Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures

"We shall have some dinner presently," said Theophilus Ruff. "I always dine in the middle of the day ever since I began to keep house for myself."

He spun another combination lock, clicked a key, and Cleg found himself in a little brick addition, plastered like a swallow's nest against the rear wall of Barnbogle House.

Here were a little table of scoured woodwork, and a cheap cooking-range with a paraffin stove, which, like all its kind, leaked a little. Upon a shelf under the window were tumbled roughly a cooking-pot, a frying-pan, a skillet, a brander, two tin plates, and half-a-dozen cheap knives and forks, all of the poorest and most ordinary description, and most of them dirty in the extreme.

The General ushered Cleg into this place with some ceremony and condescension, like a superior initiating a new and untried assistant into the work of his department.

"I will show you how to light the stove," he said; "it is an exceedingly convenient invention. I wish we had had them in the army in my time. I will do the cooking myself on this occasion, in order that you may see in what manner you may best assist me in the future.

"There are herring here," he said, waving his hand to a barrel which showed through a sparred locker, "and a ham there beyond. Butter you will find in that firkin on your left. It is the best Danish from Kiel. The tinned beef on the shelves is to be kept for emergencies. It is not to be touched. The butter I import myself, and dispose of what I do not use to an Italian warehouseman in Netherby. I find that it takes the place of lard also. Here is flour for sauces, and I always bring home a four-pound loaf every second day, which I find to be amply sufficient. I propose to continue the duty, and shall bring two in future. If there is anything necessary for your health which you do not find, I shall be happy to supply it. I think I have a suit of clothes – not my own, but which I happen to possess. They can easily be adapted for your use."

ADVENTURE LII.

THE THREE COFFINS IN THE STRONG-ROOM

While the General was explaining all these things, he was at the same time deftly handling the gridiron upon which he was cooking the four red herrings which he had laid out. These, with bread and the aforesaid best specially imported Danish butter, dug out of the keg with a scoop, furnished their simple meal. General Theophilus made tea in a black kettle, by the simple process of putting in a soup ladle filled with tea and allowing the water in the kettle to come to the boil.

"The tea is of the best quality," he said, "though I am somewhat prodigal of it, as you see. But a man must have some luxuries."

Yet all the time, while Cleg was partaking of the herrings, cutting the bread, and drinking the tea, he was oppressed by the dark overwhelming bulk of the house behind him, through which he had been led. He instinctively felt it to be full of secrets, of unknown echoing passages, doors that clicked and sprung, and of all untold and unutterable mysteries.

All through their dinner time the General was most courteously polite, handing the salt and helping the herrings with infinite address. And when Cleg in his ignorance or his awkwardness committed a solecism, the General only in the slightest degree emphasised the correctness of his own demeanour, so that Cleg, if he chose, might benefit by the lesson in deportment. Not that Cleg needed many, for had he not often taken tea with Miss Celie Tennant, which in itself was a charmingly liberal education?

When the meal was finished, Theophilus Ruff took Cleg into a little room adjoining. Here there was a fixed wash-tub and a tiny boiler.

"I do my own washing, you see. Cleanliness is most important!" the General explained. "I learned the art while campaigning in Afghanistan. For the present, therefore, I shall continue to do the washing, though I shall be glad of your assistance in the matter of drying and ironing!"

Cleg could hardly credit his ears – a General and the owner of all this wealth, talking freely of doing his own washing. Cleg looked at the beautiful linen sheets on the bed and marvelled still more. Then he remembered what Theophilus had said about the presence of women.

"This is your bedroom," said the General, opening a still smaller room, which contained nothing but a wash-stand and a small "scissors" camp-bed. Upon a nail behind the doors hung a couple of suits of clothes.

"These are yours," explained the General; "this room is also yours. I shall not again enter it. I beg of you, therefore, that when you have been visiting your friend the widow you will wear one of these suits, either as it pleases you. But when you come into the rooms which I share with you, or undertake any of the duties connected with your position, you will take the trouble to change into the other."

Cleg touched the nearer suit of clothes gently with his hand. It was of fine texture, though of a fashion somewhat antique, with wide lapels to the coat and the vest very long. The General opened a drawer.

