Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 15

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 15

ADVENTURE XXVI.

 

R. S. V. P.

 

 

A great event happened in the back-kitchen of Bailie Holden. The

postman had brought a letter with a fine monogram—a very stiff, square

letter, for Miss Janet Urquhart. The table-maid, who considered herself

quite as good as a governess, examined it as though there must needs be

some mistake in the address. The housemaid turned it about and looked

at it endways and upside down, to see if there might not be another

name concealed somewhere. She rubbed it with her apron to see if the

top would come off and something be revealed beneath. The cook, into

whose hands the missive next passed, left a perfect tracing of her

thumb and fore-finger upon it, done in oils, and very well executed,

too.

 

In this condition it reached the back-kitchen at last, and the hands of

Janet of Inverness. As she took the letter in her little damp fingers,

she grew pale to the lips. What she feared, I cannot tell—probably only

the coming true of some of her dreams.

 

In a cluster round the door stood the housemaid, the table-maid, and

family cat—the one which went habitually on four legs, I mean. The cook

moved indignantly about the range, clattering tongs, pans, and other

instruments of music, as it is the immemorial use of all cooks when the

bird in the breast does not sing sweetly. She was, of course, quite

above curiosity as to what Janet's letter might contain.

 

"Likely it's an invitation!" sneered the housemaid.

 

"Aye, frae the police!" added the table-maid from the doorway. She was

plain, and Cleaver's boy never stopped to gossip with her. Not that

she cared or would have stood talking with the likes of him.

 

The cook banged the top of the range, like Tubal-cain when Naamah vexed

him in that original stithy, near by the city of Enoch in the land of

Nod.

 

Janet of Inverness opened the letter. Scarcely could she believe her

eyes. It was a formal invitation upon a beautifully written card, and

contained a wish on the part of Mr. Greg Tennant and Miss Tennant that

Miss Janet Urquhart would favour them with her company at Aurelia Villa

on the evening of Friday the 17th, at eight o'clock. R.S.V.P.

 

Janet sank into a seat speechless, still holding the invitation. The

table-maid came and looked over her shoulder.

 

"Goodness me!" she exclaimed, as she read the card.

 

"She's been tellin' the truth after a'," said the housemaid, who,

having some claims to beauty, was glad of Janet's good fortune, and

hoped that the like might happen to herself.

 

"I dinna believe a word o't!" said the cook indignantly. "I'se warrant

she wrote it hersel'!"

 

But Janet had not written it herself. She could not even bring herself

to write the answer, though she had received a sound School Board

education. But the three R's do not contemplate the answering of

invitations upon thick cardboard, ending "R.S.V.P." They stop at the

spelling of "trigonometry" and the solving of vulgar fractions.

 

In spite of her silks and satins and her vaunted experience, Janet did

not know the meaning of "R.S.V.P." But the housemaid had not brushed

clothes ten years for nothing.

 

"It means 'Reply shortly, very pleased'!" said she. Which, being

substantially correct, settled the question.

 

Nevertheless, poor Janet was in great perturbation. When Cleaver's boy

went to see her that evening before going on duty she showed him the

card.

 

"What shall I do?" she said. "I hae nothing fit to wear, and I am

feared to gang."

 

Cleaver's boy looked up at the ceiling of the back-kitchen, as he sat

on the edge of the sink, unconscious that there was a tap running

behind him and that the plug was in.

 

"There was that purple brocade ye telled me aboot, wi' the auld lace

and the pearls that belonged to your grandmither, the Earl's dochter,"

said James Annan, meditatively.

 

"O aye," said Janet. "Yes, of course there is that ane." But she did

not look happy.

 

"Or there is the plain white muslin wi' the crimson sash aboot the

waist, that the twa gentlemen were for stickin' are anither aboot, yon

nicht they quarrelled wha was to see ye hame."

 

"Aye," said Janet, piteously, "there's that ane too."

 

"An' what say ye," continued James Annan remorselessly, "to the yellow

sattin, trimmed wi' flounces o' glory-pidgeon roses and——?"

 

Cleaver's boy suddenly stopped. He had been feeling for some time a

growing coolness somewhere. But at this point the water in the sink ran

over on the floor, and he turned round to discover that he had been

sitting in a full trough of excellent Moorfoot water, with the spigot

running briskly down his back all the while.

 

"O James," cried Janet, pleased to get a chance to change the subject,

"what for did ye do that, James? And your new breeks, too!" she added,

with an __EXPRESSION__ of supreme pain.

