Godfrey passed over to the General,
who had walked down to his gate on his way to the
great elm. Out from behind the elm came the other
two men, Arthur leading and talking briskly:-
“The sooner the better, Leonard.
Now while my work is new and taking shape-Ah!
here’s Mrs. Morris.”
Both men were handsome. Arthur,
not much older than Ruth, was of medium height, slender,
restless, dark, and eager of glance and speech.
Leonard was nearer the age of Godfrey; fairer than
Arthur, of a quieter eye, tall, broad-shouldered,
powerful, lithe, and almost tamely placid. Mrs.
Morris met them with animation.
“Have our churchwarden and our
rector been having another of their long talks?”
The joint reply was cut short by Godfrey’s
imperative hail: “Leonard!”
As Byington turned that way, Arthur
said quietly to Mrs. Morris, “He’s promised
to retain charge”-and nodded toward
Isabel. The nod meant Isabel’s financial
investments.
“And mine?” murmured the well-pleased
lady.
“Both.”
The two gave heed again to Godfrey,
who was loudly asking Leonard, “Why didn’t
you tell us the news?”
“Oh,” drawled Leonard smilingly, “I
knew father would.”
“I haven’t talked with
Godfrey since he came,” said Mrs. Morris; and
as she left Arthur she asked his brother: “What
news? Has the governor truly made him”-
“District attorney, yes,”
said Godfrey. “Ruth, I think you might have
told me.”
“Godfrey, I think you might
have asked me,” laughed the girl, drawing Isabel
toward Arthur and Leonard, in order to leave Mrs. Morris
to Godfrey.
Arthur moved to meet them, but Ruth
engaged him with a question, and Isabel turned to
Leonard, offering her félicitations with a sweetness
that gave Arthur tearing pangs to overhear.
“But when people speak to us
of your high office,” he could hear her saying,
“we will speak to them of your high fitness for
it. And still, Leonard, you must let us offer
you our congratulations, for it is a high office.”
“Thank you,” replied Leonard:
“let me save the congratulations for the day
I lay the office down. Do you, then, really think
it high and honorable?”
“Ah,” she rejoined, in
a tone of reproach and defense that tortured Arthur,
“you know I honor the pursuit of the law.”
Leonard showed a glimmer of drollery.
“Pursuit of the law, yes,” he said; “but
the pursuit of the lawbreaker”-
“Even that,” replied Isabel, “has
its frowning honors.”
“But I’m much afraid it
seems to you,” he said, “a sort of blindman’s
buff played with a club. It often looks so to
the pursued, they say.”
Isabel gave her chin a little lift,
and raised her tone for those behind her: “We
shall try not to be among the pursued, Ruth and Arthur
and I.”
The young lawyer’s smile broadened.
“My mind is relieved,” he said.
“Relieved!” exclaimed
Isabel, with a rosy toss. “Ruth, dear, here
is your brother in distress lest Arthur or we should
embarrass him in his new office by breaking the laws!
Mr. Byington, you should not confess such anxieties,
even if you are justified in them!”
His response came with meditative
slowness and with playful eyes: “Whenever
I am justified in having such anxieties, they shall
go unconfessed.”
“That relieves my fears,”
laughed Isabel, and caught a quick hint of trouble
on Arthur’s brow, though he too managed to laugh.
Whereupon, half sighing, half singing, she twined
an arm in one of Ruth’s, swung round her, waved
to the General as he took a seat on the elm-tree bench,
and so, passing to Arthur, changed partners.
“Let us go in,” whispered
Leonard to his sister, with a sudden pained look,
and instantly resumed his genial air.
But the uneasy Arthur saw his moving
lips and both changes of countenance. He saw
also the look which Ruth threw toward Mrs. Morris,
where that lady and Godfrey moved slowly in conversation,-he
ever so sedate, she ever so sprightly. And he
saw Isabel glance as anxiously in the same direction.
But then her eyes came to his, and under her voice,
though with a brow all sunshine, she said, “Don’t
look so perplexed.”
“Perplexed!” he gasped.
“Isabel, you’re giving me anguish!”
