Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 4

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 4

Whenever Cleg saw his father refrain from Hare's public and the evening

sessions of Mistress Flannigan's interesting circle, he knew that Tim

had a project on hand. Generally he took no particular heed to these.

For it was his custom, as soon as he saw his father off on any of his

raids, to go and report himself casually at the nearest police-station,

where the sergeant's wife knew him. She often gave him a "piece" with

sugar on it, having known his mother before ever she left the parish of

Ormiland.

 

The sergeant's wife remembered her own happy escape from being Mrs.

Timothy Kelly, and though her heart had been sore against Isbel at the

time, she had long forgotten the feeling in thankfulness that her lines

had fallen on the right side of the law. But she had never confided to

the sergeant that she had once known Tim Kelly somewhat intimately.

 

Cleg did not mean to be mixed up in any of his father's ill-doings if

he could help it, so upon these occasions he frequented the precincts

of the police-station as much as the sergeant's wife would let him.

 

It was his custom to take his "piece"—an excellent thick slice of bread

with brown sugar on it—and seat himself on a luxurious paling opposite

to eat it. The fact that a great many message boys passed that way may

have had something to do with Cleg's choice of locality. Cleg liked to

be envied. And, seeing the "piece," more than one boy was sure to give

chase. This introduced a healthy variety into Cleg's life. He liked to

fool with these young men of the message basket. Exercise sharpens the

appetite, and when this morning the butcher's boy chivvied him over the

parched-up grass field that lay between the station and the brickyard,

Cleg fairly whooped in his joy.

 

At first he ran slowly, and apparently with great alarm, so that the

butcher's boy had not the least doubt that he easily could catch him.

Cleg held the sergeant's wife's "piece" in his hand as he ran, so that

the butcher's boy could see the thick sugar on the top of the yellow

butter. This stirred up the pursuer's desires, and he made a spurt to

seize Cleg. Had the assailant been the grocer's boy, to whom sugar and

butter were vain things, Cleg would have had to try another plan. Now,

when the butcher's boy spurted, Cleg almost let himself be caught. He

heard close behind him the labouring of the avenger. With a sudden rush

he sped thirty yards in front; then he turned and ran backwards, eating

the sergeant's wife's "piece" as he ran. This aggravated the butcher's

boy to such an extent that he had to stop with his hand on his panting

side, and curse Cleg's parentage—which, sad to relate, pleased Cleg

more than anything. He said it was prime. By which he meant, not the

sergeant's wife's "piece," but the whole situation, and especially the

disgust of the butcher's boy.

 

Then Cleg, being contented, offered honourable terms, for he and the

butcher's boy were in reality very good friends. He gave his late

pursuer a fair half of the bread and sugar, but reserved the crust for

himself. So, munching amicably, Cleg and the butcher's boy returned

together to the paling on which Cleg had been sitting.

 

But, alas! during his temporary absence from his care, Tam Luke, the

baker's boy, had come along. And in pursuit of the eternal feud between

butcher's boys and baker's boys, he had overturned the basket and

rolled the meat on the road. Luke was now sitting on the rail a little

way along, smoking a pipe loaded with brown paper, with a kind of

ostentatious calmness.

 

When half across the field the butcher's boy observed the insult to his

basket. Yet he said nothing till he came quite near. Then, in the most

friendly manner possible, he seized the defiled leg of mutton, destined

for the dinner of an eminent Doctor in Divinity, and hit Tam Luke a

swinging blow over the head with it, which not only broke that youth's

pipe, but for a season spoiled the shape of his mouth, and tumbled him

incontinently over the fence.

 

The baker's boy rose, shedding freely bits of clay pipe and exceedingly

evil words. A battle royal seemed imminent to one who did not know the

commonplaces of friendly intercourse among these worthies. But the

baker's boy contented himself with stating over and over in varied and

ornamental language, highly metaphorical in parts, what he would do

to the butcher's boy if he hit him again. However, the butcher's boy

had too great an advantage in handling Professor Hinderlands' leg of

mutton, and the tempest gradually blew itself out.

 

Whereupon all parties betook themselves to a street pump to wash the

various articles which had been strewed in the mire, and to dry them

on the butcher's boy's blue-striped apron, which he wore girt about

him like a rope. It was a highly instructive sight. And had the cooks

of various respectable families seen the process, they would have had

a sufficient answer to their frequent indignant question that morning,

"What can be keeping Cleaver's young vaigabond?"

 

Also, had they happened to pass, a number of the good ladies who sat

down so comfortably to enjoy their dinners (which they called "lunch"

if anybody happened to call) would certainly have gone without the

principal course.

 

But the butcher's boy and the baker's boy were not in the least

distressed. Such things happened every day. It was all in the way of

business. And as for our hero, he, as we have indicated before, merely

remarked, in his vulgar way, that it was prime.