"Here," he said, "you will find collars, shirts, and stockings which, though a little large for you, are such as you will rapidly grow into. Consider them as your own. Assure yourself completely that the owner of these has no further need for them."

Cleg thanked his benefactor frankly, but without subservience or profusion.

"Now," said the General, turning rapidly upon Cleg, "I should like to come to financial terms with you. I am willing to give you one pound sterling or twenty shillings a week and your food. At the present rate of the rupee in India, from which much of my income is derived, I am not desirous of making it more. But in the event of any decided appreciation in the price of silver, I should be willing to consider your claims to a supplement."

"It's far ower muckle as it is," cried honest Cleg. "Man, I wad be glad o' the half o't!"

The General waved his hand.

"My dear sir," he said, "you are as yet unaware of the intensely peculiar services which your position here will require of you. You may have to see strange things sometimes, and to learn to say nothing. I desire, therefore, to remunerate you suitably in advance. What I shall reveal to you is perfectly harmless, as I shall show you. But still I am aware that there is a not unnatural prejudice against such experiences, especially among the young. We will call it, therefore, for the present a pound a week."

Cleg nodded. He was willing to sleep in a vault amongst skulls and crossbones, with a reliable up-to-time ghost thrown in, for a pound a week.

"I will now show you my own bedroom," he said.

The General opened the locks of the doors leading into the house with the same precise caution, and with some additional secrecy as well. But even in this the General behaved with a gentlemanly reticence.

"You will observe," he said, "that I do not for the present make you free of the passwords of the fortress. That in time will doubtless come; but in the meantime you will consider me as the governor of the castle, with discipline to maintain and my own secrets to keep.

"Your nerves are strong, I trust?" he added, as they passed along gloomy passages through which the winds blew gustily as in some cave of the winds.

"I'm no feared, gin that's what ye mean. I dinna ken aught aboot nerves," said Cleg.

The General led him sideways down a flight of steps like one that goes stealthily into a cellar.

They stopped before a door of massive iron painted red as a ship is before she is launched, and with the boltheads neatly picked out in white.

"You observe," said the General, "this door is entirely of my own construction – aided, that is, by the most skilled smiths and mechanicians. You notice that the rock upon which the house is built is above our heads, and also that the door is really excavated in the stone itself. The iron frame upon which the door closes is mortised so deeply and completely into the solid rock all round, that to all intents and purposes it is practically one piece with it."

The General pointed upwards to where a pale yellow gleam on the wall showed through a range of open and glassless but triply barred windows.

"That," he said, "is Cheiranthus Cheiri, the common, yellow, or wild wallflower – of a different species from that of the garden and, in my opinion, a much finer plant. It is growing up there on the natural rock. So that I sleep, as sayeth the Scripture, 'within the living stone'!"

Cleg looked at the General. His eyes seemed to grow darker, his figure became more erect. He continued every few minutes to refer to his watch.

"This lock," he said, patting the keyhole, "is a highly ingenious union of a time-lock and the commoner letter combination lock. This morning I set the wards to open at two in the afternoon. So that it is now almost the time when we shall be able by the application of the key-word to open the door."

He waited till the hands of the watch were opposite the hour.

"Now!" he said, and stepped forward with some show of eagerness.

The son of the burglar looked on with an interest which was almost painful.

The General twirled the lock till he had brought five letters into line upon the dial. Then he inserted a little key which hung at his watch-chain. The massive red iron door, with its white-studded nails, swung back softly of its own accord.

"A simple application of the principle of the water balance," he said, "thus – I open the lock, the water runs out and the door opens. In another five minutes the small cistern will fill of its own accord, and its weight will automatically close the door."

Cleg hung back. He was not afraid, as he had said. But it seemed an uncanny place to be shut up in with only a madman for company. For Cleg had no doubt whatever that the General was out of his mind.

General Theophilus Ruff noticed his hesitancy.

"Do not be afraid. I have the combinations all in the inside of my watch scales, so that even if I were suddenly to die here, you would still be able to make your way out."

The two stepped within, Cleg being ashamed to show any further feelings of reluctance to trust his benefactor.

The General touched a match to a large lamp which stood on a pedestal. The whole room, which had been pitchy dark a moment before, seemed now fairly bursting with light.

