Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 7

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 7

The builder saw Cleg flitting hither and thither about the yard, but,

being accustomed to such visitors, he took no great notice of the boy,

till one day, poking about among some loose rubbish and boards at the

back of his yard, he happened to glance at the old hut. Great was his

astonishment to see it set on its end, a window frame too large for

the aperture secured on the outside with large nails driven in at the

corners, a little fringe of soil scraped roughly about it as if a brood

of chickens had worked their way round the hut, and a few solitary

daisies dibbled into the loose earth, lying over on their sides, in

spite of the small ration of water which had been carefully served out

to each.

 

Thomas Callendar stood a moment gathering his senses. He had a callant

of his own who might conceivably have been at the pains to establish a

summer-house in his yard. But then James was at present at the seaside

with his mother. The builder went round the little hut, and at the

further side he came upon Cleg Kelly dribbling water upon the wilting

daisies from a broken brown teapot, and holding on the lid with his

other hand.

 

"Mercy on us! what are ye doing here, callant?" cried the astonished

builder.

 

Cleg Kelly stood up with the teapot in his hand, taking care to

keep the lid on as he did so. His life was so constant a succession

of surprises provided against by watchfulness that hardly even an

earthquake would have taken him unprepared.

 

He balanced the teapot in one hand, and with the other he pulled at his

hat-brim to make his manners.

 

"If ye please, sir," he said, "they turned me oot at the brickyaird,

and I brocht the bits o' things here. I kenned ye wadna send me away,

Maister Callendar."

 

"How kenned ye that I wadna turn ye away, boy?" said the builder.

 

"Oh, I juist prefarred to come back here, at ony rate," said Cleg.

 

"But why?" persisted Mr. Callendar.

 

Cleg scratched the turned-up earth of his garden thoughtfully with his

toe.

 

"Weel," he said, "if ye maun ken, it was because I had raither

lippen[2] to the deil I ken than to the deil I dinna ken!"

 

The builder laughed good-naturedly.

 

"So ye think me a deil?" he asked, making believe to cut at the boy

with the bit of planed moulding he was carrying in his hand with black

pencil-marks at intervals upon it as a measuring-rod.

 

"Ow, it's juist a mainner o' speaking!" said Cleg, glancing up at Mr.

Callendar with twinkling eyes. He knew that permission to bide was

as good as granted. The builder came and looked within. The hut was

whitewashed inside, and the black edges of the boards made transverse

lines across the staring white.

 

Cleg explained.

 

"I didna steal the whitewash," he said; "I got it frae Andrew Heslop

for helpin' him wi' his lime-mixing.

 

"It's a fine healthsome, heartsome smell," the boy went on, noticing

that the builder was sniffing. "Oh, man, it's the tar that ye smell,"

he again broke in. "I'm gaun to tar it on the ootside. It keeps the

weather off famous. I gat the tar frae a watchman at the end o' the

Lothian Road, where they are laying a new kind o' pavement wi' an

awsome smell."

 

The interior of the hut was shelved, and upon a pair of old trestles

was a good new mattress. The builder looked curiously at it.

 

"It was the Pleasance student missionary got it in for my mither to lie

on afore she died," said Cleg in explanation.

 

"Aye, and your mither is awa," said the builder; "it's a release."

 

"Aye, it is that," said Cleg, from whose young heart sorrow of his

mother's death had wholly passed away. He was not callous, but he was

old-fashioned and world-experienced enough to recognise facts frankly.

It was a release indeed for Isbel Kelly.

 

"Weel," said the builder, "mind ye behave yoursel'. Bring nae wild

gilravage o' loons here, or oot ye gang."

 

"Hearken ye, Maister," said Cleg. "There's no a boy atween Henry Place

an' the Sooth Back that wull daur to show the ill-favoured face o'

him within your muckle yett. I'll be the best watch that ever ye had,

Maister Callendar. See if I'm no!"

 

The builder smiled as he went away. He took the measuring-rod of white

moulding in his hand, and looked at the marks to recall what particular

business he had been employed upon. But even as he did so a thought

struck him. He turned back.

 

"Mind you," he said to Cleg, "the first time that ye bring the faither

o' ye aboot my yaird, to the curb-stane ye gang wi' a' your traps and

trantlums!"

 

Cleg peeped elvishly out of his citadel.

