It was a love without any corporal end; its greatest desire did not turn to the illusive delights of the marriage bed. My love had none of the hunger of lust; it was not an appetite which might be satiated—it was something far holier and more enduring. To me Norah represented a poetical ideal; she was a saint, the angel of my dreams. Never for a moment did I think of winning her love merely for the purpose of condemning her to a hell of bearing me children. In all our poetry and music of love we delight merely in the soft glance of eyes, the warm touch of lips, the soft feel of a maiden's breast and the flutter of one heart beating against another. But all love of women leads to passion, and poetry or music cannot follow beyond a certain boundary. There poetry dies, music falters, and the mark of the beast is over man in the moments of his desire. But my love for Norah was different. To me she represented a youthful ideal which was too beautiful and pure to be degraded by anything in the world.
Norah had given her love to another. Who was I that I should blame her? In her love she was helpless, for love is not the result of effort. It cannot be stopped; its course cannot be stayed. As well ask the soft spring meadows to prevent the rising freshet from wetting the green grass, as ask a maiden to stem the torrent of the love which overwhelms her. Love is not acquired; it is not a servant. It comes and is master.
Norah's sufferings were due to her innocence. She was betrayed when yet a child, and a child is easily led astray. But to me she was still pure, and I knew that there was no stain on the soul of her.
For a long while I stood looking after her and turning thoughts over in my mind. In the far distance I could see her stealing along the pavement like a frightened child who is afraid of the shadows. I turned and followed her, keeping well in the gloom of the houses which lined the pavement. She passed through many streets, stopping now and again to speak to the men whom she met on her journey. Never once did she look back. At the corner of Sauciehall Street, a well-dressed and half-intoxicated man stopped and spoke to her. For a few seconds they conversed; then the man linked his arm in hers and the two of them walked off together.
I stood at the street corner, unable to move or act, and almost unable to think. A blind rage welled up in my heart against the social system that compelled women to seek a livelihood by pandering to the impurity of men. Norah had come to Scotland holy and pure, and eager to earn the rent of her mother's croft. She had earned many rents for the landlord who had caused me sufferings in Mid-Tyrone and who was responsible for the death of my brother Dan. To the same landlord Norah had given her soul and her purity. The young girls of Donegal come radiantly innocent from their own glens and mountains, but often, alas! they fall into sin in a far country. It is unholy to expect all that is good and best from the young girls who lodge with the beasts of the byre and swine of the sty. I felt angry with the social system which was responsible for such a state of affairs, but my anger was thrown away; it was a monstrous futility. The social system is not like a person; one man's anger cannot remedy it, one man's fist cannot strike at its iniquities.
Norah had now disappeared, and with my brain afire I followed her round the turn of the street. What I intended to do was even a riddle to myself. When I overtook them the man who accompanied Norah would bear the impress of my knuckles for many days. Only of this was I certain. I turned into several streets and searched until three o'clock in the morning. But she had gone out of my sight once again. Then I went home to bed, but not to sleep.
Sick at heart and a prey to remorse, I prowled through the streets for many nights afterwards, looking for Norah. I did not meet her again, and only too late did I realise the opportunity which I had let slip when I met her at midnight in the city. But meeting her as I had met her on the streets, I found myself faced with a new problem, which for a moment overwhelmed and snapped the springs of action within me. In Glenmornan Norah would now be known as "that woman," and the Glenmornan pride makes a man much superior to women who make the great mistake of life. Thank goodness! the Glenmornan pride was almost dead within my heart. I thought that I had killed it years before, but there, on the streets of Glasgow, I found that part of it was remaining when I met with Norah Ryan. It rose in rebellion when I spoke to the girl who had sinned, it checked the impulse of my heart for just a moment, and in that moment she whom I loved had passed out of my sight and perhaps out of my life.
Life on the railway, always monotonous, became now dreary and dragging. Day and night my thoughts were turning to her whom I loved, and my heart went out to the girl who was suffering in a lonely town because she loved too well. I was now almost a prey to despair, and in order to divert my mind somewhat from the thoughts that embittered my life I began to write for the papers again.
Ideas came to me while at work, and these I scribbled down on scraps of paper when the old psalm-singing ganger was not watching me. When I got back to Moran's in the evening I worked the ideas into prose or verse which I sent out to various papers. Many of my verses appeared in a Glasgow paper, and I got paid at the rate of three-and-sixpence a poem. Later on I wrote for London weeklies, and these paid me better for my work. Some editors wrote very nice letters to me, others sent my stuff back, explaining that lack of space prevented them from publishing it. I often wondered why they did not speak the truth. A navvy who generally speaks the truth finds it difficult to distinguish the line of demarcation which runs between falsehood and politeness. Most of my spare evenings I gave up to writing, but often I found myself out in the street where I had met Norah Ryan, and sometimes I wandered there until four o'clock in the morning, but never once set eyes on her.
A literary frenzy took possession of me for a while. I bought second-hand books on every subject, and studied all things from the infinitely great to the infinitesimally little. Microbes and mammoths, atoms and solar systems—I learned a little of all and everything of none. I wrote, not for the love of writing as much as to drown my own introspective humours, but in no external thing was I interested enough to forget my own thoughts.