Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 9

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 9

"What do you want, boy?" he said, with a glance at the tattered

trousers with one "gallus" showing across the blue shirt, which

represented Cleg's entire summer wear.

 

"Hae ye ony licht job ye could gie a clever and wullin' lassie the

morn?" said Cleg, who knew that the way to get a thing is to ask for it.

 

"What lassie?" said the junior partner indifferently.

 

"A lassie that has nae faither or mither," said Cleg—"worth speakin'

aboot," he added as an afterthought.

 

"We are full up," said Donald Iverach, balancing himself upon one

leg of his stool. For his father was old-fashioned, and despised the

luxury of stuffed chairs as not in keeping with a sound, old-fashioned

conservative business.

 

Cleg looked disappointed.

 

"It wad be an awsome graund thing for the lassie if she could get a job

here," said Cleg sadly.

 

"Another time," replied the junior partner, turning to his desk. To

him the case and application were as fifty more. He only wished the

manager had been at hand to refer the case to. Donald was like most of

his kindly fellow-creatures. He liked to have his nasty jobs done by

deputy. Which is one reason why the law is a lucrative profession.

 

Cleg was at the door, his head sunk so low that it was nearly between

his feet. But at the very out-going, with the great brass handle in his

fingers, he tried once more.

 

"Aweel," he said, without taking his eyes off the brown matting on the

floor, "I'll e'en hae to gang and tell Miss Tennant aboot it. She wull

be desperate vexed!"

 

The junior partner swung round on his stool and called, "Hey! boy,

stop!"

 

But Cleg was already outside.

 

"Call that boy back!" he shouted to the watchman, leaping to the door

with sudden agility and astonishing interest.

 

Cleg returned with the same dejected mien and abased eyes. He stood,

the image of sorrow and disappointment, upon the cocoa-nut matting.

 

"Whom did you say you would tell?" said Donald Iverach, in a tone in

his voice quite different from his business one.

 

"Only Miss Tennant—a freend o' mine," said Cleg, with incomparable

meekness and deference.

 

"Miss Tennant of Aurelia Villa?" broke in the eager youth.

 

"Aye, juist her," said Cleg dispassionately. "She learns us aboot Jacob

and Esau—and aboot Noah," he added as if upon consideration. He would

have mentioned more of the patriarchs if he could have remembered them

at the time. His choice of names did not spring from either preference

or favouritism. So he added Noah to show that there was no ill-feeling

in the matter.

 

"And Miss Tennant is your friend?" queried the young man.

 

Cleg nodded. He might have added that sometimes, as in one great ploy

yet to be described, he had been both teacher and friend to Miss Celie

Tennant.

 

"Tell your lassie to be here at breakfast-time to-morrow morning, and

to be sure and ask for Mr. Donald Iverach," was all the junior partner

remarked.

 

And Cleg said demurely, "Thank you, sir."

 

But as Cleg went out he thought a great deal of additional matter,

and when he said his adieus to the watchman he could hardly contain

himself. Before he was fairly down the steps, he yelled three times as

loud as he could, and turned Catherine-wheel after Catherine-wheel,

till at the last turn he came down with his bare feet in the waist-belt

of a policeman. The good-natured officer solemnly smacked the

convenient end of Cleg with a vast plantigrade palm, and restored him

to the stature and progression of ordinary humanity, with a reminder to

behave—and to mind where he was coming if he did not want to get run

in.

 

But even this did not settle Cleg.

 

"O Keelies!" he cried, as if he had been addressing a large company

of his fellows, "wasna it rare to see him loup off that stool, like a

yellow paddock into the canal!"

 

And Cleg, who scorned the eccentricities of love in more mature bosoms

even when he traded upon the resultant weaknesses, went off into an

ecstasy of mocking laughter.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XV.

 

THE FIRE IN CALLENDAR'S YARD.

 

 

Vara Kavannah went daily to the factory at Hillside. She was but a slip

of a thing, yet she soon learned the work that fell to her share, and

developed marvellous quickness in passing the thin quires of foreign

paper, examining them for flaws and dirt, and rejecting the faulty

sheets.

 

The girls were mostly kind to her, though they teased her about her

name. And, indeed, in a world of Maggies and Jeanies, her Christian

name appeared somewhat strange. But Vara had a reverence for it,

because it had been her single legacy from her father, the gentle and

imaginative Sheemus, who had found married life so different from his

hopes that he had been brought at last to try that bitter pass of

flight, through which so many have gone to find a new life on the other

side.

