Chapter Thirteen Tom Moore has a Bitter Disappointment and an Unexpected Visitor
Mrs. Malone opened the door suddenly, accompanying this action with a vigorous gesture intended to represent an apology for the liberty she took in omitting the knock. By this it can be easily seen that under Buster’s tuition the manners of the landlady were improving.
“A gentleman to see you, Misther Moore.”
“Show the gentleman in, Mrs. Malone,” said the poet, adding in an undertone to Buster, “This must be a reception we are giving. We have joined society without knowing it, lad.”
“This way, sorr,” announced Mrs. Malone, with an elephantine duck, this being the best imitation nature permitted her to give of a courtesy.
Immediately a little, square-shaped man with an expressionless face from which protruded two beady eyes in much the same manner that raisins brighten and decorate the exterior surface of a plum-pudding, entered, striding as pompously as though his height were considerably over six feet instead of but a trifle under five. His face was clean shaven and consistently grave and solemn down to the lower lip, where his chin made a sudden and undignified attempt to obtain complete concealment in the folds of his neckcloth. However, all in all, he was a neat little man, though far from a beauty.
“Er—er—ahem,” he began with a little cough, meanwhile looking back and forth from Moore to Buster as Mrs. Malone waddled out of the attic, “which is Mr. Thomas Moore?”
“I am, sir,” replied the poet, taking no notice of the new-comer’s intentional rudeness. “What do you wish with me?”
“I—er—er—ahem—come from Mr. McDermot, the publisher. My name is Gannon.”
“Indeed?” cried Moore. “Won’t you have a chair, Mr. Gannon?”
“I will, thank you,” replied the clerk, for such he was, seating himself with much dignity, a performance given a humorous tinge by the unsuccessful attempt he made to cross his fat little legs. “I have called at Mr. McDermot’s request to see you about your poems.”
“You are more than welcome, I am sure,” replied Moore.
“Mr. McDermot has read the manuscript volume you submitted, and takes great pleasure in saying he has never read anything better; great pleasure.”
Moore gave a sigh of relief and grew quite light-headed with delight. Here was real appreciation. Genius was about to be recognized at last. Ugly, ill-tempered, little Gannon became in the poet’s eyes suddenly invested with the beautiful characteristics and perfect exterior of a cherub, a little over-grown and shapeless, perhaps, but nevertheless cherubic. He wondered how he could for the moment have so greatly disliked this herald of prosperity.
“Mr. Gannon, you are thirsty, I know,” stammered Moore. “You must be after such a walk. I insist that you drink with me, sir. What shall it be?”
“Since you insist I ’ll try a little port,” said the clerk, obligingly.
“Unfortunately,” replied the poet, “that is one thing I have n’t in my possession. I’m like a loaded ship, sir, just out of port. But I ’ll give you something better.”
“Will you?”
“I ’ve the finest drink in the world in that cupboard, sir. One that will make life seem like a dream of blue sky and roses to you.”
“Er—er—ahem,—I am a married man,” observed Mr. Gannon, doubtfully.
“This will enable you to forget that,” said Moore in a reassuring tone.
“I hope not,” replied Gannon, suddenly waxing confidential. “The only cloud in my domestic horizon was caused by just such a slip of memory. What a recollection women have for such lapses.”
“For theirs or for yours, Mr. Gannon?”
“For mine, Mr. Moore, for mine,” hastily replied the clerk. “Ah, women—er—er—ahem—are angels, sir, angels.”
“No doubt,” said Moore, pleasantly, as he poured out the whisky, “of one kind or another. This, sir, is the dew of heaven. You ’ll never beat this for tipple, Mr. Gannon. When I place this before you I show you the greatest compliment in my power. Believe me, it is most precious, dear sir, for it is the essence of Ireland. Each drop a tinted diamond. Your health, Mr. Gannon.”
“Thank you, Mr. Moore, thank you,” replied the clerk in a flattered tone, raising his glass to his mouth. But the first swallow of the fiery liquid sent him into such a paroxysm of coughing that Moore felt compelled to slap him on the back hastily.
“That’s the way to drink such whisky,” said the poet, approvingly. “It makes it last longer.”
“Er—er—ahem,” replied the clerk, taking advantage of Moore’s own imbibing to empty the contents of his glass over his shoulder unperceived by his host. Buster, being at this particular moment just behind the little clerk, received the whisky full in the face, and feeling compelled on his master’s account to resist the belligerent impulse which demanded he should obtain immediate satisfaction from the cause of his discomfiture, he sought with a smothered oath the seclusion of the stairs, an exile into which he was immediately followed by the bulldog.
“What ails the lad?” asked Moore in astonishment. “I wonder if he is n’t well?”
