rose chiefly from the ravages of the tender sentiment of love. The
Knuckle Dusters had laid it down as a fundamental condition that no
girls were to be permitted, or even encouraged. Miss Celie had insisted
upon this. Perhaps, womanlike, she wished to reign alone, and could
brook no rivals near her throne. But in practice the rule was found
difficult of enforcement. For there was no maidenly backwardness about
the girls of the Sooth Back. It was indeed a rule that each Keelie,
beyond the condition of a schoolboy, should possess himself of a
sweetheart—that is, so soon as he was capable of "doing for himself."
Sometimes these alliances resulted in singularly early marriage.
Oftener they did not.
Cleg, of course, was much too young for "nonsense" of this kind, as he
described it. But Cleaver's boy, and Tam Luke, and indeed most of the
Knuckle Dusters, being "in places," were from the first equipped with
a complete working outfit of sweethearts, pipes, and navy revolvers.
They got them all about the same time, not because they wanted them,
but because it was the fashion. Yet I do them no more than justice when
I allow that they thought most highly of the pipes. They treated their
pipes with every consideration.
It is true that each Knuckle Duster spoke of his sweetheart as "my
young lady," but this was only between themselves. To the "young
ladies" themselves their words were certainly not the ordinary and
hackneyed terms of affection, such as generations of common lovers have
used.
But the girls were not to be daunted. With such cavalier and disdainful
knights, ordinary methods were put out of court. It was clearly
necessary that someone should do the wooing. If not the Knuckle Dusters
(haughty knaves), why, then the "young lady" herself. It was always
Leap Year in the Sooth Back. There were but two unforgivable crimes in
the bright lexicon of love, as it was consulted in the lower parts of
the Pleasance. On the side of the Knuckle Dusters the one unpardonable
fault was "going with a swell." On the part of the "young ladies" it
was "taking up with another girl." Blows, disdain, contumely, abuse,
all fell alike harmless—mere love-pats of the gentle god. "Another" is
the only fatal word in love.
So, then, it was quite in keeping with the nature of things, and
especially with the nature of untrammelled youth, that the Knuckle
Dusters' Club should have its amatorious difficulties. Part of each
evening at the club was now devoted to the sciences. Arithmetic and
writing were the favourites. There was also talk of forming a shorthand
class. For shorthand has a mysterious fascination for the uneducated.
It is universal matter of faith among them, that only the most gifted
of the human race can learn to write shorthand. This is strange enough,
for both observation and experience teach us that the difficulty lies
in reading the shorthand after it is written.
The entrance to the club-room of the Knuckle Dusters was through a
vaulted "pend," which, having no magistrate of the city resident within
it, was wholly unlighted. It was no uncommon thing, therefore, for the
solemn work of scientific instruction to be interrupted by the voice
of the siren outside—a siren with a towse of hair done up loosely in
a net, a shawl about her head, and elf locks a-tangle over her brow.
The siren did not sing. She whistled like a locomotive engine when the
signals are contrary and the engine-driver anxious to go off duty. At
first the Knuckle Dusters used to rise and quietly depart, when, in
this well-understood fashion, the voice of love shrilly breathed up
the store-room stair. But after a little, Celie, who, from an entirely
superfluous sense of delicacy, had hitherto suffered in silence, felt
that it was time to remonstrate.
It was Cleaver's boy who caused most trouble. Now this was by no means
the fault of Cleaver's boy, who, to do him justice, was far more
interested in the adventures of "Sixteen String Jack" or "Deadshot
Dick, the Cowboy of Coon County," than in a dozen Susies or Sallies.
But Cleaver's boy was a youth of inches. Besides, he had a curly head
and an imperious way with him, which took with women—who, gentle and
simple, like to be slighted and trodden upon when the right man takes
the contract in hand. Cleaver's boy was, in fact, just Lord Byron
without the title and the clubfoot. Cleaver's boy had also genius like
the poet. Here is one of his impromptus, written after a music-hall
model:
I met my Sal a-walkin' out, a-walkin' on the street,
I says to Sal, "Why do you walk upon them clumps of feet?"
Says Sal to me, "None of your lip. I've got another chap!"
