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CLEG KELLY
ARAB OF THE CITY
* * * * * *
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
Uniform Edition. Each, $1.50.
Bog-Myrtle and Peat.
"Here are idylls, epics, dramas of human life written in words that
thrill and burn.... All are set down in words that are fit, chaste, and
noble. Each is a poem that has the immortal flavor."—_Boston Courier._
The Lilac Sunbonnet.
"A love story pure and simple—one of the old-fashioned, wholesome,
sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero and a heroine who
is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half
so sweet has been written this year it has escaped our notice."—_New
York Times._
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: From the lake arose the voice, mocking and bitter.
(See page 260.)]
CLEG KELLY
ARAB OF THE CITY
His Progress and Adventures
by
S. R. CROCKETT
Author of
The Lilac Sunbonnet, Bog-Myrtle and Peat, etc.
Illustrated
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1896
Copyright, 1895, 1896,
By D. Appleton and Company.
CONTENTS.
ADVENTURE PAGE
I.—The outcasting of Cleg Kelly 1
II.—The burning of the Whinny Knowes 5
III.—Why Cleg Kelly hated his father 13
IV.—How Isbel Kelly heard sweet music 21
V.—The brigands of the city 29
VI.—Cleg turns burglar 38
VII.—The adventure of the cockroaches 45
VIII.—The flight of Sheemus 51
IX.—The warming of the Drabble 57
X.—The squaring of the police 62
XI.—The boy in the wooden hut 68
XII.—Vara Kavannah of the Tinklers' Lands 72
XIII.—Cleg's second burglary 80
XIV.—Cleg turns diplomatist 86
XV.—The fire in Callendar's yard 94
XVI.—In the key of boy natural 101
XVII.—The Knuckle Dusters 110
XVIII.—Big Smith subdues the Knuckle Dusters 116
XIX.—The pilgrims of the penny gaff 123
XX.—The difficulties of Adonis betwixt
two Venuses 129
XXI.—An idyll of Bogie roll 139
XXII.—The seduction of a bailie 143
XXIII.—The amorous adventures of a
night-shift man 147
XXIV.—The crook in the lot of Cleaver's boy 153
XXV.—A comely Providence in a new frock 157
XXVI.—R. S. V. P. 163
XXVII.—Janet of Inverness tastes the herb
bitter-sweet 167
XXVIII.—The engine-driver with the beard 172
XXIX.—Muckle Alick's Bannockburn 177
XXX.—How Geordie Grierson's engine broke
its buffer 181
XXXI.—The "awfu' woman" 184
XXXII.—Maid Greatheart and her pilgrims 190
XXXIII.—The babes in the haystack 194
XXXIV.—That of Mary Bell, byre lass 198
XXXV.—The knight in the soft hat 202
XXXVI.—The madness of Hugh Boy 207
XXXVII.—Boy Hugh finds out the nature of a kiss 212
XXXVIII.—Of Miss Briggs and her ten cats 216
XXXIX.—The adventure of Snap's porridge 222
XL.—A new kind of hero 227
XLI.—"Twa laddies—and a lassie" 233
XLII.—Muckle Alick considers 243
XLIII.—Town knight and country knight 247
XLIV.—Cleg relapses into paganism 253
XLV.—The cabin on the summit 262
XLVI.—A child of the devil 268
XLVII.—The sleep of James Cannon, signalman 275
XLVIII.—Muckle Alick sees the distant signal
stand at Clear 284
XLIX.—Cleg collects tickets 291
L.—General Theophilus Ruff 300
LI.—The General's establishment 309
LII.—The three coffins in the strong-room 318
LIII.—A stormy morning at Loch Spellanderie 326
LIV.—Kit Kennedy's farewell 335
LV.—A young man's fancy 341
LVI.—The voices in the marsh 349
LVII.—Fighting the beasts 359
LVIII.—Within the red door 367
LIX.—The beech hedge 377
LX.—Cleg's treasure-trove comes to him 383
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FACING PAGE
From the lake arose the voice mocking
and bitter. (see page 260) _Frontispiece_
When "the Warrior" came. 11
"I shall be ruined!" 65
"Our roads separate here." 123
"He gripped them baith, but he hadna time to loup
clear o' the far rail." 182
"Out with it!" said the minister. 208
Along gloomy passages. 321
The dark figure ran past them. 358
ADVENTURE I.
