“To escape from yourself! Why did you want that?” she said, with an innocent little cry of astonishment. It was clear she was quite unaware of having done him any wrong.
“Kate, Kate,” he said, holding her close, “you did not mean it; but why did you take Fred Huntley into your confidence—why did you speak to him about you and me?”
She gave him a wondering look, and then the colour rose into her cheek. “John!” she said, in a tone of amazement, “what is this about Fred Huntley? Are you jealous of him—jealous of him? Oh, I hope I am not quite so foolish as that.”
Was that all she was going to say? No disclaimer of having given him her confidence, nothing about her part in the matter, only about his. Was he jealous? the question sank into John’s heart like a stone.
“I don’t know if I am jealous,” he said, with a falter in his voice, which went to Kate’s impressionable heart. “It must be worse to me than it is to you, or you would not ask me. To have said anything to anybody about us, Kate!”
“I see,” she said, holding away from him a little; “I see,”—and was silent for two seconds at least, which felt like two hours to them both. And the man went on playing “La Donna é Mobile,”—and Parsons, very red in the face, kept shaking her head at him, but did not attempt to leave her post. Then Kate turned and lifted her pretty eyes, full of tears, to her lover’s face, and spoke in his very ear. “John, it was very silly of me, and thoughtless, and nasty, I see. But I have had nobody to tell me such things. I have never had a mother like you; I say whatever comes into my head. John! I am so sorry——”
Could he have let her say any more? he ended the sweet confession as lovers use; he held her to him, and healed himself by her touch, by her breath, by the softness of her caressing hands. He forgot everything in the world but that she was there. She had meant no harm, she had thought no harm. It was her innocence, her ignorance, that had led her into this passing error, and foolish John was so happy that all his sufferings passed from his mind.
“His old remembrances went from him wholly,
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.”
Everything smiled and brightened before him; the organ-grinder stopped and found out from poor Parsons’s perpetual gesticulations that pennies were not to be expected; and something soft and tranquil and serene seemed to steal into the room and envelop the two, who were betrothing themselves over again, or so they thought. “Papa says you are to come to Fernwood. You must come and let me nurse you,” Kate whispered in his ear. “That would be too sweet,” John whispered back again; and then she opened the note to his mother and wrote a little postscript to it, with his arm round her, and his poor scarred face over her shoulder watching every word as she wrote it. “He looks so frightful,” Kate wrote, “you never saw any one so hideous, dear mamma, or such a darling [don’t shake my arm, John]. I never knew how nice he was, nor how fond I was of him, till now.”
This was how the day ended which had been begun in such misery; for it was nearly dusk when Kate left him with the faithful Parsons. “Indeed you shall not come with me,” she said, “you who ought to be in bed——” but, notwithstanding this protest and all his scars, he went with her till they came within sight of the bank, where the carriage was standing. Of course it did him harm, and the doctor was very angry; but what did John, in the delight of his heart, care for that?