Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories/For the Famine of Your Houses
V.—FOR THE FAMINE OF YOUR HOUSES
THE parish of Curraghmore, which is situated on the western coast, was smitten by a famine. Therefore, a benevolent Government decided to send the people some potatoes. Early in February, Mr. Nicholson-Croly arrived charged with the sale, on exceptionally favourable terms, of 200 tons of a new kind of potato called the May Queen.
He settled himself as comfortably as possible in the little hotel, and awaited the arrival of the potato-laden steamer. In due time she came into the bay and anchored opposite Father Gibbons' Presbytery, about a mile from the shore. Mr. Nicholson-Croly hired one of the canvas-covered boats, locally known as curraghs, and rowed off to the steamer.
"What's your plan," asked Captain MacNab, "for getting the potatoes on shore?"
"Oh, that's all right," said Mr. Nicholson-Croly. "You are to lie alongside the pier."
"What pier?"
"There's only one pier—the pier the Government built years ago."
"Well," said the Captain, looking slowly round, "where is it?"
Mr. Nicholson-Croly pointed out the structure. It was clearly visible in a corner of the bay. So were the teeth of a long fringe of jagged rocks guarding the approach to it.
"Well, I'm" Captain MacNab was a pious man, and stopped himself in time.
Mr. Nicholson-Croly was not a marine engineer nor a close observer of men and manners. He noticed neither the rocks nor the Captain's half- finished sentence. The pier was certainly there—grey, strong, and impressive even in the distance. He saw no reason why the steamer should not lie alongside it.
"I suppose," he said, "that you can come in some time to-morrow?"
Captain MacNab's piety failed him.
"I'll see you damned, and your Government along with you—and it's what they deserve if they built that pier—before I pile up my ship on those rocks."
"Do you mean to say that you won't go alongside the pier?"
"You may with safety take your Bible oath to it that it's exactly what I do mean," said Captain MacNab.
Mr. Nicholson-Croly went on shore, and spent the evening writing an indignant account of Captain MacNab's behaviour to the authorities in Dublin Castle. He got by return of post a card which informed him that his letter was received, its contents noted, and that a reply would be forthcoming in due course. After a week the reply arrived. The authorities were unable to understand Captain MacNab's attitude and recommended that the facts of the case should be presented to him again. Mr. Nicholson-Croly presented them. He, as it were, formally introduced the Captain to the pier, taking him on shore for the purpose. He expatiated on the beauty of its masonry, on the cost of building it, on the parental affection which the Government naturally felt for it. Captain MacNab's determination remained unchanged, though the language in which he expressed it was modified.
Mr. Nicholson-Croly wrote a second letter to Dublin, and received a second post-card identical with the first. This time ten days elapsed before anyone found leisure to deal with the matter. Then, lest further valuable time should be wasted, some one sent a telegram:—"Adopt other means for landing potatoes."
The only other means that appeared to be available were the five canvas-covered boats used by the natives for fishing. Mr. Nicholson-Croly, with despair in his heart, consulted the priest.
"I expect now," said Father Gibbons, "that if the weather isn't too bad you might get as much as ten stone into each curragh. If you employ the whole five of them, and they make eight journeys in the day—you will hardly get them to do more than that, and, indeed, Jimmy Corcoran's an old man, and has no one to help him but his gossoon of a grandson; he'll hardly go more than four times. Still, that same would bring you"
He drew an envelope from his pocket and worked the sum on the back of it.
"You'd get two and a quarter ton ashore in the day, as near as I can make it out."
"Why, I'd be" said Mr. Nicholson-Croly.
He in his turn figured rapidly with knitted brow. "I'd be over two months getting the whole cargo landed."
"You would," said the priest. "All that and more, for you haven't reckoned on Sundays and holydays. Besides, the men wouldn't stick at the work for you. There'd be the spring fishing to attend to, and the ploughing. Indeed, before you'd finished there'd be the harvest to get in."
Mr. Nicholson-Croly left the priest, and went, though not hopefully, to seek advice from the police barrack. He learned there that Mr. Normanstill, who lived at Rathmore, owned a tidy bit of a boat, a boat that might carry as much as five tons of potatoes at a time. It might be—the sergeant couldn't say for certain—but it might be that she could be borrowed.
Mr. Normanstill was the land agent, who lived by collecting rent from the inhabitants of Curraghmore. He disliked Father Gibbons. He very much disliked the Government. He nourished a special grudge against the imported potato scheme, because he had not been consulted about it. Also Mr. Normanstill was a humourist. When Mr. Nicholson-Croly called to treat for the loan or hire of the boat, he insisted on regarding the visit as a pleasant social function, and evaded all attempts to talk business. Mrs. Normanstill poured out tea. She discussed the scenery, the weather, and a new novel which Mr. Nicholson-Croly had not read. When at last the unfortunate young man propounded his potato problem, his host affected to regard it as an excellent joke, and suggested that Mr. Nicholson-Croly should swim ashore once or twice every day with a May Queen potato in his mouth. Evidently the tidy bit of a boat was not to be borrowed on any terms.