_So I hits Sal a slap, and I sends her back
To her ain countrie._
Cleaver's boy could do any amount of this kind of thing. He modelled
himself upon the popular broadsheet of the day. But it was not
popular in the Sooth Back. The article in demand there was a song
about a little child who softly faded away after bidding farewell—a
long farewell, to all his friends so dear—in a verse apiece. Like
King Charles, this boy was quite an unconscionable time a-dying. But
he did not know it. He was a popular boy in the Sooth Back, and Tam
Luke warbled about him till the assembled Knuckle Dusters snivelled
secretly, and looked hard down between their knees so as to pretend
they were spitting on the floor. But Cleaver's boy, who in early youth
had come from Blackburn with his father, the slaughterman, said it was
"Bully-rot!" He swore that he could make a song about Sal Mackay that
would be worth a shopful of such "tripe." The verse quoted above is
part of the song he made. Cleaver's boy has repeated the whole poem
to me more than once, but the above is all that I can bring myself to
print. For Sal Mackay has able-bodied relatives, and, besides, there is
a law of libel in this country, which is provided for in my agreement
with my publishers.
Sal Mackay and Susy Murphy were rivals in the affections of the
handsome "boy" of Cleaver the butcher. But for long the swain was coy
and gave no final evidence of preference. So that day by day in the
factory where they worked side by side, neither could exult over the
other.
"Ye needna think he cares a buckie for you, ye tow-headed, crawlin'
ferlie!" said Sue, who was of the dark allure, to Sal who was fair.
"He wadna look the road ye are on, ye ill-grown, cankered-faced,
jaundice hospital!" was the retort elegant of Sal Mackay.
So it happened nightly that when Celie Tennant was at the most
impressive portions of the Scripture lesson, or engaged in elucidating
the mysteries of compound division (and pardonably getting a little
tangled among the farthings), that there would come a long whistle at
the door, and then a smart rapping at the window. Another blast like
a steamer signal was blown before the dark tower, the Knuckle Dusters
would throw their heads back to laugh, and then look at Cleaver's
boy. He would stand it a little while, and then, to escape from their
meaning looks, he would throw down his slate and books and go quietly
out at the door.
At last Celie plucked up courage to speak to him.
"It is not so much that I mind," said Celie, for she had been learning
many things since she came down to the Sooth Back, things that she did
not mention when she went home to Aurelia Villa, or even repeat to the
Junior Partner.
"It is not that I mind so much myself," she said, "but it is a very bad
example for Cleg and the younger boys."
"I ken, I ken, but faith, I canna help it, Miss Celie," said Cleaver's
boy, in desperation. "As sure as daith, it is no my faut. Thae twa
lasses will juist no let me alane. I canna gang alang the street for
them."
And Celie, blushing for her sex, believed him and condoled. For, next
to Cleg, she had a weakness for Cleaver's boy. He was so good-looking.
"Wait till they come the nicht!" said Cleaver's boy, darkly.
It was the hour of the vesper writing lesson. Cleaver's boy was
seated at the long desk which Mr. Donald Iverach had found, as he
said, "about the premises"—but for which he had, curiously enough,
previously paid out of his own pocket. Cleaver's boy had his head
close down to the paper. His elbows were spread-eagled over the table.
His shoulders were squared with determination, and his whole pose gave
token of the most complete absorption and studious intentness. He was
writing the line, "Kindness to dumb animals is a sign of nobility of
character." As his pen traced the curves, his tongue was elaborating
the capitals, so exactly that you could almost tell by watching the tip
whether Cleaver's boy was writing a K or an N. This kind of expressive
caligraphy has not been sufficiently studied. But Cleaver's boy was
undoubtedly a master of it.
There came angry voices at the door.
"What are you doin' here? I tell ye he's my chap!" said a voice sharp
and shrill.
"It's a black lee. I tell ye he's naething o' the kind!" said another,
yet louder and rougher.
Sue Murphy and Sal Mackay were at it again. So said the Society of the
Knuckle Dusters as it winked amicably and collectively to itself. Celie
Tennant was just looking over the copybook of Cleaver's boy. As she
stood behind him, she could see the scarlet swiftly rising to his neck
and brow. Adonis was becoming distinctly annoyed. It was going to be a
rough night for Venuses.
"I tell ye it was only on Saturday nicht that he knocked my bonnet off
my head an' kickit it alang the street—an' ye will hae the impidence to
say after that that he is your lad!"
It was the voice of Sue Murphy which made this proud declaration.
"That nocht ava', ye Irish besom," retorted Sal Mackay; "yestreen nae
farther gane, he pu'ed a handfu' o' the hair oot o' my heid. Aye, and
rubbit my face wi' a clabber o' glaur, forbye!"