 

"My faither," he said, "is snug in a far grander hoose than yours or

mine, Maister Callendar. He has ta'en the accommodation for a year, and

gotten close wark frae the Gowvernment a' the time!"

 

"What mean ye?" said the builder; "your faither never reformed?"

 

"Na, no that," answered Cleg; "but he got a year for ganging intil

anither man's hoose without speering his leave. And I was there and saw

the judge gie him a tongue-dressing afore he spoke oot the sentence.

'One year!' says he. 'Make it three, my Lord!' says I frae the back of

the coort. So they ran me oot; but my faither kenned wha it was, for

he cried, 'May hunger, sickness, and trouble suck the life from ye, ye

bloodsucking son of my sorrow! Wait till I get hoult o' ye! I'll make

ye melt off the earth like the snow off a dyke, son o' mine though ye

are!'"

 

The respectable builder stood aghast.

 

"And your ain faither said the like o' that till ye?" he asked, with a

look of awe in his face as if he had been listening to blasphemy. "And

what did you say to him?"

 

"Faith! I only said, 'I hope ye'll like the oakum, faither!'"

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XII.

 

VARA KAVANNAH OF THE TINKLERS' LANDS.

 

 

Cleg having finished his dispositions, shut to his door, and barred it

with a cunning bolt, shot with string, which he had constructed till

he should be able to find an old lock to manipulate with the craft

inherited from his father. Then he set forth for the Tinklers' Lands,

to visit his friends the Kavannahs. He had delivered his papers in

the early morning, and now he was free till the evening. For since a

threatened descent of the police, Mistress Roy, that honest merchant,

had discouraged Cleg from "hanging round" after his work was finished.

She attempted to do the discouraging with a broomstick or anything

else that came handy. But Cleg was far too active to be struck by a

woman. And, turning upon his mistress with a sudden flash of teeth like

the grin of a wild cat, he sent that lady back upon the second line

of her defences—into the little back shop where that peculiar company

assembled which gave to Roy's paper-shop its other quality of shebeen.

 

Cleg had just reached the arched gateway which led into the builder's

yard, when he saw, pottering along the sidewalk twenty yards before

him the squat, bandy-legged figure of his late landlord, Mr. Nathan.

He had been going the round of the builders, endeavouring to discover

which of them would effect the repairs of Tim Kelly's mansion at the

least expense, and at the same time be prepared to satisfy the fiery

Inspector of Sanitation.

 

Without a moment's hesitation, and as a mere matter of duty, Cleg

bent his head, and, running full-tilt between his late landlord's

legs, he overset him on the pavement and shot ahead on his way to make

his morning call on the Kavannahs. The fulfilment of healthy natural

function required that a well-conducted boy of good principles should

cheek a policeman and overset a Jew landlord whenever met with. In such

a war there could be no truce or parley.

 

Tinklers' Lands was in one of the worst parts of the city. Davie

Dean's Street goes steeply down hill, and has apparently carried all

its inhabitants with it. Tinklers' Lands is quite at the foot, and the

inhabitants have come so low that they can fear no further fall. The

Kavannahs, as has been said, dwelt in the cellar of the worst house in

Tinklers' Lands.

 

Cleg ran down into the area and bent over the grating.

 

"Vara!" he cried, making a trumpet of the bars and his hands.

 

"Aye, Cleg, is that you?" said Vara. "She's oot; ye can come in."

 

So Cleg trotted briskly down the slimy black steps, from which the top

hand-rail had long since vanished. The stumpy palings themselves would

also have disappeared if they had been anything else than cast metal, a

material which can neither be burned nor profitably disposed of to the

old junk man.

 

Vara met him at the foot. She was a pleasant, round-faced, merry-eyed

girl of ten—or, rather, she would have been round-faced but for the

pitiful drawing about the mouth and the frightened look with which she

seemed to shrink back at any sudden movement near her. As Cleg arrived

at the door of the cellar a foul, dank smell rose from the depths to

meet him; and he, fresh from the air and cleanliness of his own new

abode among the shavings and the chips, noticed it as he would not have

done had he come directly from the house by the brickfield.

 

"She gaed awa' last nicht wi' an ill man," said Vara, "and I hae seen

nocht o' her since."

 

Vara Kavannah spoke of Sheemus Kavannah as "faither," but always of her

mother as "she." To-day the girl had her fair hair done up in a womanly

net and stowed away on the top of her head. When one has the cares of

a house and family, it is necessary to dress in a grown-up fashion.

