“Now I’ll tell ye a plain truth,” said he, “and ye may do just as ye plaise about it. There isn’t an ounce of tay or a pound of mait along with Mrs. Molloy this moment; and, what’s more, there isn’t a shilling between us to buy it. I never begged in my life;—not yet. But if you can advance me a sovereign on that manuscript it will save me from taking the coat on my back to a pawnbroker’s shop for whatever it’ll fetch there.” We paused a moment as we thought of it all, and then we handed him the coin for which he asked us. If the manuscript should be worthless the loss would be our own. We would not grudge a slice from the wholesome homemade loaf after we had used the butter-boat of benevolence. “It don’t become me,” said Mr. Molloy, “to thank you for such a thrifle as a loan of twenty shillings; but I’ll never forget the feeling that has made you listen to me, and that too after I had been rather down on you at thim baths.” We gave him a kindly nod of the head, and then he took his departure.
“Ye’ll see me again anyways?” he said, and we promised that we would.
We were anxious enough about the manuscript, but we could not examine it at that moment. When our office work was done we walked home with the roll in our pocket, speculating as we went on the probable character of Mr. Molloy. We still believed in him—still believed in him in spite of the manner in which he had descended in his language, and had fallen into a natural flow of words which alone would not have given much promise of him as a man of letters. But a human being, in regard to his power of production, is the reverse of a rope. He is as strong as his strongest part, and remembering the effect which Molloy’s words had had upon us at the Turkish bath, we still thought that there must be something in him. If so, how pleasant would it be to us to place such a man on his legs—modestly on his legs, so that he might earn for his wife and bairns that meat and tea which he had told us that they were now lacking. An editor is always striving to place someone modestly on his legs in literature—on his or her—striving, and alas! so often failing. Here had come a man in regard to whom, as I walked home with his manuscript in my pocket, I did feel rather sanguine.
Of all the rubbish that I ever read in my life, that paper on the Five-o’clock Tea-table was, I think, the worst. It was not only vulgar, foolish, unconnected, and meaningless; but it was also ungrammatical and unintelligible even in regard to the wording of it. The very spelling was defective. The paper was one with which no editor, subeditor, or reader would have found it necessary to go beyond the first ten lines before he would have known that to print it would have been quite out of the question. We went through with it because of our interest in the man; but as it was in the beginning, so it was to the end—a farrago of wretched nonsense, so bad that no one, without experience in such matters, would believe it possible that even the writer should desire the publication of it! It seemed to us to be impossible that Mr. Molloy should ever have written a word for those Hibernian periodicals which he had named to us. He had got our sovereign; and with that, as far as we were concerned, there must be an end of Mr. Molloy. We doubted even whether he would come for his own manuscript.
But he came. He came exactly at the hour appointed, and when we looked at his face we felt convinced that he did not doubt his own success. There was an air of expectant triumph about him which dismayed us. It was clear enough that he was confident that he should take away with him the full price of his article, after deducting the sovereign which he had borrowed. “You like it thin,” he said, before we had been able to compose our features to a proper form for the necessary announcement.
“Mr. Molloy,” we said, “it will not do. You must believe us that it will not do.”
“Not do?”
“No, indeed. We need not explain further;—but—but—you had really better turn your hand to some other occupation.”
“Some other occupa-ation!” he exclaimed, opening wide his eyes, and holding up both his hands.
“Indeed we think so, Mr. Molloy.”
“And you’ve read it?”
“Every word of it;—on our honour.”
“And you won’t have it?”
“Well;—no, Mr. Molloy, certainly we cannot take it.”
“Ye reject my article on the Five-o’clock Tay-table!” Looking into his face as he spoke, we could not but be certain that its rejection was to him as astonishing as would have been its acceptance to the readers of the magazine. He put his hand up to his head and stood wondering. “I suppose ye’d better choose your own subject for yourself,” he said, as though by this great surrender on his own part he was getting rid of all the difficulty on ours.
“Mr. Molloy,” we began, “we may as well be candid with you—”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said he, “I’ve taken such a liking to you there’s nothing I won’t do to plaise ye. I’ll just put it in my pocket, and