 

"I didna do it for naething," remarked Cleaver's boy, tartly. "I didna

do it ava'. It was you that left the spigot rinnin and the plug in!" he

added, after a thoughtful pause, while he realised how cool a sitz-bath

can be, even on a summer evening, when one stands by an open window.

 

Now nothing is more provoking, when you are performing a high and noble

work in the reformation of another person's morals, than to have the

thread of your weighty discourse broken by something so ridiculous as

sitting down in a bucket of water. There was every reason why Cleaver's

boy should be annoyed.

 

But Janet broke out in a sobbing ecstacy of laughter, which irritated

her lover more even than her wrong-doing.

 

"I wonder at you," he said, "telling a' thae lees when ye haena a dress

to your back, forbye the alpaca that ye pit on on Sabbaths!"

 

It was a mistake, and Cleaver's boy knew it as soon as he had the words

out of his mouth.

 

Janet instantly stopped in the midst of her laughter.

 

"I would have you know," she said with dignity, "that I shall accept

the invitation. And I will never speak to you again. I'll thank you to

take yourself out of my presence, James Annan!"

 

"And out of Bailie Holden's back-kitchen!" continued her lover, whose

colour did not diminish with the growing coolness consequent upon

standing in a draught. Then as he went up the steps from the area he

cried, "Be sure and put on the brocade, Janet!"

 

It was an unbearable affront, for Janet had told her stories so often,

and with so much innocent feeling, that though, of course, she could

not quite believe them herself, she had nevertheless all the feelings

of an indignant moralist insulted and outraged in her tenderest

susceptibilities.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XXVII.

 

JANET OF INVERNESS TASTES THE HERB BITTER-SWEET.

 

 

Janet duly arrived at the house of Mr. Robert Greg Tennant at the hour

named in the invitation. She had had a great struggle with herself, but

pride had ultimately triumphed. Her fellow-servants had given her no

peace. She had, indeed, to dress in her black alpaca. But, sure enough,

her hair had been done in the latest fashion by her only friend, the

girl with whom the cook had seen her walking, who was an assistant in a

hair-dresser's shop. It was so twisted and tortured that Janet felt "as

if she had slept on it the wrong way," as she expressed it to herself.

She passed and re-passed the end of the Avenue half-a-dozen times, but

her courage would not let her ring the bell of the corner house. For

there were lights in nearly every window, and a cab had just driven

away from the door.

 

Poor Janet's heart leapt within her, and she had half a mind to turn

homeward and confess that she had been romancing. But another cab

stopped before the gate, and through the open door she saw a glimpse of

lights and flowers that looked to her like Paradise—as she imagined it

from the hymn-singing at the Salvation Army meetings.

 

So as the last cabman came slowly out of the Avenue, Janet called to

him. The man was arranging his rugs about him for a long drive back to

his stand at the centre of the town.

 

"I'll give you a sixpence if you will turn about and drive me up to

that door you have just been at," said Janet.

 

"Done," said the man; "and good money for the job."

 

So, without betraying the least surprise or curiosity, the man turned

about his vehicle, and Janet tripped daintily inside. They drove up to

the door with prodigious rattle and ceremony. The cabman jumped from

his seat and rang the bell in form. When the door was opened, Janet

Urquhart paid the man his easily-earned sixpence. He touched his hat,

and she went leadenly up the steps.

 

A trim maid-servant was at the door, who evidently had received very

definite orders, for only the faintest curl of the nostril betrayed her

own opinion of the affair.

 

When Janet was shown into the cloak-room her troubles began. Should she

take off her hat, or not? She looked about to see if the ladies had

left their hats. None were to be seen. Yet she had never seen ladies in

the evening, except bareheaded. After long consideration she resolved

to keep her hat on. But when she was in the doorway to go up to the

drawing-room she saw a lady coming through the outer door with a shawl

of soft gauzy wool over her head.

 

Janet shrank back instantly and turned cold with the thought of her

escape. With trembling hands she took off her hat and pinned her veil

to it as she had once seen her mistress do. The lady came in, bustling

a little like one who knows she is late.

 

"It is cold to-night," she said affably to the shy girl standing in the

doorway, but without looking at her.

 

"Yes, ma'am," said Janet, and the next moment she could have bitten her

tongue out for the mistake.

 

"Oh, how I wish I had never come," she said a score of times to herself

as she went up the stairs.

 

But it was too late to turn back.

 

"What name?" said the daintily-capped maiden, with the curl of her

nostril a little more accentuated.

 

For a moment Janet was so taken aback that she could not even remember

her own name.

 

"Janet," she stammered; "Janet—from Bailie Holden's."