THE OUTCASTING OF CLEG KELLY.
"It's all a dumb lie—God's dead!"
Such a silence had never fallen upon the Sunday school, since the
fatal day when the gate was blown into the middle of the floor
by Mickey McGranaghan, a recent convert (and a temporary one) to
the peculiar orthodoxy of Hunker Court. But the new explosion far
outstripped the old in its effects. For it contained a denial of all
the principles upon which the school was founded, and especially it
confounded and blasphemed the cheerful optimism of Mr. James Lugton,
its superintendent, otherwise and more intimately known as "Pund o'
Cannles."
The statement which contained so emphatic a denial of the eternity of
the Trinity was made by Cleg Kelly, a barelegged loon of eleven, who
stood lone and unfriended on the floor before the superintendent's desk
in the gloomy cellar known as Hunker Court school. Cleg Kelly had been
reported by his teacher for incorrigible persistence in misconduct. He
had introduced pins point upwards through the cracks in the forms. He
had an instrument of wire cunningly plaited about his fingers, by means
of which he could nip unsuspecting boys sitting as many as three or
four from him—which is a great advantage to a boy in a Sunday school.
Lastly, he had fallen backwards over a seat when asked a question; he
had stood upon his hands and head while answering it, resuming his
first position as if nothing had happened so soon as the examination
passed on to the next boy. In fact, he had filled the cup of his
iniquities to the brim.
His teacher did not so much object to the pranks of Cleg Kelly
himself. He objected mainly because, being ragged, barelegged, with
garments picturesquely ventilated, and a hat without a crown, he was
as irresistible in charm and fascination to all the other members of
his class as if he had been arrayed in silver armour starry clear.
For though Hunker Court was a mission school, it was quite a superior
mission. And (with the exception of one class, which was much looked
down upon) the lowest class of children were not encouraged to attend.
Now Cleg Kelly, by parentage and character, was almost, if not quite,
as the mothers of the next social grade said, "the lowest of the low."
So when Cleg's teacher, a respectable young journeyman plumber, could
stand no more pranks and had grown tired of cuffing and pulling, he led
Cleg up to the awful desk of the superintendent from which the rebukes
and prizes were delivered.
Thereupon "Pund o' Cannles," excellent but close-fisted tallow chandler
and general dealer, proceeded to rebuke Cleg. Now the rebukes of "Pund
o' Cannles" smelt of the counter, and were delivered in the tones in
which he addressed his apprentice boys when there were no customers in
the shop—a tone which was entirely different from the bland suavity
which he used when he joined his hands and asked, "And what is the next
article, madam?"
"Do you know, boy," said the superintendent, "that by such sinful
conduct you are wilfully going on the downward road? You are a wicked
boy, and instead of becoming better under your kind teacher, and taking
advantage of the many advantages of this place devoted to religious
instruction, you stick pins—brass pins—into better conducted boys than
yourself. And so, if you do not repent, God will take you in your
iniquity and cast you into hell. For, remember, God sees everything and
punishes the bad people and rewards the good."
The superintendent uttered, though he knew it not, the most ancient of
heresies—that which Job refuted.
It was at this point in the oration of "Pund o' Cannles" that Cleg
Kelly's startling interruption occurred. The culprit stopped making O's
on the dusty floor with his toe, amongst the moist paper pellets which
were the favourite distraction of the inattentive at Hunker Court; and,
in a clear voice, which thrilled through the heart of every teacher and
scholar within hearing, he uttered his denial of the eternity of the
Trinity.
