THE OPEN ROAD
"The road runs north, the road runs south, and there foot-easy,
slow,
The tramp, God speed him! wanders forth, and nature's gentry go.
Gentlemen knights of the gravelled way, who neither toil nor spin,
Men who reck not whether or nay the landlord's rents come in,
Men who are close to the natal sod, who know not sin nor shame,
And Way of the World or Way of the Road, the end is much the same."
--From _A Song of the Road_.
In the morning I was afoot before any of my mates, full of impatience,
and looking forward eagerly to the start.
"Wake up, Moleskin!" I cried, as I bent over my mate, where he lay
snoring loudly in the bed; "it is time to be away."
"It's not time yet, for I'm still sleepy," said Moleskin drowsily. "Slow
and easy goes far in a day," he added, and fell asleep again. I turned
my attention to Carroty.
"Get up, Carroty!" I shouted. "It's time that we were out on our
journey."
"What journey?" grumbled Carroty, propping himself up on his elbow in
the bed.
"To Kinlochleven," I reminded him.
"I never heard of it."
"You said that you would go this morning," I informed him. "You said so
last night when you were drunk."
"Well, if I said so, it must be so," said the red-haired one, and
slipped out of the blankets. Moleskin rose also, and as a proof of the
bond between us, we cooked our food in common on the hot-plate, and at
ten minutes to ten by the town clock we set out on the long road leading
to Kinlochleven. Our worldly wealth amounted to elevenpence, and the
distance to which we had set our faces was every inch, as the road
turned, of one hundred miles, or a six days' tramp according to the
computation of my two mates. The pace of the road is not a sharp one.
"Slow and easy goes far in a day," is a saying amongst us, and it sums
up the whole philosophy of the long journey. Besides our few pence, each
man possessed a pipe, a knife, and a box for holding matches. The
latter, being made of tin, was very useful for keeping the matches dry
when the rain soaked the clothing. In addition, each man carried, tied
to his belt, a tin can which would always come in handy for making tea,
cooking eggs, or drinking water from a wayside well.
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.
"Tell Moleskin that I'm not comin' any further," Carroty shouted after
me as I passed him by.
"All right," I answered over my shoulder. Afterwards I passed two white
crosses, and at each I was refused even a crust of bread. "Moleskin has
got some, anyhow, and that is a comfort," I said to myself. Now I began
to feel hungry, and kept an eye in advance for the Ferry Inn. Passing by
a field which I could not see on account of the intervening hedgerow, I
heard a voice crying "Flynn! Flynn!" in a deep whisper. I stopped and
could hear some cows crop-cropping the grass in the field beyond.
"Flynn!" cried the voice again. I looked through the hedgerow and there
I saw Moleskin, the rascal, sitting on his hunkers under a cow and
milking the animal into his little tin can. When he had his own can full
I put mine through the branches and got it filled to the brim. Then my
mate dragged himself through the branches and asked me where I had left
Carroty. I told him about the woman.
"The damned whelp! I might have known," said Joe, but I did not know
whether he referred to the woman or the man. We carried our milk cans
for a little distance, then turning off the road we sat down in the
corner of a field under a rugged tree and began our meagre meal. Joe
had only one slice of bread. This he divided into equal shares, and
when engaged in that work I asked him the meaning of the two white
crosses by the roadside, the two crosses, which as far as I could see,
had no beneficial results.
"They were all right," said Joe. "I got food at the three places."
"What happened to the other two slices?" I asked.
"I gave it to a woman who was hungrier than myself," said Joe simply.
We sat in a nice cosy place. Beside us rumbled a little stream; it
glanced like anything as it ran over the stones and fine sands in its
bed. From where we sat we could see it break in small ripples against
the wild iris and green rushes on the bank. From above, the gold of the
sunlight filtered through the waving leaves and played at hide and seek
all over our muck-red moleskin trousers. Far down an osier bed covered
the stream and hid it from our sight. From there a few birds flew
swiftly and perched on the tree above our heads and began to examine us
closely. Finding that we meant to do them no harm, and observing that
Moleskin threw away little scraps which might be eatable, one bold
little beggar came down, and with legs wide apart stood a short distance
away and surveyed us narrowly. Soon it began to pick up the crumbs, and
by-and-bye we had a score of strangers at our meal.
