VI

As I have said, Arnott always got even in some way with those who tried to best him. I remember once when a group of short lines, now amalgamated into the Irish Great Northern Railway and worked in quite a different way, did what we all considered rather too sharp a thing. We had to have a special train to go from Dublin to Belfast on Sunday. For this they charged us full fare for every person and a rate for the train as well. Then when we were starting they took, at the ordinary rate, other passengers in our train for which we had paid extra. This, however, was not that which awoke Arnott’s ire. The causa teterrima belli was that whilst they gave us only open trucks for goods they charged us extra for the use of tarpaulins, which are necessary in railway travelling where goods are inflammable and sparks many. Having made the arrangement I had gone back to London on other business, and did not go to Belfast, so I did not know, till after the tour had closed, what had happened later. When I was checking the accounts in my office at the Lyceum, I found that though the railway company had charged us what we thought was an exorbitant price, still the cost of the total journey compared favourably with that of other journeys of equal length. I could not understand it until I went over the accounts, comparing item by item with the other journeys. Thus I “focussed” the difference in the matter of “goods.” Then I found that whereas the other railways had charged us on somewhere about nineteen tons weight this particular line had only assessed us at seven. I sent for Arnott and asked him how could the difference be, as on the first journey I had verified the weight as I usually did, such saving much trouble throughout a tour as it made the check easier. He shook his head and said that he did not know. I pressed him, pointing out that either this railway had underweighed us or that others had overweighed.

“Oh, the others were all right, sir,” he said. “I saw them weighed at Euston myself!”

“Then how on earth can there be such a difference?” I asked. “Can’t you throw any light on it?” He shook his head slowly as though pondering deeply and then said with a puzzled look on his face:

“I haven’t an idea. It must have been all right, for the lot of them was there, and the lot of us, too. There couldn’t have been any mistake with them all looking on. No, sir, I can’t account for it; not for the life of me!” Then seeing that I turned to my work again he moved away. When he was half way to the door he turned round, his face brightening as though a new light had suddenly dawned upon him. He spoke out quite genially as though proud of his intellectual effort:

“Unless it was, sir, that there was some mistake about the weighin’. You see, while the weighin’ was goin’ on we was all pretty angry about things. We because they was bestin’ us, and they because we was tellin’ em so, and rubbin’ in what we thought of ’em in a general way. Most of us thought that there might have been a fight and we was all ready—the lot of us—on both sides. We was standin’ close together, for we wouldn’t stir and they had to come to us.... An’—it might have been that me and the boys was standin’ before they came to join us on the platform with the weights! I daresay we wasn’t so quarrelsome when we moved a bit away, for there was more of them than of us; an’ they stood where we had been. They didn’t want to follow us. An’—an’—the weighin’ was done by them!”