"My bedroom!" said the General, circling the place with his hand, with the air of one who makes an important introduction.

The walls were of red-painted iron throughout, the red of farm carts in the district, and the bolts were again picked out with white. But the furniture was the strange thing. There was nothing whatever in the room save three coffins, each arranged squarely upon its own table.

The lids of the two at either side were hinged and closed. The centre one stood open. The coffins were not large or fine ones, but, on the contrary, common and covered with black cloth. The lid of the centre one was off, and stood leaning against the wall at the coffin head. Cleg could easily read the inscription, which was in white letters upon a black painted plate: —

MAJOR-GENERAL THEOPHILUS RUFF,

E.I.C. BENGAL ARMY.

BORN JULY 21st, 18 – .

DECEIVED JULY 21st, 18 – .

UNDECEIVED JULY 21st, 18 – .

DIED JULY 21st, 18 – .

"It is not long now," he said, pointing to the latter date. "I have not added the year, you observe. But it was revealed that all my days of fate should culminate on the 21st of July. And so hitherto they have. I do not think I shall see more than other four."

Then a new thought seemed to strike him. He turned to Cleg Kelly sharply.

"Note the lettering on the coffins," he said; "I did it all with an ordinary sharpened knitting needle. I bought a plain black tin plate from the carpenter of the village, and he showed me how the paint scrapes off. It is quite easy. But I have done it much more neatly than could the carpenter himself. I have since attended quite a number of male funerals in order to observe the quality of the lettering upon the coffin. I do assure you it is, in general, disgracefully slipshod. The man does not appear to take the least pains to improve. I have even thought of offering to do the job for him."

Cleg was continuing to look about him, when a sudden noise behind him caused him to leap to the side. The great red iron door had swung to with a little well-oiled click.

The General smiled indulgently and reassuringly.

"It is only the water balance I told you of. It is now full; the little wet-bob rises to the top, and the door swings to of its own accord."

Cleg continued to look about him. The room was about thirty feet square and half as high. But there was no bedstead or any other furniture to be seen.

The General noticed his perplexity.

"I observe," he said, smiling, "that you are looking for my bed. Here it is," laying his hand on the central coffin. "Oblige me with your hand. I usually depend upon a stick, but your shoulder is better."

The General balanced himself for a moment upon the edge of the coffin, and let his head drop back upon the little white pad. Then he arranged his shoulders into the fiddle-shaped swell, and deftly drew in his feet after him.

"Now," he said, "damp the herbs in that pipe. Light a ribbon of the prepared paper at the lamp, and put it in the bowl to smoulder."

Cleg hastened to obey. It was a large-headed East Indian pipe with a flexible handle, and mouthpiece of fine pale amber.

"You observe," said the General, as he calmly and carefully adjusted his pipe-stem over the edge of the coffin, "I do not use ordinary tobacco, but a mixture of Indian hemp and Datura stramonium, or thornapple, a common dunghill plant. With ordinary people the smoking of these would produce madness; but in my case they produce only a peculiar exaltation, and then a kind of ethereal coma, without at all being followed by the evil effects of opium."

He beckoned Cleg to come nearer. Cleg did so, and took up his position at the foot of the coffin with some reluctance.

"Now," he said, "I am about to take my siesta. Do you set the time arrangement by carefully turning the hands of the small clock to seven – the lower dial, if you please. Thank you. Now bring the letters of the word FALSE to the face of the lock attachment, and you will be able to open it by the use of this duplicate key. The same word will (for this day only) enable you to open the outer door – from the inside, that is, not again from the outside. The pass-word is changed every day. I always write it on a paper inside my watch every morning."

As Cleg was leaving the room the face and neck of the General were suddenly jerked up, so that he rose almost to a sitting position. Cleg's muscles twitched, and with a sharp cry he leaped into the air.

The General waved the hand which was not employed in managing the pipe-stem, upon which his eyes were steadily fixed.

"I beg your pardon most heartily," he said, "I should have warned you of this. The fact is, I have an automatic attachment, which I have applied beneath the pillow, by which at certain intervals my head is raised. For, though so remarkably spare of person, I have several times in the East been threatened with apoplexy; and, indeed, I suffer constantly from asthma, for which I find the Datura stramonium most useful."