 

The maid's face broadened into a smile, at sight of which poor Janet's

lip quivered, and for a moment she thought that she must burst out

crying. Scarcely was she able to keep back the welling tears. But the

door was a little open, and she saw Miss Celie, whom she already knew

and loved. The sight of that pleasant face, dimpling and flashing all

over with bright kindness, reassured her.

 

"Say 'Janet Urquhart'!" she said, with a little faltering return of

assurance in her voice.

 

And the trim maid-servant, with a strong protest in her tone, announced

in accents of terrifying distinctness, "Miss Janet Urquhart."

 

Then she shut the door, and Janet was left standing aghast and

speechless in the bright humming place.

 

"I would not have done it," soliloquised the indignant maid outside,

"unless my place had depended on it."

 

But within Celie Tennant's drawing-room, poor silly little Janet of

Inverness was being most pleasantly and charmingly entertained by her

hostess. Celie had, in fact, asked only a few of her most intimate

friends, whom she could trust with the momentous secret of the loves

and sorrows of Cleaver's boy. The fascinating cousin from the tented

field was there, ready for love or war. But it was to Donald Iverach

that the principal work of the evening had been allotted.

 

It was he who first asked Janet to dance with him. It was he who sat

out with her after her desperate failure, for she had lacked the

courage to say that she had never learned to dance. It was he who found

her a handkerchief, when, with the bitterness of disappointment, the

tears at last would not keep down, but welled piteously up from the

underlips of Janet's blue and childish eyes. It was Mr. Donald Iverach

who took her down to supper, where she suffered agonies over the use

of fish-knives and the management of a plate upon her knees. It was he

who finally took her aside, and so fervidly pursued his wooing that,

had Janet Urquhart been mercenary, he might without doubt have had a

suit for breach of promise of marriage successfully brought against

him. So far did the wooing proceed, and so fervently persistent was

this wicked Junior Partner, that, bewildered and dazzled, poor Janet

found herself being pressed to name the happy day, and, what is more,

in some danger of doing it, too. As for the Junior Partner, that young

man was obviously excited, but seemed quite unconscious of the risks

he was running. Had the Senior Partner heard him, he would undoubtedly

have considered his son to be rapidly qualifying for a strait jacket.

But the infatuated youth held on his way. Janet and he were sitting in

a little alcove at the top of the stairs, cobwebbed with the latest

artistic Japonaiseries of the period.

 

"And now," urged the reckless youth, when he had sealed in due form the

silent acquiescence he had won, "let us go back and tell them all that

we are going to be married."

 

Mr. Donald Iverach was certainly quite mad. But Janet of Inverness was

madder still, for instead of accepting the very eligible young man with

modest reluctance, she burst out crying all at once without the least

warning, and ran downstairs, leaving Donald Iverach standing spellbound

looking after her. Down the stair and through the hall she ran. She

opened the door and flew out into the night, crying "James! James! I

want you, James!"

 

And the strangest part of the whole is that even as she opened the door

two dark forms separated at the outer gate.

 

"There noo, look you after her," said Cleg Kelly to Cleaver's boy.

And James Annan went as he was bidden. The girl's wild cry of "James!

James!" hushed into quite another way of saying the same words, when

she found herself clasped in the arms of Janet's boy—late Cleaver's.

For James Annan not only had the root of the matter in him by nature,

but, as we have seen, he was a lad of some little experience.

 

"What did I tell you, sir?" said Cleg to the Junior Partner, as they

stood together on the step, and looked after the pair who had vanished

into the darkness.

 

"It came out all right, I grant," said Mr. Donald Iverach, "but I want

no more games with pretty kitchen-maids. I will tell you what—for three

full minutes I thought she was going to take me!"

 

And the Junior Partner went down the street at the rate of five miles

an hour.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XXVIII.

 

THE ENGINE-DRIVER WITH THE BEARD.

 

 

What James Annan said to little Janet of Inverness on the way home,

and what Janet of Inverness said to James Annan, I know. But since

it concerns only themselves, with themselves I will leave it. At all

events, it was no long season before they were at one. Miss Cecilia

Tennant's exact share in the plot is a harder matter to apportion.

But that she had a share in it far beyond the mere issuing of the

invitations is certain, for Mr. Donald Iverach was heard saying to the

arch-conspirator in the semi-privacy of the dusky angle of the stairs,

"But what I want to make out is, what I am to get out of it."

 

"Virtue is its own reward," replied Miss Celie, sententiously, "and,

besides, you make love to that sort of person so well, that it is

evident you must have had a great deal of practice."

 

"Now I call that a little hard on me," said the Junior Partner, who

felt that he had made a martyr of himself all the evening, and that he

had, indeed, narrowly escaped the sacrificial altar.