“Ahem—er—Mr. Moore,” began the clerk in a businesslike tone, “permit me to deliver to you the message of my employer. I really am pressed for time, sir.”
“Go ahead,” said Moore, seating himself on the opposite side of the table near which his guest was sitting. “You may command me, Mr. Gannon.”
“Mr.—er—er—McDermot—ahem—wishes me to inform you that your poetry is delightful. The language is beautiful.”
“Yes?” said Moore, interrogatively, now in the seventh heaven of delight. “Really, Mr. Gannon?”
“Each metaphor he declares is as delicate as it is charming.”
“Yes?”
“Your rhymes are perfect, Mr. Moore.”
“Yes?”
“In fact Mr. McDermot wishes me to assure you that the highest praise can be lavished on your work, Mr. Moore, the highest praise.”
“He is too kind, Mr. Gannon, he is too kind,” cried the poet, rising in his excitement.
“He was delighted with your book, but—”
Mr. Gannon paused, and looked solemn.
“But what?” asked Moore, eagerly.
“He cannot publish it.”
Moore stood looking stupidly at the little clerk for a moment quite dazed.
“Can’t publish it?” he repeated slowly. “Can’t publish it! Why not, sir?”
“Your work is most worthy,” answered Mr. Gannon, “but who are you?”
“I don’t—quite—know,” faltered Moore, stunned by the sudden casting down of his so recently raised hopes.
“Ahem—er—er—nor does any one else,” continued the clerk, pitilessly. “Mr. McDermot bade me say that to obtain success at the present time a book must be dedicated to some great figure of fashion.”
“But I know none, sir,” replied the disconsolate poet, sinking limply back on his stool. “I know none, sir.”
“Just so,—er—er—ahem,—Mr. Moore,” said Mr. Gannon, gravely. “You know none; none knows you, so here is your poetry.”
As he spoke, he drew a bundle of manuscript from his coat-tail pocket and tossed it contemptuously upon the table.
“Good day, sir, good day, er—er—ahem,—Mr. Moore.”
And swelling out his chest with the importance properly attached to the person of the bearer of bad news, little Mr. Gannon sauntered leisurely out of the attic.
For a moment Moore sat motionless and dumb, striving to comprehend that the sudden downfall of his hopes was real. So quickly had he found himself robbed of the triumph which seemed almost in his grasp that the events of the last few moments were temporarily blurred and blotted in his mind as the fanciful weavings of a slumbering brain often are when consciousness is rudely restored to the sleeper and memory seeks to recall the dream.
“Done again,” he murmured, softly. “Done again.”
Suddenly a great sob shook his frame, but he manfully choked back the others which would have followed it.
“My courage is gone at last,” he whispered, as though he were not alone. “I ’m beaten—I ’m beaten. Oh, it is bitter. All my bright hopes were conjured up but to fade. A glimpse of Paradise shown to me, and then this attic again. Ah, Bessie, Bessie, my heart is broken this day.”
For a second he seemed as though about to break down completely, but, controlling himself with a great effort, he dashed the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. Then as he turned, his eye fell upon the manuscript lying on the table where it had been thrown by the careless hand of Mr. Gannon.
“You are there, are you?” he cried, seizing it roughly. “You tempted me from beautiful Ireland—you lured me here to this heartless, cruel London, with a thousand sweet promises of hope and love and fame. You ’ve tricked me. You brought me here to starve—to die—to fail. Then, damn you, I ’m through with you forever.”
He hurled the written book to the floor and groped his way to the window, blinded with the tears he would not shed. The golden and salmon hued glory of the sunset, painting the spires and house tops with a thousand shades of flame, fell full upon his hopeless head, and conscious of the horrible mockery of such a halo at a time when only darkness and despair seemed to surround his existence, the poor fellow buried his face in his arms on the window-sill and sobbed like a beaten child.
After a while, when the final bitterness of his grief and disappointment had passed he left the window. As he crossed the room his eye fell upon the rejected poems, which lay on the floor bathed in the crimson and yellow riot of a sunbeam. He stood for a moment as though transfixed, then as his heart filled with a sudden revulsion of feeling he knelt and clasped the manuscript to his breast with a little cry.
“No, no,” he murmured brokenly, “I did n’t mean it, I did n’t mean it, for such as you are you ’re all I have.”
When Buster opened the door a few moments later he found his master sitting in his favorite arm-chair in front of the fireplace in which flickered a tiny fire, lighted for the sake of its cheering influence as the chill of fall was still at least a month away.
“Well, sir?” asked the lad, hopefully. “Did he take ’em?”
“No, Buster, he came to bring them back,” replied Moore, quite calmly. Buster made a remark as expressive as it was profane, which is saying much.
“Well, blow ’is hugly face!” he cried, in righteous indignation. “Hall that fuss hand then ’ands ’em back?”