 

So far he had had a good, interesting day, and was exceedingly pleased

with himself.

 

Presently all three went and calmly smoked on the side of the road,

roosting contentedly on the paling, while Tam Luke, who had got a prize

for good reading at the school, drew out of his pocket "The Bully

Boys' Budget"—an international journal of immense circulation, which

described the adventures of associated bands of desperate ruffians

(aged, on an average, nine) in New York, a city which Cleaver's loon

looked upon as a boys' Paradise. Boys were discouraged in Edinburgh.

They got no chance of distinguishing themselves.

 

"It's a most michty queer thing," said Cleg, "that the story says, if

Tam Luke reads it richt——"

 

"I'll smash yer tawtie heid!" remarked that gentleman, mightily

offended at the insinuation.

 

"If Tam Luke reads it richt," continued Cleg, "that in New York the

bobbies rin frae the boys; but here the boys rin frae the bobbies like

fun."

 

"_Me?_" said Cleaver's boy. "I wadna rin for ony bobby in the hale

toon."

 

"An' _me_," cried Tam Luke, with mighty contempt, "I lickit a big bobby

the nicht afore yestreen. I could fecht a bobby wi' yae hand tied ahint

my back."

 

"Bobbies are nane sic bad folks. The sergeant's wife over there gied me

a 'piece,'" said Cleg gratefully.

 

"Ye are a reid-heided Irish traitor!" said the butcher's boy with

emphasis.

 

"It's my faither that's reid-heided," said Cleg promptly; "but tak'

that ony way for speaking ill o' the family!"

 

And with the back of his hand he knocked the libeller of his forbears

over into the field.

 

"I'm gaun to be captain o' a band o' robbers—will ye baith join?" said

Tam Luke.

 

Cleaver's boy was about to wreak his vengeance on Cleg from the other

side of the fence, but he paused with his arm suspended to think over

the proposal.

 

"I'm gaun to be captain o' a band mysel'! Will ye join?" said the

butcher's boy to Cleg, instead of assaulting him as he had first

intended.

 

"What to do?" asked practical Cleg.

 

"To fecht the poliss, of course!" cried the butcher's boy and the

baker's boy together. Their unanimity was wonderful.

 

"_There's the sergeant the noo!_" said Cleg quietly, pointing across

the road.

 

And it was indeed the sergeant, who, having been on night duty, had

just risen and strolled out to see what kind of weather it was.

 

The valiant captains of the decimating bands which were to terrorise

the police of the city, descended from their several roosts as with

one mind, seized their baskets, and sped round opposite corners with

amazing speed.

 

Cleg Kelly was left alone, sitting on the paling. He pulled out what

remained of his crust, and as he ate it with relish, he laughed aloud

and kicked his heels with glee, so that the sergeant, stretching

himself after his day-sleep, called across to the boy——

 

"What's up wi' ye, Cleg? Ye seem to be enjoyin' yoursel'!"

 

But all the answer he could get out of Cleg was just, "O man, sergeant,

it's prime!"

 

But as to whether he meant the crust or only things in general, the

sergeant was none the wiser.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE VI.

 

CLEG TURNS BURGLAR.

 

 

Cleg had watched his father furtively all day. Little conversation

passed between these two. Cleg devoted much of his time to a

consideration of the best means of legitimate gain in his new

profession of capitalist. He possessed the large sum of one shilling

and a penny. It was banked upon sound old principles in the hollow

end of a brick, which was buried under a flag in the backyard of a

brewery. Cleg had hidden it with mystic incantations, and now carried

a red worsted thread twisted round his finger to remind him of its

whereabouts.

 

But there was another reason besides his large capital, why Cleg was

unusually watchful of his father that day. First of all, Tim Kelly

had come home sober from Hare's public the night before. That was a

suspicious circumstance in itself. It showed not only that his ready

cash had all been liquefied, but that Mistress Hare had drawn a line

under the big chalk score behind her door. This line was the intimation

that the single file of figures must be wiped off before another dram

was served.

 

"Ye've had Larry on your back long enough, sure, Tim!" said Mistress

Hare, who regulated these matters in person. "Idleness is a most deadly

sin, Father Malony sez!" continued the landlady devoutly.

 

"Shure, an' it's not the divil's sin, thin, Mistress Hare," said Tim

acutely, "for he's busy enough!"

 

Tim was the only burglar with a brogue in the city, and as such was

dear to the heart of Mistress Hare. For the Scot, when he takes to the

investigation of other people's houses, does so grimly and without

romance. But Tim had always a hint of Celtic imagination and even of

poetry in his creations.

