PADDING IT
"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_.
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, and fat
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 honest body 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 put
after 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 where implements 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 to the 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.