Later we lay on our backs and smoked. 'Twas good to watch the blue of
the sky outside the line of leaves that shaded us from the sun. The
feeling of rest and ease was sublime. The birds consumed every crumb
which had been thrown to them; then they flew away and left us. When our
pipes were finished we washed our feet in the passing stream, and this
gave us great relief. Moleskin pared a corn; I turned my socks inside
out and hit down a nail which had come through the sole of my bluchers,
using a stone for a hammer.
"Now we'll get along, Moleskin," I said, for I was in a hurry.
"Along be damned!" cried my mate. "I'm goin' to have my dog-sleep."[9]
"You have eaten," I said, "and you do not need your dog-sleep to-day."
Joe refused to answer, and turning over on his side he closed his eyes.
At the end of ten minutes (his dog-sleep usually lasted for that length
of time), he rose to his feet, and walked towards the Clyde, the
foreshore of which spread out from the lower corner of the field. A
little distance out a yacht heaved on the waves, and a small boat lay on
the shingle, within six feet of the water. The tide was full. Joe caught
hold of the boat and proceeded to pull it towards the water, meanwhile
roaring at me to give him a hand. This was a new adventure. I pulled
with all my might, and in barely a minute's space of time the boat was
afloat and we were inside of it. Joe rowed for all he was worth, and
soon we were past the yacht and out in the deep sea. A man on the yacht
called to us, but Joe put down one oar and made a gesture with his hand.
The man became irate and vowed that he would send the police after us.
My mate took no further heed of the man.
"Can you row?" he asked me.
"I've never had an oar in my hand in my life," I said.
"How much money have you?" he asked as he bent to his oars again. "I
gave all mine to that woman who was hungry."
"I have only a penny left," I said.
"We have to cross the Clyde somehow," said Joe, "and a penny would not
pay two men's fares on a ferry-boat. It is too far to walk to Glasgow,
so this is the only thing to do. I saw the blokes leavin' this boat when
we were at our grubbin'-up, so there was nothin' to be done but to take
a dog-sleep until they were out of the way."
My respect for Joe's cleverness rose immediately. He was a mate of whom
anyone might have been proud.
When once on the other side, we shoved the boat adrift; and went on the
road again, outside the town of Dumbarton. Joe took the lead along the
Lough Lomond road, and promised to wait for me when dusk was near at
hand. The afternoon was very successful; I soon had my pockets crammed
with bread, and I got three pipefuls of tobacco from three several men
when I asked for a chew from their plugs. An old lady gave me twopence
and later I learned that she had given Moleskin a penny.
Far outside of Dumbarton in a wild country, I overtook my mate again. It
was now nearly nightfall, and the sun was hardly a hand's breadth above
the horizon. Moleskin was singing to himself as I came up on him. I
overheard one verse and this was the kind of it. It was a song which I
had heard often before sung by navvies in the models.
"Oh! fare you well to the bricks and mortar!
And fare you well to the hod and lime!
For now I'm courtin' the ganger's daughter,
And soon I'll lift my lyin' time."
He finished off at that, as I came near, and I noticed a heavy bulge
under his left oxter between the coat and waistcoat. It was something
new; I asked him what it was, but he wouldn't tell me. The road ran
through a rocky moor, but here and there clumps of hazel bounded our
way. We could see at times soft-eyed curious Highland steers gazing out
at us from amongst the bushes, as if they were surprised to see human
beings in that deserted neighbourhood. When we stood and looked at them
they snorted in contempt and crashed away from our sight through the
copsewood.
"I think that we'll doss here for the night," said Moleskin when we had
walked about a mile further. He crawled over a wayside dyke and threw
down the bundle which he had up to that time concealed under his coat.
It was a dead hen.
"The corpse of a hen," said Joe with a laugh. "Now we've got to drum
up," he went on, "and get some supper before the dew falls. It is a hard
job to light a fire when the night is on."
