Book One
“The time I’ve lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light, that lies
In woman’s eyes,
Has been my heart’s undoing”
Chapter One Tom Moore goes Angling
Mr. Thomas Moore was certainly in a very cheerful mood. This was evidenced by the merry tune with which he was delighting himself, and a jealous-minded thrush, with head cocked on one side, waited with ill-concealed impatience for his rival to afford him the opportunity of entering into competition. As this was not forthcoming, the bird took wing with an angry flirt of the tail and mental objurgation levelled at the unconscious head of the dapper young Irishman, who lilted gayly as he wandered along the path worn in the sward of the meadow by the school children on their way to and from the institution of learning presided over by Mistress Elizabeth Dyke.
“The time I’ve lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light, that lies
In woman’s eyes,
Has been my heart’s undoing.”
Moore paused in his ditty and sat down on a convenient stone, while he wiped his brow with a ragged silk handkerchief which, though of unmistakably ancient origin, was immaculately clean.
“Faith,” he murmured, “there’s no fiction in that last stanza. It’s broken-hearted I am, or as near it as an Irishman can be without too much exertion.”
He sighed almost unhappily, and drawing a knife from his breeches pocket proceeded to manufacture a whistle from the bark on the end of the long willow wand he had cut a few moments before to serve as a fishing-rod.
This last was accomplished after some little effort accompanied by much pursing of lips and knitting of brows.
His labors completed, Moore regarded the whistle with the critical approval of an expert, and putting it to his mouth blew a shrill blast. As the result was eminently satisfactory, he bestowed the toy in the crown of his beaver and, crossing his legs comfortably, proceeded to take his ease.
His appearance was decidedly attractive. While quite a little below middle size, his wiry figure was so well proportioned that in the absence of other men nearer the ordinary standard of height, he would have passed as a fine figure of a lad. He carried himself with easy grace, but affected none of the mincing, studied mannerisms of the dandy of the period. He had a round, jolly face, a pleasing though slightly satirical mouth, an impudent nose, and a pair of fine eyes, so brightly good-humored and laughingly intelligent, that no one could have looked into their clear depths without realizing that this was no ordinary youth. And yet at the period in his career from which dates the beginning of this chronicle Tom Moore’s fortunes were at a decidedly low ebb. Disgusted and angry at the ill success which attended his attempts to sell his verses to the magazines and papers of Dublin, for at this time it was the exception, not the rule, when a poem from his pen was printed and paid for, Moore gathered together his few traps, kissed his mother and sisters good-bye, shook the hand of his father, then barrackmaster of an English regiment resident in Ireland, and hied himself to the sylvan beauties of the little town of Dalky. Here he secured lodgings for little more than a trifle and began the revision of his translation of the Odes of Anacreon, a task he had undertaken with great enthusiasm a year previous. Thus it was that he chanced to be wandering through the fields on fishing bent this bright and beautiful morning in the year of our Lord 179-.
A small boy, barefooted and shock-headed, came across the meadow in the direction of the schoolhouse visible in the distance on the crest of a long, slowly rising hill. He carried a bundle of books and an old slate tightly clutched under one arm, while from the hand left disengaged swung a long switch with which he smartly decapitated the various weeds which had achieved altitude sufficient to make them worthy of his attention.
Noticing Moore for the first time, the boy’s face brightened and lost its crafty look of prematurely developed cunning and anxiety, as he approached with a perceptible quickening of his gait.
“Is it you, Mr. Moore?” he said, a rich brogue flavoring his utterance.
“Unless I am greatly mistaken, Micky, you have guessed my identity,” admitted the young man, making a playful slap with his rod at the new-comer’s bare shins, which the lad evaded with an agility that bespoke practice, at the same time skilfully parrying with his switch.
“Goin’ fishin’?”
“Shooting, my boy. Don’t you perceive my fowling-piece?” replied Moore, waving his fish-pole in the air.
