Chapter Six.
It was some time before the boy could do anything but sit with elbows upon knees, chin upon hands, gazing straight before him into vacancy. His head throbbed so that he could not think consistently. In his struggle on the pier he had been a good deal shaken, and that alone was enough to produce a feverish kind of excitement. Then on the way back his brain had been much troubled, while, worst of all, there had been the scene with his uncle.
It was then no wonder that he could not arrange his thoughts so as to sit in judgment upon his acts, especially that last one, in which he had stubbornly, as it seemed, refused or declined to respond to his uncle’s question.
He tried, and tried hard, with a curious seething desire working in his brain, to decide upon going straight to the old man and speaking out, giving him frankly his reason for refusing to speak. But this always came to the same conclusion: “I can’t—I dare not—I can’t.”
At last, wearied out and confused more and more by his throbbing brain, the boy rose and walked slowly to the looking-glass, where he started in dismay at the image reflected there. For a few moments it seemed to be part and parcel of some confused dream, but its truth gradually forced itself upon him, and finally he burst out into a mocking, half hysterical laugh.
“I don’t wonder at uncle,” he cried; “I don’t wonder at his being in a rage.”
With a weary sigh he went to the washstand and half filled the basin.
“I’d no idea I looked such a sight,” he muttered, as he began to bathe his stiff and swollen features. “The brute!” he said, after a few moments. “I wish I’d told uncle, though, that I beat him well. But, oh, dear! what a muddle it all seems! I wish I’d hit him twice as hard,” he said, with angry vehemence, half aloud. “Yes?”
For there was a gentle tapping at the door.