 

For instance, all that day on which Cleg kept his eye on his father,

Tim was meditating a raid on the house of Mr. Robert Grey Tennant, a

comfortable burgess of the burgh, who for the ease of his later life

had built himself—not a lordly pleasure house indeed, but a comfortable

mansion of Craigleith stone, exactly like three hundred and sixty-five

other mansions on the south side of the city.

 

There was at the back of Aurelia Villa a little bordering of flowers

and strawberries. These, however, never came to much, for the cats

broke the flowers and extraneous boys stole the strawberries. There was

also a little green plot, big enough for parlour croquet, but not big

enough for lawn tennis. Yet this did not prevent the serious-minded

and inventive young woman of the house, Miss Cecilia Tennant, from

frequently playing what she called "pocket-handkerchief tennis" on this

scraplet of lawn. And it was indeed a lively game, when two or three

of her admirers arrived with racquets and rubber shoes to engage in

silk-striped summer strife.

 

When a couple of champions of the Blackhouse Club met on the same side

of the net, they winked at each other, and amusement struggled with

politeness within them. But when each one of their services came near

to annihilating an opponent's nose, and as they sent their returns

out of court and over boundary walls with monotonous regularity, they

changed their minds. Especially was this so when Miss Cecilia Tennant

and a certain Junior Partner in a mercantile concern in the town, put

in with equal certainty neat services and returns, dropping the balls

unexpectedly into odd corners as if playing with egg spoons. They asked

the Junior Partner how he did it. The Junior Partner said it was native

genius. But perhaps the undisclosed fact that Cecilia Tennant and he

played together three nights out of six on that lawn had rather more to

do with it. Pocket-handkerchief tennis is certainly convenient for some

things. It keeps the players very close to one another, except when

they fall out—an advantage which it shares with ballooning.

 

But Tim Kelly was not interested in this house because of the desirable

young men who played tennis there, nor yet because of any love of the

young woman for whose sweet sake they bought new scarves and frequented

the neighbourhood on the chance of a casual meeting. On the contrary,

Timothy was after the spoons. Hall-marked silver was his favourite

form of sport. And for this he had all the connoisseur's eagerness and

appreciation.

 

His son was, on the contrary, exceedingly interested in the house

itself. He was the most fervent of Miss Cecilia Tennant's admirers,

though he had never told her so. This peculiarity he shared with a

great many other young gentlemen, including every male teacher except

two (already attached) in Hunker Court school.

 

Yet in spite of all this affection, before midnight of that autumn

night, Cleg Kelly, future Christian, became a burglar—and that upon the

premises of his benefactress, Miss Cecilia Tennant. It happened in this

wise.

 

Tim sat all day on the floor of his house at home. He did so from

necessity, not from choice. For his apartment was airily furnished in

the Japanese fashion, with little except a couple of old mattresses

and as many rugs. There were no chairs. They had been removed during

Tim's last absence in the "Calton" by the landlord in lieu of rent. So

Tim sat on the floor and worked with a file among a bundle of keys and

curiously constructed tools. There was, for instance, a great lever

with a fine thin edge set sideways to slip beneath windows on stormy

nights, when the wrench of the hasp from its fastening would not be

heard.

 

There were delicate little keys with spidery legs which Tim looked

at with great admiration, and loved more than he had ever loved his

wife and all his relations. There were also complicated wrenching

implements, with horror latent about them, as though they had come from

some big arm-chaired, red-glassed dental surgery. Tim Kelly was putting

his tools to rights, and Cleg watched him intently, for he also was a

conspirator.

 

At midday the boy vanished and reported himself at the

police-sergeant's. He asked for a "piece," and the sergeant's wife told

him to be off. She was busy and he might come back when the weans came

in for their dinners. She had not time to be always giving the likes of

him "pieces" in the middle of the day.

 

Cleg did not care. He was not particularly hungry. But he hung about

all afternoon in the neighbourhood of the police-station, and so

pestered the good-natured policemen off duty, that one of them

threatened him with "a rare belting" if he did not quit.

 

Whereupon Cleg buttoned up his jacket, made to himself a paper helmet,

and with a truncheon in his hand stalked about in front of the station,

taking up stray dogs in the name of the law. One of these he had

previously taught to walk upon its hind legs. This animal he arrested,

handcuffed with a twist of wire, and paraded over against the station

in a manner killingly comic—much to the amusement of the passers-by,

as well as detrimental to the sobriety and discipline of the younger

officers themselves. But Cleg was seldom meddled with by the police.

He was under the protection of the sergeant's wife, who so often gave

him a "piece." She also gave "pieces" sometimes to the officers at the

station-house. For according as a policeman is fed, so is he. And it

was the sergeant's wife who stirred the porridge pot. Therefore Cleg

was left alone.

