The McMunn Brotherslay, with steam up, at a single anchor a mile below the Hamburg quays. The yellow, turbid waters of the Elbe swept past her sides. Below her stretched the long waterway which leads to the North Sea. The lights of the buoys which marked the channel twinkled dimly in the gloom of the summer evening. Shafts of brighter light swept across and across the water from occulting beacons set at long intervals among buoys. Above the steamer lay a large Norwegian barque waiting for her pilot to take her down on the ebb tide. BelowThe McMunn Brotherswas an ocean-going tramp steamer. One of her crew sat on the forecastle playing the “Swanee River” on a melodeon.
McMunn, Ginty, and Lord Dunseverick were together in the cabin ofThe McMunn Brothers. McMunn, dressed precisely as he always dressed in his office, sat bolt upright on the cabin sofa. In front of him on the table were some papers, which he turned over and looked at from time to time.
Beside him was Ginty, in his shirt sleeves, with his peaked cap pushed far back on his head. He sat with his elbows on the table. His chin, thrust forward, rested on his knuckles. He stared fixedly at the panelling on the opposite wall of the cabin. Lord Dunseverick, who had a side of the table to himself, leaned far back. His legs were stretched out straight in front of him. His hands were in his pockets. He gazed wearily at the small lamp which swung from the cabin roof.
For a long time no one spoke. It was Lord Dunseverick who broke the silence in the end. He took his cigarette-case from his pocket.
“You may say what you like about tobacco, McMunn,” he said, “but it’s a comfort to a man when he has no company but a bear with a sore head.”
“Ay,” said McMunn, “you’ll smoke and you’ll smoke, but you’ll no make me any easier in my mind by smoking.”
Ginty drew a plug of black tobacco from his pocket, and began cutting shreds from it with a clasp knife. He was apparently of opinion that smoking would relieve the strain onhismind.
“I’m no satisfied,” said McMunn.
“I don’t see what you have to grumble about,” said Lord Dunseverick. “We’ve got what we came for, and we’ve got our clearance papers. What more do you want? You expected trouble about those papers, and there wasn’t any. You ought to be pleased.”
“There you have it,” said McMunn. “According to all the laws of nature there ought to have been trouble. With a cargo like ours there ought to have been a lot of trouble. Instead of that the papers are handed over to us without a question.”
“It’s peculiar,” said Ginty. “It’s very peculiar, and that’s a fact.”
“Then there’s the matter of those extra cases,” said McMunn. “How many cases is there in the hold, Ginty?”
“A hundred, seventy-two.”
“And the contract was for one-fifty. What’s in the odd twenty-two? Tell me that.”
“Pianos,” said Lord Dunseverick. “Look at your clearance papers. ‘Nature of Cargo—Pianos.’”
“You’d have your joke,” said McMunn, “if the flames of hell were scorching the soles of your boots.”
“It’s peculiar,” said Ginty.
“It’s more than peculiar,” said McMunn. “I’ve been in business for thirty years, and it’s the first time I ever had goods given me that I didn’t ask for.”
“Well,” said Lord Dunseverick, “if we’ve got an extra five hundred rifles we can’t complain. There’s plenty of men in Ulster ready to use them.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me,” said McMunn, “why they wouldn’t let me pay for the goods in the office this afternoon. Did anyone ever hear the like of that—a man refusing money that was due to him, and it offered?”
“It’s out of the course of nature,” said Ginty.
“They told you,” said Lord Dunseverick, “that you could pay Von Edelstein, and he’d give you a receipt.”
“Ay, Von Edelstein. And where’s Von Edelstein?”
“He’s coming on board this evening,” said Lord Dunseverick. “But you needn’t wait for him unless you like. We’ve got steam up. Why not slip away?”
“Because it’s no my way of doing business,” said McMunn, “to slip away, as you call it, without paying for what I’ve got. I’m a man of principle.”
“Talking of your principles,” said Lord Dunseverick, “what did you bring on board in that basket this afternoon? It looked to me like beer.”
“It was beer.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Lord Dunseverick. “Let’s have a couple of bottles.”
Ginty took his pipe from his mouth and grinned pleasantly. He wanted beer.
“You’ll be thinking maybe,” said McMunn, “that I’m going back on my temperance principles?”
“We don’t think anything of the sort,” said Lord Dunseverick. “We think that foreign travel has widened your principles out a bit. That’s what we think, isn’t it, Ginty?”
“My principles are what they always were,” said McMunn, “but I’ve some small share of commonsense. I know there’s a foreigner coming on board the night, a baron and a dissipated man——”
“Come, now,’” said Lord Dunseverick, “you can’t be sure that Von Edelstein is dissipated. You’ve never met him.”
“He’s a foreigner and a baron,” said McMunn, “and that’s enough for me, forbye that he’s coming here under very suspicious circumstances. If I can get the better of him by means of strong drink and the snare of alcoholic liquors——”
“Good Lord!” said Lord Dunseverick. “You don’t expect to make a German drunk with half a dozen bottles of lager beer, particularly as Ginty and I mean to drink two each.”