"It's all a dumb lie—God's dead!" he said.
There was a long moment's silence, and small wonder, as the school
waited for the shivering trump of doom to split the firmament. And the
patient and self-sacrificing teachers who gave their unthanked care to
the youth of the court every Sunday, felt their breaths come short, and
experienced a feeling as if they were falling over a precipice in a
dream. At last Mr. James Lugton found his voice.
"Young and wicked blasphemer!" he said sternly, "your presence must no
longer, like that of the serpent in Paradise, poison the instruction
given at this Sabbath school—I shall expel you from our midst——"
Here Cleg's teacher interposed. He was far from disliking his scholar,
and had anticipated no such result arising from his most unfortunate
reference of his difficulty to the superintendent. For he liked Cleg's
ready tongue, and was amused by the mongrel dialect of Scots and Irish
into which, in moments of excitement, he lapsed.
"I beg pardon, sir," he said, "but I am quite willing to give Kelly
another chance—he is not such a bad boy as you might think."
The superintendent waved his hand in a dignified way. He rather fancied
himself in such scenes, and considered that his manner was quite as
distinguished as that of his minister, when the latter was preaching
his last memorable course of sermons upon the imprecatory psalms, and
making solemn applications of them to the fate of members of a sister
denomination which worshipped just over the way.
"The boy is a bold blasphemer and atheist!" he said; "he shall be cast
out from among our innocent lambs. Charles Kelly, I solemnly expel you
upon this Christian Sabbath day, as a wicked and incorrigible boy, and
a disgrace to any respectable mission school."
The attitude of the superintendent was considered especially fine at
this point. And he went home personally convinced that the excellent
and fitting manner in which he vindicated the good name of Hunker
Court upon this occasion, was quite sufficient to balance an extensive
practice of the use of light weights in the chandler's shop at the
corner of Hunker's Row. He further entirely believed judicious severity
of this kind to be acceptable in the highest quarters.
So as the resisting felon is taken to prison, Cleg Kelly, heathen of
eleven years, was haled to the outer door and cast forth of Hunker
Court. But as the culprit went he explained his position.
"It's all gammon, that about prayin'," he cried; "I've tried it heaps
of times—never fetched it once! An' look at my mother. She just prays
lashings, and all the time. An' me father, he's never a bit the
better—no, nor her neither. For he thrashes us black and blue when he
comes hame just the same. Ye canna gammon me, Pund o' Cannles, with
your lang pray-prayin' and your short weight. I tell you God's dead,
and it's all a dumb lie!"
The last accents of the terrible renunciation lingered upon the tainted
air even after the door had closed, and Cleg Kelly was an outcast. But
the awed silence was broken by a whiz and jingle which occurred close
to the superintendent's ear, as Cleg Kelly, Iconoclast, punctuated
his thesis of defiance by sending a rock of offence clear through the
fanlight over the door of Hunker Court mission school.
ADVENTURE II.
THE BURNING OF THE WHINNY KNOWES.
Cleg Kelly was now outcast and alien from the commonwealth. He had
denied the faith, cast aside every known creed, and defied the Deity
Himself. Soon he would defy the policeman and break the laws of
man—which is the natural course of progression in iniquity, as every
one knows.
So leaving Hunker Court he struck across the most unfrequented streets,
where only a stray urchin (probably a benighted Episcopalian) was
spending the Sabbath chivying cats, to the mountainous regions of
Craigside, where the tall "lands" of St. Leonards look out upon the
quarried crags and steep hill ridges of Arthur's Seat. For Cleg was
fortunate enough to be a town boy who had the country at his command
just over the wall—and a wall, too, which he could climb at as many
as twenty points. Only bare stubby feet, however, could overpass
these perilous clefts. Cleg's great toes, horny as if shod with iron,
fitted exactly into the stone crevices from which the mortar had been
loosened. His grimy little fingers found a purchase in the slightest
nicks. And once on the other side, there was no policeman, park-keeper,
or other person in authority, who could make the pace with Cleg's bare
brown legs, at least up the loose clatter of the shingle between the
lower greensward and the Radical Road.
