"I won't bear it!" But now Jonas was behind him and twisting his right arm up between the shoulders.
"Jonas, lock him in his room. Here!" She fumbled a bunch of keys from her belt, with difficulty, for doubtless she could not see plainly. "Here, take it, Jonas! The boy is possessed!" Eyes flaring to the whites, she lifted the cluster of keys and struck Ben twice across the mouth.
As Jonas frogmarched him to the stairs, Ben tried to see down the hallway into the kitchen. Anna Lloyd was restraining Reuben, though at the moment the boy was not trying to break free but stood leaning away from her in a frozen motion, his white face empty.
Jonas hurled Ben into the bedroom. Ben pulled himself upright by a leg of the four-poster in time to hear the door slam and the key chatter in the lock. He spat blood from his lips, and heard the floor creak under Jonas' swift departure; heard silence fall on the room like the booming of another, larger door. Even then a part of his mind could fret at what seemed the strangest thing of all: when she struck him with the keys, his grandmother had looked exalted, almost happy—satisfied....
Hours crawled.
Now and then Ben Cory tried to retreat from images of the recent past and terrors of the immediate present within the shelter of a lethargy, a temporary refusal to think of anything at all. This was no good, since no power could shut away the thought of Reuben alone with these people, his own twelve-year-old temper explosive and perilous. Sooner or later Ru was bound to lose control and fetch down the wrath as Ben himself had done. Now when it was too late, Ben saw his outbreak as a betrayal of Reuben, a betrayal of trust. Once or twice he pressed his forehead on the window glass and tried to pray—seeing then that if only Reuben were with him it would be quite possible to jump from this window with fair safety into the snow.
A square of thin sunshine moved across the floor. It had neared the window when high clouds obscured the sun of March; the square yielded, grayed, vanished, like Ben's own trust in ancient certainties. Footsteps sounded often, not for him. Voices flowed on somewhere; Ben heard the homely commotion of household activity—doors closing, the hiss of sweeping, a shovel scraping ash from a hearthstone, clatter of kitchen gear.
Continually his ears strained for Reuben's treble or a light tread that would be his. But plainly Reuben was forbidden to come to him. Someone would, some time soon, he supposed. Someone in authority would be obliged to deal with the wild beast, the blasphemer.
He sprawled on the bed, raising his right knee to soften the nagging of the splinter-wound. Anxious to avoid the refuge of sleep, he fell into it anyway, having had little or none last night, and woke to what was surely the pallor of late afternoon. The house was quite silent; maybe everyone had gone to the Lecture Day sermon. In spite of himself he slept again, and roused, feeling ill and disoriented, in total dark.
From the window small lights could be found twinkling over on the left where the hill road must be. Ben groped for the stub candle on the mantel, and fought a dreary battle with his tinderbox, winning at last the consolation of a pale candle-flame. His knee felt hot, and throbbed. He let down his breeches but could find nothing very wrong. The splinter-wound was slightly raised; he saw or imagined faint steaks of red up his thigh. His clothing must have chafed the wound while he slept. As he moved sluggishly about the room the throbbing ceased and he could forget it. The lightheadedness—that would be hunger. Anger was no longer hot but heavy, lead in the stomach.