“There’s a dozen in the basket. And, under the circumstances, I consider myself justified I’m no man for tricks, but if there’s any tricks to be played, I’d rather play them myself than have them played on me. Mind that now. It’s the way I’ve always acted, and it’s no a bad way.”
“Gosh,” said Ginty, “there’s somebody coming aboard of us now. The look-out man’s hailing him.”
He left the cabin as he spoke.
A few minutes later Ginty entered the cabin again. He was followed by a tall man, so tall that he could not stand quite upright in the little cabin.
“It’s the baron,” said Ginty.
“Guten Abend,” said McMunn.
He possessed some twenty more German words, and knew that “beer” was represented by the same sound as in English. The equipment seemed to him sufficient for the interview.
“I have the good fortune to speak English easily,” said Von Edelstein. “Am I addressing myself to Mr. McMunn?”
“Ay,” said McMunn, “you are. And this is Lord Dunseverick, a baron like yourself.”
Von Edelstein bowed, and held out his hand.
“I prefer,” he said, “my military title, Captain von Edelstein. I believe that Lord Dunseverick also has a military title. Should I say colonel?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Lord Dunseverick, “I’m not in the Army.”
“I understand,” said Von Edelstein. “You are in the Volunteers, the Ulster Volunteers. But, perhaps I should say general?”
“I don’t call myself that,” said Lord Dunseverick.
“As a matter of fact, my rank is not officially recognized, in England, I mean.”
“Ah, but here—we recognize it. I assure you, general, we regard the Ulster Volunteers as a properly constituted military force.”
McMunn had been groping in a locker behind him. He interrupted Von Edelstein by setting a basket on the table.
“Beer,” he said.
Von Edelstein bowed, and sat down.
“Ginty,” said McMunn, “get some tumblers. And now Baron——”
“Captain,” said Von Edelstein.
“Well get to business. What’s in them twenty-two cases that was dumped into our hold today?”
“Ah,” said Von Edelstein, smiling. “A little surprise. I hope, I feel confident, a pleasant surprise, for my comrades of the Ulster Volunteer Force.”
Ginty entered the cabin carrying three tumblers and a corkscrew. The beer was opened and poured out. Von Edelstein raised his glass.
“To the Ulster Volunteer Force,” he said, “and to the day when the pleasant little surprise we have prepared for you may prove a very unpleasant surprise for—the enemy.”
He bowed and drank.
“What’s in them cases?” said McMunn.
“Gentlemen,” said Von Edelstein, “something that will be of great value to you—machine guns.”
“We didn’t order them,” said McMunn, “and I’m not going to pay for them.”
“I am not authorized,” said Von Edelstein, “to reveal secrets of State; but I think I may trust your discretion so far as to say that one very highly placed desires that the Ulster Volunteer Force should be thoroughly equipped for war. It is his wish:——”
“Baron,” said McMunn, “here’s a bill drawn on my firm for the price of the rifles. I’ll trouble you for a receipt, and in the matter of the contents of them cases—I don’t say they’re not machine guns, but I’ve no way of knowing at present. If it turns out that they’re any use to us we may strike a bargain, but I’ll no pay for a pig in a poke.”
He laid his bill and a form of receipt on the table. Von Edelstein pushed them aside.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “between comrades in arms there is no question of payment. It is the wish of one who is very highly placed that your army——”
“But look here,” said Lord Dunseverick, “we are not comrades in arms, as you call it.”
“Ah,” said Von Edelstein. “Not to-day, not to-morrow perhaps. But who knows how soon? When the word is given, and some batteries of our artillery land in Belfast to support your excellent infantry——”
“What’s that?” said Ginty.
“And a regiment of Prussian Guards——”
“There’ll be no Prussians in Belfast,” said Ginty, “for we’ll not have it.”
“I am afraid,” said Lord Dunseverick, “that you’ve got some wrong idea into your head.”
“But,” said Von Edelstein, “you cannot fight alone. You would be—what do you call it?—you would be wiped out. Even the English Army could do that. You have no artillery. You have no cavalry. What are you but——”
“Who said we were going to fight the English Army?” said Lord Dunseverick.
“If you think we’re a pack of dirty rebels,” said Ginty, “you’re making a big mistake. We’re loyal men.”
“But if you are not going to fight the English,” said Von Edelstein, “God in heaven, who are you going to fight?”
“Young man,” said McMunn, “you’re drinking beer in my ship, a thing which is clean contrary to my principles, though I’m putting up with it; but you’re going beyond the beyonds when you sit here and take the name of the Almighty in vain. I’ll trouble you not to swear.”
Von Edelstein stared at him in blank amazement. Then very slowly a look of intelligence came over his face. He turned to Lord Dunseverick.
