“From that first night when I rode through the mountains over the white road and stopped at your gate—since I looked up and saw her standing on the balcony with the narcissus in her hair it has always been the same thing. It began that very moment—it was there when she leaned forward and spoke to me. I had never thought of a woman before—I was too poor and sad and lonely and young. And there she was—all white—and it seemed as if she was mine.”
Tom nodded his head as if to a white rose-bush in the small garden.
“I am as poor as ever I was,” said Rupert. “I am a beggar if we lose our claim; but I am not sad, and I am not lonely—I can’t be—I can’t be! I am happy—everything’s happy—because she knows—and I have kissed her.”
“What did you think I would say when you told me?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know,” impetuously; “but I knew I must come to you. It seems a million years ago since that hot morning in the old garden at Delisleville—when I had never seen her.”
“One of the things I have thought about a good deal,” said Tom, with quite a practical manner, “has been love. I had lots of time to think over things at the Cross-roads, and I used to work them out as far as my mind would carry me. Love’s as much an element as the rest of them. There’s earth, air, fire, water—and love. It has to be calculated for. What I’ve reasoned out is that it has not been calculated for enough. It’s going to come to all of us—and it will either come and stay, and make the old earth bloom with flowers—or it will come and go, and leave it like a plain swept by fire. It’s not a trivial thing that only boys and girls play with; it’s better—and worse. It ought to be prepared for and treated well. It’s not often treated well. People have got into the way of expecting trouble and tragedy to come out of it. We are always hearing of its unhappiness in books. Poets write about it that way.”
“I suppose it is often unhappy,” said Rupert; “but just now it seems as if it could not be.”
“What I’ve been wanting to see,” said Tom, “is young love come up like a flower and be given its dew and sun and rain—and bloom and bloom its best.”
He drew a big sigh.
“That poor child who lies on the hillside under the pines,” he went on, “Sheba’s mother—hers was young love—and it brought tragedy and death. Delia,” his voice was unsteady, “your mother’s was young love, and her heart was broken. No, it’s not often well treated. And when you and Sheba came to me that night with your boy and girl eyes shining with gladness just because you had met each other, I said to myself, ‘By the Lord, here is what it springs from. Perhaps it may come to them; I wonder if it will?’”