Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 2

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 2

Cleg soon reached the tawny, thin-pastured, thick-furzed slopes which

constitute the haunch of Arthur's lion hill. In the days of Cleg's

youth these were still clad thick with whins and broom, among which the

birds built in the spring, and lovers sat in long converse on little

swarded oases.

 

"I'll juist set fire to this wee bit knowe," said Cleg, his heart

beating within him at the enormity of the offence. "There's no a

'keelie' in the toon that wad dare to do as muckle!"

 

For the ranger of that particular part of the hill was an old soldier

of great size and surprising swiftness in a race. And many had been the

Arthur Street urchins who had suffered a sore skin and a night in the

cells after being taken in dire offence. So "the Warrior" they called

him, for an all-sufficient name.

 

In a sheltered spot, and with the wind behind him, Cleg opened his

matchbox. He struck a match upon the rough oval bottom. It spurted

faintly blue, burned briskly, and then flickered out within Cleg's

hollowed hands. Cleg grunted.

 

"A fizz an' a stink," said he, summing up the case in a popular phrase.

 

The next went somewhat better. The flame reached the wood, dipped as

if to expire, took hold again, and finally burned up in a broad-based

yellow triangle. Cleg let it drop among the crisp, dry, rustling

grasses at the roots of the whin bushes. Instantly a little black line

ran forward and crossways, with hardly any flame showing. Cleg was

interested, and laid the palm of his hand upon the ground. He lifted it

instantly with a cry of pain. What had seemed a black line with an edge

of flickering blue was really a considerable fire, which, springing

from the dry couch grass and bent, was briskly licking up the tindery

prickles of the gorse.

 

The next moment, with an upward bound and a noise like the flapping

of a banner, the flame sprang clear of the whin bushes, and the blue

smoke streamed heavenwards. Cleg watched the progress, chained to the

spot. He well knew that it was time for him to be off. But with the

unhallowed fascination of the murderer for the scene of his crime upon

him, he watched bush after bush being swallowed up, and shouted and

leaped with glee. But the progress of the flame was further and swifter

than he had intended. One little knoll would have satisfied him. But in

a minute, driven forward by a level-blowing, following wind, the flame

overleaped the little strait of short turf, and grasped the next and

far larger continent of whin.

 

Cleg, surprised, began to shrink from the consequences of his act.

He had looked to revenge himself upon society for his expulsion from

Hunker Court by making a little private fire, and lo! he had started a

world conflagration. He ran round to the edge of the gorse covert. Two

hedge-sparrows were fluttering and dashing hither and thither, peeping

and crying beseechingly. Cleg looked at the objective point of their

anxiety, and there, between two whin branches, was the edge of a nest,

and a little compact yellow bundle of three gaping mouths, without the

vestige of a body to be seen.

 

"Guid life," cried Cleg, who kept kindness to birds and beasts as the

softest spot of his heart, "guid life, I never thocht the birds wad be

biggin' already!"

 

And with that he took off his coat, and seizing it in both hands he

charged boldly into the front of the flame, disdainful of prickles

and scorchings. He dashed the coat down upon a bush which was just

beginning to crackle underneath; and by dint of hard fighting and

reckless bravery he succeeded in keeping the fire from the little

island, on the central bush of which was situated the hedge-sparrow's

nest. Here he stood, with his coat threshing every way, keeping the

pass with his life—brave as Horatius at the bridge (or any other

man)—while the flames crackled and roared past him.

 

[Illustration: When "the Warrior" came.]

 

Suddenly there was a great fizzing and spitting from the ragged coat

which Cleg wielded as a quenching weapon. The fatal matchbox,

cause of all the turmoil, had exploded. The fumes were stifling, but

the flames still threatened to spread, and Cleg still laid about him

manfully. The tails of the coat disappeared. There was soon little

left but the collar. Cleg stood like a warrior whose sword has broken

in his hand in the face of the triumphant enemy. But the boy had a

resource which is not usually open to the soldier. He cast the useless

coat-collar from him, stripped a sleeved waistcoat, which had been

given him by the wife of a mason's labourer, and, taking the garment by

the two arms, he made an exceedingly efficient beater of the moleskin,

which had the dried lime yet crumbly upon it at the cuffs.

 

When at last "the Warrior" came speeding up the hill, warned out of his

Sabbath afternoon sleep by the cry that the whins were on fire, he was

in no pleasant temper. He found, however, that the fire had been warded

from the greater expanses by a black imp of a boy, burned and smutted,

with the remains of a moleskin garment clasped in a pair of badly

burned hands.

 

When the crowd of wanderers had gathered from all parts of the hill,

and the fire had been completely trampled out, the ranger began his

inquiries. Cleg was the chief suspect, because no one had seen any

other person near the fire except himself. On the other hand no one had

seen him light the whins, while all had seen him single-handed fighting

the flames.

