temples, and she pressed her hand on her breast, searching as though
something were missing there. And so there was. It was about a lung and
a half which she missed. Nevertheless there had fallen a peace upon
Isbel to which she had been unaccustomed. Faint tremors ran through her
body, and though the window was wide open, she often gasped for breath.
A blissful, painless weariness stole over her.
Cleg was playing below. He had achieved a victory, complete, yet not
quite bloodless, for Tam Gillivray was staunching his nose at the
smith's cauldron with a lump of cold iron at the back of his neck.
Cleg, prancing in haughty state and followed by a little train of
admirers, was now dragging the basin in triumph round the yard. He was
pretending that it was a railway train drawn by an engine of extremely
refractory disposition, which curvetted and reared in a most unenginely
manner.
Isbel watched him from her window.
"He is happy, puir laddie—maybe happier than he'll ever be again. Let
him bide a wee. I'll gie him a cry, in time."
Then she looked again. She prayed a little while with her eyes shut.
Beneath, Cleg was holding his court. He had crowned himself with the
basin, and pulled his hair through it in the shape of a plume. As an
appropriate finish for the whole, he had stuck the mop of protruding
locks full of feathers, and now he was presiding over a court of
justice at which Michael Hennessy was being tried for his life on the
charge of murdering a "yellow yoit." In due course the verdict of
justifiable homicide was returned, and the culprit sentenced to kill
another, or be belted round the brickyard.
Then, wearying for a fresher ploy, the boys decided to build a
fortress, and instantly, as soon as they had thought of it, they set to
work with a mountain of refuse bricks, Cleg Kelly putting no hand to
the manual labour, but being easily first in the direction of affairs.
This "gaffership" suited Cleg so well that he turned three excellent
wheels in the greatness of his content, and then immediately knocked
over several boys for presuming to imitate him, when they ought to have
been fulfilling orders and building bricks into a fortress.
From the window his mother still watched him. She smiled to see his
light-heart joy, and said again, as if to herself, "In a while I shall
cry to him—I dinna need him yet!"
All about there grew up in her ears a sound of sweet music, as of the
many singers at the kirk on still, warm Sabbath days, singing the
psalms which she remembered long ago in Ormiland, only they sounded
very far away. And at times the brickyard reeled and dazzled, the arid
trodden ground and steaming bricks fell back, the cracked walls opened
out, and she saw the sun shining upon golden hills, the like of which
she had never seen before.
"What is this? Oh, what's this?" she asked herself aloud, and the sound
of her own voice was in her ears as the roaring of many waters.
It seemed to her to be almost time now. She leaned forward wearily to
call her son to help her. But he was sitting on a throne in the midst
of his castle, dressed as Robin Hood, with all his merry men about him.
He looked so happy, and he laughed so loud, that Isbel said again to
herself—
"I can manage yet for half an hour, and then I shall cry to him."
But her son caught sight of her at the window. He was so elated that he
did not mind noticing his mother, as a common boy would have done. He
waved his hand to her, calling out loud—
"Mither, mither, I'm biggin' a bonny hoose for ye to leeve in!"
Isbel smiled, and it was as if the sun which shone on the hills of her
dream had touched her thin face and made it also beautiful for the last
time before sundown.
"My guid boy—my nice boy," she said, "the Lord will look till him! He
said he was biggin' a hoose for his mither. Let him big his hoose. In
an hour I shall cry to him—my ain laddie!"
Yet in an hour she did not cry, and it was the only time she had ever
broken her word to her son.
But that was because Isbel Kelly had journeyed where no crying is.
Neither shall there be any more pain.
ADVENTURE V.
THE BRIGANDS OF THE CITY.
Cleg Kelly's mother lay still in her resting grave, and had no more
need of pity. Cleg abode with his father in the tumble-down shanty by
the brickfield at Easter Beach, and asked for no pity either. Cleg had
promised his mother, Isbel, that he would not forsake his father.
"Na, I'll no rin awa' frae ye," so he told his father, frankly, "for I
promised my mither; but gin ye lick me, I'll pit my wee knife intil ye
when ye are sleepin'! Mind ye that!"
And his father minded, which was fortunate for both.
Cleg was now twelve, and much respected by his father, who fully
believed that he was speaking the truth. Tim Kelly, snow-shoveller,
feared his son Cleg with his sudden wild-cat fierceness, much more than
he feared God—more, even, than he feared Father Donnelly, to whom he
went twice a year to ease his soul of a portion of his more specially
heinous sins.
Yet Tim Kelly was a better man, because of the respect in which he held
his son. He even boasted of Cleg's cleverness when he was safe among
his old cronies in Mother Flannigan's kitchen, or in the bar-parlour at
Hare's public.
