Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.

by E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

  III

  POISSON D'AVRIL

  The atmosphere of the waiting-room set at naught at a single glance thetheory that there can be no smoke without fire. The stationmaster,when remonstrated with, stated, as an incontrovertible fact, that anychimney in the world would smoke in a south-easterly wind, and further,said there wasn't a poker, and that if you poked the fire the gratewould fall out. He was, however, sympathetic, and went on his kneesbefore the smouldering mound of slack, endeavouring to charm it to asmile by subtle proddings with the handle of the ticket-punch.Finally, he took me to his own kitchen fire and talked politics andsalmon-fishing, the former with judicious attention to my presumedpoint of view, and careful suppression of his own, the latter with noless tactful regard for my admission that for three days I had notcaught a fish, while the steam rose from my wet boots, in witness ofthe ten miles of rain through which an outside car had carried me.

  Before the train was signalled I realised for the hundredth time themagnificent superiority of the Irish mind to the trammels ofofficialdom, and the inveterate supremacy in Ireland of the PersonalElement.

  "You might get a foot-warmer at Carrig Junction," said a species of layporter in a knitted jersey, ramming my suit-case upside down under theseat. "Sometimes they're in it, and more times they're not."

  The train dragged itself rheumatically from the station, and a coldspring rain--the time was the middle of a most inclement April--smoteit in flank as it came into the open. I pulled up both windows andbegan to smoke; there is, at least, a semblance of warmth in athoroughly vitiated atmosphere.

  It is my wife's habit to assert that I do not read her letters, andbeing now on my way to join her and my family in Gloucestershire, itseemed a sound thing to study again her latest letter of instructions.

  "I am starting to-day, as Alice wrote to say we must be there two daysbefore the wedding, so as to have a rehearsal for the pages. Theirdresses have come, and they look too delicious in them----"

  (I here omit profuse particulars not pertinent to this tale)----

  "It is sickening for you to have had such bad sport. If the worstcomes to the worst couldn't you buy one?----"

  I smote my hand upon my knee. I had forgotten the infernal salmon!What a score for Philippa! If these contretemps would only teach herthat I was not to be relied upon, they would have their uses, butexperience is wasted upon her; I have no objection to being called anidiot, but, that being so, I ought to be allowed the privileges andexemptions proper to idiots. Philippa had, no doubt, written to AliceHervey, and assured her that Sinclair would be only too delighted tobring her a salmon, and Alice Hervey, who was rich enough to find muchenjoyment in saving money, would reckon upon it, to its final fin inmayonnaise.

  Plunged in morose meditations, I progressed through a country parcelledout by shaky and crooked walls into a patchwood of hazel scrub androcky fields, veiled in rain. About every six miles there was astation, wet and windswept; at one the sole occurrence was thepresentation of a newspaper to the guard by the station-master; at thenext the guard read aloud some choice excerpts from the same to theporter. The Personal Element was potent on this branch of the Munsterand Connaught Railway. Routine, abhorrent to all artistic minds, wassheathed in conversation; even the engine-driver, a functionaryordinarily as aloof as the Mikado, alleviated his enforced isolation bysociable shrieks to every level crossing, while the long row ofpublic-houses that formed, as far as I could judge, the town of Carrig,received a special and, as it seemed, humorous salutation.

  The Time-Table decreed that we were to spend ten minutes at CarrigJunction; it was fifteen before the crowd of market people on theplatform had been assimilated; finally, the window of a neighbouringcarriage was flung open, and a wrathful English voice asked how muchlonger the train was going to wait. The stationmaster, who was at themoment engrossed in conversation with the guard and a man who wascarrying a long parcel wrapped in newspaper, looked round, and saidgravely--

  "Well now, that's a mystery!"

  The man with the parcel turned away, and convulsively studied a poster.The guard put his hand over his mouth.

  THE GUARD PUT HIS HAND OVER HIS MOUTH]

  The voice, still more wrathfully, demanded the earliest hour at whichits owner could get to Belfast.

  "Ye'll be asking me next when I take me breakfast," replied thestationmaster, without haste or palpable annoyance.