 

These were pleasant evenings in the wooden hut. Cleg generally dropped

in to see his sub-tenants after his papers were delivered. Then he

would potter about, watering the flowers, which now began to bloom

bravely in spite of the city heat and the dust of the yard. Vara had

a seam or a stocking, and sat at the outside of the door on a creepie

stool.

 

Hugh learned to nurse Gavin on his knee or to rock him in the old

cradle which the kindly foreman of the yard, a widower, had lent to

Vara, saying, "I'm no needin' it the noo—no for a year or twa at ony

rate."

 

He was a "seeking" widower, and did not make the presentation absolute

because he was a far-sighted man, and one never knew what might happen.

As for Vara, she seemed to shoot up in stature every day, and the

curves of her wasted and abused body filled out. Her face again grew

merry and bright, and she was ready to take her share in mirthful talk.

But sometimes her eyes were sad and far away. Then she was thinking of

her father, the gentle Sheemus; and she longed greatly to go to meet

him in Liverpool, when the ill days should have overpassed and there

was no mother any more in her life.

 

In the Works Vara gained the friendship of her companions, though she

was younger than most of them. A tall girl, who was much looked up to

in the mill because she sang in a choir, stood firmly her friend. And

the two, Agnes Ramsay and little Vara, used to walk home together. Vara

was anxious that Cleg should apply for a situation for himself at the

Works; but Cleg preferred his untrammelled freedom, and continued to

deliver his papers and sleep in the yard at Echo Bank all through the

summer.

 

It was mid-August and the sky shone like copper. There was a peculiar

dunness in the air, and light puffs of burning wind came in, hot and

unrefreshing, from the walls and pavement in the afternoon. But when

the girls came home "on the back of six," as they said, the air had

grown cooler, and Agnes and Vara often lingered a little in the great

"saal," or work-room, in order to let the press of girls well down the

street before them, and so be rid of the rough chaff of the lads as

they passed home.

 

But this evening, as they came leisurely out, arm linked in arm, Vara

saw a great crowd blocking up the way in front of the clock which gave

the time to the Works, and with a quick clutch at her companion's arm

she would have drawn her away.

 

But Agnes Ramsay saw a woman furiously attacking the manager, and

pushed forward to get a better view. Vara knew too well what it meant.

Her enemy had found her. She tried to steal away, but it seemed

impossible to move. With a cry of anger Sal Kavannah recognised her

daughter, and threshed a way through the crowd to reach her. Vara stood

still, white to the lips. Her mother seized her by the neck of her

dress and began to shake her, striking her about the face and shoulders

with foul names and blasphemous words.

 

"Brazen besom," she cried; "you and your 'Keelie' stole my bairns frae

me. Where have you hidden them? Ye think I canna find oot. But I can

track them as I tracked you. Aff wi' that dress, you slut. It's ower

guid for the like o' you, and me trapesin' in a gown like this. Take it

off, I say, and give me back my children."

 

Vara stood mute and silent under the storm of oaths. The manager would

have sent for the police, but knowing that Vara was a _protégée_ of Mr.

Donald's, he went within, leaving them (as he said) to fight it out.

 

Then Agnes Ramsay pulled the shrinking girl away from her mother, and

so turned the abuse upon herself. But Agnes was a well-grown girl, and,

being supported by half-a-hundred of her companions, she stood her

ground valiantly.

 

"Run," she said, "run, lassie, while ye can. She doesna ken yet where

ye bide."

 

So like a hunted hare Vara turned and ran. But when she reached the

little wooden house, so trim and quiet, with its fragrant wood-yard

about it, and the daisies and pansies in the little plots and

diamond-shaped patches which Cleg had made, the bitterness of her heart

broke up within her, like the breaking up of the fountains of the great

deep.

 

Little Hugh came trotting to her, waving a red flag, the latest gift of

the widower foreman, in his hand. "Vara, Vara," he cried, "Gavin can

say 'Dadda,' and I nursed him good as gold all day."

 

The tears were running down Vara's face. She went in without power of

speech and sat by the babe's cot. He was asleep, and she laid her wet

cheek on the pillow beside his and sobbed. Hugh kept a little way off,

not knowing what to make of the unknown sorrow. Then he came softly up

to her, and gave her sleeve a little pull.

 

"Vara," he said, "here's a seetie."

 

For Hugh understood no sorrow which a sweetie would not make better.

 

"I can never go back to the Works," sobbed Vara. "I am disgraced before

them all. I can never face them—never!"

