"A nail in the sole of your bluchers jagging your foot like a pin,And every step of the journey driving it further in;Then out on the great long roadway, you'll find when you go abroad,The nearer you go to nature, the further you go from God."—A Song of the Dead End.
"A nail in the sole of your bluchers jagging your foot like a pin,And every step of the journey driving it further in;Then out on the great long roadway, you'll find when you go abroad,The nearer you go to nature, the further you go from God."—A Song of the Dead End.
"A nail in the sole of your bluchers jagging your foot like a pin,And every step of the journey driving it further in;Then out on the great long roadway, you'll find when you go abroad,The nearer you go to nature, the further you go from God."
"A nail in the sole of your bluchers jagging your foot like a pin,
And every step of the journey driving it further in;
Then out on the great long roadway, you'll find when you go abroad,
The nearer you go to nature, the further you go from God."
—A Song of the Dead End.
—A Song of the Dead End.
Out on tramp, homeless in a strange country, with twopence in my pocket! The darkness lay around me and the snow was white on the ground. Whenever I took my hands out of my pockets the chill air nipped them like pincers. One knee was out through my trousers, and my boots were leaking. The snow melted as it came through the torn uppers, and I could hear the water gurgling between my toes as I walked. When I passed a lighted house I felt a hunger that was not of the belly kind. I came to the village of Bishopton, and went into a little shop, where I asked for a pennyworth of biscuits. The man weighed them in scales that shone like gold, and broke one in halves to make the exact weight.
"There's nothin' like fair measure, laddie," he said.
"Is there any chance of a man getting a job about this district?" I asked.
"What man?" said the shopkeeper.
"Me," I said.
"Get out, ye scamp!" roared the man. "It would be better for you to go to bed instead of tryin' to take a rise out of yer betters."
"You are an old pig!" I shouted at the man, for I did not like his way of speaking, and disappeared into the darkness. I ate the biscuits, but felt hungrier after my meal than I was before it.
The night was calm and deadly cold. Overhead a very pale moon forged its way through a heaven of stars. On such a night it is a pleasure to sit before a nice warm fire on a well-swept hearth. I had no fire, no home, no friends; nothing but the bleak road and the coldness. I kept walking, walking. I knew that it would be unwise to sit down: perhaps I would fall asleep and die. I did not want to die. It was so much better to walk about on the roads of a strange country in which there was nobody to care what became of me; no one except an old harridan, and she was far away from me now. The love of life was strong within me, for I was very young, and never did I cling closer to life than I did at that moment when it was blackest. My thoughts went to the future and the good things which might lie before me.
"I'll get a job yet," I said to myself. "I'll walk about until I meet somebody who needs me. Then I'll grow up in years and work among men, maybe getting a whole pound a week as my pay. A pound a week is a big wage, and it will amount to a lot in a year. I will pay ten shillings a week for my keep in some lodging-house, as Micky's Jim had done when he worked on Greenock pier, and I will save the other half-sovereign. Ten shillings a week amounts to twenty-six pounds a year. In ten years I shall save two hundred and sixty pounds. Such a big lump-sum of money! Two hundred and sixty pounds!
"It will be hard to keep a wife on a pound a week, but I will always remain single, and send my money home to my own people. If I don't, I'll never have any luck. I will never gamble again. Neither will I marry, for women are no earthly use, anyway. They get old, wrinkled, andfat very quickly. They are all alike, every one of them."
I found my thoughts wandering from one subject to another like those of a person who is falling asleep. Anyhow, I had something to live for, so I kept walking, walking on.
I was in the open country, and I did not know where the road was leading to, but that did not matter. I was as near home in one place as in another.
From one point of the sky, probably the north, I saw the clouds rising, covering up the stars, and at last blotting the moon off the sky as a picture is wiped off a slate. It was more dismal than ever when the moon and stars were gone, for now I was alone with the night and the darkness. I could hear the wind as it passed through the telegraph wires by the roadside. It was a weeping wind, and put me in mind of the breeze calling down the chimney far away at home in Glenmornan.
A low bent man came out of the darkness and shuffled by. "It looks like snow," he said, in passing.
"It does," I replied. I could not see his face, but his voice was kindly. He shuffled along. Perhaps he was going home to a warm supper and bed. I did not know, and I wondered who the man was.
Suddenly the snow from the darkness above drifted down and my clothes were white in an instant. My bare knee became very cold, for the flakes melted on it as they fell. The snow ran down my legs and made me shiver. I took off my muffler and tied it around the hole in my trousers to prevent the snowflakes from getting in. I felt wearied and cold, but after a while I got very angry. I got angry, not with myself, but with the wind, the snow, my leaky boots and ragged clothes. I was angry with the man who carried the devil's prayer book, and also with the man who broke a biscuit in two because he was an honestbody and a believer in fair measure. Perhaps I ought to have been angry with myself, for did I not spend all my money at the card school, and was it not my own fault that now I had only one penny in my possession? If I had saved my money like Micky's Jim I would have now eight or nine pounds in my pocket.
Suddenly the snow cleared, and my eyes fell on a farmhouse hardly a stone's-throw away from the road. Thinking that I might get a shed to lie in I went towards it. There was no light showing in the house and it must have been long after midnight. As I approached a dog ran at me yelping. I turned and fled, but the dog caught my trousers and hung on, trying to fasten his teeth in my leg. I twisted round and swung him clear, then lifted my boot and aimed a blow at the animal which took him on the jaw. His teeth snapped together like a trap, and he ran back squealing. I took to my heels and returned to the road. From there I saw a light in the farmhouse, so I ran quicker than ever. I was frightened at what I had done; I had committed a crime in looking for a night's shelter along with the beasts of the byre. I could not get sleeping with men; I was not a man. I could not get sleeping in a shed; I was not even a brute beast. I was merely a little boy who was very hungry, ragged, and tired.
I ran for a long distance, and was sweating all over when I stopped. I stood until I got cool, then continued my walking, walking through the darkness. I was still walking when the day broke cold and cheerless. I met a navvy going to his work and I asked him for a penny. He had no money, but he gave me half of the food which he had brought from home for his daily meal.
On the outskirts of Paisley I went to the door of a mansion to ask for a penny. A man opened the door. He was a fat and comfortable-looking, round-paunched fellow. He told me to get off before the dog was putafter me. I hurried off, and forsook the big houses afterwards.