“I think I understand,” he said. “You do not quite trust me. You fear that I may be a spy in the pay of infamous Englishmen. But you are mistaken—entirely mistaken. I offer you proof of my good faith. General, be so kind as to read my commission.”
He drew a folded document from his pocket, and spread it out before Lord Dunseverick.
“It is signed,” he said, “as you see, by the Emperor himself. It places my services, the services of Captain von Edelstein, of the Prussian Guard, at the disposal of the Ulster Volunteer Force, as military organiser.”
Lord Dunseverick glanced at the document before him. He read parts of it with close attention. He laid his finger on the signature as if to convince himself by actual touch that it really was what it seemed to be.
“You see,” said Von Edelstein, “I am to be trusted. When you and I are fighting side by side against the cursed English, your enemies and ours——”
Von Edelstein was still smiling. What happened then happened in an instant. Lord Dunseverick struck the German full on the mouth with his fist. Von Edelstein’s head went back. His hands clutched convulsively at the tablecloth. Before he had recovered, Lord Dunseverick hit him again, beat him down on the cabin sofa, and struck blow after blow at his face.
“You infernal scoundrel,” he said, “do you take me for a traitor?”
“Quit it,” said McMunn. “Quit it when I tell you. You cannot kill the man with your naked fists, and you’ll break the furniture.”
Ginty drew a long coil of rope from a locker. He tied up Von Edelstein and laid him, a helpless figure, on the table.
“It’s my opinion,” said McMunn, “that we’d better be getting out to sea.”
“I’m thinking the same,” said Ginty.
He went on deck. SoonThe McMunn Brotherswas under way.
Lord Dunseverick looked at the prostrate Von Edelstein.
“What are we going to do with him?” he asked.
“Drown him,” said McMunn.
A trickle of blood was running down Von Edelstein’s chin. He spat out some fragments of broken teeth.
“It appears,” he said, “that I have made a mistake about your intentions.”
“You’ve offered an outrageous insult to loyal men,” said McMunn.
“A mistake,” said Von Edelstein, “but surely excusable. I have in my pocket at the present moment—would you be so kind as to feel in my breast pocket? You’ll find some papers there, and a newspaper cutting among them.”
Lord Dunseverick slipped his hand into the prisoner’s pocket. He drew out a number of letters and a newspaper cutting. It was a report, taken from theBelfast News Letter, of the speech which he had made at Ballymena a fortnight before. He had proclaimed the Kaiser the deliverer of Ulster. His own words stared him in the face. McMunn took the cutting and glanced at it. He thumped his fist on the table.
“I stand by every word of it,” he said. “We will not have Home Rule.”
“You are a curious people,” said Von Edelstein. “I thought—and even now you say——”
“That speech,” said McMunn, “was made for an entirely different purpose. If you thought that we wanted a German Army in Ulster, or that we meant to fire on the British flag——”
“It is exactly what I did think,” said Von Edelstein.
“You’re a born fool, then,” said McMunn.
“Perhaps,” said Lord Dunseverick, “we ought not to drown him. Suppose we take him home, and hand him over to the Ulster Provisional Government?”
“I wish you would,” said Von Edelstein, “I am a student of human nature. I should greatly like to meet your Ulster Government.”
“You’ll maybe not like it so much when they hang you,” said McMunn, “and it’s what they’ll do.”
Mr. Courtney, the R.M., was a man of ideas, and prided himself on his sympathy with progress, the advance of thought, and similar delights. If he had been thirty years younger, and had lived in Dublin, he would have been classed among the “Intellectuals.” He would then have written a gloomy play or two, several poems and an essay, published at a shilling, in a green paper cover, on the “Civilization of the Future.” Being, unfortunately, fifty-five years of age, he could not write poetry or gloomy plays. Nobody can after the age of forty. Being a Resident Magistrate, he was debarred from discussing the Civilization of the Future in print. No Government allows its paid servant to write books on controversial subjects. But Mr. Courtney remained intellectually alert, and was a determined champion of the cause of progress, even amid the uncongenial society of a West of Ireland town.
The introduction of Summer Time gave Mr. Courtney a great opportunity. Almost everyone else in the neighbourhood objected to the change of the clock. Cows, it was said, disliked being milked before their accustomed hour. Dew collects in deep pools, and renders farm work impossible in the early morning. It is unreasonable to expect labourers, who have to rise early in any case, to get out of their beds before the day is properly warm. Mr. Courtney combated all these objections with arguments which struck him as sound, but irritated everybody else. When it appeared that Ireland, worse treated as usual than England, was to be fined an additional twenty-five minutes, and was to lose the proud privilege of Irish time, Mr. Courtney was more pleased than ever. He made merry over what he called the arguments of reactionary patriotism.