 

"It's Tim Kelly's loon, the housebreaker, that leeved in the Sooth

Back!" said the inevitable officious stranger with the gratuitous

local knowledge. At his father's ill-omened name there was an obvious

hardening in the faces of the men who stood about.

 

"At ony rate, the loon is better in the lock-up," said the ranger

sententiously.

 

At this Cleg's heart beat faster than ever. Many had been his perilous

ploys, but never yet had he seen the inside of the prison. He

acknowledged that he deserved it, but it was hard thus to begin his

prison experience after having stayed to fight the fire, when he could

easily have run away. There was unfairness somewhere, Cleg felt.

 

So, with the burnt relics of his sleeved waistcoat still in his hands,

Cleg was dragged along down the edge of the Hunter's Bog. The ranger

grasped him roughly by a handful of dirty shirt collar, and his strides

were so long that Cleg's short legs were not more than half the time

upon the ground.

 

But at a certain spring of clear, crystal water, which gushes out of

the hillside from beneath a large round stone, the ranger paused.

 

He too had fought the flames, and he had cause to thirst. For it

was Sunday afternoon, and he had arisen from his usual lethargic

after-dinner sleep upon the settle opposite the kitchen fire.

 

So at the well he stooped to drink, one hand still on Cleg's collar,

and the palm of the other set flat on the side of the boulder. It was

Cleg's opportunity. He quickly twisted himself suddenly round, just

after the ranger's lips had touched the water. The rotten cloth of his

shirt tore, and Cleg sprang free. The ranger, jerked from the support

of the stone, and at the same moment detached from his prisoner, fell

forward with his head in the spring, while Cleg sped downhill like the

wind. He was ready stripped for the race. So, leaving the panting chase

far behind, he made for a portion of the encompassing wall, which none

but he had ever scaled. Having clambered upon the top, he crossed his

legs and calmly awaited the approach of the ranger.

 

"It's a warm day, Warrior," said Cleg; "ye seem to be sweatin'!"

 

"Ye limb o' Sawtan," panted the ranger, "gin ever I get ye this side o'

the dyke, I'll break every bane in your body."

 

"Faith," answered Cleg, "ye should be braw an' thankfu', Warrior, for

ye hae gotten what ye haena had for years, and had muckle need o'!"

 

"And what was that, ye de'il's buckie?" cried the angry ranger.

 

"A wash!" said Cleg Kelly, as he dropped down the city side of the

wall, and sped home to his fortress.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE III.

 

WHY CLEG KELLY HATED HIS FATHER.

 

 

This is a bad, black tale; yet, for the sake of what comes after, it

must be told.

 

Cleg Kelly had a father. He was a deeply pockmarked man who hated

his son; but not so bitterly as his son hated him. Once on a time

Cleg Kelly had also a mother, and it is the story of his mother which

remains to tell. The story of most men is the story of their mother.

They drank love or hatred, scorn or sympathy, at her breasts.

 

So it was with Cleg Kelly. So let the story of Isbel Kelly be told. How

a woman may be murdered in this land and none swing for it! How a woman

may be put to the torture every day and every night for years, and the

voice of her crying mount (we must believe it) into the ears of the God

of Sabaoth, yet no murmur reach her nearest neighbour upon the earth!

Gladlier would I tell a merrier tale, save that it is ever best to get

the worst over first, as medicine goes before barley-sugar.

 

Isbel Kelly had not always been Isbel Kelly. That is to say, she had

not always been unhappy. There was a time when Timothy Kelly had not

come into her life. Isbel Beattie was once a country girl. She had

sung in the morn as she went afield to call the dappled kine, as glad

a milkmaid as any in song or story. Her foot was the lightest in the

dance at the "kirn," her hand the deftest at the spinning-wheel, her

cheerful presence the most desired when the butter would not come. For

the butter ever comes fastest for a good-tempered woman. A vixenish

disposition only curdles the milk. That is why young men, landward

but wise, so eagerly offer to help the maids at the butter-making.

And no sweeter maiden than Isbel Beattie ever wore print gowns and

lilted "O whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad," in all the parish of

Ormiland—that is, till Timothy Kelly came, and Isbel sang no more.

 

Isbel Beattie was "fey," they said, and would take no advice. Lads

tight and trig stood in rows to wait for her as she came out of the

kirk, on fine Sabbath days when the lilac blossoms, white and purple,

were out, and there was a drooping sprig in every spruce bachelor's

coat. But Isbel passed them all by with a toss of her head. She could

have married a rather stupid young farmer of the best intentions and

unquestioned solvency had she so chosen. But Isbel was "fey," and would

take counsel from neither maid nor matron.

