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.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Ordering and drinking whisky, and having no intention of paying for
the drink, is known to navvies as "shooting the crow."
[5] Schooner. A large glass used for lager-beer and ale, which contains
fourteen fluid ounces.
[6] A stick. A half-glass of whisky mixed with beer--a navvyism for
_petite verre_.
[7] Pulling the hare's foot. A farmyard phrase. The hare in the
cornfield takes refuge in the standing corn when the servants are
reaping. To the farmer himself belongs the privilege of catching the
animal. If he is unable to corner the hare he stands drinks to all the
harvesters, and the drink is usually a sure one.