Once in Paisley I sat down on a kerbstone under the Caledonian Railway Bridge in Moss Street. I fell asleep, and slept until a policeman woke me up.
"Go away from here!" he roared at me. I got away.
A gang of men were laying down tramway rails on the street and I went forward and asked the overseer for a job. He laughed at me for a minute, then drew his gang around to examine me.
"He's a fine bit o' a man," said one.
"He's shouthered like a rake," said another.
Discomfited and disgusted I hurried away from the grinning circle of men, and all day long I travelled through the town. I soon got tired of looking for work, and instead I looked for food. I was very unsuccessful, and youth is the time for a healthy appetite. I spent my last penny on a bun, and when it was dark I got a crust from a night watchman who sat in a little hut by the tram-lines. About midnight I left the town and went into the country. The snow was no longer falling, but a hard frost had set in. About two o'clock in the morning I lay down on the cold ground utterly exhausted, and fell asleep. When dawn came I rose, and shivering in every limb I struck out once more on my journey. I looked for work on the farms along the road, but at every place I was turned away.
"Go back to the puirs' house," said every second or third farmer.
I went to one farmhouse when the men were coming out from dinner.
"Are you lookin' for a job?" asked a man, whom I took to be master.
"I am," I answered.
"Then give us a hand in the shed for a while," he said.
I followed the party into a large building whereimplements were stored, and the men gathered round a broken reaper which had to be taken out into the open.
"Help us out with this," said the farmer to me.
There were six of us altogether, and three went to each side of the machine and caught hold of it.
"Now, lift!" shouted the farmer.
The men at the other side lifted their end, but ours remained on the ground despite all efforts to raise it.
"Damn you, lift!" said my two mates angrily to me.
I put all my energy into the work, but the cold and hunger had taken the half of my strength away. We could not lift the machine clear of the ground. The farmer got angry.
"Get out of my sight, you spineless brat!" he roared to me, and I left the farmyard. When I came to the high-road again there were tears in my eyes. They were tears of shame; I was ashamed of my own weakness.
For a whole week afterwards I tramped through the country, hating all men, despised by everyone, and angry with my own plight. A few gave me food, some cursed me from their doors, and a great number mocked me as I passed. "Auld ragged breeks!" the children of the villages cried after me. "We're sick o' lookin' at the likes o' you!" the fat tubs of women, who stood by their cottage doors, said when I asked them for something to eat. Others would say: "Get out o' our sight, or we'll tell the policeman about you. Then you'll go to the lock-up, where you'll only get bread and water and a bed on a plank."
Such a dreadful thing! It shocked me to think of it, and for a while I always hurried away when women spoke in such a manner. However, in the end, suffering caused me to change my opinions. A man with an empty stomach may well prefer bread and water to water, a bed on a plank to a bed on the snow, and the roof of a prison tothe cold sky over him. So it was that I came into Paisley again at the end of the week and asked a policeman to arrest me. I told him that I was hungry and wanted something to eat. The man was highly amused.
"You must break the law before the king feeds you," he said.
"But I have been begging," I persisted.
"If you want me to arrest you, break a window," said the man. "Then I'll take you before a bailie and he'll put you into a reformatory, where they'll give you a jail-bird's education. You'll come out worse than you went in, and it's ten to one in favour of your life ending with a hempen cravat round your neck."
The man put his hand in his pocket and took out a sixpence, which he handed to me.
"Run away now and get something to eat," he shouted in an angry voice, and I hurried away hugging the silver coin in my hand. That night I got twopence more, and fed well for the first time in a whole week.
I met the policeman once again in later years. He was a Socialist, and happened to have the unhealthy job of protecting blacklegs from a crowd of strikers when I met him for the second time. While pretending to keep the strikers back he was urging them to rush by him and set upon the blacklegs—the men who had not the backbone to fight for justice and right. Not being, as a Socialist, a believer in charity, he feigned to be annoyed when I reminded him of his generous action of years before.
"Soft words may win a woman's love, or soothe a maiden's fears.But hungry stomachs heed them not—the belly hasn't ears."—FromThe Maxims of Moleskin Joe.
"Soft words may win a woman's love, or soothe a maiden's fears.But hungry stomachs heed them not—the belly hasn't ears."—FromThe Maxims of Moleskin Joe.
"Soft words may win a woman's love, or soothe a maiden's fears.But hungry stomachs heed them not—the belly hasn't ears."
"Soft words may win a woman's love, or soothe a maiden's fears.
But hungry stomachs heed them not—the belly hasn't ears."
—FromThe Maxims of Moleskin Joe.
—FromThe Maxims of Moleskin Joe.
That night I slept in a watchman's hut on the streets, and in the morning I obtained a slice of bread from a religious lady, who gave me a long harangue on the necessity of leading a holy life. Afterwards I went away from Paisley, and out on the road I came upon a man who was walking along by himself. He was whistling a tune, and his hands were deep in his trousers' pockets. He had knee-straps around his knees, and a long skiver of tin wedged between one of the straps and the legs of his trousers, which were heavy with red muck frozen on the cloth. The cloth itself was hard, and rattled like wood against the necks of his boots. He was very curiously dressed. He wore a pea-jacket, which bore marks of the earth of many strange sleeping-places. A grey cap covered a heavy cluster of thick dark hair. But the man's waistcoat was the most noticeable article of apparel. It was made of velvet, ornamented with large ivory buttons which ran down the front in parallel rows. Each of his boots was of different colour; one was deep brown, the other dark chrome; and they were also different in size and shape.
In later years I often wore similar boots myself. We navvies call them "subs." and they can be bought verycheaply in rag-stores and second-hand clothes-shops. One boot has always the knack of wearing better than its fellow. The odd good boot is usually picked up by a rag-picker, and in course of time it finds its way into a rag-store, where it is thrown amongst hundreds of others, which are always ready for further use at their old trade. A pair of odd boots may be got for a shilling or less, and most navvies wear them.
The man's face was strongly boned and fierce of expression. He had not shaved for weeks. His shoulders were broad, and he stood well over six feet in height. At once I guessed that he was very strong, so I liked the man even before I spoke to him.
"Where are you for?" he asked when I overtook him.
"God knows," I answered. "Where are you for?"