  The window went up again with a bang, the man with the parcel dug theguard in the ribs with his elbow, and the parcel slipped from under hisarm and fell on the platform.

  "Oh my! oh my! Me fish!" exclaimed the man, solicitously picking up aremarkably good-looking salmon that had slipped from its wrapping ofnewspaper.

  Inspiration came to me, and I, in my turn, opened my window andsummoned the station-master.

  Would his friend sell me the salmon? The stationmaster entered uponthe mission with ardour, but without success.

  No; the gentleman was only just after running down to the town for itin the delay, but why wouldn't I run down and get one for myself?There was half-a-dozen more of them below at Coffey's, selling cheap;there would be time enough, the mail wasn't signalled yet.

  I jumped from the carriage and doubled out of the station at top speed,followed by an assurance from the guard that he would not forget me.

  Congratulating myself on the ascendancy of the Personal Element, I spedthrough the soapy limestone mud towards the public-houses. En route Imet a heated man carrying yet another salmon, who, without preamble,informed me that there were three or four more good fish in it, andthat he was after running down from the train himself.

  "Ye have whips o' time!" he called after me. "It's the first housethat's not a public-house. Ye'll see boots in the window--she'll givethem for tenpence a pound if ye're stiff with her!"

  I ran past the public-houses.

  "Tenpence a pound!" I exclaimed inwardly, "at this time of year!That's good enough."

  Here I perceived the house with boots in the window, and dived into itsdark doorway.

  A cobbler was at work behind a low counter. He mumbled something aboutHerself, through lengths of waxed thread that hung across his mouth, afat woman appeared at an inner door, and at that moment I heard,appallingly near, the whistle of the incoming mail. The fat womangrasped the situation in an instant, and with what appeared but onemovement, snatched a large fish from the floor of the room behind herand flung a newspaper round it.

  "Eight pound weight!" she said swiftly. "Ten shillings!"

  A convulsive effort of mental arithmetic assured me that this was morethan tenpence a pound, but it was not the moment for stiffness. Ishoved a half-sovereign into her fishy hand, clasped my salmon in myarms, and ran.

  Needless to say it was uphill, and at the steepest gradient anotherwhistle stabbed me like a spur; above the station roof successive andadvancing puffs of steam warned me that the worst had probablyhappened, but still I ran. When I gained the platform my train wasalready clear of it, but the Personal Element held good. Every soul inthe station, or so it seemed to me, lifted up his voice and yelled.The stationmaster put his fingers in his mouth and sent after thedeparting train an unearthly whistle, with a high trajectory and aserrated edge. It took effect; the train slackened, I plunged from theplatform and followed it up the rails, and every window in both trainsblossomed with the heads of deeply-interested spectators. The guardmet me on the line, very apologetic and primed with an explanation thatthe gentleman going for the boat-train wouldn't let him wait anylonger, while from our rear came an exultant cry from thestation-master.

  "Ye _told_ him ye wouldn't forget him!"

  "There's a few countrywomen in your carriage, sir," said the guard,ignoring the taunt, as he shoved me and my salmon up the side of thetrain, "but they'll be getting out in a couple of stations. Therewasn't another seat in the train for them!"

  My sensational return to my carriage was viewed with the utmostsympathy by no less than seven shawl
ed and cloaked countrywomen. Inorder to make room for me, one of them seated herself on the floor withher basket in her lap, another, on the seat opposite to me, squeezedherself under the central elbow flap that had been turned up to makeroom. The aromas of wet cloaks, turf smoke, and salt fish formed apotent blend. I was excessively hot, and the eyes of the seven womenwere fastened upon me with intense and unwearying interest.

  "Move west a small piece, Mary Jack, if you please," said a voluminousmatron in the corner, "I declare we're as throng as three in a bed thisminute!"

  "Why then Julia Casey, there's little throubling yourself," grumbledthe woman under the flap. "Look at the way meself is! I wonder is itto be putting humps on themselves the gentry has them things down ontop o' them! I'd sooner be carrying a basket of turnips on me backthan to be scrooged this way!"