Sir Timothy was the principal landlord, and, socially, the most important person in the neighbourhood. Sir Timothy did not like Mr. Courtney. He was of opinion that the R.M. was inclined to take a high hand at Petty Sessions and to bully the other magistrates—Sir Timothy was himself a magistrate—who sat with him on the Bench. He also thought that Mr. Courtney was “too d——d superior” in private life. Sir Timothy had the lowest possible opinion of the progress made by civilization in his own time. The Civilization of the Future, about which Mr. Courtney talked a great deal, seemed to Sir Timothy a nasty kind of nightmare.
It was natural, almost inevitable, that Sir Timothy should take a conservative view on the subject of the new time.
“I don’t see the use of playing silly tricks with the clock,” he said. “You might just as well say that I’d live ten years longer if everybody agreed to say that I’m forty-eight instead of fifty-eight. I’d still be fifty-eight in reality. It’s just the same with the time. We may all make up our minds to pretend it’s eight o’clock when it’s really seven, but it will still be seven.”
Mr. Courtney smiled in a gentle, but very annoying manner.
“My dear Sir Timothy,” he said, “don’t you see that what is really wanted is a complete change in the habits of the population? We’ve been gradually slipping into wasteful ways of living. Our expenditure on artificial light———”
“I know all about that,” said Sir Timothy. “If you’ve said it to me once, you’ve said it a dozen times, and last year I did alter my clocks. But this year—hang it all! They’re sticking another twenty-five minutes on it. If they go on at this rate, moving us back an extra half hour every May, we’ll be living in the middle of the night before we die.”
“I’m sorry to hear you taking up that question of the so-called Irish time,” said Mr. Courtney. “Reactionary patriotism——”
Sir Timothy spluttered. Being an Irish gentleman, he hated to be accused of patriotism, which he held—following Dr. Johnson—to be the last refuge of a scoundrel.
“There’s nothing patriotic about it,” he said. “What I object to hasn’t anything to do with any particular country. It’s simply a direct insult to the sun.”
“The sun,” said Mr. Courtney, smiling more offensively than ever, “can take care of itself.”
“It can,” said Sir Timothy, “and does. It takes jolly good care not to rise in Dublin at the same time that it does in Greenwich, and what you’re trying to do is to bluff it into saying it does. When you come to think of it, the sun doesn’t rise here the same time it does in Dublin. We’re a hundred and twenty miles west of Dublin, so the real time here——”
“We can’t have a different time in every parish,” said Mr. Courtney. “In the interests of international civilization——”
“I don’t care a row of pins about international civilization. We’re something like twenty minutes wrong already here. When you’ve made your silly change to summer time, and wiped out that twenty-five minutes Irish time, we shall be an hour and three quarters wrong.”
“At all events,” said Mr. Courtney, “you’ll have to do it.”
“I won’t.”
“And when you’ve got accustomed to it, you’ll see the advantages of the change.”
Sir Timothy was profoundly irritated.
“You may do as you like,” he said, “I mean to stick to the proper time. The proper time, mind you, strictly according to the sun, as it rises in this neighbourhood. I haven’t worked it out exactly yet, but I should say, roughly, that there’ll be two hours’ difference between your watch and mine.”
Mr. Courtney gasped.
“Do you mean to say that you’re actually going to add on two hours?
“I’m going to take off two hours,” said Sir Timothy.
Mr. Courtney thought for a moment.
“You’ll be adding on those two hours,” he said, “not taking them off——”
“You’re an extraordinarily muddle-headed man, Courtney. Can’t you see that if I call it six when you say it’s eight I’m taking off——”
“You’re not. The way to look at it is this: A day is twenty-four hours long. You say it’s twenty-six hours. Therefore, you add on.”
“I don’t do anything of the sort,” said Sir Timothy. “Look here, the sun rises, say, at 6 a.m. You and a lot of other silly people choose to say that it rises at 8. What I’m doing—I and the sun, Courtney—mind that. The sun’s with me—— What we’re doing is taking off two hours.”
The argument went on for some time. Its result was that Sir Timothy and Mr. Courtney did not speak to each other again for a fortnight. Arguments, religious, political and economic, often end in this way.
During that fortnight summer time established itself, more or less, in the neighbourhood. Mr. Courtney, the local bank, the railway company, and the police observed the new time in its full intensity. The parish priest and most of the farmers took a moderate line. They sacrificed the twenty-five minutes of the original Irish time, but resisted the imposition of a whole extra hour. With them it was eight o’clock when the nine o’clock train started for Dublin. A few extremists stood out for their full rights as Irishmen, and insisted that the bank, which said it opened at 10 a.m., was really beginning business at 8.35 a.m. Sir Timothy, dragging his household with him, set up what he called actual time, and breakfasted a full two hours after the progressive party.
The practical inconvenience of these differences of opinion became obvious when Sir Timothy arrived at the Petty Sessions Court to take his seat on the Bench just as Mr. Courtney, having completed the business of the day, was going home for a rather late luncheon.
“No cases to-day?” said Sir Timothy, coldly polite.
“Oh, yes, there were, several. I’ve finished them off.”