From experience I knew this to be the case; so together we broke rotten
hazel twigs, collected some dry brambles from the undergrowth and built
them in a heap. Joe placed some crisp moss under the pile; I applied a
match and in a moment we had a brightly blazing fire. I emptied my
pockets, proud to display the results of the afternoon's work, which,
when totalled, consisted of four slices of bread, twopence, and about
one half-ounce of tobacco. Joe produced some more bread, his penny, and
three little packets which contained tea, sugar, and salt. These, he
told me, he had procured from a young girl in a ploughman's cottage.
"But the hen, Moleskin--where did you get that?" I asked, when I had
gathered in some extra wood for the fire.
"On the king's highway, Flynn," he added with a touch of pardonable
pride. "Coaxed it near me with crumbs until I nabbed it. It made an
awful fuss when I was wringing its neck, but no one turned up, more by
good luck than anything else. I never caught any hen that made such a
noise in all my life before."
"You are used to it then!" I exclaimed.
"Of course I am," was the answer. "When you are on the road as long as
I've been on it, you'll be as big a belly-thief[10] as myself."
It was fine to look around as the sun went down. Far west the sky was a
dark red, the colour of old wine. A pale moon had stolen up the eastern
sky, and it hung by its horn from the blue above us. Looking up at it,
my thoughts turned to home, and I wondered what my own people would say
if they saw me out here on the ghostly moor along with old Moleskin.
I searched around for water, and found a little well with the moon at
the bottom. As I bent closer the moon disappeared, and I could see the
white sand beneath. I thought that the well was very holy, it looked so
peaceful and calm out there alone in the wild place. I said to myself,
"Has anybody ever seen it before? What purpose does it serve here?" I
filled the billies, and when turning away I noticed that a pair of eyes
were gazing at me from the depths of the near thicket where a heavy
darkness had settled. I felt a little bit frightened, and hurried
towards the fire, and once there I looked back. A large roan steer came
into the clearing and drank at the well. Another followed, and another.
Their spreading horns glistened in the moonshine, and Joe and I watched
them from where we sat.
"Will I take some more water here?" I asked my mate, as he cleaned out
the hen, using the contents of the second billy in the operation.
"Wait a minute till all the bullocks have drunk enough," he replied.
"It's a pity to drive them away."
The fowl was cooked whole on the ashes, and we ate it with great relish.
When the meal was finished, Moleskin flung away the bones.
"The skeleton of the feast," he remarked sadly.
Next day was dry, and we got plenty of food, food enough and to spare,
and we made much progress on the journey north. Joe had an argument with
a ploughman. This was the way of it.
Coming round a bend of the road we met a man with the wet clay of the
newly turned earth heavy on his shoes. He was knock-kneed in the manner
of ploughmen who place their feet against the slant of the furrows which
they follow day by day. He was a decent man, and he told Moleskin as
much when my mate asked him for a chew of tobacco.
"I dinna gang aboot lookin' for work and prayin' to God that I dinna get
it, like you men," said the plougher. "I'm a decent man, and I work hard
and hae no reason to gang about beggin'."
I was turning my wits upside down for a sarcastic answer, when Joe broke
in.
"You're too damned decent!" he answered. "If you weren't, you'd give a
man a plug of tobacco when he asks for it in a friendly way, you
God-forsaken, thran-faced bell-wether, you!"
"If you did your work well and take a job when you get one, you'd have
tobacco of your own," said the ploughman. "Forbye you would have a hoose
and a wife and a dinner ready for you when you went hame in the evenin'.
As it is, you're daunderin' aboot like a lost flea, too lazy to leeve
and too afeard to dee."
"By Christ! I wouldn't be in your shoes, anyway," Joe broke in quietly
and soberly, a sign that he was aware of having encountered an enemy
worthy of his steel. "A man might as well expect an old sow to go up a
tree backwards and whistle like a thrush, as expect decency from a
nipple-noddled ninny-hammer like you. If you were a man like me, you
would not be tied to a woman's apron strings all your life; you would be
fit to take your turn and pay for it. Look at me! I'm not at the beck
and call of any woman that takes a calf fancy for me."
"Who would take a fancy to you?"