"Christ knows," he replied, and went on with the tune which he had left off to question me.
When he had finished whistling he turned to me again.
"Are you down and out?" he asked.
"I slept out last night," I answered.
"The first time?" he enquired.
"I slept out for a whole week."
"There's a good time comin', though we may never live to see it," he said, by way of consolation. "Had you anything to eat this mornin'?"
"A slice of bread," I said; then added, "and a lot of advice along with it from an old lady."
"Damn her advice!" cried the man angrily. "The belly hasn't ears. A slice of bread is danged mealy grub for a youngster."
He stuck his hand in the pocket of his pea-jacket and drew out a chunk of currant bread, which he handed to me.
"Try that, cully," he said.
I ate it ravenously, for I was feeling very hungry.
"By cripes! you've a stomach," said my companion, when I had finished eating. "Where are you for, anyhow?"
"I don't know. I'm looking for work."
"It's not work you need; it's rest," said the stranger.
"You've been working," I replied, looking at his covering of muck. "Why don't you clean your trousers and shoes?"
"If you were well fed you'd be as impudent as myself," said the man. "And clean my trousers and shoes! What's the good of being clean?"
"It puts the dirt away."
"It does not; it only shifts it from one place to another. And as to work—well, I work now and again, I'm sorry to say, although I done all the work that a man is put into the world to do before I was twenty-one. What's your name?"
"Dermod Flynn. What's yours?"
"Joe—Moleskin Joe, my mates calls me. Have you any tin?"
"Twopence," I replied, showing the man the remainder of the eightpence which I had picked up the night before.
"You're savin' up your fortune," he said with fine irony. "I haven't a penny itself."
"Where did you get the currant cake?" I asked.
"Stole it."
"And the waistcoat?"
"Stole it," said the man, and then continued with thinly-veiled sarcasm in his voice. "My name's Moleskin Joe, as I've told you already. I don't mind havin' seen my father or mother, and I was bred in a workhouse. I'm forty years of age—more or less—and I started work when I was seven. I've been in workhouse, reformatory, prison, and church. I went to prison of my own free will when the times were bad and I couldn't get a mouthfulof food outside, but it was always against my will that I went to church. I can fight like hell and drink like blazes, and now that you know as much about my life as I know myself you'll maybe be satisfied. You're the most impudent brat that I have ever met."
The man made the last assertion in a quiet voice, as if stating a fact which could not be contradicted. I did not feel angry or annoyed with the man who made sarcastic remarks so frankly and good-humouredly. For a long while I kept silence and the two of us plodded on together.
"Why do you drink?" I asked at last.
"Why do I drink?" repeated the man in a voice of wonder. "Such a funny question! If God causes a man to thirst He'll allow him to drink, for He's not as bad a chap as some of the parsons make Him out to be. Drink draws a man nearer to heaven and multiplies the stars; and 'Drink when you can, the drouth will come' is my motto. Do you smoke or chew?"
He pulled a plug of tobacco from his pocket, bit a piece from the end of it, and handed the plug to me. Now and again I had taken a whiff at Micky's Jim's pipe, and I liked a chew of tobacco. Without answering Moleskin's question I took the proffered tobacco and bit a piece off it.
"There's some hope for you yet," was all he said.
We walked along together, and my mate asked a farmer who was standing by the roadside for a few coppers to help us on our way.
"Go to the devil!" said the farmer.
"Never mind," Moleskin remarked to me when we got out of hearing. "There's a good time comin', though we may never live to see it in this world."
Afterwards we talked of many things, and Joe told me of many adventures with women who were not good and men who were evil. When money was plentiful he livedlarge and drank between drinks as long as he was able to stand on his feet.
The man impressed me, and, what was most wonderful, he seemed to enjoy life. Nights spent out in the cold, days when hardly a crust of food was obtainable, were looked upon as a matter of course by him.
"Let us live to-day, if we can, and the morrow can go be damned!" he said, and this summed up the whole of his philosophy as far as I could see. It would be fine to live such a life as his, I thought, but such a life was not for me. I had my own people depending on my earnings, and I must make money to send home to Glenmornan. If I had a free foot I would live like Joe, and at that moment I envied the man who was born in a workhouse and who had never seen a father or mother.
A lot of events took place on the road. Passing along we overtook a dour-faced man who carried a spade over his shoulder.
"He's goin' to dig his own grave," said Moleskin to me.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Well, I'd like to know how a man is goin' to live long if he works on a day like this!"
Just as we came up to him a young woman passed by and gave us an impudent glance, as Moleskin called it. She was good to look at and had a taking way with her. As she went by the man with the spade turned and looked after her.
"Did ye see that woman?" he asked Moleskin when we came abreast.
"By God, I'm not blind!" said my friend.
"Dinna sweer," said the man with the spade. "'Tis an evil habit."
"'Tisn't a habit," said Joe. "'Tis a gift."
"'Tis a gift frae the deevil," replied the other man."A gift frae the deevil, that's what it is. 'Tis along with that woman that ye should be, though God forgi'e me for callin' her a woman, for her house is on the way tae Sheol goin' doon tae the chambers of death. I wadna talk tae her wi' muckle mooth sine she be a scarlet woman with a wily heart."
"What are you jawin' about?" asked Moleskin, who seemed at a loss what to make of the man with the spade, while for myself I did not in the least understand him.
"Have you a sixpence?" asked Joe suddenly.
"A sixpence?" queried the man. "Gin that I hae, what is it tae ye?"
"If you have a sixpence you should have given it to that woman when she was passin'. She's a lusty wench."
"Gi'e a sixpence to that woman!" replied the stranger. "I wadna do it, mon, if she was lyin' for death by the roadside. I'm a Chreestian."
"I would give up your company in heaven for hers in hell any day," said Moleskin, as the man with the spade turned into a turnip field by the roadside. "And never look too much into other people's faults or you're apt to forget your own!" roared Joe, by way of a parting shot.
"Don't you think that I had the best of that argument?" Joe asked me five minutes later.
"What was it all about?" I asked.
"I don't know what he was jawin' at half of the time," said Joe. "But his talk about the Christian was a damned good hit against me. However, I got in two good hits myself! The one about her company in hell and the one about lookin' too much into other people's faults were a pair up for me. I think that I did win, Flynn, and between me and you I never like to get the worst of either an argument or a fight."
