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Updated: June 20, 2025
It could be supposed that Josiah Hilbrook, since he had given the money for a Rixonite church and the perpetual pay of a Rixonite minister in his native place, had died in the faith; and it might have been supposed that Ransom Hilbrook, from his constant attendance upon its services, was living in the same faith.
"Well, no," he answered, with a vague smile; "we did a good deal of listening at first, both of us. I didn't know just where to begin, after I got through my excuses for coming, and Mr. Hilbrook didn't offer any opening. Don't you think he's a very handsome old man?" "He has a pretty head, and his close-cut white hair gives it a neat effect, like a nice child's.
You never preached so well, Clarence, and if they have any appreciation at all, they simply won't be able to keep away. I wish you could have heard all the nice things they said about you. I guess they've waked up to you, at last, and I do believe that the idea of losing you has had a great deal to do with it. And that is something we owe to old Ransom Hilbrook more than to anything else.
Hilbrook's reception was wary and non-committal, but it was by no means so grudging as Ewbert had been led to expect. After some ceremonious moments in the cold parlor Hilbrook asked him into the warm kitchen, where apparently he passed most of his own time.
Below it staggered the trees of an apple orchard belted in with a stone wall, and beside it sagged the sheds whose stretch united the gray old house to the gray old barn, and made it possible for Hilbrook to do his chores in rain or snow without leaving cover.
There had been a proposition to use him representatively in the ceremonies celebrating the acceptance of the various gifts of Josiah Hilbrook; but he had not lent himself to this, and upon experiment the authorities found that he was right in his guess that they could get along without him. He had not said it surlily, but sadly, and with a gentle deprecation of their insistence.
I stayed a long time talking; I tried to interest him in the fact that he was not interested, and" "Well, what?" "If I didn't fatigue Hilbrook, I came away feeling perfectly exhausted myself. Were you uneasy at my being out so late?" It was some time after the Ewberts had given up expecting him that old Hilbrook came to return the minister's visit.
It was as if the truth, so vital at first, had perished in its formulation, and in the repetition he was sensible, or he was fearful, of an insincerity, a hollowness in the arguments he had originally employed so earnestly against the old man's doubt. He recognized with dismay a quality of question in his own mind, and he fancied that as Hilbrook waxed in belief he himself waned.
The conviction of a life hereafter was not something which he was sharing with Hilbrook; he was giving it absolutely, and with such entire unreserve that he was impoverishing his own soul of its most precious possession. So it seemed to him in those flaccid moods to which Hilbrook's visits left him, when mind and body were both spent in the effort he had been making.
He broke a bit of fragrant spray from the flowering currant which guarded the doorway on his side of the steps; Ewbert sat next the Spanish willow and softly twisted the stem between his thumb and finger. "Ever hear how I came to leave Hilbrook, West Mallow, as it was then?" he asked at last.
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