 

Now Timothy Kelly, the weasel-faced Irish harvestman, wormed himself

into the girl's affections by ways of his own, as before and after he

had undone many a trebly fastened door with his steel picklock.

 

From that day until the hour of her death Isbel Beattie saw no good

day. A week after they were married, Timothy Kelly was drinking Isbel's

last half-year's wages in a public-house, and Isbel was crying at home

with a bruised cheek. She sang no more late or early; but learned to

endure hardness and to pray that the kind Lord of whom she had heard in

the kirk, might send a swift and easy death as the best thing to pray

for.

 

Timothy Kelly was not long in Ormiland ere he removed to Edinburgh in

the interests of business. He needed the metropolis for the exercise of

his talents. So Isbel packed what he had left her, and followed him,

faithful and weary-foot, to the city lane, and Timothy Kelly cursed her

over his shoulder all the way. But she did not hear him, and his words

did not hurt her. God had stopped her ears. For the sound of a dearer

voice was in them, and the promise of the Eden joy answered Isbel, as

though the Lord Almighty walked with her through the streets of the

city in the cool of the day.

 

A week after an infant lay on the breast of Isbel Kelly, in a garret

up Meggat's Close, off the Pleasance. A kindly neighbour looked in now

and then when Tim Kelly was out, and comforted the young mother. When

Tim came in he cursed them all impartially. His foul words sent the

neighbours forth again, full of pity and indignation; and so he cast

himself down to sleep off drink and temper on the couch of rags in the

corner.

 

Towered fair-faced Edinburgh and its seething under-world held no man

like Timothy Kelly. A sieve-net might have been drawn through it and no

worse rascal caught than he. Cruel only where he dared with impunity

to be cruel, plausible and fawning where it was to his interest so to

be, Timothy Kelly was a type of the criminal who lives to profit by

the strange infatuations of the weakest women. From silly servant

girls at kitchen doors who thought him "a most civil-spoken young man,"

he obtained the professional information which enabled him to make

unrecognised but accurate lists of the family silver upon some stormy

midnight, when the policemen stood in doorways, or perambulated the

city with their helmets down upon their brows.

 

Isbel Kelly wore thin and white, and the bruises on her face grew

chronic, only occasionally changing the side. For in this matter

Timothy Kelly had no weak partiality. Yet, in the midst of all, Cleg

Kelly gained in years and strength, his mother many a time shielding

him from blows with her own frail body. There was a soft light on her

face when she looked at him. When her husband was out Isbel watched

Cleg all day long as he lay on the bed and kicked with sturdy limbs, or

sprawled restlessly about the house. The dwelling was not extensive. It

consisted of one room, and Tim Kelly's "hidie holes," where he kept the

weapons of his craft—curious utensils, with iron crab fingers set at

various angles upon the end of steel stalks.

 

Now, it is the strangest, yet one of the commonest, things in this

world that Isbel Kelly loved her husband, and at the worst times said

no word against him. It was a mistake. She ought to have outfaced him,

insulted him, defied him, given him blow for blow. Then he might have

been a reasonably decent husband, according to the standard of Meggat's

Close.

 

But Cleg Kelly made no such mistake. From the time that he was a

toddling little fellow till the parish buried his mother, Cleg Kelly

looked at his father with level brows of hate and scorn. No one had

taught him; but the perception of youth gauged the matter unerringly.

 

There are but two beings in the universe whom a really bad-hearted man

cannot deceive: his Maker and a young child. Cleg Kelly never quailed

before his father. Neither words nor blows daunted him. Whenever his

father went out, he said:

 

"Bad mannie gone away, minnie!"

 

"Na, Cleg," said his mother, "ye mauna speak that way o' yer faither!"

 

"Bad mannie, minnie!" Cleg repeated determinedly; "bad mannie gone

away."

 

And from this she could not move him.

 

Then as soon as his father began to beat the lad, and his mother was

not able to protect him, Cleg developed a marvellous litheness and

speed. He could climb roofs like a cat at five years of age, and watch

his father from the ledge of an outlying wall or the side of a reeking

chimney-can, where even the foot of the practised burglar dared not

venture.

 

Then came a year black and bitter. It was the year of the small-pox.

That part of Edinburgh where the Kellys lived became a walled city.

There was one death in every three or four attacked. And Tim Kelly went

to the seaside for his health.

 

But Isbel and her boy battled it out alone. She had seven shillings

a week for cleaning a day-school. But soon the schools were closed,

and her pay ceased. Nevertheless, she earned money somehow, and the

minister of the McGill-Gillespie church visited her. It would take a

whole treatise on Church History, and a professor thereof, to tell why

that church was called the McGill-Gillespie. But the unlearned may be

assured that these excellent gentlemen were not canonised Scottish

saints, nor were their effigies worshipped inside. But at this time the

minister of the church came very near to being worshipped outside.