"The opinions of a man who argues with his fist are always respected."—Moleskin Joe.
About midday we met a red-faced farmer driving a spring-cart along the road.
"Where are you bound for?" he called to me as he reined up his pony.
"What the hell is it to you?" asked Moleskin, assuming a pugilistic pose all of a sudden. Love of fighting was my mate's great trait, and I found it out in later years. He would fight his own shadow for the very fun of the thing. "The man who argues with his fist is always respected," he often told me.
"I'm lookin' for a young lad who can milk and take care of beasts in a byre," replied the man nervously, for Joe's remark seemed to have frightened him. "Can the youngster milk?"
"I can," I answered gleefully. I had never caught hold of a cow's teat in my life, but I wanted work at all costs, and did not mind telling a lie. A moment before I was in a despondent mood, seeing nothing in front of me but the life of the road for years to come, but now, with the prospect of work and wages before me, I felt happy. Already I was forming dreams of the future, and my mind was once more turning to the homecoming to Glenmornan when I became a rich man. A lot of my dreams had been dashed to pieces already, but I was easily captured andmade the slave of new ones. Also, there was a great deal of my old pride slipping away. There was a time when I would not touch a cow's teat, but the Glenmornan pride that looked down upon such work was already gone.
"Milk!" cried Moleskin in answer to the last remark of the farmer. "You should see my son under a cow! He's the boy for a job like that, you'll find. What wages are you goin' to offer him?"
"Ten pounds from now till May-day, if he suits," replied the farmer.
"He'll suit you all right," said Joe. "But he'll not go with you for one penny less than eleven pounds."
"I'll take ten pounds, Moleskin," I cried. I did not want to sleep another night on the cold ground.
"Hold your blessed jaw," growled my mate. Then he turned to the farmer again and went on:
"Eleven pounds and not one penny less. Forbye, you must give me something for lettin' him go with you, as I do not like to lose the child."
After a great deal of haggling, during which no notice was taken of me, a bargain was struck, the outcome of which was that I should receive the sum of ten guineas at the end of six months spent in the employ of the farmer. My "father" received five shillings, paid on the nail, because he allowed me to go to work.
"There's a good time comin', though we may never live to see it," said Joe, as he shoved the silver into his pocket and cast a farewell glance at me as I climbed into the cart. I caught my mate's square look for a minute. In the left eye a faint glimmer appeared and the eyelid slowly descended. Then he bit a piece off the end of his plug, started whistling a tune and went on his way.
The farmer set the young cob at a gallop, and in about a quarter of an hour we arrived at his place, which wascalled Braxey Farm. When evening came round my master found that I could not milk.
"You'll learn," he said, not at all unkindly, and proceeded to teach me the correct way in which to coax a cow's udder. In a fortnight's time I was one of the best milkers in the byre.
Just off the stable I had a room to sleep in, an evil-smelling and dirty little place crammed with horses' harness and agricultural implements. But after the nights spent on the snow I thought the little room and the bed the most cosy room and bed in the world. I slept there all alone, and by night I could hear the horses pawing the floor of the stable, and sometimes I was wakened by the noise they made and thought that somebody had gotten into my room.
I started work at five o'clock in the morning and finished at seven in the evening, and when Sunday came round I had to feed the ploughman's horses in addition to my ordinary work.
I liked the place in a negative sort of way; it was dull and depressing, but it was better than the life of the road. Now and again I got a letter from home, and my people were very angry because I had sent so little money to them during the summer months. For all that, I liked to get a letter from home, and I loved to hear what the people whom I had known since childhood were doing. On the farm there was no one to speak to me or call me friend. The two red-cheeked servant girls who helped me at the milking hardly ever took any notice of me, a kid lifted from the toll-road. They were decent ploughmen's daughters, and they let me know as much whenever I tried to become familiar. After all, I think they liked me to speak to them, for they could thus get an excuse to dwell on their own superior merits.
"Workin' wi' a lad picked off the roads, indeed!Whoever heard of such a thing for respectable lassies!" they exclaimed.
Even the ploughman who worked on the farm ignored me when he was out of temper. When in a good humour he insulted me by way of pastime.
"You're an Eerish pig!" he roared at me one evening.
I am impulsive, and my temper, never the best, was becoming worse daily. When angry I am blind to everything but my own grievance, and the ploughman's taunt made me angrier than ever I had been in my life before. He had just come into the byre where the girls and I were milking. He was a married man, but he loved to pass loose jokes with the two young respectable lassies, and his filthy utterances amused them.
Although the ploughman was a big hardy fellow, his taunt angered me, and made me blind to his physical advantages. I rushed at him head down and butted him in the stomach. He flattened out in the sink amidst the cow-dung, and once I got him down I jumped on him and rained a shower of blows on his face and body. The girls screamed, the cows jumped wildly in the stalls, and we were in imminent danger of getting kicked to death. So I heard later, but at that moment I saw nothing but the face which was bleeding under my blows. The ploughman was much stronger than I, and gripping me round the waist he turned me over, thus placing me under himself. I struggled gamely, but the man suddenly hit my head against the flagged walk and I went off in a swoon. When I came to myself, the farmer, the two girls, and the ploughman were standing over me.
I struggled to my feet, rushed at the man again, and taking him by surprise I was able to shove him against one of the cows in the stall nearest him. The animal kicked him in the leg, and, mad with rage, he reached forward and gripped me by the throat with the intentionof strangling me. But I was not afraid; the outside world was non-existent to me at that moment, and I wanted to fight until I fell again.
The farmer interposed. We were separated and the ploughman left the byre. That night I did not sleep; my anger burned like a fire until dawn. The next day I felt dizzy and unwell, but that was the only evil result of the fight. The ploughman never spoke to me again, civilly or otherwise, and I was left in peace.
From start to finish the work on Braxey Farm was very wearisome, and the surroundings were soul-killing and spiritless. By nature I am sensitive and refined. A woman of untidy appearance disgusts me, a man who talks filthily without reason is utterly repellent to me. The ploughman with his loose jokes I loathed, the girls I despised even more than they despised me. Their dislike was more affected than real; my dislike was real though less ostentatious. It gave me no pleasure to tell a dirty slut that she was dirty, but a dirty woman annoyed me in those days. I could not imagine a man falling in love with one of those women, with their short, inelegant petticoats and hobnailed shoes caked with the dried muck of the farmyard. I could not imagine love in the midst of such filth, such squalid poverty. But I did not then understand the meaning of love; to me it was something which would exist when Norah Ryan became a lady, and when I had a grand house wherein to pay her homage. I am afraid that my knowledge of life was very small.
