“You thought it might, even then,” Rupert cried.
“Yes, I did,” was Tom’s answer. “You were young—you were drawn together—it seemed natural. I used to watch you, and think it over, making a kind of picture to myself of how it would be if two young things could meet each other and join hands and wander on among roses until they reached the gate of life—and it swung open for them and they passed through and found another paradise.”
He stopped a second and turned to look at Rupert’s dreamy face with a smile not all humorous. “I’m a sentimental chap for my size,” he added. “That’s what I wanted for Sheba and you—that’s what I want. That sort of thing was left out of my life; but I should like to see it before I’m done with. Good God! why can’t people be happy? I want people to be happy.”
The boy was trembling.
“Uncle Tom,” he said, “Sheba and I are happy to-night.”
“Then God have mercy on the soul of the man who would spoil it for you,” said Big Tom, with actual solemnity. “I’m not that man. You two just go on being happy; try and make up for what your two mothers had to bear.”
Rupert got up from his chair and caught the big hand in his. It was a boy’s action, and he looked particularly like a boy as he did it. “It is just like you,” he broke forth. “I did not know what you would say when I told you—but I ought to have known you would say something like this. It’s—it’s as big as you are, Uncle Tom,” ingenuously.
That was his good-night. When he went away Big Tom settled into his chair again and looked out for some time longer at the bright night. He was going back to two other nights which lay in the years behind. One was the night he turned his back on Delisleville and rode towards the mountain with a weight on his kindly heart which he had grimly told himself seemed to weigh a ton; the other was the night he had been wakened from his sleep by the knock on the door of the bedroom behind the Cross-roads Post-office and had ridden out under the whiteness of the moon to find in the bare cabin at Blair’s Hollow the little fair girl who had sobbed and died as she clung to his warm hand.