“Sure,” said Micky, grinning broadly, “you will have your joke.”
“None of the editors will, so, if I did n’t, who would?” responded Moore, with a smile not altogether untinged by bitterness. “Where are you going, Micky?”
“To school, sir, bad cess to it.”
“Such enthusiasm in the pursuit of education is worthy of the highest commendation, my lad.”
“Is it?” said Micky doubtfully. “What’s that, Mr. Moore?”
“Commendation?”
“Yis.”
“Well, if I said you were a good boy, what would that be?”
“Father would say it was a d—n lie.”
Moore chuckled.
“Well, we will let it go at that. You seem to be in a great hurry, Micky.”
“So do you, sir.”
“Humph!” said Moore. “I perceive you are blessed with an observing mind. Have you observed the whereabouts of a trout brook that is located somewhere in this neighborhood?”
“Yis,” replied Micky, himself an enthusiastic fisherman. “I have that. Don’t ye know the place, Mr. Moore?”
“Not I, my lad, but, since Providence has sent you along to show me the way, I ’ll speedily be possessed of that knowledge.”
Micky looked doubtfully in the direction of the schoolhouse. It was almost time for the afternoon session, but the day was too beautiful to be spent in the dull depths of the school without regret.
“I ’d show you the way, sir, gladly, but it ’ll make me late.”
“Are you afraid of Mistress Dyke?” queried Moore, noticing the boy’s hesitation.
“Yis, sir.”
“So am I, my lad.”
Micky looked surprised. That this dashing young blade in whose person were apparently embodied all the manly virtues, at least from the lad’s point of view, should stand in dread of such a soft-eyed, red-cheeked little bundle of femininity as his schoolmistress was a matter beyond his juvenile comprehension.
“And why, sir?” asked the boy curiously.
“She ’s very pretty,” replied Moore. “When you are older you will understand what it is to be in awe of a trim little miss with the blue sky in her eyes and a ripple of red merriment for a mouth. In the meantime you shall show me the way to the brook.”
“But she ’ll lick me,” objected Micky, numerous ferulings keenly in mind.
“Not she, my laddybuck. To-day I ’m coming to visit the school. Tell her that and she ’ll not whack you at all.”
“Won’t she?”
“No, she will be so pleased, she will more than likely kiss you.”
“Then why don’t you go and tell her yourself? You would like the kiss, would n’t you?”
“Micky,” said Moore solemnly, “you have discovered my secret. I would. Ah me! my lad, how little we appreciate such dispensations of Providence when we are favored with them. Now you, you raparee—you would much rather she did n’t practise osculation upon you.”
Micky nodded. He did not understand what his companion meant, but he was quite convinced that the assertion made by him was absolutely correct.
What a beautiful thing is faith!
“A pretty teacher beats the devil, Micky, and you have the prettiest in Ireland. I wish I could be taught by such a preceptress. I ’d need instruction both day and night, and that last is no lie, even at this day, if the lesson were to be in love,” he added, a twinkle in his eyes, though his face was perfectly sober.
“Sure,” said Micky, “she don’t think you nade lessons. I heard her tell Squire Farrell’s daughter blarney ran off your tongue like water off a duck’s back.”
“What is that?” said Moore. “I ’ll have to investigate this matter thoroughly.”
At this moment the metallic clang of an old fashioned hand-bell sounded faintly down the hillside mellowed into comparative melodiousness by the intervening distance.
“Ah,” said Moore, “your absence has been reported to Mistress Dyke, and she has tolled the bell.”
It seemed as though the young Irishman’s execrable pun decided the ragged urchin that the way of the transgressor might be hard, for, without further hesitation, he took to his heels and fled in the direction of the schoolhouse.
After a moment’s thought Moore followed him, beating time with the willow fishing-rod to the song which half unconsciously issued from his lips as he turned his steps in the direction of the headquarters of Mistress Bessie Dyke.
Tom Moore was going angling, but not for trout.