It was the last straw. Cleaver's boy rose to his feet with a look of
stern and righteous determination on his face. The assembled Knuckle
Dusters watched him eagerly. Celie stood aghast, fearing that murder
might be done, in the obvious endeavour Cleaver's boy was now about to
make, to excel all his previous records in the art of love-making, as
practised in the Sooth Back and the Tinklers' Lands.
He walked slowly to the corner of the store room, where on a little
bench stood two very large water cans of tin, painted a dark blue. They
were the property of the club and contained the drinking water for the
evening. They had just been filled.
Cleaver's boy took one in his hand and opened the door. Then he swung
the heavy can, and tilting it up with the other hand, he arched the
contents solidly and impartially upon the waiting Juliets. Returning,
he seized the other, and from the shrieking down the passage it was
obvious to Celie, that he had been equally successful in cooling the
ardour of the rivals with that.
Cleaver's boy came back with the empty cans in his hand, panting a
little as with honest toil, but there was no shamefacedness in his eyes
now. He looked straight at Celie like a man who has done his full duty,
and perhaps a little over.
"I pit it to yoursel', Miss Celie, can a man do mair than that?"
And with no further word, Cleaver's boy dusted the drops from the knees
of his breeches, and sat down to write six more lines of "Kindness to
dumb animals is a sign of nobility of character."
But next night he came to Celie in the blackness of despair.
"I will hae to resign, after all, Miss Celie," he said, "I canna bide
here to be a disgrace to ye a'."
"Why, what's the matter, James?" said Miss Tennant, who did not yet
know everything; "are the girls going to prosecute you in the police
court for throwing the water over them last night?"
Cleaver's boy opened his mouth in astonishment and kept it so for some
time.
"Prosecute me?—I wish to peace they wad!" cried he, after he got his
breath. "Na, faith, Miss Celie; will ye believe me, they are fonder
o' me than ever. They were baith waitin' for me at the stairfit this
mornin' when I cam doon to gang to the shop."
And Miss Celie again believed him.
ADVENTURE XXI.
AN IDYLL OF BOGIE ROLL.
Perhaps it was in sheer desperation that Cleaver's boy (whose name, by
the way, was James Annan, though the fact was hardly ever mentioned
except in the police court) at last resolved to make a desperate cast.
"They canna baith hae me," he said, "an' Guid kens I want neither o'
them. But gin I had yin o' them, she wad maybe keep the ither off."
So Cleaver's boy scratched his head to find out a way of settling the
difficulty. He could, he thought, be indifferently happy with either.
It was only having both of them "tearing at his coat-tails" that made
him miserable.
At last he dashed his hand against his thigh with a cry of joy, and
fell to dancing a hobnailed fandango in the gutter.
"Dod, man, the verra thing," he said; "I'll toss for them!"
So with that Cleaver's boy took out his lucky penny, and, selecting a
smooth space of the unpaved roadway of a new street, where the coin
would neither stick edgeways nor yet bounce unfairly on the stones, he
spun the coin deftly upwards from his level thumb-nail.
"Heads Sall—tails Susy!" he said, very solemnly, for his life was in
the twirl of the penny.
"Heads she is—Sal has got me!" exclaimed the ardent lover.
They were engaged that night. The next day they were photographed
together—Sal with a very large hat, a great deal of hair, and a still
larger amount of feather; Cleaver's boy with a very small hat, an
immense check suit, and a pipe stuck at a knowing angle with the bowl
turned down. That same night Sal had still a lover, indeed, but the
glory of her betrothal attire was no more. Her hat was a mere trampled
ruin. Her fringe was patchy. She had a black eye; and all that remained
of Susy Murphy was in the lock-up for assault and battery. Without
doubt it was a stirring time for James Annan, and it is to be feared
that Mr. Cleaver and his customers did not get quite their fair share
of his attention while it lasted.
Susy Murphy got off under the First Offenders Act. But immediately upon
re-encountering her successful rival she incontinently became a second
offender, and was as summarily fined thirty shillings or seven days.
And it added to the bitterness of Cleaver's boy, that he had to come
good for both the hat ruined in the first battle and the dress torn to
shreds in the second.
Then it also became his duty to take out Miss Mackay every evening,
and so frequent were the demands upon his purse, that Cleaver's boy
perceived that nothing but marriage stood between him and financial
ruin.