“But,” said Sir Timothy, “it’s only just the hour for beginning.”
“Excuse me, it’s 2 p.m.”
“12 noon,” said Sir Timothy.
“2 p.m.,” repeated Mr. Courtney.
Sir Timothy took out his watch. The hands were together at the hour of 12. He showed it to Mr. Courtney, who grinned. Sir Timothy scowled at him and turned fiercely to a police sergeant who stood by.
“Sergeant,” he said, “what time is it?”
It is not the function of the Irish police to decide great questions of State. Their business is to enforce what the higher powers, for the time being, wish the law to be. In case of any uncertainty about which power is the higher, the police occupy the uncomfortable position of neutrals. The sergeant was not quite sure whether Sir Timothy or Mr. Courtney were the more influential man. He answered cautiously.
“There’s some,” he said, “who do be saying that it’s one o’clock at the present time. There’s others—and I’m not saying they’re wrong—who are of opinion that it’s half-past twelve, or about that. There’s them—and some of the most respectable people is with them there—that says it’s 2 p.m. If I was to be put on my oath this minute, I’d find it mortal hard to say what time it was.”
“By Act of Parliament,” said Mr. Courtney, “its 2 p.m.”
“In the matter of an Act of Parliament,” said the sergeant, “I wouldn’t like to be contradicting your honour.”
Sir Timothy turned on his heel and walked away. The victory was with Mr. Courtney, but not because he had an Act of Parliament behind him. Nobody in Ireland pays much attention to Acts of Parliament. He made his point successfully, because the police did not like to contradict him. From that day on Sir Timothy made no attempt to take his seat on the Magistrates’ Bench in the Court House.
Late in the summer Sir Archibald Chesney visited the neighbourhood. Sir Archibald is, of course, a great man. He is one of the people who are supposed to govern Ireland. He does not actually do so. Nobody could. But he dispenses patronage, which, after all, is one of the most important functions of any Government. It was, for instance, in Sir Archibald’s power to give Mr. Courtney a pleasant and well-paid post in Dublin, to remove him from the uncongenial atmosphere of Connaught, and set him in an office in the Lower Castle Yard. There, and in a house in Ailesbury Road—houses in Ailesbury Road are most desirable—Mr. Courtney could mingle in really intellectual society.
Mr. Courtney knew this, and invited Sir Archibald to be his guest during his stay in the neighbourhood. Sir Archibald gracefully accepted the invitation.
Then a surprising thing happened. Mr. Courtney received a very friendly letter from Sir Timothy.
“I hear,” so the letter ran, “that Sir Archibald Chesney is to be with you for a few days next week. We shall be very pleased if you will bring him out to dine with us some evening. Shall we say Tuesday at 7.30? I shall not ask anyone else. Three of us will be enough for a couple of bottles of my old port.”
Sir Timothy’s port was very old and remarkably good. Mr. Courtney had tasted it once or twice before the days when summer time was thought of. No doubt, Sir Archibald would appreciate the port.
He might afterwards take an optimistic view of life, and feel well disposed towards Mr. Courtney. The invitation was accepted.
Sir Archibald and Mr. Courtney dressed for dinner, as gentlemen belonging to the high official classes in Ireland should and do. They put on shirts with stiff fronts and cuffs. With painful efforts they drove studs through tightly sealed buttonholes. They fastened white ties round their collars. They encased their stomachs in stiff white waistcoats. They struggled into silk-lined, silk-faced, long-tailed coats. They wrapped their necks in white silk scarves. They even put high silk hats on their heads. Their overcoats were becomingly open, for the day was warm. They took their seats in the motor. Every policeman in the village saluted them as they passed. They sped up the long, tree-lined avenue which led to Sir Timothy’s house. They reached the lofty doorway, over which crouched lions upheld a shield, bearing a coat of arms.
On the lawn opposite the door Sir Timothy, his two daughters and a young man whom Mr. Courtney recognized as the police inspector, were playing tennis. It was a bright and agreeable scene. The sun shone pleasantly. Sir Timothy and the police inspector were in white flannels. The girls wore pretty cotton frocks.
Sir Archibald looked at Mr. Courtney.
“We’ve come the wrong day,” he said, “or the wrong hour, or something.”
“ItisTuesday,” said Mr. Courtney, “and he certainly said 7.30.”
“It’s infernally awkward,” said Sir Archibald, glancing at his clothes.
Sir Timothy crossed the lawn, swinging his tennis racket and smiling.
“Delighted to see you,” he said. “I’d have asked you to come up for a game of tennis if I’d thought you’d have cared for it. Had an idea you’d be busy all day, and would rather dress at your own place. Hullo, you are dressed! A bit early, isn’t it? But I’m delighted to see you.”