"You marry a wench and set up a beggarly house," said Joe, without
taking any heed of the interruption. "You work fourteen or fifteen hours
a day for every day of the year. If you find the company of another
woman pleasant you have your old crow to jaw at you from the chimney
corner. You'll bring up a breed of children that will leave you when you
need them most. Your wife will get old, her teeth will fall out, and her
hair will get thin, until she becomes as bald as the sole of your foot.
She'll get uglier until you loathe the sight of her, and find one day
that you cannot kiss her for the love of God. But all the time you'll
have to stay with her, growl at her, and nothin' before both of you but
the grave or the workhouse. If you are as clever a cadger as me why do
you suffer all this?"
"Because I'm a decent man," said the plougher.
Joe straightened up as if seriously insulted. "Well, I'm damned!" he
muttered and continued on his journey. "It's the first time ever I got
the worst of an argument, Flynn," he said after we had gone out of the
sight of the ploughman, and he kept repeating this phrase for the rest
of the day. For myself, I thought that Joe got the best of the argument,
and I pointed out the merits of his sarcastic remarks and proved to him
that if his opponent had not been a brainless man, he would be aware of
defeat after the first exchange of sallies.
"But that about the decent man was one up for him," Joe interrupted.
"It was the only remark which the man was able to make," I said. "The
pig has its grunt, the bull its bellow, the cock its crow, and the
plougher his boasted decency. To each his crow, grunt, boast, or bellow,
and to all their ignorance. It is impossible to argue against ignorance,
Moleskin. It is proof against sarcasm and satire and is blind to its own
failings and the merits of clever men like you."
Joe brightened perceptibly, and he walked along with elated stride.
"You're very clever, Flynn," he said. "And you think I won?"
"You certainly did. The last shot thrown at you struck the man who threw
it full in the face. He admitted that he suffered because of his
decency."
Joe was now quite pleased with himself, and the rest of the day passed
without any further adventure.
On the day following it rained and rained. We tasted the dye of our caps
as the water washed it down our faces into our mouths. By noon we came
to the crest of a hill and looked into a wild sweep of valley below. The
valley--it was Glencoe--from its centre had a reach of miles on either
side, and standing on its rim we were mere midges perched on the
copestones of an amphitheatre set apart for the play of giants. Far
away, amongst grey boulders that burrowed into steep inclines, we could
see a pigmy cottage sending a wreath of blue spectral smoke into the
air. No other sign of human life could be seen. The cottage was subdued
by its surroundings, the movement of the ascending smoke was a sacrilege
against the spell of the desolate places.
"It looks lonely," I said to my mate.
"As hell!" he added, taking up the words as they fell from my tongue.
We took our meal of bread and water on the ledge and saved up the crumbs
for our supper. When night came we turned into a field that lay near the
cottage, which we had seen from a distance earlier in the day.
"It's a god's charity to have a shut gate between us and the world,"
said Moleskin, as he fastened the bars of the fence. Some bullocks were
resting under a hazel clump. These we chased away, and sat down on the
spot which their bellies had warmed, and endeavoured to light our fire.
From under grey rocks, and from the crevices in the stone dyke, we
picked out light, dry twigs, and in the course of an hour we had a
blazing flame, around which we dried our wet clothes. The clouds had
cleared away and the moon came out silently from behind the shadow of
the hills. The night was calm as the face of a sleeping girl.
We lay down together when we had eaten our crumbs, but for a long while
I kept awake. A wind, soft as the breath of a child, ruffled the bushes
beside us and died away in a long-drawn swoon. Far in the distance I
could hear another, for it was the night of many winds, beating against
the bald peaks that thrust their pointed spires into the mystery of the
heavens. From time to time I could hear the falling earth as it was
loosened from its century-long resting place and flung heavily into the
womb of some fathomless abyss. God was still busy with the work of
creation!
I was close to the earth, almost part of it, and the smell of the wet
sod was heavy in my nostrils. It was the breath of the world, the world
that was in the eternal throes of change all around me. Nature was
restless and throbbing with movement; streams were gliding forward
filled with a longing for unknown waters; winds were moving to and fro
with the indecision of homeless wayfarers; leaves were dropping from the
brown branches, falling down the curves of the wind silently and slowly
to the great earth that whispered out the secret of everlasting change.
