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

When Cleg had done everything that he could think of for Vara and her mistress, he tied a new whip lash on Gavin's driving stick, tossed Hugh up to the ceiling, and departed.

Vara came with him to the door. Cleg did not even attempt to shake hands. On the contrary, he edged cautiously away lest Vara should offer to do it. "A chap looks saft aye shakin' hands" was how he explained the matter to himself. So when Vara stood a moment at the doorstep, with her hands wrapped tightly in her white apron and her eyes upon the beehives, Cleg looked at her a long time. It was exceedingly good to look upon her, and he had a little heartache all to himself as he thought of Theophilus Ruff in his terrible bedroom. Vara seemed all sunshine and pleasantness. But still he could think of nothing to say, till he was about ten yards down the walk. Then at last he spoke.

"Ye are takkin' your meat weel to a' appearance," he said.

Vara understood his meaning and was pleased. It was more to her from Cleg than all Kit Kennedy's sweet speeches. Her mind was mightily relieved. Cleg would learn yet.

But Vara only replied, "Do you think so, Cleg?"

"Guidnicht, Vara," said Cleg, soberly.

And with that he took his way sedately over the fields and disappeared into the coppice towards the house of Barnbogle. Vara watched him out of sight; but now not so wistfully. There was a proud little expression in her face. She looked almost conscious of her growing beauty.

"He maun think an awfu' deal o' me to say that!" she told herself.

When she went back into the house Mirren Douglas was just putting on her milking apron. She pretended to busy herself with the strings.

"Cleg doesna improve muckle in looks," she said; "he's no great beauty, is he noo?"

She spoke with intent to see what Vara would reply. For, after her sorrow, the old Mirren was springing up again like roses in an Indian summer.

"I never think muckle aboot his looks when I see him," said Vara quickly. "If he had looked like an angel, he couldna hae been kinder to me."

"Hoots, lassie," said Mirren hastily, "I was only jokin' ye. He is growin' a fine, personable lad, and when he has some flesh on his banes and a wee tait o' mair growth aboot his face, he'll do verra weel."

"He does very weel as he is, I think," said the loyal Vara, who was not yet appeased. "He has chappit the firewood, fetched the water, brocht in the peats and stalled the kye, soopit the yaird – and he is coming back the morn to clean the lum."

"And to see you, Vara," said Mirren Douglas, with wicked meaning in her tone. "What said ye at the door when he cannily bade ye guidnicht, Vara?"

"He said I was lookin' like takkin' my meat weel," said Vara, demurely pulling at the corner of her apron, where a knot of the lace was coming loose. At least Vara was rapidly loosening it.

"Let your apron be, lassie; what ill-will hae ye at it?" cried Mirren from the doorstep.

Vara dropped the loop as if it had been a white-hot iron. And as Mirren Douglas carried her milking stool to the byre, she dropped a few tears. "I mind sae weel," she said to herself, "the time when Alick was a lad and coming aboot the place, I used to like naething better than for folk to be aye botherin' me aboot him!"

And if "bothering" be a provocative to love, Mirren resolved that neither Vara nor Cleg should lack the amatorious irritant.

ADVENTURE LVI.

THE VOICES IN THE MARSH

During the days that followed her home-coming Vara was happier than she had ever been. In the warm sunshine of family love and physical well-being the curves of her figure filled out. She seemed to shoot up all at once from the child into the woman. Her eyes lost their old frightened look. Her arms and shoulders hid their angles and became curved and dimpled. But Cleg waxed even more shy and awkward. But, nevertheless, he came every day, and if there was anything to be done about the house, or in the little grass parks, Cleg Kelly was there to do it. It was Cleg, for instance, who started the wonderful wild-flower industry. This was the secret which he had kept in store against the day when he should fall out with the General.

It was Cleg's idea that if only he could send large enough quantities of the commoner wild flowers to the market, there would soon be a trade in them which might, with proper attention, grow to very considerable dimensions.

Not that Cleg contemplated any great extensions at present. But he desired to make a beginning, so that he might not have to build up from the foundations, if anything were suddenly to happen which might cast him again upon the world.

So Cleg advertised in the Scottish city papers that he was prepared to supply both blooms and entire plants of such ferns and wild flowers as grew in the neighbourhood of Netherby. He got Vara also to send similar advertisements to the Exchange and Mart and other papers. And in a little time he had developed as large a trade as could be carried on directly by parcel and limited orders. He found, for instance, a hill not far off which was entirely overgrown with the parsley-fern. And with this he made great deals in the fern market. For he was able to supply a dozen or a hundred plants for a very modest remittance, and that with merely the trouble of walking to the hill for them.