  The woman on the floor at my feet rolled up at me a glance ofcompassionate amusement at this rustic ignorance, and tactfully changedthe conversation by supposing that it was at Coffey's I got the salmon.

  I said it was.

  There was a silence, during which it was obvious that one questionburnt in every heart.

  "I'll go bail she axed him tinpence!" said the woman under the flap, asone who touches the limits of absurdity.

  "It's a beautiful fish!" I said defiantly. "Eight pounds weight. Igave her ten shillings for it."

  What is described in newspapers as "sensation in court" greeted thisconfession.

  "Look!" said the woman under the flap, darting her head out of the hoodof her cloak, like a tortoise, "t' is what it is, ye haven't as muchroguery in your heart as'd make ye a match for her!"

  "Divil blow the ha'penny Eliza Coffey paid for that fish!" burst outthe fat woman in the corner. "Thim lads o' her's had a creel full o'thim snatched this morning before it was making day!"

  "How would the gentleman be a match for her!" shouted the woman on thefloor through a long-drawn whistle that told of a coming station."Sure a Turk itself wouldn't be a match for her! That one has a tonguethat'd clip a hedge!"

  At the station they clambered out laboriously, and with groaning. Ihanded down to them their monster baskets, laden, apparently, withingots of lead; they told me in return that I was a fine _grauver_ man,and it was a pity there weren't more like me; they wished, finally,that my journey might well thrive with me, and passed from my ken,bequeathing to me, after the agreeable manner of their kind, a certaincomfortable mental sleekness that reason cannot immediately dispel.They also left me in possession of the fact that I was about to presentthe irreproachable Alice Hervey with a contraband salmon.

  The afternoon passed cheerlessly into evening, and my journey did notconspicuously thrive with me. Somewhere in the dripping twilight Ichanged trains, and again later on, and at each change the salmonmoulted some more of its damp raiment of newspaper, and I debatedseriously the idea of interring it, regardless of consequences, in myportmanteau. A lamp was banged into the roof of my carriage, half aninch of orange flame, poised in a large glass globe, like a gold-fish,and of about as much use as an illuminant. Here also was handed in thedinner basket that I had wired for, and its contents, arid though theywere, enabled me to achieve at least some measure of mechanicaldistension, followed by a dreary lethargy that was not far fromdrowsiness.

  At the next station we paused long; nothing whatever occurred, and therain drummed patiently upon the roof. Two nuns and some school-girlswere in the carriage next door, and their voices came plaintively andin snatches through the partition; after a long period of apparentcollapse, during which I closed my eyes to evade the cold gaze of thesalmon through the netting, a voice in the next carriage saidresourcefully:

  "Oh, girls, I'll tell you what we'll do! We'll say the Rosary!"

  "Oh, that will be lovely!" said another voice; "well, who'll give itout? Theresa Condon, you'll give it out."

  Theresa Condon gave it out, in a not unmelodious monotone, interspersedwith the responses, always in a lower cadence; the words wereindistinguishable, but the rise and fall of the western voices waslulling as the hum of bees. I fell asleep.

  I awoke in total darkness; the train was motionless, and complete andprofound silence reigned. We were at a station, that much I discernedby the light of the dim lamp at the far end of a platform glisteningwith wet. I struck a match and ascertained that it was eleven o'clock,precisely the hour at which I was to board the mail train. I jumpedout and ran down the platform; there was no one in the train; there wasno one even on the engine, which was forlornly hissing to itself in thesilence. There was not a human being anywhere. Every door was closed,and all was dark. The name-board of the station was faintly visible;with a lighted match I went along it letter by letter. It seemed as ifthe whole alphabet were in it, and by the time I had got to the end Ihad forgotten the beginning. One fact I had, however, mastered, thatit was not the junction at which I was to catch the mail.

  I was undoubtedly awake, but for a moment I was inclined to entertainthe idea that there had been an accident, and that I had entered uponexistence in another world. Once more I assailed the station house andthe appurtenances thereof, the ticket-office, the waiting room,finally, and at some distance, the goods store, outside which thesingle lamp of the station commented feebly on the drizzle and thedarkness. As I approached it a crack of light under the door becameperceptible, and a voice was suddenly uplifted within.

