“I hope so,” said John, standing before her, not knowing what to do or say. He took it for granted, in his innocence, that she wished him to go away. And he had something to do; but yet did not think it quite civil to leave her, and felt that his mother would not like it—and, to tell the truth, did not like it himself.
“Oh, pray don’t wait,” said Kate; “I shall be quite comfortable. There are plenty of books here, and I can go to the garden if I get tired.” Then there was a little pause. John never budged, standing thus in the height of awkwardness before her—wishing for his mother—wishing for anything to happen to deliver him, and yet feeling a charm in the position, which was very amazing to him. Kate, for her part, began to recover. She forgot the impression which had been made upon her by that unknown something in his face, and gradually came back to herself. She sat on the sofa playing with the picture-books on the table beside it, very demure; with cast-down eyes; and he balancing himself on one foot, not knowing what to make of himself, watching her anxiously for guidance. Kate resisted as long as she could, and then burst into a peal of unsteady laughter, in which John, very much surprised, did not find himself able to share.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she cried, when she could command her voice, “for being silly. I don’t know, I am sure, why I should laugh, only it is all so funny. I don’t know you in the least, and yet I know you quite well; and I have been living in the house ever so long, and yet go about like a thief, peeping in at the doors. It is all so very odd. I can’t tell what to make of it. And you who are looking at me so puzzled—you saved my life!” cried Kate, with another burst of laughter. She had never been so ashamed of herself before, but she could not help it. The whole business was so droll. He kept standing, balancing himself in the funniest way, looking down upon her with the strangest incomprehension—and he had saved her life! Though she was ashamed, she could not restrain herself. She laughed till the tears came into her eyes, more and more stimulated thereto by the gravity and astonishment with which he regarded her. As for John, he tried to laugh at first, but finally settled into quiet, and looked at her with an amazed and wondering observation, as if it was a new species that had thus come suddenly under his eyes.
“I am very glad you are so much amused,” he said at last, quite seriously, poor fellow, without the slightest ironical meaning. Was she by any possibility a little fool, giggling like a baby at the gravest matters? or was it some deeper sense in her of the phantasmagoria of life which had called forth this curious outburst of incomprehensible laughter? Laughter (John reflected in his perplexity—being, as will be perceived, a young intellectualist, and fond of such questions) is one of the most subtle and least comprehensible of things. It may express folly, levity, mere amusement—or it may express that deep sense of the humour which lies at the bottom of most earthly transactions, which is possible only to very rare spirits. Gazing at Kate with his eyes full of romance, he could not tell which it was, but felt it most probable that it was the latter, the depths being more natural to him than the shallows. “I don’t wonder that you laugh,” he added, after a pause, in the grave way which was so quaint to Kate. “It is like a thing that happened in a dream.”
At this strange comment she looked up at him, puzzled in her turn. Did he mean something? or was he laughing as she had been? But there was no laugh on John’s face; and suddenly it occurred to her that the eyes with which he was looking at her were those same eyes which she had seen, as in a vision, at the foot of the sofa, on the day of her accident. They were full of wonder, and anxiety, and alarm then; they were only serious and perplexed, and anxious to understand her now: but yet they were the same eyes; and the whole scene flashed back upon Kate’s impatient mind, and changed her mood in a moment. A sudden cloud, almost like that which comes over a child’s face when it is about to cry, enveloped her. “Ah!” she cried, suddenly, “I remember you now. I remember your eyes!”
“My eyes!” cried John, growing scarlet with amazement.
“Yes, your eyes. The day it all happened, you know—though I am sure I don’t know even now what did happen. When I came to myself, I suppose—the first thing I was conscious of was a pair of eyes looking at me. They had no body to them,” said Kate, with a sudden moisture coming into her own—“they looked so anxious, so unhappy, about me. I see now it was you. How awfully good of you to care!”
“Good of me!” said John, feeling this sudden praise steal all over him with a melting weakening softness of delight. “I was very anxious, and very much alarmed. I think—they thought—you would never come to yourself.”
“Was it so long?” said Kate, with that intense wistful interest which youth feels in itself.
“It was long to us—please don’t speak of it; it felt like an age,” said John, with a shudder. He turned half away from her in the pain of the recollection, and then turned back to find those moist surprised child eyes of hers fixed upon him with an incipient tear in each of them, and a look of—what was it?—tenderness, gratitude, admiration—yes, admiration—from her to him! It took away his breath, and took the strength out of him. He gave a low sort of chuckle of laughter, most bizarre expression of his feelings, and dropped into the first chair he could find in such agonies of bashfulness and pleasure as would have better beseemed a charity boy than a man trained to encounter with the world. “It is very funny, as you say,” he gasped; and then saw how ridiculous his speech was, and put his hands in his pockets, and blushed all over a violent painful red.