So, after being expelled from Hunker Court, Cleg made straight for a
nook of his own among the crags. Here, like a prudent outlaw, he took
account of his possessions with a view to arranging his future career
of crime. He turned out his pockets into his hat. This was, indeed,
a curious thing to do. For the article which he wore upon his shaggy
locks was now little more than the rim of what had once been a covering
for the head, proof against wind and water. But though Cleg's treasures
rested upon the ground, the fact that they were within his hat-rim
focussed them, as it were, and their relative worth was the more easily
determined.
The first article which Cleg deposited upon the ground inside his hat
was a box of matches, which had been given him to light the gas with in
the outlying corners of Hunker Court school, for that dank cellar was
gloomy enough even on a summer afternoon. Then came some string, the
long-pronged nipping-wires which he had taken from his father's stores,
a pair of pincers, a knife with one whole and one broken blade, a pipe,
some brown-paper tobacco of a good brand, a half-written exercise-book
from the day-school at which Cleg occasionally looked in, five marbles
of a variety known as "commonies," one noble knuckler of alabaster
which Cleg would not have parted with for his life, a piece of dry
bread, and, lastly, half an apple, with encroaching bays and projecting
promontories, which indicated in every case but one the gap in Cleg's
dental formation on the left side of his upper jaw, which dated from
his great fight with Hole in the Wa' in the police yard. The exception
was a clean semicircle, bitten right into the apple-core. This was the
tidemark of a friendly bite Cleg had given to a friend, in whose double
row were no gaps. The perfect crescent had been made by the teeth of a
lassie—one Vara Kavannah.
The box of matches was to its owner the most attractive article in
all this array of wealth. Cleg looked into his hat-rim with manifest
pleasure. He slapped his knee. He felt that he was indeed well adapted
to the profession of outlaw. If he had to be a Cain, he could at least
make it exceedingly lively in the Land of Nod.
It was a chilly day on the craigs, the wind blowing bask from the East,
and everything underfoot as dry as tinder. The wild thought of a yet
untried ploy surged up in Cleg's mind. He grasped the matchbox quickly,
with thoughts of arson crystallising in his mind. He almost wished that
he had set Hunker Court itself on fire. But just in time he remembered
Vara Kavannah and her little brother Hugh.
"I'll get them to gang to anither school first," he said.
But in the meantime, with the thought of setting fire to something in
his heart and the matchbox in his hand, it was necessary to find the
materials for a blaze. He had no powder with him or he would have made
a "peeoye"—the simple and inexpensive firework of metropolitan youth.
He looked up at the heather and whin which covered the Nether Hill.
His heart bounded within him at the thought. He looked again at his
matchbox, which was one of the old oval shape, containing matches so
exceedingly and gratuitously sulphurous, that the very smell of one of
them was well worth the halfpenny charged for the lot. So, without any
further pause for reflection, Cleg stowed away all the possessions,
inventoried with such accuracy above, into various outlying nooks and
crevices among the seams and pockets of his flapping attire.
Having collected the last one of these, Cleg climbed up a crumbling
cliff at the eastern end of the craigs, where the stones lie about in
slats. Upon each of them, for all the world like green post-office
wax dripped upon grey paper, was some curious mineral, which Cleg,
in his hours of decent citizenship, collected and sold at easy rates
to the boys of the Pleasance as a charm. This mysterious green stuff
had even been made a seal of initiation into one of the most select,
aristocratic, and bloody secret societies of which Cleg was a member.
Indeed, if the truth must be told, Cleg had formed the association
chiefly that he might be able to supply the badges of membership, for
he had a corner in green mineral wax—at least so long as the mine
at the east corner of the craigs remained undiscovered by the other
adventurous loons of the south side.
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.
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.