Sir Archibald stepped slowly from the car. Men who undertake the task of governing Ireland must expect to find themselves looking like fools occasionally. But it is doubtful whether any turn of the political or administrative machine can make a man look as foolish as he feels when, elaborately dressed in evening clothes, he is suddenly set down on a sunny lawn in the middle of a group of people suitably attired for tennis. Sir Archibald, puzzled and annoyed, turned to Mr. Courtney with a frown.
“He said half-past seven,” said Mr. Courtney.
“I’m delighted to see you now or at any time, but, as a matter of fact, it’s only half-past five,” said Sir Timothy.
Sir Archibald looked at his watch.
“It’s—surely my watch can’t have gained two hours?”
“It’s half-past seven,” said Mr. Courtney, firmly.
“Oh, no it isn’t,” said Sir Timothy. “I don’t dine by Act of Parliament.”
Sir Archibald frowned angrily.
“We’d better go home again,” he said. “We mustn’t interrupt the tennis.”
He climbed stiffly into the motor.
“I suppose,” he said to Mr. Courtney a few minutes later, “that this is some kind of Irish joke.”
Mr. Courtney explained, elaborately and fully, Sir Timothy’s peculiar views about time.
“If I’d known,” said Sir Archibald, “that you were taking me to dine with a lunatic, I should not have agreed to go.”
Mr. Courtney recognized that his chances of promotion to a pleasant post in Dublin had vanished. The Irish Government had no use for men who place their superiors in embarrassing positions.
“I’ll say this for old MacManaway, an honester man never lived nor what he was; and I’m sorry he’s gone, so I am.”
The speaker was Dan Gallaher. The occasion was the morning of the auction of old MacManaway’s property. The place was the yard behind the farmhouse in which MacManaway had lived, a solitary man, without wife or child, for fifty years. Dan Gallaher held the hames of a set of harness in his hand as he spoke and critically examined the leather of the traces. It was good leather, sound and well preserved. Old MacManaway while alive liked sound things and took good care of his property.
“An honester man never lived,” Dan repeated “And I’m not saying that because the old man and me agreed together, for we didn’t.”
“How could you agree?” said James McNiece. “It wasn’t to be expected that you would agree. There wasn’t a stronger Protestant nor a greater Orangeman in the whole country nor old MacManaway.”
James McNiece turned from the examination of a cart as he spoke and gave his attention to the hames. His description of the dead man’s religious and political convictions was just. No one in all the Ulster border land ever held the principle of the Orange Society more firmly or opposed any form of Home Rule more bitterly than old MacManaway.
And Dan Gallaher was a Roman Catholic and a Nationalist of the extremest kind.
“They tell me,” said Dan Gallaher, in a pleasant conversational tone, “that it’s to be yourself, James McNiece, that’s to be the head of the Orangemen in the parish now that MacManaway is gone.”
James looked at him sideways out of the corners of his eyes. Dan spoke in a friendly tone, but it is never wise to give any information to “Papishes and rebels.”
“The Colonel,” he said, “is the Grand Master of the Orangemen in these parts.”
Colonel Eden, a J.P., and the principal landlord in the parish, drove into the yard in his motor. A police sergeant slipped his pipe into his pocket, stepped forward and took the number of the Colonel’s car. It has never been decided in Ireland whether motor cars may or may not be used, under the provisions of D.O.R.A., for attending auctions.
We know that the safety of the empire is compromised by driving to a race meeting. We know that the King and his Army are in no way injured by our driving to market. Attendance at an auction stands midway between pleasure and business; and the use of motors in such matters is debatable.
“It’s the D.I’s orders, sir,” said the sergeant apologetically.
“All right,” said the Colonel, “but if the D.I. expects me to fine myself at the next Petty Sessions hell be disappointed.”
James McNiece and Dan Gallaher touched their hats to the Colonel.
“Morning, James,” said the Colonel. “Morning, Dan. Fine day for the sale, and a good gathering of people. I don’t know that I ever saw a bigger crowd at an auction.”
He looked round as he spoke. The whole parish and many people from outside the parish had assembled. The yard was full of men, handling and appraising the outdoor effects. Women passed in and out of the house, poked mattresses with their fingers, felt the fabrics of sheets and curtains, examined china and kitchen utensils warily.
“There’s the doctor over there,” said the Colonel, “looking at the stable buckets, and who’s that young fellow in the yellow leggings, James?”
“I’m not rightly sure,” said James McNiece, “but I’m thinking he’ll be the new D.I. from Curraghfin.”
“It is him,” said Dan Gallaher. “I was asking the sergeant this minute and he told me. What’s more he said he was a terrible sharp young fellow.”
“That won’t suit you, Dan,” said the Colonel. “You and your friends will have to be a bit careful before you get up another rebellion.”
“It may not suit me,” said Dan, “but there’s others it won’t suit either. Didn’t I see the sergeant taking the number of your motor, Colonel, and would he be doing the like of that if the new D.I. hadn’t told him?”