And as Cleg whirled the combination circles in imitation of the General, he prayed that he might never again have to enter that ghastly chamber. Yet it was his fortune to abide with the General four years as his body servant, and to enter the strong-room of Barnbogle nearly every day.

ADVENTURE LIII.

A STORMY MORNING AT LOCH SPELLANDERIE

It had been a stormy morning at Loch Spellanderie. It was not wholly that the winds howled gustily up the loch, or that the tiny breakers lashed the shore in mimic fury. Mistress McWalter had ofttimes been a deceived woman, but never before had she taken to her bosom so complete a viper as Vara Kavannah. She had, indeed, been telling her so for well-nigh four years. Even Kit Kennedy had become for once almost an angel of light when compared with her. The reason of the sudden riot was that Cleg Kelly had been discovered talking to Vara by the orchard dyke the night before.

"Ye brazen-faced besom – ye toon's madam," cried Mrs. McWalter, "I'll learn you to bring your ragged, unkempt, stravagin' followers here! – Guidman, gin ye were worth your salt, as ye are not, ye wad tak' speech in hand, and order sic a randy instantly frae 'boot the hoose!"

It was early in the morning. Mrs. McWalter was still in bed, and her husband was pretending to be asleep. But she was well acquainted with his guile.

"Ye needna pretend ye are sleepin', John, for brawly do I ken that ye hear every word."

Vara, grown by this time into a tall, handsome girl, was already brushing out the kitchen and lighting the fire. Kit Kennedy was whistling cheerfully about the stable. Mistress McWalter always assisted at reveille in the house of Loch Spellanderie. Her voice was so sharp and shrill that it could easily reach every corner of the house from her bed. And upon occasion, when she felt that she was generally doing herself justice, it had been known to sweep the cart-shed, and even beat upon the walls of the barn with considerable effect. But that was, of course, when the front door of the dwelling-house was open.

While thus lying comfortably upon her back, Mistress McWalter could keep up a steady and destructive criticism of life in a high-pitched falsetto, as it was represented below in the sweeps of Vara's brush and the patter of Kit Kennedy's clogs upon the stone floor.

"What are ye doin' near the dresser, ye sly, ill-contrivin' limmer," she cried; "hae I no telled ye a thousand times, that if I catch ye takkin' as muckle as a sup o' the milk that was skimmed yestreen for the bairns' breakfast this mornin', I will hae the polissman at ye? But the jail wad be no surprise to the likes o' you. Na, I'm guessin' ye hae been weel acquant wi' the poliss a' your days. Tak' up the water-cans and gang your ways to the well for water. Then haste ye fast back and put on the muckle pot and the porridge pot, baith o' them. Or, my certes, I'll come at ye wi' a stick, ye careless, trapesin' slut, ye!"

Vara was not slow in obeying this command. To go to the well meant, at the least, to be for five minutes out of the hearing of the all-compassing tongue of Mistress McWalter, and out of the shrill ding-dong of her vocabulary. It was not much, but still it was something.

The girl took the blue cans readily, and went towards the door.

"Gang some deal quaiter," cried Mistress McWalter, "or, by my faith, I'll thresh ye like a sheaf o' corn when I rise to ye, ye misleared gamester frae the streets! Dinna wauken a' the puir tired bairns, for they were honestly gotten and weel brocht up. And shut the door after ye, when ye gang oot. Ye want us a' to get our deaths o' cauld, nae doot!"

The anger that burned in Vara's breast was healthy and natural, and it would have done her a world of good if she had been able to allow herself the safety valve of intemperate speech. But she only said to herself, "I'll thole awhile yet for Boy Hugh's and wee Gavin' sake, till they can fend for themselves. I need the siller she pays me."

Kit Kennedy met Vara as she crossed the yard. Now in order to reach the well it was necessary to go through the gate at the far angle of the yard, and to walk some distance along the grassy road which led to the next farm. The gusts blew off the lake and twirled Vara's hair becomingly about her face. She was certainly growing a tall, shapely, personable lass. And so thought Kit Kennedy, and said so with his eyes.

