Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 3

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 3

ADVENTURE IV.

 

HOW ISBEL KELLY HEARD SWEET MUSIC.

 

 

Cleg Kelly did not die just then, which was in some ways a good thing.

But neither did his mother Isbel, which, for herself, was a pity. It

was also a mistake for society, for then Tim Kelly might also have died

for the want of a nurse, and Providence and the city authorities would

have been saved a vast deal of trouble.

 

But in spite of all boasts to the contrary, this is so little a free

country that people cannot always die when they want—some not even

when they ought to. And not a few have got themselves into trouble for

assisting manifest destiny. But no one, not even the chief constable,

would have been sorry had Isbel Beattie forgotten to help Tim Kelly,

her husband, at some crisis of his disease, so that he might have gone

betimes to his own place, and thus have been compelled to leave alone

a great number of other places and things with which he had no proper

concern.

 

But Isbel Kelly did not think of that. Moreover, Tim Kelly behaved

himself better as an invalid than he had ever done as a whole man. And

as for little Cleg, he got better rapidly in order to get out of his

father's way.

 

But there came a day when both her invalids were out of her hands, and

Isbel had time to clean her house and give her attention to dying on

her own account. She did not wish to put any one to an inconvenience.

But, indeed, there was little else left for her to do. Tim Kelly

was again able to attend to his business—which, strictly speaking,

consisted in the porterage of other people's goods out of their houses,

without previous arrangement with the owners, and in a manner as

unobtrusive as possible.

 

Cleg was too young for this profession, but according to his father's

friends his day was coming. In the meantime he spent most of the day in

a brickyard at the back. For Tim Kelly, owing to a little difficulty

as to rent, had moved his household goods from Meggat's Close to the

outskirts of the city. Now they do not use many bricks about Edinburgh;

but there are exceptions, especially in the direction of Leith, and

this was the place where they made the exceptions.

 

The brickyard was a paradise to Cleg Kelly in the warm days of summer.

The burning bricks made a strange misty fume of smoke in the air, which

was said to be healthy. People who could not afford to go to Portobello

for convalescence brought their children to the brickyard. They made

drain-pipes and other sanitary things there; and on that account also

the brickyard was accounted healthy for people in the position of the

Kellys.

 

At any rate Cleg Kelly was well content, and he played there from morn

to night. His mother generally watched him from a window. There was but

one window in the little "rickle of brick" which their pawnbroking Jew

landlord called a "commodious cottage." He might call it what he liked.

He never got any rent for it from Tim Kelly.

 

Yet Isbel was happier here than in the city. At least she could see the

trees, and she had neighbours who came in to visit her when her husband

was known to be from home.

 

"Eh, Mistress Kelly, I wonder ye can pit up wi' sic a man," said the

wife of Jo Turner, a decent man steadily employed on the brickfields,

who only drank half his wages.

 

Isbel signed frantically towards the bed with her hand. But without

noticing her signals of distress, the innocent Mrs. Turner went on with

the burden of her tale.

 

"Gin _I_ had sic a man, I wad tak' him to bits an' pit him up again

anew—the black-hearted scoondrel o' a red-headed Irishman!"

 

Tim Kelly rose from the bed where he had been resting himself. They do

not set a bed in a room in that country. They put it down outside a

room and build it round on three sides. Then they cover the remaining

side in with as many cloths as possible, for the purpose of keeping out

the air. From such a death-trap Tim Kelly rose slowly, and confronted

Mistress Turner.

 

"Get out av me house, Misthress Turner, afore I break the thick skull

av yer ill-conditioned face," said Tim, whose abuse was always of the

linked and logical kind.

 

"'Deed an' I'll gang oot o' yer hoose wi' pleesure, Timothy Kelly; gin

I had kenned that the likes o' ye was in it, Mary Turner wad never hae

crossed yer doorstep."

 

"Well, now that ye are here, be afther takin' yersilf acrost the

durestip, as suddent an' comprehensive-like as ye can—wid yer brazen

face afore ye an' yer turned-up nose in the air. When ye are wanted bad

in this house, ye'll get an invite wid a queen's pictur' on it an' me

kyard!" said Tim Kelly, sarcastically.

 

Mary Turner betook herself to the door, in a manner as dignified as

it is possible to retain when retreating with one's face to the foe.

But when she got there, she put her arms akimbo and opened the vials

of her wrath on Tim Kelly. The neighbours came to the doors to listen.

It was a noble effort, and the wives remembered some of Mistress

Turner's phrases long after, and reproduced them every fortnight upon

pay-nights, for the benefit of their husbands when they came home with

only eleven intact shillings out of twenty-three.

 

But Tim Kelly hardly troubled to reply. He only said that Mary Turner

was a brass-faced old Jezebel, a statement which he repeated several

times, because he observed that it provoked on each occasion a fresh

burst of the Turnerian vocabulary.