The talk of the two girls gave me the first real insight into love and all that it cloaks with the false covering of poetical illusion. Every poetical ideal, every charm and beauty which I had associated with love was dispelled by the talk of those two women. For a while I did not believe the things of which they spoke. My mind revolted. The ploughman and the two girls continued their disgustinganecdotes. I did my best not to listen. Knowing that I hated their talk the servants would persist in talking, and every particle of information collected by them was in course of time given to me.
My outlook on life became cynical and sour. I was a sort of outcast among men, liking few and liked by none. When the end of the season came I was pleased to get clear of Braxey Farm; the more familiar I became with the people the more I disliked them. The farmer paid me nine pounds, and explained that he retained the other thirty shillings because he had to learn me how to milk.
"Your feyther was a great liar," he added.
Out of my wages I sent seven pounds home to Glenmornan and kept the remainder for my own use, as I did not know when I could get a next job. My mother sent me a letter that another brother was born to me—the second since I left home—and asking me for some more money to help them along with the rent. But my disposition was changing; my outlook on life was becoming bitter, and I hated to be slave to farmers, landlords, parents, and brothers and sisters. Every new arrival into the family was reported to me as something for which I should be grateful. "Send home some more money, you have another brother," ran the letters, and a sense of unfairness crept over me. The younger members of the family were taking the very life-blood out of my veins, and on account of them I had to suffer kicks, snubs, cold and hunger. New brothers and sisters were no pleasure to me. I rebelled against the imposition and did not answer the letter.
"He tramped through the colourless winter land or swined in the scorching heat,The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering on his feet;He wallowed in mire, unseen, unknown where your houses of pleasure rise,And hapless hungry and chilled to the bone he builded the edifice."—FromA Song of the Dead End.
"He tramped through the colourless winter land or swined in the scorching heat,The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering on his feet;He wallowed in mire, unseen, unknown where your houses of pleasure rise,And hapless hungry and chilled to the bone he builded the edifice."—FromA Song of the Dead End.
"He tramped through the colourless winter land or swined in the scorching heat,The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering on his feet;He wallowed in mire, unseen, unknown where your houses of pleasure rise,And hapless hungry and chilled to the bone he builded the edifice."
"He tramped through the colourless winter land or swined in the scorching heat,
The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering on his feet;
He wallowed in mire, unseen, unknown where your houses of pleasure rise,
And hapless hungry and chilled to the bone he builded the edifice."
—FromA Song of the Dead End.
—FromA Song of the Dead End.
In this true story, as in real life, men and women crop up for a moment, do something or say something, then go away and probably never reappear again. In my story there is no train of events or sequence of incidents leading up to a desired end. When I started writing of my life I knew not how I would end my story; and even yet, seeing that one thing follows another so closely, I hardly know when to lay down my pen and say that the tale is told. Sometimes I say, "I'll write my life up to this day and no further," but suddenly it comes to me that to-morrow may furnish a more fitting climax, and so on my story runs. In fiction you settle upon the final chapter before you begin the first, and every event is described and placed in the fabric of the story to suit an end already in view. A story of real life, like real life itself, has no beginning, no end. Something happens before and after; the first chapter succeeds another and another follows the last. The threads of a made-up story are like the ribs of an open umbrella, far apart at one end and joined together at the other. You close theumbrella and it becomes straight; you draw the threads of the story together at the end and the plot is made clear. Emanating as it does from the mind of a man or woman, the plot is worked up so that it arouses interest and compels attention. Such an incident is unnecessary; then dispense with it. Such a character is undesirable; then away with him. Such a conversation is unfitting; then substitute one more suitable. But I, writing a true story, cannot substitute imaginary talk for real, nor false characters for true, if I am faithful to myself and the task imposed upon me when I took to writing the story of my life. No doubt I shall have some readers weak enough to be shocked by my disclosures; men and women, who like ascetic hermits, fight temptation by running from it, and avoid sin by shutting their eyes to it. But these need not be taken into account, their weakness is not worthy of attention. I merely tell the truth, speak of things as I have seen them, of people as I have known them, and of incidents as one who has taken part in them. Truth needs no apologies, frankness does not deserve reproof. I write of the ills which society inflicts on individuals like myself, and when possible I lay every wound open to the eyes of the world. I believe that there is an Influence for Good working through the ages, and it is only by laying our wounds open that we can hope to benefit by the Influence. Who doctors the wounds which we hide from everybody's eyes?
It was beautiful weather and the last day of May, 1906, when I left Braxey Farm and took to the road again. I obtained work, before night fell, on an estate in the vicinity. The factor, a pompous man with a large stomach, gave me the job; and I got lodgings with a labourer who worked on the estate. My pay was eighteen shillings a week, and I stopped a fortnight. At the end of that period I got sacked. This was how it happened.
Two men, a fat man and a fatter, came to the spot where I was working on the estate grounds. The fat man was the factor.
"Are you working here?" asked the fat man.
"Yes," I answered.
"'Yes, sir,' you mean," said the fatter man.
"I mean 'yes,'" I said. The man looked overbearing, and he annoyed me.
"I'm the master of this place," said the fatter man. "You must address me as 'sir' when speaking to me."
A fat man looks awfully ridiculous with his big stomach, his short breath, and short legs. An ugly man may look dignified; a gargoyle may even possess the dignity of unrivalled ugliness, but a fat man with a red face who poses as a dignified being is very funny to see. I never raise my hat to any man, and I was not going to say "sir" to the blown bubble in front of me.
"You had better say 'sir,'" said the factor. "This gentleman is your master."
The word "master" is repellent to me.
"Sir be damned!" I snapped out.
"Pay him off this evening," was all that gentleman said; and that evening I was on the road again.
