When we got clear of the town Moleskin opened his shirt front and allowed the wind to play coolly against his hairy chest.
"Man alive!" he exclaimed, "this wind runs over a fellow's chest like the hands of a soncy wench!" Then he spoke of our journey. Carroty was silent; he was a morbid fellow who had little to say, except when drunk, and as for myself I was busy with my thoughts, and eager to tramp on at a quicker pace.
"We'll separate here, and each must go alone and pick up what he can lay his hands on," said Moleskin. "As I'm an old dog on the road, far more knowing than a torch-headed boozer or young mongrel, I'll go ahead and lead the way. Whenever I manage to bum a bit of tucker from a house, I'll put a white cross on the gatepost; and both of you can try your luck after me at the same place. If you hear a hen making a noise in a bunch of brambles, just look about there and see if you can pick up an egg or two. It would be sort of natural for you, Carroty, to talk about your wife and young brats, when speaking to the woman of a house. You look miserable enough to have been married more than once. You're good lookin', Flynn; just put on your blarney to the young wenches and maybe they'll be good for the price of a drink for three. We'll sit for a bite at the Ferry Inn, and that is a good six miles of country from our feet."
Without another word Joe slouched off, and Carroty and I sat down and waited until he turned the corner of the road, a mile further along. The moment he was out of sight, Carroty rose and trudged after him, his head bent well over his breast and his hands deep in the pockets of his coat. This slowness of movement disgusted me. I was afire to reach Kinlochleven, but my mates were in no great hurry. They placed their faith in getting there to-morrow, if to-morrow came. Each man was calmly content, when working out the problem of the day's existence, to allow the next day to do for itself.
Carroty had barely turned the corner when I got up and followed. Over my head the sun burned and scalded with its scorching blaze. The grey road and its fine gravel, crunching under the heels of my boots, affected the ears, and put the teeth on edge. Far in front, whenever I raised my head, I could see the road winding in and out, now losing itself from my view, and again, further on, reappearing, desolate, grey, and lonely as ever. Although memories of the road are in a sense always pleasing to me, the road itself invariably depressed me; the monotony of the same everlasting stretch of dull gravelled earth gnawed at my soul. Most of us, men of the road, long for comfort, for love, for the smile of a woman, and the kiss of a child, but these things are denied to us. The women shun us as lepers are shunned, the brainless girl who works with a hoe in a turnip field will have nothing to do with a tramp navvy. The children hide behind their mothers' petticoats when they see us coming, frightened to death of the awful navvy man who carries away naughty children, and never lets them back to their mothers again.
He is a lonely man who wanders on the roads of a strange land, shunned and despised by all men, and foul in the eyes of all women. Rising cold in the morning from the shadow of the hedge where the bed of a night was found, he turns out on his journey and begs for a crumb. High noon sees nor wife nor mother prepare his mid-day meal, and there is no welcome for him at an open door when the evening comes. Christ had a mother who followed him all along the road to Calvary, but the poor tramp is seldom followed even by a mother's prayers along the road where he carries the cross of brotherly hate to the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Suddenly I saw a white cross on a gate in front of a little cottage. A girl stood by the door, and I asked for a slice of bread. From the inside of the house a woman cried out: "Don't give that fellow anything to eat. We're sick of the likes of him."
The maiden remonstrated. "Poor thing! he must eat just like ourselves," she said.
Once I heard one of the servant girls on Braxey Farm use the same words when feeding a pig. I did not wait for my slice of bread. I walked on; the girl called after me, but I never turned round to answer. And the little dignity that yet remained made me feel very miserable, for I felt that I was a man classed among swine, and that is a very bitter truth to learn at eighteen.
Houses were rare in the country, but alas! rarer were the crosses of white. I had just been about two hours upon the journey, when as I was rounding a bend of the road I came upon Carroty sitting on a bank with his arms around a woman who sat beside him. I had been walking on the grass to ease my feet, and he failed to hear my approach. When he saw me, he looked half ashamed, and his companion gazed at me with a look half cringing and half defiant. She put me in mind of Gourock Ellen. Her face might have been handsome at one time, but it was blotched and repugnant now. Vice had forestalled old age and left its traces on the woman's features. Her eyes were hard as steel and looked as if they had never been dimmed by tears. I wondered what Carroty could see in such a person, and it was poor enough comfort to know that there was at least one woman who looked with favour upon a tramp navvy.