 

Tim Kelly never wasted animosity. After all, Mistress Turner was not

his wife, and there were other means of getting even with her. He could

win money at cards from her husband, or he could teach her son, Jamie,

who had just left school, a fine new game with the lock of a door and

one of his curious pronged hooks. There are more ways of killing a cat

than drowning it in cream—also many deaths less agreeable to the cat.

So Tim Kelly bided his time.

 

But for some reason Tim Kelly grew less unkind to his wife than he had

ever been, since those terrible days when in Ormiland parish bonny

Isbel Beattie grew "fey."

 

It was said that Tim was afraid of his son Cleg. At any rate, certain

it is that he beat his wife no more, and very occasionally he even

gave her a little money. So in her heart Isbel Kelly counted these

good days, and sometimes she could almost have wished to live a little

longer.

 

It was not often that Cleg stayed in the house with her. That she did

not expect. But at all times of the day she could see him, rushing

about the brickfield, sometimes piling bricks into castles; at other

times helping Jo Turner; then again playing at marbles for "keeps" in

the red dust of the yard, with the sun pouring down upon his head. It

was a constant marvel to Isbel that he was never tired. She was always

tired.

 

Sometimes Cleg Kelly fought, and then his mother called him in. He

always came—after the fight was over. He still wore a hat of straw with

a hole in it, or rather he wore a hole with a little rim of hat round

it. He loved his mother, and, on the whole, attended to what she told

him. He did not steal anything of value, nor would he go near Hare's

public. He did not tell more lies than were just and necessary. He

minded his mother's wants, and was on the whole a fairly good boy, as

boys go down by the Easter Beach brickyard. The standard was not an

exacting one.

 

"Mind, now, Cleg, when I gang awa', ye are to bide wi' your faither,

an' no cross him ower sair. He is your faither, mind, an' I leave him

to you."

 

Cleg promised—to please his mother, but he loved his other parent none

the more. The next time he saw him come home drunk, he clouted him with

a paving-stone from behind the yard wall. He excused himself by saying

his mother was not gone away yet.

 

This was the lesson Isbel taught Cleg every day when he came in to his

scanty meals, many of which good Mistress Turner slipped into the house

under her apron, when the "brute beast and red-headed gorilla" of her

anathema was known to be out of the way.

 

After a while there came an afternoon when Isbel Kelly felt strangely

quiet. It was a drowsy day, and the customary sounds of the brickfield

were hushed in the doze of the afternoon sun. Outside it was hot

with an intense heat, and a kind of pale bluish smother rose off the

burning bricks. The reek of the kilns drifted across the fields, too

lazy to rise through the slumberous sunshine. The whole yard radiated

blistering heat like an oven.

 

Isbel sat by the window in a chair which Tim had made during his

convalescence; for he was exceedingly handy with tools, and during

those days he had nothing worse to do.

 

She made the house as tidy as she could compass during the morning

hours, steadying herself with one hand on the walls as she went about.

Cleg, of course, was playing outside. He had come racing in for his

dinner with a wisp of hair sticking out of the hole in his hat. Isbel

smoothed it down, and because her hand touched him like a caress Cleg

put it from him, saying, "Dinna, mother; somebody micht see ye!"

 

It was hot, and the boy was a little irritable; but his mother

understood.

 

Then, as he took the plate of broth, he told his mother all that had

happened in the brickfield that day. He had carried clay for Jo, and

Jo had given him a penny. Then he had been at a rat-hunt with the best

terrier in the world. He had also chased Michael Hennessy twice round

the yard after a smart bout of fisticuffs. Thereupon, the men had

cheered him, and called him a "perfect wull-cat"—which Cleg took to be

a term of praise, and cherished as a soldier does the "penn'orth o'

bronze" which constitutes the Victoria Cross.

 

Isbel only sat and rested and listened. Tim was away for the day, she

knew not where, and the minutes Cleg remained indoors and talked to her

were her sole and sufficient pleasure. She thanked the Lord for each

one of them. But she never called the boy in against his will, nor yet

held him longer than he cared to stay.

 

Yet, somehow, on this day Isbel was more eager than usual to detain

her son. She clung to him with a strange kind of yearning. But as

soon as Cleg had finished his bread and soup he snatched up his white

straw hat-brim and raced out, crying, as he ran, "I'm awa', mither—Tam

Gillivray has stealed my auld basin withoot the bottom."

 

This was a serious offence, and Cleg went down in haste to avenge the

insult. Soon there was the noise of battle below—chiefly, however, the

noise of them that shout for the mastery; and then, in a little, when

the bottomless basin had been recovered by its rightful owner, the

noise of them that cry for being overcome.