Afterwards I kept mucking about on farms and other places, working a day here and a week there, earning a guinea clear at one job and spending it while looking for the next. Sometimes I tramped for days at a time, sleeping in haysheds, barns and ditches, and "bumming my grub," as we tramps say, from houses by the roadside. Often in the darkness of the night I lit my little fire of dried sticks under shelter of a rock or tree, and boiled my billy of tea in the red flames. Then I would fall asleep while looking at the pictures in the embers, and my dreams would take me back again to Glenmornan and the road that led from Greenanore to my home on the steep hillside of Donegal.Often and often I went home to my own people in my nightly dreams. When morning came I would set out again on my journey, leaving nothing to tell of my passing but the ashes of my midnight fire. I had nothing to cheer me, no hopes, no joys, no amusements. It was hard to obtain constant employment; a farmer kept me a fortnight, a drainer a week, a roadmender a day, and afterwards it was the road, the eternal, soul-killing road again. When I had money I spent it easily; spending was my nearest approach to pleasure. When I had aught in my purse I lived in suspense, thinking of the time when all would be spent, but when the coin was gone I had the contentment of a man who knows that he can fall no lower. Always, however, I sought for work; I wanted something to do. My desire to labour became a craze, an obsession, and nothing else mattered if I got plenty of work to do.
"You are an idle, useless-lookin' lump o' a man," the women in roadside cottages said to me. "Why don't you work?" Looking for work meant laziness and idleness to them. For me they felt all the contempt which people with fixed abodes feel for vagabonds. They did not hate me; of that I was not worthy. They were very human, which is the worst that can be said of them, and they despised me. Work was scarce; I looked light and young, and a boy is not much good to a farmer. Yet for my age I was very strong, and many a man much older than myself I could work blind, if only I got the chance. But no one seemed to want me. "Run away, little impudence, and hide behind your big sister's petticoats!" were the words that I was greeted with when I asked for a job.
For a whole month I earned my living by gathering discarded metal from the corporation middens near Glasgow and selling the scrap to proprietors of the city rag-stores. Starvation has hold of the forelock of a manwho works at that job. Sometimes I made tenpence a day. By night I slept on the midden, or, to be more exact, in the midden. I dug a little hole in the warm refuse sent out from the corporation stables, and curled myself up there and went to sleep, somewhat after the manner of Job of old. Once a tipster employed me to sell his tips outside the enclosure of Ayr racecourse. I gave up that job quickly, for I could only earn sixpence a day. During the end of the summer I made a few shillings by carrying luggage for passengers aboard the steamer at G—— Pier, but in the end the porters on the quay chased me away. I was depriving decent men of their livelihood, they said.
About this time I met Tom MacGuire, a countryman of my own, an anarchist, a man with great courage, strength, and love of justice. Tom said that all property was theft, all religion was fraud, and a life lacking adventure was a life for a pig. He had just come out of jail after serving six months' hard because he shot the crow[4]in a Greenock public-house. I met him on the roadside, where he was sitting reading an English translation of some of Schopenhauer's works. We sat down together and talked of one thing and another, and soon were the best of friends. I told Tom the story of the man who wanted me to say "Yes, sir," when speaking to him.
"I have a job on that man's place to-night," said Tom. "Will you come and give me a hand?"
"What is the job?" I asked.
Tom lowered the left eyelid slightly as I looked at him. That was his only answer. I guessed instinctively that Tom's job was a good one, and so I promised to accompany him.
We worked together on that estate not only that night, but for some weeks afterwards. Operations started at midnight and finished at four o'clock in the morning. We stopped in Paisley, and we went into the town in the morning, each on a different route, and sold the proceeds of our night's labour. At the end of a fortnight, or, to be exact, fifteen days' work on the estate, Tom was accosted by two policemen as he was going into Paisley. His belly looked bigger than any alderman's, and no wonder! When searched he had three pheasants under his waistcoat. Because of that he got six months, and the magistrate spoke hard things against Tom's character. For all that, my mate was a sound, good fellow. In a compact made beforehand it was understood that if one was gripped by the law he would not give his comrade away, and Tom was good to his word when put to the test. From that time forward I forsook poaching. I loved it for its risks alone, but I was not an adept at the art, and I could never make a living at the game. I felt sorry for poor Tom and I have never seen him since.
Once, eighteen months after I had left Braxey Farm, I wrote home to my own people. I was longing to hear from somebody who cared for me. In reply an angry letter came from my mother. "Why was I not sending home some money?" she asked. Another child had come into the family and there were many mouths to fill. I would never have a day's luck in all my life if I forgot my father and mother. I was working with a drainer at the time and I had thirty shillings in my possession. This I sent home, but not with a willing heart, for I did not know when I would be idle again. Three days later my mother wrote asking me to send some more money, for they were badly needing it. I did not answer the letter, for I got sacked that evening, and I went out on the road again with five shillings in my pocket and new thoughts in my head, thoughts that had never come there before.
Why had my parents brought me into the world? I asked myself. Did they look to the future? At home I heard them say when a child was born to such and such a person that it was the will of God, just as if man and woman had nothing to do with the affair. I wished that I had never been born. My parents had sinned against me in bringing me into the world in which I had to fight for crumbs with the dogs of the gutter. And now they wanted money when I was hardly able to keep myself alive on what I earned. Bringing me into the world and then living on my labour—such an absurd and unjust state of things! I was angry, very angry, with myself and with everyone else, with the world and the people on it.
The evening was wet; the rain came down heavily, and I got drenched to the skin. While wandering in the town of Kilmacolm, my eye caught the light of a fire through the window-blind of an inn parlour. It would be very warm inside there. My flesh was shivery and my feet were cold, like lumps of ice, in my battered and worn boots. I went in, sat down, and when the bar-tender approached me, I called for a half-glass of whisky. I did not intend to drink it, having never drunk intoxicating liquor before, but I had to order something and was quite content to pay twopence for the heat of the fire. It was so very comfortable there that I almost fell asleep three or four times. Suddenly I began to feel thirsty; it seemed as if I was drying up inside, and the glass of whisky, sparkling brightly as the firelight caught it, looked very tempting. I raised it to my mouth, just to wet my lips, and the whisky tasted good. Almost without realising what I was doing I swallowed the contents of the glass.
At that moment a man entered, a man named Fergus Boyle, who belonged to the same arm of the Glen as myself, and he was then employed on a farm in the neighbourhood.I was pleased to see him. I had not seen a Glenmornan man since I had left Micky's Jim's squad, but Fergus brought no news from home; he had been in Scotland for over five years without a break. Without asking me, he called for "two schooners[5]of beer, with a stick[6]in iviry wan of them."