Indeed, in some of her moods, when the trouble of Hugh and the baby lay

heavy on her, Vara looked like a little old woman, as if she had been

her own fairy godmother fallen upon evil times.

 

But to-day she had her head also tied in a napkin, rolled white

and smooth about her brows. Cleg glanced at it with the quick

comprehension which comes from a kindred bitterness.

 

"Her?" he queried, as much with his thumb and eyebrow as with his voice.

 

"Aye," said Vara, looking down at the floor, for in the Lands such

occurrences were not spoken of outside the family; "yestreen."

 

Hearing the voices at the door, little Hugh, Vara's brother of four,

came toddling unevenly upon legs which ought to have been chubby, but

which were only feeble and uncertain. He had one hand wrapped in a

piece of white rag; and, whenever he remembered, he carried it in his

other hand and wept over it with a sad, wearying whimper.

 

Cleg again looked his query at Vara.

 

"Aye," said the girl, her eyes lighting this time with a glint of

anger; "the bairn toddled to her when she cam' hame, and he asked for

a bit piece. And wi' that she took him and gied him a fling across the

floor, and he hurt his airm on the corner of the bed."

 

And Cleg, though he had given up swearing, swore.

 

"The wean's asleep!" said Vara; "speak quietly."

 

And upon tiptoe she led the way. The dusk of the cellar was so dense

and the oppression of the foul air so terrible that had not Cleg been

to the manner born, he could hardly have reached the little crib where

the baby lay huddled among swathings of old petticoats and bits of

flannel, while underneath was a layer of hay.

 

Vara stood gazing with inexpressible rapture at the babe.

 

"Isna he bonny—bonny?"

 

She clasped her hands as she spoke, and looked for the answering

admiration in Cleg's face.

 

"Aye," said Cleg, who knew what was demanded of him if he expected to

remain Vara Kavannah's friend; "he's juist terrible bonny—elegant as a

pictur'!"

 

He had heard his father say that of a new "jemmy."

 

In truth, the babe was but skin and bone, with the drawn face of a

mummy of five thousand years—and tiny hands, prehensile like those of a

monkey.

 

"Vara," said Cleg, "ye canna bide here. I maun get ye awa'. This is no

to be tholed. What hae ye had to eat the day?"

 

"We had some broth that a neighbour brocht in yesterday, and some fish.

But the fish was bad," said Vara, flushing and hesitating even to say

these things to Cleg.

 

The badness of the fish, indeed, sufficiently advertised itself.

 

At the mention of something to eat little Hugh sharpened his croon of

pain into a yell.

 

"Hugh's awsome hungry! Hugh boy wants his dinner!"

 

Vara went to him and knelt beside him.

 

"Hush thee, Hugh boy!" she said, speaking with a fragrance of

motherliness which must have come to her from some ancestor, for

certainly never in her life had she experienced anything like it.

"Hush! Hugh boy shall have his dinner if he is a good boy! Poor handie!

Poor, poor handie!"

 

And the girl took the swollen wrist and torn hand into hers and rocked

to and fro with the boy on her knee.

 

"Hugh is gaun to be a man," she said. "He wadna greet. Na, he will wait

till faither comes hame. And then he will get ham, nice ham, singing

in the pan; aye, and red herring brandering on the fire, and salmon in

tins, an' aipples, an' oranges, an' cancellaries."

 

"Losh, aye, but that wull be guid!" said Hugh, stopping his crying to

listen to the enthralling catalogue.

 

"Aye," said Vara, "and when faither comes hame, he will tak' us away

to a bonny hoose to leeve where the ships sail by. For dadda has gane

to the seaside to look for wark. It will be a bonny hoose wi' swings

at every door, and blacky men that dance in braw, striped claes, and

shows. And Hugh boy shall gang to them a'. We'll howk holes in the

sand, and fill the dirt into buckets, and row our girds, Hughie. And we

shall paidle in the tide, and splash the bonny water aboon oor heids!"

 

"Oh, oh," cried the child, "Hugh boy wants to gang noo. He wants to

paidle in the bonny water and eat the oranges!"

 

"Bide ye, bonny man," said Vara, fondling him, "that's a' to be when

dadda comes hame."