Next day the five curraghs were hired, and loaded with potatoes under a withering fire of sarcasm from Captain MacNab, echoed by his crew, who watched operations with broad grins. Father Gibbons' estimate of the capacity of the curraghs proved too high. Barely two tons of potatoes were landed before dark. Mr. Nicholson-Croly went to bed and slept uneasily, haunted by a nightmare of a whole life spent in ferrying potatoes by twos and threes across an abnormally stormy waste of water. Three days of immense toil resulted in the housing of nearly six tons of battered May Queens in a galvanised iron shed lent by Father Gibbons for purposes of sorting. After that the owners of the curraghs declined to put to sea any more. Nor would offers of increased payment, expositions of the value of the potatoes to the community, or threats of Government vengeance, somewhat vaguely expressed, move them from their decision.
Mr. Nicholson-Croly, doing the best possible under the circumstances, prepared to sell his available stock. He established himself in the shed with a ledger, a bottle of ink, some sacks, and a package of sandwiches. The rush of buyers might, he reflected, prevent his getting away for lunch. No one came near him all the morning. About half-past twelve o'clock a small boy arrived and stared through the open door. Mr. Nicholson-Croly, who was beginning to find the hut draughty, sent him to the hotel to fetch two rugs. He wrapped his legs up, ate his sandwiches, lit a pipe, and waited. At four o'clock Father Gibbons looked in and inquired how his sale was going on. He expressed surprise at learning that no single May Queen had been disposed of.
"Maybe now," he said, "the people don't know you're selling them. They very well might, of course, considering that the whole parish has been talking of nothing but the way you got the cargo landed. Still it's surprising, sometimes, the things people won't know. It would be as well, perhaps, if I warned them on Sunday after Mass where the potatoes are to be had."
The next Sunday Father Gibbons very kindly announced that the potatoes were on sale in his galvanised iron shed, adding that intending buyers should be prompt, because the supply was limited. On Monday no single individual visited the shed. On Tuesday Captain MacNab looked in to inquire when the rest of his cargo would be landed.
"Of course," he said, "it's nothing to me when you land them. I'd just as soon spend the spring here as anywhere else; but I'd be getting them ashore if I were you. I've a sort of suspicion that some of them are beginning to go bad."
Early in the following week, Mr. Normanstill drove up to the shed.
"I looked in as I passed," he said, cheerfully, "to see if you were worn out selling those potatoes. It must be hard work. I shouldn't wonder, now, if you'd be the better of a holiday."
"I'm not worn out with selling potatoes," said Mr. Nicholson-Croly, bitterly. "I haven't sold a single stone, and so far as I can see, I'm not likely to. I can't understand it."
"Do you tell me that?" said "Mr. Normanstill. "It's most extraordinary. Did you ask Father Gibbons why you couldn't sell them?"
"He can't understand it any more than I can."
"Oh, he can't understand it!" Mr. Normanstill grinned. "Do you know, it occurs to me that maybe the people are holding off in expectation of the second cargo."
"What second cargo?"
"Do you mean to tell me you don't know? Well, you must be the only man in the whole country who doesn't. Why, man, the gentlemen who came down to arrange about the potatoes said they were going to send another two hundred tons for free distribution among those who hadn't money to buy any of the first lot. Every soul in the place knew that six weeks ago, and no man would be such a fool as to buy to-day what he'll get for nothing to-morrow."
Captain MacNab was the next visitor to the shed. He appeared to be in a very bad temper.
"Sir," he said, "I've come to tell you that unless you take those infernal potatoes out of my ship I'll dump the whole cargo of them into the sea. They've gone rotten, sir. They stink, stink so that the toughest man on board can't go below without puking. I might as well sleep in a sewer as my cabin.
Poor Mr. Nicholson-Croly succumbed to this last blow.
"I can't help it," he said, piteously. "God knows I wish the potatoes and the Government and Father Gibbons and Mr. Normanstill and the whole parish were all at the bottom of the sea together."
"Well," said the Captain, "I'll see that the potatoes get there anyhow. You can look after the drowning of the rest of the party yourself."
That night Mr. Nicholson-Croly was rowed on board in one of the ship's boats. Steam was got up after dark, and at about two o'clock in the morning, three miles from the shore, one hundred and ninety-four tons of exceedingly malodorous potatoes were shovelled into the Atlantic. At daylight the steamer was again at her old anchorage, where Captain MacNab and his crew awaited the further orders in a comparatively pure atmosphere. A letter, marked "private and urgent," ordered the steamer back to her native port, and directed Mr. Nicholson-Croly to impress upon the Captain and crew the absolute necessity for silence.
The next two hundred tons of "May Queens" were sent to Curraghmore by rail, and Mr. Nicholson-Croly had the satisfaction of handing them over, free of charge, to people who grumbled a good deal because they were "a poor, soft kind of potato," and certain to "rot on us in the ground."