Chapter Twenty Tom Moore makes a Bad Bargain
Mr. McDermot raised his bald head as Moore approached him in the smoking-room. His keen, hatchet-shaped face was framed on either side by a huge mutton-chop whisker which was like nothing else half so much as a furze bush recently sifted over by a snow-storm. This worthy gentleman regarded Moore with a keenness that seemed to the poet to penetrate and to coldly scrutinize his troubled mind, for Moore was ever a poor hand at dissimulation and bore on his unusually cheery countenance only too plainly the mark of the mental anxiety he was now enduring.
“Weel, Mr. Moore, what can I do for ye, sair?”
“Sir,” said Moore, trying to hide his eagerness, “I have been thinking over the proposition you made a week ago at the instigation of Lord Lansdowne.”
“Weel, Mr. Moore?” repeated McDermot, realizing at a single glance that the person addressing him was much in need of something he hoped to obtain as the result of this interview, and wisely concluding that this something was money.
“You wished me to write a long poem, for which you asserted you were willing to pay in advance, if by so doing you secured the exclusive right to all my work for the next two years.”
“So I said, Mr. Moore, but that was a week ago, sair. However, continue your remarks.”
“At that time I did not regard the matter favorably,” continued Moore, “but since then I have changed my mind. I accept your offer, sir.”
“Ah, do ye? And what terms did I propose, Mr. Moore?”
“You named none, sir, but from the way you spoke I fancied you would be agreeable to any reasonable bargain I might propose.”
“True, sair, true, but what is reasonable in one man’s eyes may weel be considered exhorbitant by anither. Ha’ the kindness to name in figures, Mr. Moore, what ye deem ye due.”
McDermot spoke in his most chilling tones, indifference ringing its baleful note in each word. Moore’s heart sank, but he struggled bravely on with his hopeless task, resolved not to even acknowledge the possibility of defeat until failure absolute and crushing should be forced upon him beyond all denying.
“I have decided to ask one thousand pounds in advance, sir,” he began, intending to name the royalty he hoped to be paid upon each copy of the poem sold, but the look he received from the grim old Scotchman made him hesitate and falter with the words upon his lips unspoken.
“One thousand poonds!” ejaculated McDermot, terribly shocked, if the tone in which he spoke could be regarded as a truthful indication of his feelings. “One thousand poonds, Mr. Moore? What jest is this, sair?”
“Is it not worth it?” stammered Moore, the blood rushing to his face.
“Worth it? Worth it? You must be mad, sair. No publisher half sane would dream o’ paying ye half that in advance.”
“Oh, come now,” said Moore, trying to speak unconcernedly, and scoring a wretched failure as a result.
“I too ha’ been considering the matter o’ which ye speak, Mr. Moore.”
“You mean you wish to withdraw your offer, sir?” cried Moore, in great alarm.
“That, Mr. Moore, is preecisely what I mean,” declared McDermot, regarding the poet from beneath his bristling brows. “I ha’ decided, sair, that I much exaggerated ye popularity as well as ye talents. This determination, taken togither with the terms ye ha’ just suggested, leads me to wash my hands o’ the whole matter. Find some ither pooblisher, Mr. Moore. Try Longmans or Mooray.”
“Mr. McDermot,” said Moore, forcing himself to speak calmly, thankful that the publisher and he had the smoking-room to themselves, “if the proposition I have made is unsatisfactory, pray suggest one in your turn. I will consider any you may see fit to offer.”
McDermot coughed a little and shook his shining old head. That Moore was in desperate need of money was quite evident. The wily old publisher had no intention of allowing the most promising young poet of the day to slip through his fingers, yet he was quite resolved to take advantage of his extremity to drive him to as desperate a bargain as could be obtained by the craft which forty years of business life had endowed him with in addition to his natural astuteness.
“No,” said he, “I ’ll not haggle wi’ ye. No doubt there are ithers who will gi’ ye what ye ask.”
This last was said in a way that plainly stated his sincere conviction that no one else would even consider the matter.
“Oh, sir!” cried Moore, despairingly, “I have relied upon this bargain.”
“No fault o’ mine, Mr. Moore, no fault o’ mine, sair.”
“Do you think I would ask you to reconsider your words if I had any hope of obtaining the money in any other quarter?”
“Where is Lord Brooking? He should help ye if ye ask him.”
“Lord Brooking is on the Continent.”
“Really, Mr. Moore, ye accomplish nothing by this perseestance.”
“Have you no heart, Mr. McDermot?”
“Weel, it has no voice in my business affairs, sair.”
“If you will give me one thousand pounds to-night and three hundred more during the year you shall own and publish all that I write these two years.”
“No, no, Mr. Moore.”
“One hundred during the year and the thousand pounds to-night, sir.”
“Let us end this useless discussion,” snarled McDermot, rising from the easy chair he had occupied until now.
