Chapter Twelve In which the Poet warbles to Mrs. Malone
Rat-tat-tat!
“Are you dressed, Mister Moore?” asked Mrs. Malone, her ear against the crack of the door.
Moore winked at Buster and motioned him to admit the landlady, who entered with her accustomed independence of carriage, apparently expecting and prepared for contention.
“Ah, ha,” said she, triumphantly. “You didn’t thrick me this time, Tom Moore.”
“On the contrary, I have been patiently waiting for your coming, Mrs. Malone,” replied the poet, politely.
The landlady looked incredulous.
“Where is the rint?” she inquired, belligerently.
“Here in my dressing gown,” answered Moore, exhibiting a long tear in the garment mentioned. “A big rip it is, too. Have you your needle handy?”
“I wants no fooling, Misther Thomas Moore,” declared Mrs. Malone, drawing her bushy brows low in a ferocious frown.
“Were you ever in love, Mrs. Malone?”
“Thot is none of your business.”
“You forget your husband was my first instructor,” said Moore, reproachfully.
“Well, I ’ll be your last teacher, and I ’ll give you instructions in how to get up and get out wid your pile o’ kit, bag and baggage, unless I gets me rint.”
“You are Irish, Mrs. Malone.”
“Niver mind thot, sorr.”
“Sure, I don’t mind, if you don’t,” replied Moore, “and if Ireland don’t object there will be no discussion on that point at all.”
“Whot are yez going to do? Thot’s whot I wants to know, Mr. Moore? Is it rint or run, me fine bucko?”
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Malone?”
“I ’ll not sit down, I ’ll stand up.”
“Well, will you stand up till you get the rent, Mrs. Malone?”
“I ’ll sit down,” replied the landlady, suiting the action to the words so vigorously that the attic rattled.
“Do you know, Mrs. Malone, I ’ve written you a song?”
“I wants no song. I have no notes in me voice.”
“Faith,” said Moore, with a chuckle, “we are alike then, for I ’ve none in my pocket.”
“I wants me rint.”
“Be easy, Mrs. Malone,” said Moore, in a conciliatory tone and forthwith broke into song:
“Oh, the days are gone when beauty bright
My heart’s chain wove—”
“Where is the rint?” interrupted the irate landlady, but Moore continued his singing, at the same time helping himself to a seat on the table beside her.
“When all my dreams by day or night
Were love, still love—”
“The rint is no dream,” exclaimed Mrs. Malone, “and by gorry, I ’ll have it, me canary-bird.”
“New hopes may bloom,
And days may come
Of milder, calmer beam—”
“Not till I have ivery penny due me,” asserted Mrs. Malone, turning a deaf ear to the pathos and sentiment with which the poet’s beautiful voice was investing the simple words of the song.
“But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As Love’s young dream—”
“I ’ll prefer the rint a t’ousand times,” observed Mrs. Malone, quite unaffected.
“No, there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As Love’s young dream.”
As the words of the song died away in a sigh of sentimental melody, Moore leaned forward and touched the old woman on the shoulder, hoping that he had struck some responsive chord of memory in her recollections of long-departed youth, but he was doomed to disappointment, for she smote the table with one calloused fist and called upon the saints to witness and sustain her resolve to accept nothing but the whole amount of the money due her.
Nothing daunted, Moore slipped off the table and standing behind his determined creditor began another verse, throwing even more feeling into his voice as he proceeded:
“No,—that hallowed form is ne’er forgot
Which first love traced—”
“I ’ll have that rint, Tom Moore, song or no song,” interrupted Mrs. Malone, but her tone was not quite so quarrelsome as before, and Moore from this drew encouragement that lent double sympathy to his music as he continued:
“Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot
On memory’s waste—”
“I wants me rint,” remarked Mrs. Malone, but her voice had lost its assertive defiance.
“’T was odor fled
As soon as shed—”
“I ’ll have me rint, Tom Moore,” said the landlady plaintively.
“’Twas morning’s wingéd dream;
’Twas a light that ne’er can shine again,
On life’s dull stream—”
An audible sniff came from beneath the frill of Mrs. Malone’s cap and she cleared her throat noisily. Moore leaned over her and tenderly and slowly breathed forth the last words of his song, the mournful cadences stealing from his lips sweet and low and laden with tears, supremely touching in their plaintive harmony, for he sang as though it was to the hopeless love that filled his heart’s innermost recess that he now gave utterance.
“No, there ’s nothing half so sweet in life
As Love’s young dream.”
The last words died away, and for a moment the old attic was silent. Then Mrs. Malone rose from her seat with a stifled sob, and, wiping her eyes, started toward the door.
“And the rent, Mrs. Malone?” asked Moore, timidly.
“You—you rapscallion,” she said, brokenly, “to make an old woman like me cry. Ah, bless you, Tom Moore, for it’s the old days you ’ve brought back to me.”
“But the rent?”
“May your voice never grow less, Tom Moore. You—You—!”
“Well, Mrs. Malone?”
“You have me rint Satherday or there ’ll be throuble.”
And, blowing her nose vigorously, the relenting landlady left the attic to its inhabitants.
“‘O-o-ray! ‘O-o-ray!” shouted Buster in a hoarse whisper, seizing Lord Castlereagh by the front paws and dancing around in a circle in his delight. “Till Saturday, till Saturday! ‘O-oray! ‘O-oray!”
“Buster, from now on, we can never complain of these apartments as expensive,” said Moore, fanning himself by the window.
“No, sir? Why not?” asked Buster.
“Because I got them for a song,” replied the poet. “A cursed bad joke, Buster, even if I did make it myself.”