Instantly he was greeted with a storm of hisses. Stanley turned from him with a look on his bruised and swollen face Paul had never seen there before. It was a look of repugnance, as though the affection between them had suddenly turned to loathing. Then the crowd of boys parted, and drawing away from Paul, left him standing there alone—he might have been a leper.
He began to feel indignant against Stanley. He at least ought to have known why he had refused to fight Wyndham; and then, as he recalled Stanley's bruised face, his indignation vanished. The old tenderness and affection for his friend came back in a wave.
"Why did I leave you, Stan—why did I leave you?"
He reproached himself, and still more bitterly Wyndham. It was Wyndham who had done this—who had bruised and battered Stanley, and raised this barrier between them.
"You'll have to reckon with me some day, Master Wyndham," he said to himself.
He looked in the direction of Garside. The boys had disappeared from sight. How could he get an explanation of what had happened? He would go and demand one; but somehow as he turned to the school his feet seemed as heavy as lead. For the first time he felt as though he had no right there. What was the use of going back when no one wanted him? He had made a horrible mess of everything.
Paul felt utterly miserable, as though he would like to flee from everything and every one. Then the pale face of little Hibbert rose before him, and he heard him speaking again as he had spoken to him in the class-room:
"Coward! I know you couldn't be. Any one can see that by looking in your face."
There was one at the school, at any rate, who had not lost faith in him. And Paul was strengthened by the memory.
Thus thinking, he turned away from the school again, scarcely heeding the direction in which he went. Happening to look up, he saw Waterman coming along the road towards him. He was strolling along with both hands thrust in his pockets in his usual leisurely manner. He was one of that class of boys who never seem to have anything to do, and plenty of time to do it in.