"If I was only marriet," he soliloquised, "I could stop the lemonades
and ice-creams. They're juist terrible expensive. I declare Sal thinks
naething o' a dozen bottles. And gin ye stickit a preen until her ony
gate, I declare she wad fizz."
It occurred to him, however, that as a temporary alternative it might
be possible to increase his earnings. And Cleaver's boy was not above
asking for what he wanted.
"Guid jobs wants finding nooadays!" was a favourite expression of his.
Now there was a certain Bailie Holden among the customers of Mr.
Cleaver. This dignitary had succeeded to the responsible position
of Convener of the Cleaning and Lighting department—a division of
the city's municipal business which has always been associated with
excellent eating and drinking, and a good deal of both.
Bailie Holden had the finest taste in the light wines of his country
of any man on the council. In his happier moments of inspiration he
could tell the age of Long John to within a year. Now Bailie Holden
had, among other excellent domestic properties, a kitchen-maid who
was not above casting soft eyes at spruce James Annan of Cleaver's,
so _débonnaire_, with his blue apron and his basket over his arm. And
James had cultivated the acquaintance according to his opportunity,
without, of course, thinking it necessary to say anything to Sal
Mackay—or, for the matter of that, to Sue Murphy either. So that, in
the course of conversation at the area door, it fell out that Cleaver's
boy mentioned his desire to be no more Cleaver's boy, but a servant of
the city corporation in the department of Cleaning and Lighting. And
the kitchen-maid answered, keeping her eyes on James and adjusting her
tumbled cap at the same time—
"I'll speak to the maister when he comes through the back kitchen, to
smoke his pipe in the yaird after dinner-time."
For it was the use and wont of Bailie Holden, when he was without
company, or could shunt the entertainment of it upon his wife, to put
on a seedy garden coat and slip off quietly round by the greenhouses.
Here he took from the edge of a heating tube a short clay pipe of
excessive blackness; then from a canister he extracted a snaky twist of
Bogie roll. Bailie Holden was renowned for keeping the best cigars in
the city, and he also smoked them regularly indoors. His wife, indeed,
did not allow anything else. But he came outside for his real smoke,
in his shirt-sleeves in the warm evenings, and in his garden coat when
it was colder. For though to all men he was now Havanna of the most
exclusive brand, and all his appointments like unto that dignity, yet
at the heart of him he was still kindly Bogie roll.
The Bailie thought on many things out there in the dark as he nuzzled
down the glowing ash in the pipe-bowl close under his nose. He thought,
for instance, of the year Elizabeth and he were married, when they
started at the foot of Morrison Street in one room at the back of the
gasfitter's shop. They did not keep a servant then, and Elizabeth had
not yet learned to object to the smoking of Bogie roll. Indeed, her
father and her three brothers (all honest masons) incessantly smoked
nothing else. But when there was need to find a place in the little
back-room for another person with no experience in Bogie roll where he
came from, then the Bailie had gone out every night to the backyard,
sat down on a roll of lead piping and smoked a black pipe, with a
babe's little complainings tugging at his heart all the while. And the
memory of the Bogie roll outside the window, across which the black
shadows went and came, had somehow kept his heart warm all through the
years.
And, strange it is to say it, but though he was in many ways a
difficult man to serve, yet many a servant had remained another term,
simply because the master slipped out to take his smoke away from
every one in the evening. This is the whole idyll of the life of
Bailie Holden, Convener of the Committee on Cleaning and Lighting and
proximate Lord Provost of the city. It is curious that it should be an
idyll of Bogie roll.
ADVENTURE XXII.
THE SEDUCTION OF A BAILIE.
So it was at this most favourable of times that Cleaver's boy's
kitchen-maid approached her master with her request. It was just at the
critical moment when the Bailie was laying aside the Convener and host,
and donning the Morrison Street plumber, with the garden coat which
carried so strong an atmosphere of the idyllic Bogie roll.
"If ye please, sir, there's a young man——," the voice of the
kitchen-maid broke upon his dreams.
"Ah, Janet," said the Convener, getting helped into the garden coat,
for he was not now so slim as once he had been, "there always is a
young man! And that's how the world goes on!"
"But," said Janet, the kitchen-maid, "this is a very nice young man.
You may have seen him, sir. He comes here twice every day from Mr.
Cleaver's, the butcher's, sir."
"No, Janet," replied the Bailie, amicably, "I do not know that I have
observed him. You see, my duties do not compel me to be cleaning the
kitchen steps when nice young men come from Cleaver's!"