 

From the window Isbel watched. Her thin hair fell over her wasted

temples, and she pressed her hand on her breast, searching as though

something were missing there. And so there was. It was about a lung and

a half which she missed. Nevertheless there had fallen a peace upon

Isbel to which she had been unaccustomed. Faint tremors ran through her

body, and though the window was wide open, she often gasped for breath.

A blissful, painless weariness stole over her.

 

Cleg was playing below. He had achieved a victory, complete, yet not

quite bloodless, for Tam Gillivray was staunching his nose at the

smith's cauldron with a lump of cold iron at the back of his neck.

Cleg, prancing in haughty state and followed by a little train of

admirers, was now dragging the basin in triumph round the yard. He was

pretending that it was a railway train drawn by an engine of extremely

refractory disposition, which curvetted and reared in a most unenginely

manner.

 

Isbel watched him from her window.

 

"He is happy, puir laddie—maybe happier than he'll ever be again. Let

him bide a wee. I'll gie him a cry, in time."

 

Then she looked again. She prayed a little while with her eyes shut.

Beneath, Cleg was holding his court. He had crowned himself with the

basin, and pulled his hair through it in the shape of a plume. As an

appropriate finish for the whole, he had stuck the mop of protruding

locks full of feathers, and now he was presiding over a court of

justice at which Michael Hennessy was being tried for his life on the

charge of murdering a "yellow yoit." In due course the verdict of

justifiable homicide was returned, and the culprit sentenced to kill

another, or be belted round the brickyard.

 

Then, wearying for a fresher ploy, the boys decided to build a

fortress, and instantly, as soon as they had thought of it, they set to

work with a mountain of refuse bricks, Cleg Kelly putting no hand to

the manual labour, but being easily first in the direction of affairs.

This "gaffership" suited Cleg so well that he turned three excellent

wheels in the greatness of his content, and then immediately knocked

over several boys for presuming to imitate him, when they ought to have

been fulfilling orders and building bricks into a fortress.

 

From the window his mother still watched him. She smiled to see his

light-heart joy, and said again, as if to herself, "In a while I shall

cry to him—I dinna need him yet!"

 

All about there grew up in her ears a sound of sweet music, as of the

many singers at the kirk on still, warm Sabbath days, singing the

psalms which she remembered long ago in Ormiland, only they sounded

very far away. And at times the brickyard reeled and dazzled, the arid

trodden ground and steaming bricks fell back, the cracked walls opened

out, and she saw the sun shining upon golden hills, the like of which

she had never seen before.

 

"What is this? Oh, what's this?" she asked herself aloud, and the sound

of her own voice was in her ears as the roaring of many waters.

 

It seemed to her to be almost time now. She leaned forward wearily to

call her son to help her. But he was sitting on a throne in the midst

of his castle, dressed as Robin Hood, with all his merry men about him.

He looked so happy, and he laughed so loud, that Isbel said again to

herself—

 

"I can manage yet for half an hour, and then I shall cry to him."

 

But her son caught sight of her at the window. He was so elated that he

did not mind noticing his mother, as a common boy would have done. He

waved his hand to her, calling out loud—

 

"Mither, mither, I'm biggin' a bonny hoose for ye to leeve in!"

 

Isbel smiled, and it was as if the sun which shone on the hills of her

dream had touched her thin face and made it also beautiful for the last

time before sundown.

 

"My guid boy—my nice boy," she said, "the Lord will look till him! He

said he was biggin' a hoose for his mither. Let him big his hoose. In

an hour I shall cry to him—my ain laddie!"

 

Yet in an hour she did not cry, and it was the only time she had ever

broken her word to her son.

 

But that was because Isbel Kelly had journeyed where no crying is.

Neither shall there be any more pain.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE V.

 

THE BRIGANDS OF THE CITY.

 

 

Cleg Kelly's mother lay still in her resting grave, and had no more

need of pity. Cleg abode with his father in the tumble-down shanty by

the brickfield at Easter Beach, and asked for no pity either. Cleg had

promised his mother, Isbel, that he would not forsake his father.

 

"Na, I'll no rin awa' frae ye," so he told his father, frankly, "for I

promised my mither; but gin ye lick me, I'll pit my wee knife intil ye

when ye are sleepin'! Mind ye that!"

 

And his father minded, which was fortunate for both.

 

Cleg was now twelve, and much respected by his father, who fully

believed that he was speaking the truth. Tim Kelly, snow-shoveller,

feared his son Cleg with his sudden wild-cat fierceness, much more than

he feared God—more, even, than he feared Father Donnelly, to whom he

went twice a year to ease his soul of a portion of his more specially

heinous sins.

 

Yet Tim Kelly was a better man, because of the respect in which he held

his son. He even boasted of Cleg's cleverness when he was safe among

his old cronies in Mother Flannigan's kitchen, or in the bar-parlour at

Hare's public.

