By this time, undoubtedly, Elspeth had said her gentle No; but he was not railing against Fate, not even for striking the final blow at him through that innocent medium. He had still too much to do for that--to help others. There were three of them at present, and by some sort of sympathetic jugglery he had an arm for each.
"Lean on me, Grizel--dear sister Elspeth, you little know the harm you have done--David, old friend, your hand."
Thus loaded, he bravely returned at the fitting time to the cottage. His head was not even bent.
Had you asked Tommy what Elspeth would probably do when she dismissed David, he might have replied that she would go up to his room and lock herself into it, so that no one should disturb her for a time. And this he discovered, on returning home, was actually what had happened. How well he knew her! How distinctly he heard every beat of her tender heart, and how easy to him to tell why it was beating! He did not go up; he waited for little Elspeth to come to him, all in her own good time. And when she came, looking just as he knew she would look, he had a brave, bright face for her.
She was shaking after her excitement, or perhaps she had ceased to shake and begun again as she came down to him. He pretended not to notice it; he would notice it the moment he was sure she wanted him to, but perhaps that would not be until she was in bed and he had come to say good-night and put out her light, for, as we know, she often kept her great confidences till then, when she discovered that he already knew them.
"The doctor has been in."
She began almost at once, and in a quaking voice and from a distance, as if in hope that the bullet might be spent before it reached her brother.
"I am sorry I missed him," he replied cautiously. "What a fine fellow he is!"
"You always liked him," said Elspeth, clinging eagerly to that.
"No one could help liking him, Elspeth, he has such winning ways," said Tommy, perhaps a little in the voice with which at funerals we refer to the departed. She loved his words, but she knew she had a surprise for him this time, and she tried to blurt it out.
"He said something to me. He--oh, what a high opinion he has of you!" (She really thought he had.)
"Was that the something?" Tommy asked, with a smile that helped her, as it was meant to do.
"You understand, don't you?" she said, almost in a whisper.
"Of course I do, Elspeth," he answered reassuringly; but somehow she still thought he didn't.
"No one could have been more manly and gentle and humble," she said beseechingly.
"I am sure of it," said Tommy.
"He thinks nothing of himself," she said.
"We shall always think a great deal of him," replied Tommy.
"Yes, but----" Elspeth found the strangest difficulty in continuing, for, though it would have surprised him to be told so, Tommy was not helping her nearly as much as he imagined.
"I told him," she said, shaking, "that no one could be to me what you were. I told him----" and then timid Elspeth altogether broke down. Tommy drew her to him, as he had so often done since she was the smallest child, and pressed her head against his breast, and waited. So often he had waited thus upon Elspeth.
"There is nothing to cry about, dear," he said tenderly, when the time to speak came. "You have, instead, the right to be proud that so good a man loves you. I am very proud of it, Elspeth."
"If I could be sure of that!" she gasped.
"Don't you believe me, dear?"
"Yes, but--that is not what makes me cry. Tommy, don't you see?"
"Yes," he assured her, "I see. You are crying because you feel so sorry for him. But I don't feel sorry for him, Elspeth. If I know anything at all, it is this: that no man needs pity who sincerely loves; whether that love be returned or not, he walks in a new and more beautiful world for evermore."
She clutched his hand. "I don't understand how you know those things," she whispered.
Please God, was Tommy's reflection, she should never know. He saw most vividly the pathos of his case, but he did not break down under it; it helped him, rather, to proceed.