The hazel clump twined its trellises of branches overhead, leaving
spaces at random for the eternal glory of the stars to filter through
and rest on our faces. Joe, bearded and wrinkled, slept and dreamt
perhaps of some night's heavy drinking and desperate fighting, or maybe
his dreams were of some weary shift which had been laboured out in the
lonely places of the world.
Coming across the line of hills could be heard the gathering of the sea,
and the chant of the deep waters that were for ever voicing their
secrets to the throbbing shores.
The fire burned down but I could not go to sleep. I looked in the dying
embers, and saw pictures in the flames and the redness; pictures of men
and women, and strange pictures of forlorn hopes and blasted
expectations. I saw weary kinless outcasts wandering over deserted
roads, shunned and accursed of all their kind. Also I saw women, old
women, who dragged out a sordid existence, labouring like beasts of
burden from the cradle to the grave. Also pictures of young women with
the blood of early life in them, and the fulness of maiden promise in
them, walking one by one in the streets of the midnight city--young
women, fair and beautiful, who knew of an easier means of livelihood
than that which is offered by learning the uses of sewing-needle or
loom-spindle in fetid garret or steam-driven mill. In the flames and the
redness I saw pictures of men and women who suffered; for in that, and
that only, there is very little change through all the ages. Thinking
thus I fell asleep.
When I awoke, all the glory of the naked world was aflame with the early
sun. The red mud of our moleskins blended in harmony with the tints of
the great dawn. The bullocks were busy with their breakfasts and bore us
no ill-will for the wrong which we had done them the night before. Two
snails had crawled over Joe's coat, leaving a trail of slimy silver
behind them, and a couple of beetles had found a resting-place in the
seams of his velvet waistcoat. He rubbed his eyes when I called to him
and sat up.
The snails curled up in mute protest on the ground, and the beetles
hurried off and lost themselves amid the blades of grass. Joe made no
effort to kill the insects. He lifted the snails off his coat and laid
them down easily on the grass. "Run, you little devils!" he said with a
laugh, as he looked at the scurrying beetles. "You haven't got hold of
me yet, mind."
I never saw Joe kill an insect. He did not like to do so, he often told
me. "If we think evil of insects, what will they think of us?" he said
to me once. As for myself, I have never killed an insect knowingly in
all my life. My house for so long has been the wide world, that I can
afford to look leniently on all other inmates, animal or human. Four
walls coffin the human sympathies.
When I rose to my feet I felt stiff and sore, and there was nothing to
eat for breakfast. My mate alluded to this when he said bitterly: "I
wish to God that I was a bullock!"
A crow was perched on a bush some distance away, its head a little to
one side, and it kept eyeing us with a look of half quizzical contempt.
When Joe saw it he jumped to his feet.
"A hooded crow!" he exclaimed.
"I think that it is as well to start off," I said. "We must try and pick
up something for breakfast."
My mate was still gazing at the tree, and he took no heed to my remark.
"A hooded crow!" he repeated, and lifting a stone flung it at the bird.
"What about it?" I asked.
"Them birds, they eat dead men," Moleskin answered, as the crow flew
away. "There was Muck Devaney--Red Muck we called him--and he worked at
the Toward waterworks three winters ago. Red Muck had a temper like an
Orangeman, and so had the ganger. The two of them had a row about some
contract job, and Devaney lifted his lyin' time and jacked the graft
altogether. There was a heavy snow on the ground when he left our shack
in the evenin', and no sooner were his heels out of sight than a
blizzard came on. You know Toward Mountain, Flynn? Yes. Well, it is
seven long miles from the top of the hill to the nearest town. Devaney
never finished his journey. We found him when the thaw came on, and he
was lyin' stiff as a bone in a heap of snow. And them hooded crows!
There was dozens of them pickin' the flesh from his naked
shoulder-blades. They had eat the very guts clean out of Red Muck, so we
had to bury him as naked as a newborn baby. By God! Flynn, they're one
of the things that I am afraid of in this world, them same hooded crows.
Just think of it! maybe that one that I just threw the stone at was one
of them as gobbled up the flesh of Muck Devaney."
FOOTNOTES:
[9] A sleep on an empty stomach in the full sun.
[10] One who steals to satisfy his hunger.