 

In this manner Cleg amused himself till dark, when he stole home. His

father was already coming down the stairs. Cleg rapidly withdrew.

His father passed out and took the narrowest lanes southward till he

entered the Queen's Park under the immanent gloom of the Salisbury

Crags. Cleg followed like his shadow. Tim Kelly often looked behind.

He boasted that he could hear the tramp of the regulation police boot

at least half a mile, and tell it from the tread of a circus elephant,

and even from the one o'clock gun at the Castle. But he saw no silent

boy tracking him noiselessly after the fashion of the Indian scout, so

vividly described in the "Bully Boys' Journal."

 

Tim Kelly bored his way into the eye of a rousing south wind that

"reesled" among the bare bones of Samson's Ribs, and hurled itself

upon Edinburgh as if to drive the city off its long, irregular ridge

into the North Sea. Bending sharply to the right, the burglar came

among buildings again. He crossed the marshy end of Duddingstone Loch.

It was tinder-dry with the drought. At the end of a long avenue was

to be seen the loom of houses, and the gleam of lights, as burgess's

wife and burgess moved in this order to their bedrooms and disarrayed

themselves for the night.

 

Tim Kelly hid behind a wall. Cleg crouched behind his father, but

sufficiently far behind not to attract his attention. Cleg was

taking his first lessons in the great craft of speculation—which is

the obtaining of your neighbour's goods without providing him with

an equivalent in exchange. The trifling matter of your neighbour's

connivance, requisite in betting and stock transactions, escaped the

notice of the Kellys. But perhaps after all that did not matter.

 

Aurelia Villa, the home of Miss Cecilia Tennant (incidentally also of

her father, Mr. Robert Grey Tennant), darkened down early; for Mr.

Robert Tennant was an early riser, and early rising means early bedding

(and a very good thing too).

 

Tim Kelly knew all that, for his local knowledge was as astonishing

as his methods of obtaining it were mysterious. It was not twelve of

the clock when Tim drew himself over the wall out of the avenue, and

dropped lightly as a cat upon the pocket-handkerchief lawn, which all

the summer had been worn at the corners by the egg-spoon tennis of

Cecilia and the Junior Partner.

 

Tim Kelly was at the back door in a minute. It was down three steps. He

laid a bag of tools, which clinked a little as he took them out of his

pocket, on the stone ledge of the step. It might be safer, he thought,

to take a look round the house and listen for the hippopotamus tread

of the regulation bull-hide. In a moment after Tim was round at the

gable end flat among the strawberries. There it came! Clear and

solemnising fell the tread of the law in all its majesty—a bull's-eye

lantern swinging midships a sturdy girth, which could hardly, even by

courtesy, be called a waist. Flash! Like a search-light ran the ray of

the lantern over the front of the property of Mr. Robert Grey Tennant.

 

But the regulation boots were upon the feet of a man of probity. The

wearer opened the front gate, tramped up the steps, conscientiously

tried the front door and dining-room window of the end house in the

row. They were fast. All was well. Duty done. The owners might sleep

sound. They paid heavy police rates to a beneficent local authority.

Why should they not sleep well? But, alas! the regulation boots did not

take any cognisance of Tim Kelly with his nose among the strawberries,

or of a small boy who was speeding over the waste fields and back yards

into the Park. The small boy carried a parcel. He was a thief. This

small boy was Cleg Kelly, the hero of this tale.

 

Timothy Kelly rose from among the strawberries with laughter and scorn

in his heart. If the bobby had only gone to the back door instead of

the front, there was a parcel there, which it would have made him a

proud policeman to take to the head office. Tim Kelly stooped at the

steps to take up his precious satchel of tools. His hand met the bare

stone. His bag was gone! His heart dinned suddenly in his ears. This

was not less than witchcraft. He had never been ten yards from them

all the time. Yet the tools were gone without sound or sight of human

being. Then there was an interval.

 

* * * * *

 

During this interval Tim Kelly expressed his opinions upon things in

general. The details are quite unfit for publication.

 

But at that very moment, over at the end of Duddingstone Loch, a small

boy was whirling a small but heavy bag round his head.

 

"Once! Twice! Thrice—and away!" he cried with glee. Something hurtled

through the air, and fell with a splash far in the black deeps of the

loch. Years after this the antiquary of the thirtieth century may find

this bundle, and on the strength of it he will take away the honest

character of our ancestors of the Iron Age, proving that burglary was

commonly and scientifically practised among them. But the memory of

Cleg Kelly will be clear.

 

Indeed, he was sound asleep when his father came in, breathing out

threatenings and slaughter. Tim listened intently with his ear at his

son's mouth, for it is well to be suspicious of every one. But Cleg's breathing was as natural and regular as that of an infant.