  "Your best now agin that! Throw down your Jack!"

  I opened the door with pardonable violence, and found the guard, thestationmaster, the driver, and the stoker, seated on barrels round apacking case, on which they were playing a game of cards.

  To have too egregiously the best of a situation is not, to a generousmind, a source of strength. In the perfection of their overthrow Ipermitted the driver and stoker to wither from their places, and tofade away into the outer darkness without any suitable send-off; withthe guard and the stationmaster I dealt more faithfully, but thepleasure of throwing water on drowned rats is not a lasting one. Iaccepted the statements that they thought there wasn't a Christian inthe train, that a few minutes here or there wouldn't signify, that theywould have me at the junction in twenty minutes, and it was often themail was late.

  Fired by this hope I hurried back to my carriage, preceded at anemulous gallop by the officials. The guard thrust in with me thelantern from the card table, and fled to his van.

  "Mind the goods, Tim!" shouted the station-master, as he slammed mydoor, "she might be coming anytime now!"

  The answer travelled magnificently back from the engine.

  "Let her come! She'll meet her match!" A war-whoop upon the steamwhistle fittingly closed the speech, and the train sprang into action.

  We had about fifteen miles to go, and we banged and bucketed over it inwhat was, I should imagine, record time. The carriage felt as if itwere galloping on four wooden legs, my teeth chattered in my head, andthe salmon slowly churned its way forth from its newspaper, and movedalong the netting with dreadful stealth.

  All was of no avail.

  "Well," said the guard, as I stepped forth on to the deserted platformof Loughranny, "that owld Limited Mail's th' unpunctualest thrain inIreland! If you're a minute late she's gone from you, and may be ifyou were early you might be half-an-hour waiting for her!"

  On the whole the guard was a gentleman. He said he would show me thebest hotel in the town, though he feared I would be hard set to get abed anywhere because of the "_Feis_" (a Feis, I should explain, is aFestival, devoted to competitions in Irish songs and dances). Heshouldered my portmanteau, he even grappled successfully with thesalmon, and, as we traversed the empty streets, he explained to me howeasily I could catch the morning boat from Rosslare, and how it was, asa matter of fact, quite the act of Providence that my original schemehad been frustrated.

  All was dark at the uninviting portals of the hotel favoured by theguard. For a full five minutes we waited at them, ringing hard: Isuggested that we should try elsewhere.


  "He'll come," said the guard, with the confidence of the Pied Piper ofHamelin, retaining an implacable thumb upon the button of the electricbell. "He'll come. Sure it rings in his room!"

  The victim came, half awake, half dressed, and with an inch of drippingcandle in his fingers. There was not a bed there, he said, nor in thetown neither.

  THE VICTIM CAME]

  I said I would sit in the dining-room till the time for the early train.

  "Sure there's five beds in the dining-room," replied the boots, "andthere's mostly two in every bed."

  His voice was firm, but there was a wavering look in his eye.

  "What about the billiard-room, Mike?" said the guard, in wooing tones.

  "Ah, God bless you! we have a mattress on the table this minute!"answered the boots, wearily, "and the fellow that got the First Prizefor Reels asleep on top of it!"

  "Well, and can't ye put the palliasse on the floor under it, yeomadhawn?" said the guard, dumping my luggage and the salmon in thehall, "sure there's no snugger place in the house! I must run awayhome now, before Herself thinks I'm dead altogether!"

  His retreating footsteps went lightly away down the empty street.

  "Annything don't throuble _him_!" said the boots bitterly.

  As for me, nothing save the Personal Element stood between me anddestitution.

  It was in the dark of the early morning that I woke again to life andits troubles. A voice, dropping, as it were, over the edge of somesmothering over-world, had awakened me. It was the voice of the FirstPrize for Reels, descending through a pocket of the billiard-table.

  "I beg your pardon, sir, are ye going on the 5 to Cork?"

  I grunted a negative.