 

"Wait," he said threateningly, "till you want me to do anything else of

the kind for you."

 

Celie Tennant set her pretty head the least bit to the side. It could

not be called a cock, but it was the next thing to it. Next she pursed

her mouth till it looked like a cherry.

 

"You would do it just as quick if I asked you to do it all over again,"

said Celie Tennant, looking pins and needles at Donald Iverach, till

the very palms of his hands pingled.

 

The Junior Partner stamped his foot.

 

"Oh, hang it all!" he cried, "I believe that's the God's truth—I would."

 

That night as he walked home, the Junior Partner, who had no gifts for

the imparting of religious instruction, but who respected those who had

(especially if they were pretty), wondered what could make a Sunday

school teacher act in such a perverse manner. He could not understand

how it was that Celie Tennant, who upon occasion would weep over the

crushing of a fly, and who was all the time worrying her life out over

these young rascals of hers, could yet take pleasure in tormenting a

fellow-creature, and making his very existence a burden to him.

 

But when he came to think of it afterwards, he had to confess that on

the whole he rather liked it. In fact, that he would rather be made

unhappy by Celie Tennant than that anyone else should give him the

happiness of Paradise. He was a rankly foolish young man, and he would

have hugged his follies if this particular one would have permitted him.

 

The present chronicler has, be it understood, undertaken to relate the

adventures of Cleg's companions as well as those which immediately

concern the hero. But these adventures of Cleaver's boy and his Janet

of Inverness were not without direct bearing upon the fates of Cleg

and of his lost friends the Kavannahs. For it so happened that Duncan

Urquhart, the uncle of Janet of Inverness, came one night to see her

in the kitchen of Bailie Holden. The cook was pleased with him, for he

was a single man and well bearded; in fact, the very kind of man whom

all cooks adore. Housemaids, on the other hand, like clean-shaven or

moustached men, and as a rule prefer to catch them younger. And this is

the reason why cooks marry gardeners while housemaids marry coachmen.

While nurses, having had enough of children, live to a good old age

in picturesque cottages, with assured pensions and uncertain tempers,

eventually dying old maids. At least, so sayeth the philosopher.

 

Duncan Urquhart was not the chief of a clan. He was an engine-driver

in the goods department of the Greenock and South-Eastern Railway. In

the course of conversation the engine-driver, chiefly for the sake of

the applause of the cook, cast about him for moving tales of the iron

road on which his working hours were passed. He had settled in his

mind that the cook was a wonderful woman. She could, to his certain

knowledge, watch a roast, turn an omelette, taste a soup, and cast a

languishing glance over her shoulder at him, all at the same time. He

could not help thinking how excellent a thing it would be to come home

after a grimy run on the footplate. And then, having washed, sit down

in his own house to the soup, the omelette, and the joint, with (so

little did he know) as many of the languishing glances as he could wish

for, thrown in as a permanent asset of his home. So overcome was he

by the idea, that for the moment he forgot that matters had proceeded

even further with another cook in the town of Netherby, which formed

his alternate stopping-place. It was a pity, he sometimes thought (for

an instant only), that the laws of his country did not permit two such

homes to be set up, one at either end of his daily journeyings.

 

Now, as one good effect of Duncan Urquhart's visit to the kitchen of

Bailie Holden, the position of Janet of Inverness as kitchenmaid was

made a far more tolerable one. It is a thing strongly advisable, that

if the junior domestics of a house have presentable brothers or even

uncles, unmarried and eligible, they should make haste to produce them.

Janet of Inverness quite understood this. She knew, indeed, that

Duncan was to marry his cousin Mary in the Black Isle. But she was far

too wise a little girl to say anything about a family arrangement like

that. And then the cook always allowed her to walk in pleasanter places

for several days after the visits of her Uncle Duncan, who, as has been

said, was a handsome man with a beard, and in habit very well put on

and desirable.

 

But it is with Duncan's story that we have to do. Duncan had the

English of Inverness crossed with the dialect peculiar to the Greenock

and South-Eastern—a line whose engines are apple-green and gold, but

the speech of whose engineers is blue, with purple patches. Not that

Duncan swore before ladies, though Bailie Holden's cook would have

forgiven him because of his beard. It was indeed a habit she was

rather partial to, thinking it a mighty offset to the conversation of

bearded men. There was no denying that Duncan's speech was picturesque.

But Cleg could not help feeling that swearing of Duncan's sort was

altogether roundabout and unmanly. For himself, when he had need and

occasion, he simply said "Dam" and had done with it. Anything more savoured of superfluity to a boy of his simple tastes.