I do not often get a headache, but the one which woke me next morning seemed determined to bring my average of pain up to the level of that of less fortunate people. All day long it pressed like a burning cap over my head, till my pillow felt as if it were a block of wood, and the thin chinks of light that came through the closed shutters cut my eyes like the blades of knives. The infrequent sounds in the quiet house—the far-off shutting of a door, the knocking of the housemaid’s broom against the wainscot in the corridor, or an occasional footstep in the hall—all jarred upon my aching brain as if it had lost some accustomed shelter, and the blows of sound struck directly upon its bruised nerves.
The wretchedness of the day before had given way to the supremacy of physical suffering. I lay in my darkened room, thinking of nothing except how best to endure the passing of the slow hours. Once, as the clock in the hall struck three, I was conscious of some association connected with the sound, and remembered that this was the hour at which I should have been starting for Mount Prospect.
But it had all lost reality. Even the horror of that scene with my uncle and Willy in the drawing-room had been for the time obliterated, wiped out by the pain, of which it had partly been the cause. All that I felt was that some trouble surely was there, and, though in abeyance for to-day, it was already in possession of to-morrow, and of many to-morrows.
When, on the next morning, after breakfast in bed, I made my way downstairs, I felt as if a long time had gone by since I had crossed the hall. The house was cold and deserted. I dreaded meeting my uncle, but I saw no one; there was not even a dog to wish me good morning. In the drawing-room, the fire had only just been lighted; the blinds were drawn to the top of the windows, showing the various layers of dust in the room, from the venerable accumulation under the piano, to the lighter and more recent coating on the tables. I went straight to the writing-table, and, regardless of the cheerless glare from the sheet of grey sea, I began a letter to Aunt Jane.
Upstairs, in the early hours of the morning, it had seemed an easy and not disagreeable thing to do—to write and tell her that my Irish visit was over, and that, as soon as her answer had come, I should be ready to start for America. But when the letter was closed and directed, I sat looking at it for a long time, feeling that I had done something akin to making my will. The best part of my life was over; into these past three months had been crushed its keenest happiness and unhappiness, and this was what they had amounted to. They had none the less now to fall into the background, and soon would have no more connection with my future life than if they had never been.
I had convinced myself so thoroughly that by writing to Aunt Jane I had closed this epoch in my life, that when, a few minutes afterwards, Willy came into the room, I was almost surprised to find that he was as awkward and constrained as when I had seen him last.
“Oh! I didn’t know you were in here, Theo,” he said apologetically, stopping short half-way across the room. “I only came in to look for a pen.”
“Come in, Willy,” I answered, with an appearance of ease which was the result of the high, unemotional standpoint on which I had taken up my position. “I have just finished my letter-writing.”
“I hope your head’s all right to-day? The governor was asking after you yesterday,” he said, rolling his cap in his hands, and looking at the ground. “He was very sorry to hear your headache was so bad.”
I knew that he was trying, as well as he could, to apologize for his father’s outbreak and its too obvious cause.