The Colonel laughed. As commander of a battalion of the Ulster Volunteer Force, he was fully prepared to meet Dan Gallaher on the field of battle—Dan leading the National Volunteers. He looked forward with something like pleasure to the final settlement of the Home Rule question by the ordeal of battle. In the meanwhile he and Dan Gallaher by no means hated each other, and were occasionally in full sympathy when the police or some ridiculous Government department made trouble by fussy activity.
Mr. Robinson, the auctioneer, drove up in his dogcart. He touched his hat to Colonel Eden, gave an order to his clerk and crossed the yard briskly. He twisted the cigarette he smoked into the corner of his mouth with deft movements of his lips, waved his hand to various acquaintances and looked round him with quick, cheerful glances. No man in the country was quicker to appreciate the financial worth of a crowd. He knew before a single bid was made whether people were in a mood to spend lavishly. He found himself very well satisfied with the prospect of this particular auction. The stuff he had to sell, indoors and out, was good. The farmers were enjoying a prosperous season. They had money in their pockets which they would certainly want to spend. Mr. Robinson had visions of a percentage, his share of the proceeds, running into three figures.
He began work in a corner of the yard with a cross-cut saw. The bidding rose merrily to a point slightly higher than the cost of a similar saw new in a shop. At 23/6 Mr. Robinson knocked it down to a purchaser who seemed well satisfied. A number of small articles, scythes, barrows, spades, were sold rapidly, Mr. Robinson moving round the yard from outhouse to outhouse, surrounded by an eager crowd which pressed on him. His progress was not unlike that of a queen bee at swarming time. He made—as she makes—short flights, and always at the end of them found himself in the centre of a cluster of followers.
At about half-past twelve Mr. Robinson reached his most important lot. He lit a fresh cigarette—his eighth—before putting up for sale a rick of hay.
“About four tons,” said Mr. Robinson, “new meadow hay, well saved, saved with not a drop of rain. Gentlemen, I needn’t tell you that this is a rare, under existing conditions, a unique opportunity. Hay—you know this better than I do—is at present unobtainable in the ordinary market. Now, don’t disappoint me, gentlemen. Let me have a reasonable offer. Thirty pounds. Did I hear some one say fifteen pounds? Less than four pounds a ton! Now, gentlemen, really——”
But the crowd in front of Mr. Robinson knew just as well as he did that four pounds a ton is not a reasonable offer. The bids succeeded each other rapidly. The original fifteen pounds changed to twenty pounds, then to twenty-five, rose a little more slowly to thirty pounds. At thirty-two pounds the bidding hesitated. Mr. Robinson, dropping his cigarette from his mouth, urged his clients on with gusts of eloquence. There was a short spurt. The bids rose by five shillings at a time and finally stopped dead at thirty-four pounds. The hay was sold at a little over eight pounds a ton. Public interest, roused to boiling point by the sale of a whole rick of hay, cooled down a little when Mr. Robinson went on to the next lot on his list.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I am now offering the hay stored in the loft above the stable. A small lot, gentlemen, but prime hay. I offer no guarantee as to the quantity in the loft; but I should guess it at anything between ten and fifteen hundred-weight.”
Several of the more important farmers drew out of the crowd which surrounded Mr. Robinson. It was not worth while bidding for so small a quantity of hay. Other members of the crowd, feeling that a breathing space had been granted them, took packets of sandwiches from their pockets and sat down in one of the outhouses to refresh themselves. Mr. Robinson viewed the diminishing group of bidders with some disappointment. He was gratified to see that the new police officer from Curraghfin, a gentleman who had not so far made a single bid, crossed the yard and took a place on the steps leading to the loft. Colonel Eden, too, appeared interested in the new lot of hay. If the inspector of police and Colonel Eden began to bid against each other the hay might realize a good price.
“Now, gentlemen,” said Mr. Robinson, “shall we make a start with three pounds?”
He glanced at Colonel Eden, then at the police officer. Neither gentleman made any sign of wishing to bid. It was James McNiece who made the first offer.
“Two pounds,” he said.
There was a pause.
“Two pounds,” said Mr. Robinson, “two pounds. Going at two pounds. You’re not going to let this hay,—more than half a ton of it—go at two pounds.”
He looked appealingly at Colonel Eden and at the police officer. They were entirely unresponsive.
“And at two pounds, going——” said Mr. Robinson.
“Two-ten,” said Dan Gallaher, in a quiet voice.
“Two-fifteen,” said James McNiece.
Dan Gallaher, still apparently bored by the proceedings, raised the price another five shillings. James McNiece went half a crown further. Dan Gallaher, becoming slightly interested, made a jump to three pounds ten. McNiece, with an air of finality, bid four pounds. The contest began to attract attention. When the price rose to five pounds interest became lively, and those who had drawn out of the group round Mr. Robinson began to dribble back. It seemed likely that the contest was one of those, not uncommon at Irish auctions, into which personal feelings enter largely and the actual value of the article sold is little considered. There was a certain piquancy about a struggle of this kind between a prominent Orangeman like James McNiece, and Dan Gallaher, whom everyone knew to be the leader of the Sinn Fein party.