"Shure, there's not the like av him in this kingdom av ignorant
blockheads. My Clig's the natest and the illigantest gossoon that
stips in his own boot-leather. Shure, he can lick anything at all near
his own weight. Sorra's in him, he can make his ould man stand about.
Faith, 'tis him that's goin' to be the great man intoirely, is our
little Clig."
These were the opinions of his proud father.
But Jim Carnochan, better known as the "Devil's Lickpot," demurred. If
Cleg was so clever a boy, why was he not set to work? A boy so smart
ought long ere this to have been learning the profession. To this
Mother Flannigan agreed, for she shared in the profits.
"My Peether, rest his sowl for a good lad—him as was hanged be token of
false evidence—and the bobbies findin' the gintleman's goold watch in
Peether's pocket, was at wurrk whin he was six years av his age. Take
my wurrd for it, Timothy Kelly, there never yet was a thruely great
man that didn't begin his education young."
"Maybe," said Tim, "and that's the raison, Misthress Flannigan, that so
few av them grew up to be ould men."
"Gin he was my boy," said Sandy Telfer, whose occupation was breaking
into houses during the summer holidays (one of the safest "lays" in the
profession, but looked down upon as mean-spirited), "I wad be haein'
him through the windows and openin' the front doors every dark nicht."
"Ah, you wud, wud ye?" replied Tim Kelly contemptuously; "you're
the great boy to talk, you that has no more manhud in ye than a
draff-sack wid a hole in it. Yuss, ye can do yer dirthy way wid your
own mane-spirited spalpeens, wid no more spunk than a dure-mat. But I'd
have ye know that my Clig cud make hares av you an' ivvery Telfer av
the lot o' ye—hear to me now!"
And Tim Kelly shook his fist within an inch of the nose of Sandy
Telfer, who, not being a man of war, showed by the curl of his nostril
and the whitening of his lip, that he did not find the bouquet of Tim
Kelly's bunch-of-fives an agreeable perfume. Tim Kelly waited to see if
on any pretext he could bring his fist into closer contact with Sandy
Telfer's face, but he found no cause.
"My Clig," he said emphatically, "is goin' to be a great characther.
He is jist the boy that is to climb the top laddher av the profession.
It's his father that must be out at night, an' run the risk av the
dirthy bobby wid his lanthern, an' the gintleman av the house in his
night-shirt wid a cruel poker. But Clig shall sit safe and aisy in his
chair, an' make his thousands a year wid the scrap av his pen. He'll
promothe companies, an' be out av the way when they burst. He'll write
so illegant that he cud turn ye off another gintleman's signathure as
fast as his own, an' worth a deal more on a bit av paper than anny av
our names——"
"Come away hame, faither, sittin' bletherin' there. Ye hae been here
lang enough."
It was the face of Cleg Kelly, dirty, sharp, and good-natured, which
appeared at the door of the boozing ken.
Mistress Flannigan caught up a pound weight and threw it at Cleg with
a woman's aim. It flew wide, and would surely have smashed some of the
unclean vessels standing ready for the wash on the dresser, had Cleg
not stepped briskly within, and, catching the missile deftly, made a
low bow as he laid it on the table, and said, with his rare disarming
smile—
"Your obedient servant, Cleg Kelly!"
"Hear to him now, the young bliggard!" cried his delighted and
well-intoxicated father. "He has come to arm the ould man home, an' the
ould man'll have to be stippin' too when Clig gives the wurrd."
Isbel Kelly had indeed been a happy woman if, ten years ago, she had
learned Cleg's method.
"Come on, faither," reiterated Cleg, who had again retreated to the
door, for he had no liking for the company or the place.
Tim Kelly got himself on his feet unsteadily, and lurched towards the
door. His son caught him deftly on the descending swoop.
"Steady, faither, mind the stair. Gie us yer han'."
And so Cleg got Timothy, his father, who deserved no such care,
tenderly up the filthy exit of Mistress Flannigan's cellar.
"Tim's not the man he was," Sandy Telfer said, as the pair went out.
"It's fair undecent doin' as the boy bids him, an' never so much as
puttin' the laddie to an honest bit o' wark. Ah, he'll suffer for that,
or a' be dune! They'll be raisons annexed to that," continued the
summer housebreaker, who had been respectably brought up on the Shorter
Catechism, but who, owing to a disappointment in love, had first of all
joined another denomination, and, the change not answering its purpose,
had finally taken to housebreaking and drink.
"Ye may say so, indeed," said Bridget Flannigan.
So Cleg took his father home to the rickety house by the brickyard.
Cleg kept the room clean as well as he could. But the sympathetic
neighbour, who remembered his mother, occasionally took a turn round
the place with a scrubbing-brush when it was absolutely certain that
the "red-headed gorilla" was absent, attending to other people's
business.
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.