 

About seven Cleg came over the waste ground joyfully, having disposed

of his papers. He sat silent while Vara told him of the terrible

evening at the gate of Hillside, and of all her shame and terror. Cleg

whistled very softly to himself, as he always did when he was thinking

deeply.

 

"Wait here this ae nicht," he said. "I am watching with anither man at

the corner o' the Grange where they hae the road up. I'll think it oot

in the shelter. Keep up your heart, Vara—we'll win through yet."

 

But Vara would not be comforted. She would not even raise her head to

bid him say "Guid nicht."

 

So, still more softly whistling, Cleg departed.

 

He was not great company that night for the man in the shelter,

one "Tyke" Tweedie—a man who had once been a soldier for three

months, before being bought off by his father, who had regretted the

transaction ever since. "Tyke" was a man of battles. By his own account

he had been in the Crimea. He was great upon "the Hichts o' Almy." He

described the joint career of himself and the victorious Sir Colin

Campbell, concluding his epic with, "Then we charged the enemy and

carriet a' afore us, till we garred the Russian chiels rin like stour!"

 

But Tyke had a poor listener that night, though he never knew it. For

Cleg sat silent, and only by a nod did he acknowledge his interest when

Tyke had come to the crisis of one of his famous narrations.

 

The policeman on the beat would sometimes stop and look over the

windward edge of the shelter. "Hae ye gotten to the battle o' the

Inkermann yet?" he would ask.

 

"Na, Rob," Tyke would reply, "we are aye on the Hichts o' Almy yet!

Dear, sirce, but it was a sare, sare job. Ye see, there was me and Sir

Colin, and wi' that we at them sword in hand——"

 

And the policeman would stroll away from the glow of the fire, out

under the stars—alone save for the transient rake-hell cat skirmishing

across from area-railing to area-railing, and the tramp of a brother

officer coming up sombre and subdued from far down the hill.

 

But about one of the clock, when the night was verging to its stillest,

Cleg looked up and saw the stars overhead thinning out.

 

"It's never morning already!" he said, rubbing his eyes, for he had not

half solved the hard problem of Vara Kavannah.

 

He stepped out of the shelter. All the heaven to the north was

a-flicker with the skarrow of fire.

 

Without a word to the now drowsy Tyke, nodding over the blackening

cinders in his grated brazier, Cleg Kelly set off at his top speed

towards the fire, to be in at the death. "It's surely in the

Pleasance," he said to himself as he ran. The flame towered mightily

clear and clean, without sparks or crackling as when houses burn.

 

"It's Callendar's yaird!" said Cleg again, and never in his life had he

run so fast. For there in the midst of the timber was the little wooden

house in which were lying asleep little Vara Kavannah and her baby

brothers.

 

It was indeed Callendar's wood-yard. When Cleg arrived there were whole

regiments of firemen playing upon the flames; but his experienced

eyes saw at once that the case was hopeless. Indeed, the officer in

charge had come to the same conclusion some time before, and he was

now directing the solid streams of water towards such surrounding

properties as seemed in danger of catching fire.

 

The crowds were kept back by police, and all was orderly. The owner of

all stood patiently at the gate, talking matters over with his foreman.

After all, it was the visitation of God, and, further, he was fully

insured. It is a great thing to be prepared for affliction.

 

Into the black mass of the onlookers Cleg darted. He wormed his way

round to the back. He crossed a wall on which three or four boys were

roosting.

 

"Ye'll get nabbed if ye gang that road," cried one of them, giving

Cleg "the office" in the friendliest way, though he belonged to quite

another gang.

 

But Cleg sped on. He dived between the long legs of his former friend,

the red-headed officer known as "Longshanks." He skimmed across the

yard among the falling sparks, dodging the flames which shot out of the

burning piles to intercept him, as if they had been policemen.

 

The little wooden house lay before him in the red heart of the fire. He

saw the daisies growing in his own garden plots. He remembered that, in

the hurry and distress of listening to Vara's story, he had not watered

them that day.

 

But he dashed for the door, opened it eagerly, and fell forward across

the floor. The hut was filled with the odour of burning. Shooting

flames met him in the face as he rose; but nevertheless he groped all

about the tiny room, getting his hands and arms burned as he did so.

The children were not there—Vara, Hugh, and the baby—all were gone! He

turned to the door. The thing that he had stumbled over was a body.

He turned over the lump with his bare foot. It was soft, heavy, and

smelled of whisky. Cleg had found Sal Kavannah in the home he had made

to protect her children from her search. He had little doubt that it

was she who had set the yard on fire and stumbled in here afterwards.