“No,” cried Moore, “you shall not deny me. I ’ll give you a bargain you cannot refuse, sir. Give me one thousand pounds which shall be payment in full for the long poem, and I will write when and how you will for the next year at your own price. Yes, I will do this and bless you for it. Oh, sir, it means more than life to me. It is my whole future. It’s love, it’s honor. I beg that you will not use my extremity to drive me to despair. Surely my work is worth as much as it was a week ago when you would have gladly accepted such terms as I offer you now?”
“That is not the question,” replied McDermot, coldly. “Ha’ the goodness to get out o’ my way, Mr. Moore.”
Moore seized the publisher by the arm.
“An old man’s liberty, perhaps his life; the happiness and good name of a mere girl depend upon me, sir. I have no other way of raising the money. Have pity.”
“I am sorry,” began McDermot in cold, merciless tones, but he got no farther.
“Then dictate your own terms, sir. I must have one thousand pounds. For that sum I will bind myself to anything you may propose.”
“Ye mean that, Mr. Moore?”
“I do, sir.”
“For one thousand poonds ye will gi’ me, without further compensation, the entire literary labor o’ your life, sair? All that ye may write so long as ye live, Mr. Moore?”
“Is that the best you will offer me?”
“That’s all, sair.”
“I accept your terms,” said Moore in a choking voice.
McDermot sat down at a desk near by and wrote out the check for the desired amount.
Moore, accompanied by Mr. Sheridan, went in search of Sir Percival armed with the check made payable to the order of the baronet by Mr. McDermot, who immediately after drawing it went home to bed, entirely satisfied with his evening’s work.
The two Irishmen found Sir Percival idly chatting with Mr. Walter Scott and that gentleman’s most intimate friend, Mr. Samuel Rogers, these two giants being as usual surrounded by a circle of the lesser lights in the world of literature. Their host, seeing that his company was evidently desired, excused himself to his other guests, and the trio withdrew to a secluded corner of the room.
“Sir Percival,” said Moore, in reply to the baronet’s inquiring glance, “I have been informed by my friend, Mr. Dyke, that he is indebted to you for the amount of one thousand pounds.”
Sir Percival allowed an expression of gentle surprise to play over his clever face.
“It is quite true, Mr. Moore, but really I fail to see how the transaction concerns you in the least.”
“Perhaps your comprehension of the affair in its entirety is quite as unnecessary as you seem to regard the interest I feel in the matter,” replied Moore, taking the same key as his host.
“Will you pardon me if I ask the business in regard to which you wish to see me?”
“Certainly, Sir Percival, I desire you to give Mr. Dyke a receipt for one thousand pounds.”
“Tut, tut!” said the baronet, as though slightly irritated by the apparent silliness of Moore’s request. “I shall do nothing of the sort unless I am paid in full.”
“Allow me to pay you, sir. Here are a thousand pounds.”
Sir Percival took the check from Moore, for once astonished out of his usually indifferent demeanor.
“The devil!” said he.
“Yes, a publisher,” replied Moore, with a wink at Sheridan. “Kindly write me out a receipt, Sir Percival. Sherry, you will witness this transaction?”
“Faith, that I will gladly,” said the dramatist, regarding Sir Percival’s discomfiture with a humorous twinkle in his keen old eyes. “Damme, this is really a joyous occasion for all concerned.”
To say that Sir Percival was surprised would be but to feebly express the feelings of that gentleman when he received payment of the debt which he had fondly hoped would be sufficient to gain his ends with Mistress Bessie. However, quickly rallying from his momentary discomposure, he put the check in his pocket.
“Believe me, gentlemen, I receive this with pleasure,” said he, scribbling off a receipt with pen and ink brought by a servant.
“Yes, I know how pleased you are,” replied Moore, politely. Then taking the acknowledgment of liquidation from the baronet, he carefully folded it before depositing it in his wallet.
“Some day, Sir Percival, when the time comes for us to make a settlement, I shall ask you for my receipt,” he said in a tone that there was no mistaking.
“When that time comes, Mr. Moore, you will find me as eager and prompt as yourself,” replied Sir Percival.
Moore looked his enemy calmly in the face and read there a courage fully the equal of his own.
“Egad, Sir Percival,” said he, “for once I believe you. No doubt you will find it in your heart to release the bailiffs from further attendance this evening?”
“Your suggestion is a good one, Mr. Moore,” answered the baronet, smothering his rage. “Carry to Mr. Dyke my thanks and add one more to the list of the many kindnesses for which I am already indebted to you, sir.”
Moore and Sheridan lost but little time in the exchange of social amenities with their discomfited host. The younger man sought the card-room, bent on forgetting, for a while at least, the slavery into which he had sold his pen; the elder picked up the temporarily abandoned thread of his intoxication without further delay.