'What has he done? What has Mr Chatterton done?'
'Tried to kill himself. Why, we might have had the house streaming with blood, and the crowner's inquest held here.'
'He threatened to kill himself, in a letter which Mr Barrett put into my hands,' Mr Lambert said, as he stood at the parlour door looking anxiously at his mother. 'Come, come, mother, no harm is done. The boy is mad, and a lot of people here have turned his head by flattering him till he is puffed up, and, like the frog in the fable, is all but bursting with conceit. I'll soon settle matters. He must take away what belongs to him; there's not much, I'll warrant, except his manuscripts in their outlandish trashy language. Now, keep her quiet, Miss Palmer, and don't let her fume and fret.'
Madam Lambert took her son's advice, and Bryda, seeing her inclined to take a nap, quietly left the room, and went downstairs to pursue her usual domestic duties. Mrs Symes was gone to market, and the footboy had been sent with her to carry the basket of purchases, so that Bryda was alone in the kitchen regions.
Presently a quick step was heard coming down the stairs, and Chatterton appeared.
'I am free,' he said, 'Miss Palmer, I am free, and Bristol chains will hold me no longer. Do they think I am sorry? Not I! And yet'--the boy paused--'there is my mother. Poor soul, it will vex her sorely--and poor sister also. Well, I shall be off to London, and then--why, Miss Palmer, _then_ you may live to hear of me as famous.'
Bryda raised her eyes to the boy's glowing face as he repeated the word _famous_, and said gently,--
'You would not, sure, think of taking your own life? Oh, it is very dreadful--it is a sin!'
'A sin!' he repeated. 'Well, I have not done it yet. I feel vastly full of life to-day. Old Lambert's rating at me put some spirit into me, and I shall not die yet.'
'Death is so solemn,' Bryda said, 'even when God calls us to die--the leaving of the sun and all the beauty of the world for the dark grave. I always shudder to see even a little bird dead, to think its songs are silent for ever, and its happy flights into the blue sky, and its sleep in its warm nest--'
'Ah!' Chatterton said, 'you have a breath of poetry in you. You can understand!'