Something in Roche’s manner implied reproach and inquiry, and I felt obliged to defend myself. “There was nothing the matter with him when I saw him last, yesterday morning.”
“Is that so, miss?” said Roche, picking up his coal-scuttle preparatory to leaving the room. “Well, miss, maybe I’m only an owld fool afther all, but there’s things going on I don’t like.”
Luncheon came, and again I had to eat it in no better company than my own. I began to feel seriously troubled about Willy, and finally put on my things and went round to the yard to see if I could hear anything about him there. He had been in the stables early that morning, to see the mare get her feed, Mick told me, and he thought he had seen him, a while ago, going round the shrubberies towards the plantation.
There had been sharp, sleety showers all the morning, and one of them now began to fall so heavily that I had to take refuge in a stable while it lasted. I watched it impatiently, as it whipped the surface of the puddles about the yard and drove the fowls to the friendly shelter of the coach-house, and at the first signs of its abating I started for the plantation to look for Willy. By the time I reached the front of the house, the shower was quite over, and was driving out to sea. A wet gleam of sunlight shone on the trees, making every branch and twig show with pale distinctness against the bank of purple cloud behind; a pilot-boat was beating in to Durrusmore Harbour in the teeth of the cold south-easterly wind; the curlews screamed fitfully as they flew inland over my head, and I was weatherwise enough by this time to know that a storm was not far off.
The shrubberies were chilly and dripping, and their narrow walks were covered with soaking withered leaves, but they were sheltered from the wind. I hurried along them, not very certain of where I was going, or what my exact intention in looking for Willy was. I had come to the place where I had once left the path to gather ferns by the stream, and was beginning to realize the absurdity of expecting to find him here, half an hour at least since Mick had seen him, when, at the angle where the two paths meet, I came suddenly upon him.
He was sitting on a tumble-down old rustic seat, with his elbows on his knees, and his face hidden in his hands.
“Willy!” I cried, starting forward, “what is the matter? Are you ill?”
He raised his head, and looked at me vacantly, and for the moment I felt almost as great a shock as if I had seen him lying dead there; if he had been dead, his whole look could hardly be more changed than it was now. A bluish-grey pallor had taken the place of his usually fresh colouring; his eyes were sunk in dark hollows, but the lids were red; and I saw, with a shame at surprising them there, the traces of tears on his cheeks.
“I’m all right,” he answered, turning his face away without getting up; “please don’t stay here, Theo. It’s only that my head’s pretty bad.”
A small brown book was lying on the seat beside him, and he put it into the pocket of his coat while he was speaking. I was too bewildered to move.