Edwin glowed. It came as a delightful surprise to him that his father should think of a thing like this. He was ashamed to confess that he hadn’t believed him capable of it. It was the sort of thing that he would only have expected of his mother. “What a rotten little snob I am,” he thought. And though he happened to know, quite by accident, from the Rowley Poems of Chatterton, that the builder of Redcliffe was William Cannynge, round whose shadowy reputation the work of the wondrous boy had grown, he could not for the life of him reveal this piece of learning, since it would have spoiled the originality of his father’s reflection. He only said, “Yes,” but the train of thought was so strong in him that he couldn’t resist asking Mr. Ingleby if he knew which was the muniment room.
“Because it was in the muniment room that Chatterton pretended that he found the Rowley manuscripts.”
“Chatterton? Ah, yes. . . . Thomas Chatterton, the poet.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I never read any of his poems, but I believe he starved in London and committed suicide with Arsenious Oxide.”
This gleam of professional interest tickled Edwin. Keats: Beatings. Chatterton: Arsenious Oxide.
“They found Arsenic on his lips. He made no mistake about it. The lethal dose is a very small one. A grain or so would have done it. Why, it’s beginning to rain again. We’d better go. I hope it will clear up by to-morrow.”
They walked back to their lodging in a fine drizzle. On the way Edwin’s father took his arm. The action gave Edwin a curious sensation. It suggested to him that his father was lonely; that the natural instinct of love in the man was making him eager for some sort of sympathy. It was pitiable; for, in reality, they were strangers . . . there was no getting away from the fact that they were strangers.
“I must make it easy for him,” Edwin thought. “However impossible it may seem, I must make it easy. I must know him. I must love him. Whatever it costs I must love him. It is ridiculous that I should have to choose my words and even at times be a little dishonest when it ought to be the most natural and easy thing in the world to be myself with him. Of course it’s difficult at present; but later on, when we know each other better, it will be all right.”