 

Cleg stood a moment wondering whether he would not do better to leave

her where she was; and more than once since that night has the same

thought crossed his mind. He still fears that in dragging her away by

the feet from the burning hut he unduly interfered with the working of

the designs of an all-wise Providence.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XVI.

 

IN THE KEY OF BOY NATURAL.

 

 

In time and under a new superintendent Cleg Kelly went back to Hunker

Court Sunday school, some time after the loss of his friends the

Kavannahs. This is equivalent to saying that Hunker Court became again

an exceedingly lively place of instruction and amusement on a Sabbath

afternoon. It is true that Cleg was not always present, and when he

was absent his teacher's heart sent up a silent thanksgiving. That, of

course, was before Miss Cecilia Tennant took him in hand.

 

Cleg had several teachers before he found his fate. He was, in fact,

the crux of the school, and every aspiring young neophyte who "took a

class" was provided with a nut to crack in the shape of Cleg. But he

never cracked him.

 

The superintendent of Hunker Court at the date of this first pilgrimage

was a somewhat ineffective gentleman, whose distinguishing trait was

that he appeared to be of a pale sandy complexion all over. That

is, all of him not covered by a tightly-buttoned black surtout.

His name was Samson Langpenny. Why it was so, is historically

uncertain—"Langpenny," probably, owing to his connection with his

father. But "Samson" is wholly inexplicable, and was certainly

exceedingly hard upon Master Langpenny as a boy. For it procured him

many lickings at that delightful season, owing to logic of the usual

schoolboy type and cogency.

 

"Jock, ye dinna ken wha was the strongest man?"

 

"It's a lee, I do ken. It was Samson!"

 

"Na, then it juist isna, for I lickit Samson this mornin' mysel'!"

 

The second boy thought this over a moment—saw it—considered it rather

good.

 

"Dod," he said, "I wad like to could say that mysel'. I can lick Samson

mysel' as weel as Pate Tamson!"

 

Whereupon he went and lurked for Samson till that unfortunate youth

came along. Then he triumphantly established his claim to be the

strongest man by once more thrashing "Samson" Langpenny, while the

tears of the first combat were hardly yet dry upon the cuff of the

coat-sleeve which Master Langpenny ordinarily used instead of a

pocket-handkerchief.

 

It was quite in accordance with the contrariness of things, that

Samson Langpenny should develop into the superintendent of the

roughest Sunday school in all the South Side of Edinburgh. He had

now a real handkerchief, as every one might see, for he wore about

equal parts of it within his pocket and without. The lower and

unseen portion was the working end. Now, there may be excellent

moral purpose in a judiciously-used pocket-handkerchief. There is,

indeed, a certain literary man whose wife avers that her husband's

toilet consists ordinarily of "four paper knives, four pens, and no

pocket-handkerchief." But this person is not usually held up in Sunday

schools as a shining example. Quite the contrary.

 

Now, Cleg Kelly had no great personal grievance against his

superintendent. But he said in his vulgar way (for there is no doubt

that he was that kind of boy) that "he did not cotton to that wipe o'

Langpenny's!"

 

Cleg's present teacher was a young gentleman of the name of Percy

Somerville, whose principal reasons for teaching in Hunker Court were

that he might improve the minds of the youth of the district, and that

he might have a fair chance of seeing Miss Cecilia Tennant home across

the meadows. This last was a pleasant thing to do at any time, but

specially desirable in the summer season, after the heat and turmoil

of Hunker Court, and on this account Samson Langpenny never lacked for

recruits to his teaching staff at that time.

 

Now, Percy Somerville was "a very nice boy"—these were Miss Tennant's

own words. "But, you know—well, you know—after all, he is only a boy."

 

And, in addition, as they say in political circles, when the leadership

of the party is in question, "there was no vacancy." The junior partner

still lived.

 

How Percy Somerville undoubtedly had his troubles, owing chiefly to

Celie Tennant's hardness of heart; but they were as nothing to the

difficulties which afflicted Samson Langpenny.

 

For instance, it was in this wise that Mr. Percy Somerville was

greeted, as he appeared with a reluctant scholar who had been detected

in trying to escape by the side door after the roll had been marked.

(It was drawing near the time of the summer treat into the country, so

it behoved the teachers to be careful in marking attendances.)

 

"Go it, Pierce-eye! Hit him one in the eye!"

 

This exclamation was traced afterwards to Cleg Kelly's acquaintance in

day-school with a baleful ballad included in the _Royal Poetry Book_, and intituled "Chevy Chase."