"Don't pull the hare's foot,[7]for I don't drink, Fergus," I said. I did not want to take any more liquor. I could hardly realise that I had just been drinking a moment before, the act being so unpremeditated. I came into the inn parlour solely to warm myself, and thinking still of that more than anything else I could hardly grasp what had resulted. I had a great dislike in my heart for drunken men, and I did not want to become one. Fergus sniffed at the glass beside me and winked knowingly. Evidences were against my assertion, and if I did not drink with Fergus he would say that I did not like his company. He was the first Glenmornan man whom I had seen for years, and I could not offend him. When the bar-tender brought the drinks I drained the schooner at one gulp, partly to please Fergus and partly because I was very dry. I stood treat then myself, as decency required, and my remembrance of subsequent events is very vague. In a misty sort of way I saw Fergus putting up his fists, as a Glenmornan man should when insulted, and knocking somebody down. There was a scuffle afterwards and I was somehow mixed up in it and laying out round me for all I was worth.
Dawn was breaking when I found myself lying on thetoll-road, racked by a headache and suffering from extreme thirst. It was still raining and my clothes were covered with mud; one boot was gone and one sleeve of my coat was hanging by a mere thread. I found the sum of sevenpence in my pockets—the rest of the money had disappeared. I looked round for Fergus, but could not see him. About a hundred paces along the road I came on his cap and I saw the trace of his body in the wet muck. Probably he had slept there for a part of the night and crept away when the rain brought him to his senses. I looked high and low for my lost boot, but could not find it. I crept over the wall surrounding a cottage near the road and discovered a pair of boots in an outhouse. I put them on when I came back to the road and threw my own old one away. The pain in my head was almost intolerable, and my mind went back to the stories told by hard drinkers of the cure known as the "hair of the dog that bit you." So it was that I went into Kilmacolm again, not knowing how I came out, and waited until the pubs opened, when I drank a bottle of beer and a half-glass of whisky. My headache cleared away and I had threepence left and felt happy. By getting drunk the night before I made myself impervious to the rain and blind to the discomforts of the cold and the slush of the roadway. Drunkenness had no more terrors for me, and as a matter of course I often got drunk when a cold night rested over the houseless road, and when my body shuddered at the thought of spending hour after hour in the open. Drink kept me company, and there was no terror that we could not face together, drink and I.
I never have seen Fergus since, but often I think of the part which he played in my life. If he had not come into the inn at the moment when I was sitting by the fire I would probably never have drunk another glass of spiritsin my life. I do not see anything wrong in taking liquor as long as a man makes it his slave. Drink was a slave to me. I used it for the betterment of my soul, and for the comfort of the body. In conformity with the laws of society an individual like me must sleep under a wet hedgerow now and again. There is nothing in the world more dismal. The water drops off the tree like water from the walls of a dungeon, splashes on your face, maybe dropping into the eyes when you open them. The hands are frozen, the legs are cold, heavy and dead; you hum little songs to yourself over and over again, ever the same song, for you have not the will to start a fresh one, and the cold creeps all over the body, coming closer and closer, like a thief to your heart. Sometimes it catches men who are too cold to move even from the spectre of death. The nights spent in the cold are horrible, are soul-killing. Only drink can draw a man from his misery; only by getting drunk may a man sleep well on the cold ground. So I have found, and so it was that I got drunk when I slept out on a winter's night. Maybe I would be dead in the morning, I sometimes thought, but no one would regret that, not even myself. Drink is a servant wonderfully efficient. Only when sober could I see myself as I really was, an outcast, a man rejected by society, and despised and forgotten. Often I would sit alone in a quiet place and think my life was hardly worth living. But somehow I kept on living a life that was to me as smoke is to the eyes, bitter and cruel. As time wore on I became primeval, animalised and brutish. Everything which I could lay hands on and which would serve my purposes was mine. The milk left by milkmen at the doors of houses in early morning was mine. How often in the grey dawn of a winter morning did I steal through a front gate silently as a cat and empty the milk-can hanging over some doorstep, then slip so silently away again that no one either heard my comingor going. It was most exciting, and excitement is one of the necessaries of life. Excitement appeals to me, I hanker after it as a hungry man hankers after food. I like to see people getting excited over something.
One evening in early spring, nearly two years after I had left Braxey Farm, I was passing a large house near G——, or was it P——? I now forget which of these towns was nearest the house. I had at that time a strange partiality for a curious form of amusement. I liked to steal up to large houses in the darkness and watch the occupants at dinner.
A large party was at dinner in the house on this spring evening, and I crept into the shrubbery and looked through the window into the lighted room. With the slushy earth under my body I lay and watched the people inside eating, drinking, and making merry. At the further end of the table a big fat woman in evening dress sat facing me, and she looked irrepressibly merry. Her low-cut frock exposed a great spread of bulging flesh stretching across from shoulder to shoulder. It was a most disgusting sight, and should have been hidden.
The damp of the earth came through my clothing and I rose to my feet, intending to go away. Before me lay the darkness, the night, and the cold. I am, as I said, very impulsive, and long for excitement. Some rash act would certainly enliven the dull dark hours. In rising, my hand encountered a large pebble, and suddenly an idea entered my mind. What would the old lady do if the pebble suddenly crashed through the window? If such a thing occurred it would be most amusing to witness her actions. I stepped out of the shrubbery in order to have a clear swing of the arm, and threw the stone through the window. There was a tinkling fall of broken glass, and everyone in the room turned to the window—everyone in the room except the old lady. She rose to her feet, andin another moment the door of the house opened and she stood in the doorway, her large form outlined against the light in the hall. So quickly had she come out that I had barely time to steal into the shrubbery. From there I crept backwards towards the road, but before I had completed half the journey I heard to my horror the fat lady calling for a dog. Then I heard a short, sharp yelp, and I turned and ran for all I was worth. Before I reached the gate a fairly-sized black animal was at my heels, squealing as I had heard dogs in Ireland squeal when pursuing a rabbit. I turned round suddenly, fearing to get bitten in the legs, and the animal, unable to restrain his mad rush, careered past. He tried to turn round, but my boot shot out and the blow took him on the head. This was an action that he did not relish, and he hurried back to the house, whimpering all the way. In a moment I was on the road, and I ran for a long distance, feeling that I had had enough excitement for one night. Needless to say I never threw a stone through a window again. I had been out of work for quite a long while and hunger was again pinching me. I remember well the day following my encounter with the fat lady and her dog, for on that day I sold my shirt in a rag-store in Glasgow and got the sum of sixpence for the same.