Kit was also tall and strong. There was nothing rustic about his appearance. He had the profile and pose of head of the young Apollo of the Bow. He did not, indeed, possess the sinewy, gypsy alertness of Cleg Kelly, nor yet the devil's grit, turned, on the whole, to good intents, which drove that youth safely through so many adventures. Kit Kennedy was slower, more thoughtful, more meditative. Cleg never by any chance wasted a moment in meditation, so long as there was a chance to do anything. And when he did, it was only that he might again dash the more determinedly and certainly into the arena of action.

But Kit Kennedy could call friends out of the visionary air to sit with him in "sessions of sweet silent thought." Often he walked day after day in a world all his own. And the most stinging words of Mistress McWalter did not affect him one whit more than the gusts of wind-born rain which dashed at him across the lake.

In the same circumstances, Cleg would simply have smitten Mistress McWalter with a stone, or, if more convenient, with a poker, and so departed well content. But Kit Kennedy forbore, and made nothing of her persecution. He could dodge her blows by watching her hand. And he could go on calmly rehearsing the adventures of Sir Aylmer de Vallance, while the abuse of his aunt provided a ready-made background of storm and fret, which gave a delicious relish to a victorious single combat in Kit's imagination.

When Kit met Vara on the well road he took the cans naturally out of her hands, as if he had been well accustomed to doing it. He had been waiting for her. In his heart he always called her his lady Gloriana, and it was only with difficulty that he could remember to call her Vara. Kit had been much happier during the years since Vara came. He had now a heroine for his romances, as well as a companion for his hours of ease. For Kit went about acting another life all day long. He fed the bullocks to the clatter of cavalry hoofs. He shepherded the sheep towards pastures new, to the blast of trumpet and the beat of drum. Or, as a great general, he stood gloomily apart upon a knoll, with his staff around him, and sent a barking aide-de-camp here and another there, to direct the woolly battalions how to make their attack upon the bridge. He always thrust one hand into his breast, in order to represent the correct attitude of a great general on such occasions. He was compelled to unloose the third button of his waistcoat in order to do it. This seemed strange. He had never read that this was necessary. He wondered what heroes did in that case. But it struck him afterwards that very likely they had their waistcoats made open on purpose.

Again, in his books of chivalry there was always a lady to be the guiding star of every life of adventure. Each knight, if he was of any respectability at all, provided himself at least with one. The great Don Quixote had done that. For the Knight Dolorous was, in the opinion of Kit Kennedy, as indeed in that of all fair-minded people, a most high-minded and ill-used man.

Kit had tried in various directions to find a lady of his vows before Vara came. For lack of better, he had even tried to imagine his aunt as a divinity, beautiful and cruel. But something was always happening to destroy this illusion. Nothing is more hurtful to exalted sentiment than a box on the ear, administered unexpectedly. So, after a fair trial, Kit was compelled definitely to give his aunt up, as a possible queen of love and courtesy. It could not be done, even with all Kit's very generous good-will. So, instead, he called her the False Duessa, the black hag Sycorax, and especially and generally Beelzebubba, for the last name pleased him greatly. And whenever she mocked him with her bitter tongue, Kit hugged himself, saying, "Ah! if only I were to call her Beelzebubba! Little knows she that in the history of my mighty and knightly deeds, she is condemned to go down to posterity yet unborn under the name of the Loathly Beelzebubba!"

So Kit carried the Lady Gloriana's silver vessels to the fountain of the Elixir of Life, swinging them lightly and talking briskly all the way.

Vara looked often at Kit, with his free breezy ways and erect carriage. Indeed, she looked so often, that if Cleg had been within sight there would certainly have been another fight.

But Vara was constantly mindful of Cleg. She prayed for him night and morning. She remembered all his goodness, and she wished that he could oftener come to see her. But in the meantime it was undoubtedly pleasant to have some one at hand, so ready to help with sympathy for herself and abuse of the enemy as Kit Kennedy.

The lad and the girl stood awhile at the well, leaning elbows upon the dyke, while Vara confided to Kit all the morning enormities of Mistress McWalter, and Kit bade her be of good cheer, for there was a good time coming for them both. And also, doubtless, a very bad time for Beelzebubba. It always was so in the story books.