CHAPTER XVI
FORGIVENESS.
During the drive to Rock House the kind-hearted surgeon did his best to divert Bryda from dwelling upon the past or the dreaded interview with Mr Bayfield. He did not know how sharp was the pang his companion felt as the old thorn tree came in sight, nor how she bit her lips and clenched the rail of the high gig with a grasp that gave her physical pain to deaden the terrible ache at her heart.
Mr Barrett talked of many things in all ignorance of the intensity of her feelings, roused by the sight of the very spot where she had last seen Jack and that rigid upturned face.
'You take an interest in the poor boy Chatterton, Miss Palmer, I know. I am afraid the sunshine of his first weeks in London is a little clouded.'
'I have seen his mother once or twice,' Bryda said. 'She showed me his first letter, written in high spirits.'
'Ah, yes! and there have been others since, but they don't deceive George Catcott, who is always thinking of him, having the notion that there never was a poet like him since Shakespeare. He is making a mistake now in rushing into politics in the Middlesex Journal. He sends Catcott the papers. What will Lord Hillsborough or the Lord Mayor care for all his violent reproaches anent this affair at Boston? Not a brass farthing—not they! That's a fine letter to the freeholders of Bristol, I own, in which he chronicles the speech of his glorious Canynge, when he said, "dear as his family were, his country was dearer," or something like that. It is all very fine, but Chatterton has to earn his bread, and I don't think he is going the right way to do it. He seems proud of his intimacy with the editor of the Political Register, but I fear it won't do him much good.'
'He still writes poetry, sir,' Bryda said, 'so his sister tells me,' and she added, with enthusiasm, 'his poetry is beautiful!'
'Yes, yes, you know, I take it, many folks think there never was such a person as "Rowley the priest."'