It was now two years and a half since I had seen Micky's Jim or any members of his squad, but often during that time I thought of Norah Ryan and the part she played in my life. Almost daily since leaving the squad I had thoughts of her in my mind. For a while I was angry with myself for allowing such thoughts to master me, but in the end I became resigned to them. Norah's fair face would persist in rising before my vision, and when other dreams, other illusions, were shattered, the memory of Norah Ryan still exercised a spell over me. In the end I resigned myself to the remembrances of her, and in thecourse of time remembrance gave rise to longings and I wanted to see her again. Now, instead of being almost entirely mental, the longing, different from the youthful longing, was both of the mind and body. I wanted to kiss her, take her on my knees and fondle her. But these desires were always damped by the thought of the other man, so much so that I recoiled from the very thought even of meeting Norah again.
Since meeting Gourock Ellen and hearing the loose talk of the women in Braxey Farm most women were repulsive in my sight. For all that, Norah Ryan was ever the same in my eyes. To me she was a wonder, a mystery, a dream. But when I desired to go and see her a certain pride held me back. She allowed another man to kiss her. I never kissed her, partly because kissing was practically unknown in Glenmornan, and partly because I thought Norah far above the mere caresses of my lips. To kiss her would be a violation and a wrong. Why had she allowed Morrison to kiss her? I often asked myself. She must have loved him, and, loving him, she would have no thought for me. Perhaps she would be annoyed if I went to see her, and it is wrong to annoy those whom we love. True love to a man should mean the doing of that which is most desirable in the eyes of her whom he loves. The man who disputes this has never loved; if he thinks that he has, he is mistaken. He has been merely governed by that most bestial passion, lust.
The year had already taken the best part of autumn to itself, and I was going along to Greenock by the Glasgow road when I came to a farmhouse. There I met with Micky's Jim and a squad of potato-diggers. It gave me pleasure to meet Jim again, and, the pleasure being mutual, he took me into the byre and gave me food and drink. There were many Glenmornan people in the squad, but there were none of those who were in it in my time, and ofthese latter people you may be certain I lost no time in asking. Gourock Ellen and Annie had not come back that season, and nobody knew where they had gone and what had become of them.
"It does not matter, anyhow," said Jim, who, curiously enough, had nothing but contempt for women of that class.
Norah Ryan, first in my thoughts, was the last for whom I made enquiries.
"She left us a week ago, and went away to Glasgow," said Jim.
"Indeed she did, poor girl," said one of the Glenmornan women.
"And her such a fine soncy lass too! Wasn't it a great pity that it happened?" said another.
"What happened?" I asked, bewildered. "Is she not well?"
"It's worse than that," said a woman.
"Much worse!" cackled another, shaking her head.
"The farmer's son kept gaddin' about with her all last year," broke in Jim, and I noticed the eyes of everybody in the byre turned on me. "But he has left her to herself now," he concluded.
"I'm glad to hear it," I said.
"I think that ye had a notion of her yerself," said Jim, "and the farmer's son was a dirty beast, anyhow."
"Why has she left the squad?" I asked again. "Has she got married?"
"When she left here she was in the family-way, ye know," answered Micky's Jim. "Such a funny thing, and no one would have thought of it, the dirty slut. Ye would think that butter would not melt in her mouth."
"That's just so," chorused the women. "Wan would think that butter would not melt in the girl's mouth."
"She was a dirty wench," said Micky's Jim, as if giving a heavy decision.
I was stunned by the news and could hardly trust my ears. Also I got mad with Micky's Jim for his last words. It comes naturally to some people to call those women betrayed by great love and innocence the most opprobrious names. The fact of a woman having loved unwisely and far too well often offers everybody excuses to throw stones at her. And there are other men who, in the company of their own sex, always talk of women in the most filthy manner, and nobody takes offence. Often have I listened to tirades of abuse levelled against all women, and I have taken no hand in suppressing it, not being worthy enough to correct the faults of others. But when Micky's Jim said those words against Norah Ryan I reached out, forgetting the bread eaten with him and the hand raised on the 'Derry boat on my behalf years before, and gripping him under the armpits I lifted him up into the air and threw him head foremost on the floor. He got to his feet and rushed at me, while the other occupants of the byre watched us but never interfered.
"I didn't think it was in ye, Dermod, to strike a friend," he said, and drove his fist for my face. But I had learned a little of the art of self-defence here and there; so it was that at the end of five minutes Jim, still willing in spirit but weak in flesh, was unable to rise to his feet, and I went out to the road again, having fought one fight in which victory gave me no pleasure.
I walked along heedlessly, but in some inexplicable manner my feet turned towards Glasgow. My brain was afire, my life was broken, and I almost wished that I had not asked about Norah when I met Jim. My last dream, my greatest illusion, was shattered now, and only at that moment did I realise the pleasure which the remembrances of early days in Norah's company had given me. I believedso much in my ideal love for Norah that I thought the one whom I idealised was proof against temptation and sin. My mind went back to the night when I saw her give the two-shilling piece, nearly all her fortune, to the man with the pain in his back—the same night when she and I both blushed at the frowardness of Gourock Ellen. Such goodness and such innocence! Instinctively I knew that her sin—not sin, but mistake—was due to her innocence. And some day Norah might become like Gourock Ellen. The thought terrified me, and almost drove me frantic. Only now did I know what Norah Ryan really meant to me. For her I lived, and for her alone. I loved her, then it was my duty to help her. Love is unworthy of the name unless it proves its worth when put to the test. I went to Glasgow and made enquiries for my sweetheart. For three whole weeks I searched, but my search was unsuccessful, and at last hunger drove me from the city.
Perhaps Jim knew of her abode? After our last encounter it was hard to go back and ask a favour of him. In the end I humbled myself and went and spoke to one of the women in the squad. She did not know where Norah was; and sour against Heaven and Destiny I went out on the long road again.