 

The children knew his step, and ran—_to_, not _from_, him. He was the

only man, except the doctor, at whom the urchins of Meggat's did not

fling dirt. One of these had even been known to touch his hat to the

minister of McGill-Gillespie. But this was a great risk, and of course

he did not do it when any one was looking.

 

One day Cleg Kelly sickened, and though at the time he was a great boy

of six, his mother carried him about in her arms all day, soothing him.

And the hot, dry spots burned ever brighter on his cheeks, and his eyes

shone like flame. The minister brought the doctor, for they hunted

in couples—these two. Some of the ministers had gone to the seaside

with Timothy Kelly, and along with them a few great professional men

from the West-End. But the Pleasance doctor, a little fair man, and

the minister of McGill-Gillespie, a tall dark man, remained with the

small-pox. Also God was there—not very evidently, or obtrusively,

perhaps; but the minister of McGill-Gillespie knew where to find Him

when He was wanted.

 

And He was needed badly enough in the sick-room of Cleg Kelly. No

doubt Cleg ought to have gone to the hospital. But, for one thing, the

hospitals were overcrowded. And, for another, if they had taken Cleg,

they might have taken his mother also. At all events Cleg was nursed in

his home, while his father remained at the seaside for his health.

 

One night, when the trouble was at its height, Cleg ran deliriously on

about "the bad mannie." His mother stilled and tended him. The doctor

ordered a little warm wine to be given to Cleg occasionally, and the

minister of McGill-Gillespie had brought it. But Cleg wavered between

life and death in spite of the wine—and much nearer death than life.

Isbel had seen the doctor earlier in the day, and she was to go for him

again if a certain anticipated change did not come within six hours.

The change did not come, though the mother never took her eyes off

her boy. Cleg lay back on his pallet bed, inert and flaccid, his eyes

glassy and fixed in his head. His mother softly closed the door, took

her shawl over her head, and fled through the midnight streets to the

doctor's house.

 

A sudden summer storm had arisen off the sea. The wind swirled about

the old many-gabled closes of Edinburgh. It roared over the broken

fortress line of the Salisbury Crags. The streets were deserted. The

serried ash-backets were driven this way and that by the gale. Random

cats scudded from doorstep to cellar, dipped, and disappeared. _Clash!_

fell a great shutter on the pavement before her. Isbel Kelly was at the

doctor's door. He was not in. Would she leave a message? She would,

and the message was that a little boy was sinking, and that unless the

doctor came quickly a mother's only son would die. She cried out in

agony as she said it, but the wind swirled the cry away.

 

So through the turmoil of the storm she came back, and ran up the

evil-smelling dark stairs, where the banister was broken, and only

the wind-blown fleer of the gas-lamp outside, flickering through the

glassless windows of the stairway, lighted her upwards. She had once

been a milkmaid, but she had forgotten how the cowslips smelled. And

only in her dreams did she recall the scent of beehives over the wall

on a still summer night.

 

She opened the door with a great yearning, but with no presentiment of

evil.

 

"Tim!" she said, her face whitening.

 

A man, weasel-faced and hateful to look upon, stood by the little

cupboard. He had a purse in his hand, and a bottle stood on the

mantelshelf beside him.

 

"Oh, Tim!" she cried, "for the Lord's sake dinna tak' my last

shillin'—no frae me an' the boy. He's deein', Tim!"

 

She ran forward as if to beseech him to give the money back to her; but

Tim Kelly, reckless with drink, snatched up the minister's wine-bottle

and it met his wife's temple with a dull sound. The woman fell in a

heap. She lay loosely on the floor by the wall, and did not even moan.

Tim Kelly set the bottle to his lips to drain the last dregs with an

empty laugh. But from the bed something small and white flew at his

throat.

 

"Bad mannie, bad mannie, bad mannie!" a shrill voice cried. And before

Tim Kelly could set down the bottle, the little figure in flying

swathings had dashed itself again and again upon him, biting and

gnashing on him like a wolf's cub. For the blood of Tim Kelly was in

the lad, as well as the blood of the milkmaid who lay on the floor as

one dead.

 

And this was what the doctor found, when he stumbled up the stair and

opened the door. He had seen many strange things in his day, but none

so terrible as this. He does not care to speak about it, though he told

the minister that either Providence or the excitement had probably

saved the child's life. Yet for all that he tended Timothy Kelly, when

his turn came, as well as the best of paying patients. For Tim's was an

interesting case, with many complications.

 

So this adventure tells the reason of three things very important to be

known in this history—why, six months after, Isbel Kelly was glad to

die, why Cleg Kelly hated his father, and why smooth-faced Tim, who had

once deceived the servant girls, was ever after a deeply pockmarked man.

 

What it does not tell is, why God permitted it all.