Interest developed into actual excitement when the price rose to ten pounds. A half ton of hay never is and never has been worth ten pounds. But ten pounds was by no means the final bid.
“Mr. McNiece,” said Mr. Robinson, “the bid is against you.”
“Guineas,” said McNiece.
“Eleven,” said Dan Gallaher.
“Guineas,” said McNiece.
The duet went on, McNiece capping Gallaher’s pounds with a monotonous repetition of the word guineas until the price rose to twenty pounds. At that point McNiece faltered for a moment. The auctioneer, watching keenly, saw him turn half round and look at Colonel Eden. The Colonel nodded slightly, so slightly that no one except Mr. Robinson and McNiece himself saw the gesture.
“At twenty pounds,” said Mr. Robinson, “going, and at twenty pounds——”
“Thirty,” said McNiece.
The crowd of watchers gasped audibly. This was something outside of all experience. A man might willingly pay a few shillings, even a pound, too much for the sake of getting the better of an opponent; but to give thirty pounds for half a ton of hay—not even the natural enmity of an Orangeman for a Sinn Feiner would account for such recklessness.
“Guineas,” said Dan Gallaher.
It was his turn to say guineas now, and he repeated the word without faltering until the price rose to fifty pounds. Mr. Robinson took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Never in all his experience of auctions had he heard bidding like this. He lit a fresh cigarette, holding the match in fingers which trembled visibly.
“You will understand, gentlemen, that I am only selling the hay, not the barn or the stable.”
“Guineas,” said Dan Gallaher.
It was the last bid. As he made it Colonel Eden turned and walked out of the group round the auctioneer. James McNiece took his pipe from his pocket and filled it slowly.
“The hay is yours, Mr. Gallaher,” said the auctioneer.
Dan Gallaher, having secured the hay, left the yard. He found his horse, which he had tethered to a tree, and mounted. He rode slowly down the rough lane which led from the farm. At the gate leading to the high road the police sergeant stopped him.
“If you wouldn’t mind waiting a minute, Mr. Gallaher,” said the sergeant, “the D.I. would like to speak to you.”
“What about?” said Gallaher.
The sergeant winked ponderously.
“It might be,” he said, “about the hay you’re just after buying.”
“If he wants it,” said Gallaher, “he can have it, and I’ll deliver it to him at his own home at half the price I paid for it.”
The District Inspector, smiling and tapping his gaiters with a riding switch, explained in a few words that he did not want the hay and did not intend to pay for it.
“I’m taking over the contents of that loft,” he said, “in the name of the Government under the provisions of D.O.R.A.”
“I don’t know,” said Gallaher, “that you’ve any right to be taking over what I’ve bought in that kind of way, and what’s more you’ll not be able to do it without you show me a proper order in writing, signed by a magistrate.”
“If I were you,” said the D.I., “I wouldn’t insist on any kind of legal trial about that hay. At present there’s no evidence against you, Mr. Gallaher, except that you paid a perfectly absurd price for some hay that you didn’t want, and I’m not inclined to press the matter now. I’ve got what I wanted; but if you insist on dragging the matter into Court——”
“I do not,” said Gallaher.
At ten o’clock that evening Dan Gallaher and James McNiece sat together in the private room behind the bar of Sam Twining’s public-house. The house was neutral ground used by Orangemen and Nationalists alike, a convenient arrangement, indeed a necessary arrangement, for there was no other public-house nearer than Curraghfin.
“Dan,” said James McNiece, “I’m an Orangeman and a Protestant and a loyalist, and what I’ve always said about Home Rule and always will say is this:—We’ll not have it and to Hell with the rebels. But I’m telling you now I’d rather you had them, papist and rebel and all as you are, than see them swept off that way by the police. And what’s more, I’m not the only one says that. The Colonel was talking to me after he heard what happened, and what he said was this—‘The Government of this country,’ said he, meaning the police, ‘is a disgrace to civilization.’”
“Give me your hand, James McNiece,” said Gallaher. “Let me shake your hand to show there’s no ill feeling about the way I bid against you at the sale to-day.”
McNiece laid down the glass of whisky which he was raising to his lips and stretched out his hand. Gallaher grasped it and held it.
“Tell me this now, James McNiece,” he said, “for it’s what I was never sure of—How many was there behind that hay?”
McNiece looked round him carefully and made sure that no third person could hear him. Neglecting no precaution he sank his voice to a whisper.
“Twenty rifles,” he said, “of the latest pattern, the same as the soldiers use, and four hundred rounds of ball cartridge.”
“Gosh,” said Gallaher, “but we’d have done great work with them. Either your lads or mine, James McNiece, would have done great work with them. But, sure, what’s the use of talking? The police has them now.”
“Damn the police,” said James McNiece.