“He did, Buster.”
“Oh, Hi wishes Hi ’ad a knowed it. Babble’s tumble wouldn’t ’ave been a circumstance to the ‘eader that little pot-bellied cove would ’ave tooken. Hi say, Mr. Moore, will you call me ‘Pride’ after this?”
“Why?” asked Moore, more cheerfully.
“Because ’as ’ow Hi goes before a fall hand returns hafter it. Dabble will swear to that, sir. Aw, don’t let a measly publishing cove cast you down, sir. W’y hall we ’as got to do is to cut McDermot dead when we meets ’im on Pall Mall. That ’ll ruin ’im socially.”
“You are a plucky little devil, Buster.”
“Yessir,” replied the boy, sagely. “You see, Hi hain’t got no gal to worry me, sir.”
“Ah, my lad,” said Moore, nodding his head with a sigh, “that makes a world of difference after all.”
“There is some one hat the door, sir,” said Buster. “Shall Hi tell ’im you’re hout?”
“No, lad, I ’ll be glad of company. Bid him enter.”
Buster obediently opened the door and a tall gentleman, magnificently dressed, stepped over the threshold.
“Is this the residence of Mr. Thomas Moore?” he asked, removing his hat politely.
At the sound of the new-comer’s voice Moore started to his feet.
“It is, sir,” he answered, advancing a step or two.
“Oh, how are you, Mr. Moore? You remember me?”
“Lord Brooking; Sir Percival’s friend,” said Moore coldly. “I ’ve not forgotten you.”
And he paid no attention to his lordship’s outstretched hand.
Brooking seemed a trifle disconcerted at the coolness of his reception, but, recovering himself, he continued winningly:
“You wrong me, sir. My intimacy with the gentleman you named has declined to a mere acquaintance.”
“You are to be congratulated, Lord Brooking,” replied Moore more cordially. “Won’t you sit down?”
Then, as the young nobleman was relieved of his cloak and hat by Buster, the poet went on:
“I believed your lordship to be abroad.”
“It is my custom to pass six months yearly upon the Continent,” answered Brooking, settling back at his ease in the old arm-chair to which his host had waved him. “To this, doubtless, your impression is due. As it is, I only returned from there two days ago, so you see, Mr. Moore, you are one of the first of my friends to receive a call from me.”
“I am honored,” replied Moore, politely, sitting down on the other side of the fireplace.
“No doubt you are wondering what has brought me to see you?”
“I can’t deny a slight curiosity, my lord,” admitted Moore, smiling back at the young nobleman, whose charming manner was winning his confidence in spite of his previous suspicions.
“Then I ’ll proceed to enlighten you without further delay, Mr. Moore.”
“If your lordship will be so good.”
“In Ireland a year ago Sir Percival offered little Mistress Dyke a position at Drury Lane Theatre.”
“He did, curse him!”
“Knowing the gentleman as I do, I promised my better self that, if the young lady did come to London as the protégée of Lovelace, I would fetch you here as mine, so, if the time came when she would require a strong arm and a loving heart to defend her happiness, she need not go far to find it. That very day I left Ireland and have since been abroad. Two days ago I returned from Paris and found to my surprise that Mistress Dyke is acting at Drury Lane. Surely, you did not allow this willingly?”
“Not I, sir. I had nothing to say about it.”
“You mean she preferred Lovelace’s advice to yours, Mr. Moore?”
“We quarrelled, sir, and from that day—it was the one on which you left the old country, my lord—she has had no good word for me. Circumstances placed me in an unfavorable light, and, believing me faithless, she turned a deaf ear to my warnings. Her father was daft to come to London, and in her anger she consented to make the venture.”
“And you followed her here, Mr. Moore?”
“Yes, sir, I made a pretence of studying law in the Middle Temple, but it was wretched work which I soon abandoned. Since then I ’ve been scribbling for a living and not achieving much success at it, though I have done my best.”
“I see,” said Brooking, reflectively.
“Did Bessie give you my address?”
“Not she,” replied his lordship. “I ’ve not had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with Mistress Dyke.”
“She and her father go everywhere,” said Moore, proudly. “Thanks to Sir Percival’s influence, they have been received by society with open arms. The old gentleman’s poems sell, and Bessie is more than ordinarily successful at Drury Lane.”
“I am not surprised at the young lady’s success,” observed the young nobleman. “That of her father in the world of letters would have seemed to me problematical had I not your assurance of his prosperity.”
“Then if Bessie did not tell you where I lived, how did you find me out?”
“I lunched to-day at Mrs. FitzHerbert’s. There I saw a poem with your name and address attached.”
Moore gave Buster a grateful glance which more than repaid that young gentleman for his enterprise.
