Finally her husband broke the silence. “It ’pears as if we had jest buried someone and come home from the funeral.”
“An’ that’s jest what we have done, ef we only knowed it, ’Liphalet. We’ve buried the last of the Fred Brent we knowed an’ raised. Even ef we ever see him ag’in, he’ll never be the same to us. He’ll have new friends to think of an’ new notions in his head.”
“Don’t say that, Hester; don’t say that. I can’t stand it. He is never goin’ to furgit you an’ me, an’ it hurts me to hear you talk like that.”
“It don’t soun’ none too pleasant fur me, ’Liphalet, but I’ve learned to face the truth, an’ that’s the truth ef it ever was told.”
“Well, mebbe it’s fur the best, then. It’ll draw us closer together and make us more to each other as we journey down to the end. It’s our evenin’, Hester, an’ we must expect some chilly winds ’long towards night, but I guess He knows best.” He reached over and took his wife’s hand tenderly in his, and so they sat on sadly, but gathering peace in the silence and the sympathy, until far into the morning.
Meanwhile the eight-fifty “flier” was speeding through the beautiful Ohio Valley, bearing the young minister away from the town of his birth. Out of sight of the grief of his friends, he had regained all his usual stolid self-possession, though his mind often went back to the little cottage at Dexter where the two old people sat, and he may be forgiven if his memory lingered longer over the image of the man than of the woman. He remembered with a thrill at his heart what Eliphalet Hodges had been to him in the dark days of his youth, and he confessed to himself with a half shame that his greatest regret was in leaving him.
The feeling with which he had bidden his guardian goodbye was one not of regret at his own loss, but of pity for her distress. To Elizabeth his mind only turned for a moment to dismiss her with a mild contempt. Something hard that had always been in his nature seemed to have suddenly manifested itself.
“It is so much better this way,” he said, “for if the awakening had come later we should have been miserable together.” And then his thoughts went forward to the new scenes towards which he was speeding.
He had never been to Cincinnati. Indeed, except on picnic days, he had scarcely ever been outside of Dexter. But Cincinnati was the great city of his State, the one towards which adventurous youth turned its steps when real life was to be begun. He dreaded and yet longed to be there, and his heart was in a turmoil of conflicting emotion as he watched the landscape flit by.
It was a clear August day. Nature was trembling and fainting in the ecstasies of sensuous heat. Beside the railway the trenches which in spring were gurgling brooks were now dry and brown, and the reeds which had bent forward to kiss the water now leaned over from very weakness, dusty and sickly. The fields were ripening to the harvest. There was in the air the smell of fresh-cut hay. The cornstalks stood like a host armed with brazen swords to resist the onslaught of that other force whose weapon was the corn-knife. Farther on, between the trees, the much depleted river sparkled in the sun and wound its way, now near, now away from the road, a glittering dragon in an enchanted wood.
Such scenes as these occupied the young man’s mind, until, amid the shouts of brakemen, the vociferous solicitations of the baggage-man, and a general air of bustle and preparation, the train thundered into the Grand Central Station. Something seized Brent’s heart like a great compressing hand. He was frightened for an instant, and then he was whirled out with the rest of the crowd, up the platform, through the thronged waiting-room, into the street.
Then the cries of the eager men outside of “Cab, sir? cab, sir?” “Let me take your baggage,” and “Which way, sir?” bewildered him. He did the thing which every provincial does: he went to a policeman and inquired of him where he might find a respectable boardinghouse. The policeman did not know, but informed him that there were plenty of hotels farther up. With something like disgust, Brent wondered if all the hotels were like those he saw at the station, where the guests had to go through the barroom to reach their chambers. He shuddered at it; so strong is the influence of habit. But he did not wish to go to a hotel: so, carrying his two valises, he trudged on, though the hot sun of the mid-afternoon beat mercilessly down upon him. He kept looking into the faces of people who passed him, in the hope that he might see in one encouragement to ask for the information he so much wanted; but one and all they hurried by without even so much as a glance at the dusty traveller. Had one of them looked at him, he would merely have said, mentally, “Some country bumpkin come in to see the sights of town and be buncoed.”
There is no loneliness like the loneliness of the unknown man in a crowd. A feeling of desolation took hold upon Brent, so he turned down a side-street in order to be more out of the main line of business. It was a fairly respectable quarter; children were playing about the pavements and in the gutters, while others with pails and pitchers were going to and from the corner saloon, where their vessels were filled with foaming beer. Brent wondered at the cruelty of parents who thus put their children in the way of temptation, and looked to see if the little ones were not bowed with shame;