 

"Hugh boy is gangin' to the door to look for dadda!" said the boy as he

moved off with his bandaged hand clutched to his side.

 

The baby in the bunk among the old clouts set up a crying, and Cleg

went to it, for he was touched to the heart by the voice of dumb things

in pain, whether babes or beasts.

 

But little Gavin (called for a comrade of Sheemus Kavannah's who had

been kind to him) was wrinkling all his face into a myriad crinkles.

Then, lifting up the tiniest shrill pipe, he cried with the cry

of underfed and ill-used childhood—a cry that breaks off sharp in

the middle and never attains to the lusty roar of the healthy and

well-grown malcontent.

 

Vara flew to Gavin and, taking the babe in her arms, she hushed him

back again to sleep, making a swift gesture of command for silence.

She kept her eyes fondly upon the peaked little face, till the wailing

ceased, the tiny clenched hand fell back from the puckered face, and

the infant dropped again to sleep, clasping the frill of Vara's

pinafore with fingers like bird claws.

 

"I was feared he wad waken an' I had nocht to gie him," she explained,

simply.

 

"God!" said Cleg; "I canna stand this."

 

And without a word he skimmed up the cellar steps and out. He went

straight to his mistress of the paper-shop, and with her he had a

loud-voiced and maledictory interview, in which he endeavoured to

uplift his week's wage before it was due. There were threats and

recriminations on both sides before a compromise was effected. It ended

in the half, which had already been worked for, being paid over in view

of instant necessities—which, it is to be regretted, Cleg did not quite

truthfully represent to Mistress Roy.

 

Then, with two silver shillings in his hand, Cleg went and bought

twopence worth of meat from the neck and a penny bone for boiling, a

penny worth of carrots, a halfpenny cabbage, a large four-pound loaf,

and twopence worth of the best milk. To this he added two apples and an

orange for Hugh, so that he might have a foretaste of the golden time

when dadda should come home.

 

It was as good as a circus procession when Cleg went back laden like a

bee, and no humble bee either, to the cellar in Tinklers' Lands. He had

his head in the air, and his chest out, just as he used to march when

he heard the regiments coming down the High Street from the Castle, and

caught a glimpse of their swinging tartans and towering plumes.

 

Vara met him at the door. She raised her hands in amaze, but

mechanically checked the cry of gladness and admiration on her lips

as Cleg came scrambling down, without ever minding his feet on the

slippery stairs.

 

"Cleg Kelly!" said she, speaking under her breath, "what are ye doin'

wi' a' that meat?"

 

"Oh, it's nocht ava," said Cleg lightly; "it's juist some things that

I had nae use for this week. Ye ken I'm watchman noo at Callendar's as

weel as working at the paper-shop!"

 

"Save us!" said Vara, "this is never a' for us. I canna tak' it. I

canna!"

 

"Aye, is it!" said Cleg, "an' you tak' it for the bairns' sake. Sheemus

will pay me when he comes back, gin ye like!"

 

Vara's heart broke out in a cry, "O Cleg, I canna thank ye!" And her

tears fairly rained down while she sobbed quickly and freely.

 

"Dinna, Vara, dinna, lassie!" said Cleg, edging for the door; "ye maun

stop that or I declare I'll hae to rin!"

 

From within came the babe's cry. But it had no terrors for Vara now.

 

"Greet, Gavin, greet," she cried; "aye, that is richt. Let us hear

something like a noise, for I hae gotten something to gie ye at last."

 

So she hasted and ran for the baby's bottle—which, as in all poor

houses, was one of Maw's best. She mixed rapidly the due proportions of

milk and water, and tested the drawing of the tube with her mouth as

she ran to the cot. At first the babe could not be brought to believe

in the genuineness of the nourishment offered, so often had the cold

comfort of the empty tube been offered. It was a moment or two before

he tasted the milk; but, as soon as he did so, his outcry ceased as if

by magic, the puckers smoothed out, and the big solemn baby eyes fixed

themselves on the ceiling of the cellar with a stare of grave rapture.

 

Then Cleg took himself off, with a hop and a skip up the steps,

having seen Hugh settled to his bread and butter, eating eagerly and

jealously, but never for a moment letting the orange, earnest of the

Promised Land of his father's return, out of his other hand. Vara was

putting away the great store of provision in the empty cupboard when

Cleg looked his last down the grating which admitted the scanty light to the Kavannahs' home.