"Sir," said Janet, with a little privileged indignation, "James Annan,
sir, is a most respectable young man."
"And he asked you to speak to me?"
"Oh no, sir! Indeed, no, sir! But I thought, sir, that in your
department you might have need of a steady young man."
"I have, indeed, Janet. You are as right as ever you will be in your
life," said the Convener of Cleaning and Lighting, thinking of the
ravages which the traditional hospitality of the department sometimes
made among his steadiest young men.
"What are his desires, Janet?" said the Bailie; "does he want a chief
inspectorship, or will he be content to handle a broom?"
"Oh, not an inspectorship—at first, sir. And he can handle anything,
indeed, sir," said Janet, breathlessly, for the Convener had endued
himself with his coat and showed signs of moving gardenwards.
"Including your chin, my dear," said the Bailie, touching (it is very
regrettable to have to state) one of Janet's plump dimples with the
action which used fifty years ago to go by the name of "chucking." He
had dined, his wife was safely up stairs out of harm's way, and Bogie
roll glowed cloudily before him. Let these be his excuses.
"James Annan, nor no one else, has more to do with my chin than I like
to let them, sir," said Janet, who came from Inverness, and had a very
clear idea of business.
The Bailie laughed and went out.
"I will bear it in mind, Janet," said he, for he felt that he was
wasting time. He did not mean Janet's dimpled chin.
"Better put it down in your notebook—I'll fetch it, sir!" And Janet
promptly fetched a black leather case, round-shouldered with importance
and bulgy with business.
So the Bailie stood in the half-light which came from the kitchen
window, and wetted the stub of a lead-pencil, which Janet had carried
for years in the pocket of her working-dresses without ever needing it.
He hesitated what to write.
"The young man's name, sir, is James Annan, and you can send the letter
in care of me, sir," said Janet, with a subtle suggestiveness. She
tiptoed round till she touched his sleeve, so as to look over at what
he was writing.
"Thank you, Janet; anything else?" asked the Bailie.
"No, sir," said Janet, hesitating with her finger at her lip, "unless,
sir, you could think to put him on this district."
So it happened that in due time Mr. Cleaver lost the services of
Cleaver's boy. These valuable assets were simultaneously gained by the
city corporation in the department of Cleaning and Lighting. This has
been the immemorial method in which subordinate positions have been
filled, according to the best traditions of the municipal service. The
great thing is, of course, to catch your convener, as it were, between
dinner and Bogie roll.
James Annan was placed on the southern district, and his duty was to
mark in a notebook, less important but a good deal cleaner than the
Bailie's, the names of the streets which were attended to in their
order, and also the exact moment when each final ash-backet was heaped
upon the cart.
What precise benefit trim Janet of Inverness got from the arrangement
is not clear. For, being occupied during the night, Cleaver's boy
could no more come for the orders early in the morning, nor yet trot
whistling down the area steps an hour later with the laden basket upon
his arm. So that Janet, supposing the matter interested her at all,
seemed definitely to be the loser.
Yet one never knows. For the ways of girls from Inverness are deep
as the sea is deep in the unplumbed places in the middle, which are
painted the deepest indigo on the atlases. James Annan continued to
be called Cleaver's boy, in spite of the fact that a successor at six
shillings a week had been appointed, who now wore Cleaver's boy's
discarded blue aprons. In other ways he would have been glad to succeed
to the perquisites of Cleaver's boy. But he was a sallow-faced youth
with straight hair, who used his tobacco without the aid of a pipe. So
Janet did not deign to bandy a single word with the new boy. He was
no more than a penny-in-the-slot machine, wound up to deliver so many
pounds of steak every day. The kitchen steps were now always cleaned in
the early dawn, and Janet went about in her old wrapper all the morning
and most of the afternoon.
She had taken a saving turn, she said, as if it had been the measles.
It was all very well for the table-maid always to wear a black frock.
But though she saw less of Cleaver's boy (the original and only genuine
article), it is possible, and indeed likely, that Janet of Inverness
knew more of the romance of Susy and Sal than Cleaver's boy gave
her credit for. Let those who try to run three or four love affairs
abreast, like horses in a circus ring, take warning. Janet of Inverness
had never heard of either Sal or Susy from the lips of Cleaver's boy.
Nevertheless, there was not much of importance to her schemes which
was not familiar to the wise little head set upon the plumply demure
shoulders of Janet of Inverness.
ADVENTURE XXIII.
THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT-SHIFT MAN.