 

"Shure, there's not the like av him in this kingdom av ignorant

blockheads. My Clig's the natest and the illigantest gossoon that

stips in his own boot-leather. Shure, he can lick anything at all near

his own weight. Sorra's in him, he can make his ould man stand about.

Faith, 'tis him that's goin' to be the great man intoirely, is our

little Clig."

 

These were the opinions of his proud father.

 

But Jim Carnochan, better known as the "Devil's Lickpot," demurred. If

Cleg was so clever a boy, why was he not set to work? A boy so smart

ought long ere this to have been learning the profession. To this

Mother Flannigan agreed, for she shared in the profits.

 

"My Peether, rest his sowl for a good lad—him as was hanged be token of

false evidence—and the bobbies findin' the gintleman's goold watch in

Peether's pocket, was at wurrk whin he was six years av his age. Take

my wurrd for it, Timothy Kelly, there never yet was a thruely great

man that didn't begin his education young."

 

"Maybe," said Tim, "and that's the raison, Misthress Flannigan, that so

few av them grew up to be ould men."

 

"Gin he was my boy," said Sandy Telfer, whose occupation was breaking

into houses during the summer holidays (one of the safest "lays" in the

profession, but looked down upon as mean-spirited), "I wad be haein'

him through the windows and openin' the front doors every dark nicht."

 

"Ah, you wud, wud ye?" replied Tim Kelly contemptuously; "you're

the great boy to talk, you that has no more manhud in ye than a

draff-sack wid a hole in it. Yuss, ye can do yer dirthy way wid your

own mane-spirited spalpeens, wid no more spunk than a dure-mat. But I'd

have ye know that my Clig cud make hares av you an' ivvery Telfer av

the lot o' ye—hear to me now!"

 

And Tim Kelly shook his fist within an inch of the nose of Sandy

Telfer, who, not being a man of war, showed by the curl of his nostril

and the whitening of his lip, that he did not find the bouquet of Tim

Kelly's bunch-of-fives an agreeable perfume. Tim Kelly waited to see if

on any pretext he could bring his fist into closer contact with Sandy

Telfer's face, but he found no cause.

 

"My Clig," he said emphatically, "is goin' to be a great characther.

He is jist the boy that is to climb the top laddher av the profession.

It's his father that must be out at night, an' run the risk av the

dirthy bobby wid his lanthern, an' the gintleman av the house in his

night-shirt wid a cruel poker. But Clig shall sit safe and aisy in his

chair, an' make his thousands a year wid the scrap av his pen. He'll

promothe companies, an' be out av the way when they burst. He'll write

so illegant that he cud turn ye off another gintleman's signathure as

fast as his own, an' worth a deal more on a bit av paper than anny av

our names——"

 

"Come away hame, faither, sittin' bletherin' there. Ye hae been here

lang enough."

 

It was the face of Cleg Kelly, dirty, sharp, and good-natured, which

appeared at the door of the boozing ken.

 

Mistress Flannigan caught up a pound weight and threw it at Cleg with

a woman's aim. It flew wide, and would surely have smashed some of the

unclean vessels standing ready for the wash on the dresser, had Cleg

not stepped briskly within, and, catching the missile deftly, made a

low bow as he laid it on the table, and said, with his rare disarming

smile—

 

"Your obedient servant, Cleg Kelly!"

 

"Hear to him now, the young bliggard!" cried his delighted and

well-intoxicated father. "He has come to arm the ould man home, an' the

ould man'll have to be stippin' too when Clig gives the wurrd."

 

Isbel Kelly had indeed been a happy woman if, ten years ago, she had

learned Cleg's method.

 

"Come on, faither," reiterated Cleg, who had again retreated to the

door, for he had no liking for the company or the place.

 

Tim Kelly got himself on his feet unsteadily, and lurched towards the

door. His son caught him deftly on the descending swoop.

 

"Steady, faither, mind the stair. Gie us yer han'."

 

And so Cleg got Timothy, his father, who deserved no such care,

tenderly up the filthy exit of Mistress Flannigan's cellar.

 

"Tim's not the man he was," Sandy Telfer said, as the pair went out.

 

"It's fair undecent doin' as the boy bids him, an' never so much as

puttin' the laddie to an honest bit o' wark. Ah, he'll suffer for that,

or a' be dune! They'll be raisons annexed to that," continued the

summer housebreaker, who had been respectably brought up on the Shorter

Catechism, but who, owing to a disappointment in love, had first of all

joined another denomination, and, the change not answering its purpose,

had finally taken to housebreaking and drink.

 

"Ye may say so, indeed," said Bridget Flannigan.

 

So Cleg took his father home to the rickety house by the brickyard.

Cleg kept the room clean as well as he could. But the sympathetic

neighbour, who remembered his mother, occasionally took a turn round

the place with a scrubbing-brush when it was absolutely certain that

the "red-headed gorilla" was absent, attending to other people's business.