already had it out with
him in several strenuous reveries before they met, and she was able to
welcome him gently to the interview which she made very brief. His face
fell in visible disappointment when she said that Mr. Ewbert would not
be able to see him, and perhaps there was nothing to uplift him in the
reasons she gave, though she obscurely resented his continued dejection
as a kind of ingratitude. She explained that poor Mr. Ewbert was quite
broken down, and that the doctor had advised his going to the seaside
for the whole of August, where he promised everything from the air and
the bathing. Mr. Ewbert merely needed toning up, she said; but to
correct the impression she might be giving that his breakdown was a
trifling matter, she added that she felt very anxious about it, and
wanted to get him away as soon as possible. She said with a confidential
effect, as of something in which Hilbrook could sympathize with her:
"You know it isn't merely his church work proper; it's his giving
himself spiritually to all sorts of people so indiscriminately. He can't
deny himself to any one; and sometimes he's perfectly exhausted by it.
You must come and see him as soon as he gets back, Mr. Hilbrook. He will
count upon it, I know; he's so much interested in the discussions he has
been having with you."
She gave the old man her hand for good-by, after she had artfully stood
him up, in a double hope,--a hope that he would understand that there
was some limit to her husband's nervous strength, and a hope that her
closing invitation would keep him from feeling anything personal in her
hints.
Hilbrook took his leave in the dreamy fashion age has with so many
things, as if there were a veil between him and experience which kept
him from the full realization of what had happened; and as she watched
his bent shoulders down the garden walk, carrying his forward-drooping
head at a slant that scarcely left the crown of his hat visible, a fear
came upon her which made it impossible for her to recount all the facts
of her interview to her husband. It became her duty, rather, to conceal
what was painful to herself in it, and she merely told him that Mr.
Hilbrook had taken it all in the right way, and she had made him promise
to come and see them as soon as they got back.