  "Well, if ye were, ye'd be late," said the voice.

  I received this useful information in indignant silence, andendeavoured to wrap myself again in the vanishing skirts of a dream.

  "I'm going on the 6.30 meself," proceeded the voice, "and it's unknownto me how I'll put on me boots. Me feet is swelled the size o'three-pound loaves with the dint of the little dancing-shoes I had onme in the competition last night. Me feet's delicate that way, and I'ma great epicure about me boots."

  I snored aggressively, but the dream was gone. So, for all practicalpurposes, was the night.

  The First Prize for Reels arose, presenting an astonishing spectacle ofgrass-green breeches, a white shirt, and pearl-grey stockings, andaccomplished a toilet that consisted of removing these and putting onordinary garments, completed by the apparently excruciating act ofgetting into his boots. At any other hour of the day I might have beensorry for him. He then removed himself and his belongings to the hall,and there entered upon a resounding conversation with the boots, whileI crawled forth from my lair to renew the strife with circumstances andto endeavour to compose a telegram to Alice Hervey of explanation andapology that should cost less than seven and sixpence. There was alsothe salmon to be dealt with.

  Here the boots intervened, opportunely, with a cup of tea, and theintelligence that he had already done up the salmon in strawbottle-covers and brown paper, and that I could travel Europe with itif I liked. He further informed me that he would run up to the stationwith the luggage now, and that may be I wouldn't mind carrying the fishmyself; it was on the table in the hall.

  My train went at 6.15. The boots had secured for me one of many emptycarriages, and lingered conversationally till the train started; heregretted politely my bad night at the hotel, and assured me that onlyfor Jimmy Durkan having a little drink taken--Jimmy Durkan was theFirst Prize for Reels--he would have turned him off the billiard-tablefor my benefit. He finally confided to me that Mr. Durkan was engagedto his sister, and was a rising baker in the town of Limerick,"indeed," he said, "any girl might be glad to get him. He dances likewhalebone, and he makes grand bread!"

  Here the train started.

  It was late that night when, stiff, dirty, with tired eyes blinking inthe dazzle of electric lights, I was conducted by the Herveys'beautiful footman into the Herveys' baronial hall, and was told by theHerveys' imperial butler that dinner was over, and the gentlemen hadjust gone into the drawing-room. I was in the act of hastily decliningto join them there, when a voice cried--

  "Here he is!"

  And Philippa, rustling and radiant, came forth into the hall, followedin shimmers of satin, and flutterings of lace, by Alice Hervey, by thebride elect, and by the usual festive rout of exhilarated relatives,male and female, whose mission it is to keep things lively before awedding.

  "Is this a wedding present for me, Uncle Sinclair?" cried the brideelect, through a deluge of questions and commiserations, and snatchedfrom under my arm the brown paper parcel that had remained there fromforce of direful habit.

  "I advise you not to open it!" I exclaimed; "it's a salmon!"

  The bride elect, with a shriek of disgust, and without an instant ofhesitation, hurled it at her nearest neighbour, the head bridesmaid.The head bridesmaid, with an answering shriek, sprang to one side, andthe parcel that I had cherished with a mother's care across twocountries and a stormy channel, fell, with a crash, on the flaggedfloor.

  _Why did it crash?_

  "A salmon!" screamed Philippa, gazing at the parcel, round which a poolwas already forming, "why that's whisky! Can't you smell it?"

  The footman here respectfully interposed, and kneeling down, cautiouslyextracted from folds of brown paper a straw bottle-cover full of brokenglass and dripping with whisky.

  "I'm afraid the other things are rather spoiled, sir," he saidseriously, and drew forth, successively, a very large pair of high-lowshoes, two long grey worsted stockings, and a pair of grass-greenbreeches.

  They brought the house down, in a manner doubtless familiar to themwhen they shared the triumphs of Mr. Jimmy Durkan, but they left AliceHervey distinctly cold.

  "You know, darling," she said to Philippa afterwards, "I don't think itwas very clever of dear Sinclair to take the wrong parcel. I _had_counted on that salmon."