CHAPTER XVII ON 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."
—From A 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 the umbrella 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 man who 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 the toll-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 spirits in 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 coming or 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, and in 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 the course 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 of these 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 believed so 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.