“By the way, Mr. Moore, the verses I spoke of were charming. Mrs. FitzHerbert read them aloud to the assembled company, who received them with every mark of pleasure and appreciation. Mr. Sheridan was particularly complimentary in his comments, while no less harsh a critic than Mr. Brummell condescended to express himself as delighted. Have you other poems, Mr. Moore?”
“What is that, Lord Brooking?”
“Have you other poems?”
Moore’s laugh was not untinged with bitterness as he opened the drawer in the table, lifting from it with both hands a confused pile of manuscripts which he dropped carelessly in front of his guest.
“A few, sir,” he remarked grimly.
“But why are they not published?” demanded Lord Brooking, scanning various poems through his eyeglasses. “They seem of uniform excellence.”
“They are refused because I have no patron in the world of fashion to accept the dedication. McDermot, the great publisher, told me so himself.”
“Indeed?” remarked his lordship, meditatively. “Hum!”
“Ah, if your lordship would permit me?” began Moore, eagerly.
“I ’ll do better than that,” interrupted Brooking. “I ’ll bring your work to the attention of the Prince himself.”
“The Prince?” cried Moore, dazzled at the mere idea.
“Yes, Mr. Moore, the Prince. Wales, in spite of his many faults, is a curst good fellow, and quite a judge of poetry. He shall read specimens of your skill. Fortunately Mrs. FitzHerbert, who still enjoys his Highness’s favor, is mightily at odds with Sir Percival. Moreover, she was greatly pleased with the Rose poem you favored her with. I ’ll get her to exert her influence with Wales. Egad, Mr. Moore, we ’ll do our best for you.”
“How can I thank you?” faltered Moore, hope welling up in his heart once more.
Brooking rose from his chair.
“You can repay me easily,” he answered, placing his hand upon his protégé’s shoulder. “Marry sweet Mistress Bessie and then keep her from Sir Percival. The happiness your wedded life should bring you both will amply reward me for any effort I may make in your behalf. If the Prince permits me to dedicate your book to him the publishers will fight for the privilege of printing it and your fortune is made, Tom Moore.”
“But we have quarrelled,” said Moore, hopelessly.
“Capital!” cried his lordship. “No woman tiffs with a man to whom she is indifferent. It is the sex’s sweet perversity. Then, again, Tom Moore famous, for you ’ll never be more than ‘Tom’ if success is yours—the public loves a familiar diminutive, sir—will be a different Moore from Thomas Moore unknown.”
“Ah, sir, you put new courage in my heart,” said Moore, catching the young nobleman’s infectious enthusiasm.
“I ’ll put money in your purse, which is even better, lad,” replied Brooking, plunging his hand in his pocket, from which he drew it forth filled with coins of various denominations. “Write me a sonnet to send to my lady love.”
“I ’ll do it gladly,” said Moore, seating himself at the table and with feverish haste drawing towards him pen and paper. “Is the lady blonde or brunette?”
Lord Brooking hesitated for a moment.
“Curst if I know,” thought he, “since I have never laid eyes on her.”
Then he continued, addressing Moore:
“Brunette, dark hair and blue eyes, and a devilishly sweet and mischievous mouth.”
“Very well, sir,” replied Moore, dipping his pen in the ink.
“One second, Mr. Moore. Here are five sovereigns in advance.”
His lordship dropped the coins upon the table as Moore looked up at him, gratitude dumbing his tongue for the moment.
“Finish the verses at your leisure,” continued Brooking. “I am in no hurry for them.”
“God bless you, sir,” stammered Moore, finding speech at last. “You have brought new life and hope to me this day. I ’ll never forget your generosity.”
“Tut, tut,” said his lordship, hastily. “Never mind thanking me. If all goes well you are to get married and be happy if you wish to please me.”
“I promise I ’ll do my best,” replied the poet, smiling more cheerfully than in days.
“My hat and cloak, boy,” said Brooking. “I ’ll off to Carlton House, where I am expected by Wales even now.”
“I can hardly believe I am the same man, my lord,” said Moore. “You have changed me completely, sir.”
“You ’ll hear from me soon, Tom,” said Brooking, hat in hand, as he crossed to the door. “Be of good cheer, my lad, for if Wales will have none of it, I ’ll accept the dedication, and I flatter myself that will be enough to insure publication for you. Good-bye for the present.”
“Good-bye, my lord,” answered Moore, closing the door behind his benefactor with almost reverential care.
“Mr. Moore,” said Buster.
“Yes, my lad.”
“Was that Lord Brooking?”
“Yes, Buster. Why do you ask?”
“Coz Hi thought as ’ow he was a bloomin’ hangel,” said Buster.
“Ah, lad, I ’m not sure that you are not right,” answered Moore, and there was no laughter in his voice.