She gleamed an injured amazement,
but promptly threw it off, and when she turned to
see if Leonard or Ruth had observed it they were moving
to meet Godfrey. Mrs. Morris was joining the
General under the elm.
“How have I given you pain,
dear heart?” asked Isabel, as she and Arthur
took two or three slow steps apart from the rest, so
turning her face that they should see its tender kindness.
“Ah! don’t ask me, my
beloved!” he warily exclaimed. “It
is all gone! Oh, the heavenly wonder to hear
you, Isabel Morris, you-give me loving
names! You might have answered me so differently;
but your voice, your eyes, work miracles of healing,
and I am whole again.”
Isabel gave again the laugh whose
blithe, final sigh was always its most winning note.
Then, with tremendous gravity, she said, “You
are very indiscreet, dear, to let me know my power.”
His face clouded an instant, as if
the thought startled him with its truth and value.
But when she added, with yet deeper seriousness of
brow, “That’s no way to tame a shrew, my
love,” he laughed aloud, and peace came again
with Isabel’s smile.
Then-because a woman must
always insist on seeing the wrong side of the goods-she
murmured, “Tell me, Arthur, what disturbed you.”
“Words, Isabel, mere words of
yours, which I see now were meant in purest play.
You told Leonard”-
“Leonard! What did I tell Leonard, dear?”
“You told him not to confess
certain anxieties, even if they were justified.”
“Oh, Arthur!”
“I see my folly, dearest.
But Isabel, he ought not to have answered that the
more they were justified, the more they should go unconfessed!”
“Oh, Arthur! the merest, idlest
prattle! What meaning could you”-
“None, Isabel, none! Only,
my good angel, I so ill deserve you that with every
breath I draw I have a desperate fright of losing you,
and a hideous resentment against whoever could so
much as think to rob me of you.”
“Why, dear heart, don’t you know that
couldn’t be done?”
“Oh, I know it, you being what
you are, even though I am only what I am. But,
Isabel, you know he loves you. No human soul is
strong enough to blow out the flame of the love you
kindle, Isabel Morris, as one would blow out his bedroom
candle and go to sleep at the stroke of a clock.”
“Arthur, I believe Leonard-and
I do not say it in his praise-I believe
Leonard can do that!”
“No, not so, not so! Leonard
is strong, but the fire of a strong man’s love,
however smothered, burns on without mercy, my beautiful,
and you cannot go in and out of that burning house
as though it were not on fire.”
“And shall Leonard, then, not
be our nearest and best friend, as we had planned?”
“He shall, Isabel. Ah yes;
not one smallest part of your sweet friendship will
I take from him, nor of his from you. For, Isabel,
though he were as weak as I”-
“As weak as I, you should
say, dear. You are not weak, Arthur, are you?”
“Weak as the bending grass,
Isabel, under this load of love. But though he,
I say, were as weak as I, you-ah, you!-are
as wise as you are bewitching; and if I should speak
to you from my most craven fear, I could find but
one word of warning.”
“Oh, you dear, blind flatterer!
And what word would that be?”
“That you are most bewitching when you are wisest.”
As Isabel softly laughed she cast
a dreaming glance behind, and noticed that she and
Arthur were quite hidden in the flowery undergrowth
of the hill path. They kissed.
“Beloved,” said her worshipper,
with a clouded smile, as he let her down from her
tiptoes, “do you know you took that as though
you were thinking of something else?”
“Did I? Oh, I didn’t mean to.”
Such a reply only darkened the cloud.
“Of whom were you thinking, Isabel?”
She blushed. “I was think-thinking-why,
I was-I-I was think-thinking”-she
went redder and redder as he went pale-“thinking
of everybody on Bylow Hill. Why-why,
dear heart, don’t you see? When you”-
“Oh, enough, enough, my angel! I take the
question back!”
“You made me think of
everybody, Arthur, you were so sudden. Just suppose
I had done so to you!” They both thought that
worthy of a good laugh. “Next time, dear,”
added Isabel,-“no, no, no, but-next
time, you mustn’t be so sudden. There’s
no need, you know,”-she blushed again,-“and
I promise you I’ll give my whole mind to it!
Get me some of that hawthorn bloom yonder, and let’s
go back.”