But he saw that the undertaking must have a surer basis than this haphazard ingathering of chance growths. And so Cleg set himself to plant out and cultivate the wild flowers in ground naturally suited for their growth. He had the wet morass at hand for the water-plants, the burnside for those which loved to be near, but not in, running water. There were shy nooks about the linn for ferns, and for the rest the fine light soil of Sandyknowes. He utilised ground which was not in use for any other purposes, fencing it round with wire, and setting Vara and Hugh to do the watering and caring for the plants, as they had done long ago around the old construction hut in Callendar's yard.

Hugh Boy went to school during the day at Netherby Academy, and was proving a great success. Cleg Kelly taught him how to box, and warned him at the same time not to fight. But Cleg added that if he needed to do it, it was better to do it once for all and be done with it. So these advantages assured Hugh an easy life of it at school.

Cleg had also been thinking much lately of developing the wild-flower business. He meant to establish an agency in each of the larger towns, and he had already written a letter to Cleaver's boy offering him terms as his agent and advising him to look out for openings. For Cleg was proving himself above all things practical, and seemed destined to turn out as prosperous a business man as Bailie Holden.

The General often laughed at Cleg's devotion to his flowers and his children. Yet he liked to hear tidings of them. Sometimes, indeed, he reproved Cleg for bringing with him a floating atmosphere and suggestion of womankind. But Cleg always assured him that he had been careful to change his clothes.

Life at Barnbogle went on uneventfully. Daily the time locks clicked. Daily the General retired to his strange bedroom, coming forth again with the pupils of his eyes dilated and his face drawn with the drugs which he had inhaled and swallowed. Cleg cooked the bacon, brewed the tea, and made a couple of daily pilgrimages to the room of the three coffins. Then he came out again and shut the doors carefully behind him, and slept soundly at nights. Cleg had no spiritual fears and had outgrown his illusions – at least such of them as interfered with a pound a week.

But whenever he went into Netherby he found himself an object of great interest. For not even the peccadilloes of the ministers of Netherby, nor yet the unbecoming gaiety of their wives' attire, supplied so favourite a subject for gossip to the good folk of the town as the madness and the miserliness of General Theophilus Ruff.

The old men would tell over again those tales of the General driving his coach and six with the lady by his side who was arrayed like the Queen of Sheba. Netherby had never had any doubt as to the fascinating moral character of this personage. And Theophilus Ruff still carried the glory of his former sins about with him, even though he had dwelt for twenty years a hermit and a madman in his house of Barnbogle.

His fabulous wealth was everywhere a common topic. He received his rents in person, but none of it, so far as was known, was placed in the banks of the neighbourhood. The builders, the engineers, and the locksmiths from the city had, as we have seen, all told tales of the strong-rooms they had been erecting, and of the secret arrangements which had been made with a great firm in London for yet more complete safety.

"It's a perfect Guid's wonder that ye are no a' murdered in your beds, wi' thae millions of siller lyin' in the hoose," said one of Cleg's most persistent inquisitors, after vainly trying to extract from Cleg whether he had ever seen the treasure with his own eyes.

"I wadna be in your shoon for a hundred pounds a week – na, no for a' the gowd in Barnbogle Hoose," the respectable shopkeeper told him each time he came in. "The General's servants never leave him. Na, they a' dee – and generally michty suddenly at the tail o' the day. And naebody kens in what mainner they come by their ends. I'm thinking that when he gets tired o' them, he juist locks them up in yin o' his iron rooms and then – lets them bide there!"

But Cleg was not frightened, as the good grocer had hoped. He bought his red herrings, his bacon, and his eggs; and he carried them peacefully back to the brick building in the rear of the vast blind wall of Barnbogle House, to be ready when the General should come again from his room.

"A pound a week was never easier earned," said practical and unimaginative Cleg.

Vara felt that this time of bliss was too sweet to last. Yet, with the fatalism of those bred up in the midst of misery, she was content to bask carelessly in the sunshine of present prosperity. She was like a bird taking its fill of the warmth and delight of summer, without a thought of blusterous winter winds and the shrewd pinch of nipping skies.

But one night, when the year was already drawing to its end, and November was expiring in a clear silver-grey rime of frost, Vara was locking up the outhouses at Sandyknowes in the gloaming. She had already been at the byre, and had given the cows their last bit of fodder, and a pat each on the flank as she passed – a pat so remote from the sentient and operative end of the animal, that it seemed almost as ridiculous as caressing the porch of a church in order to please the parson.

Nevertheless, Vara never omitted the ceremony on any consideration. Yet this particular evening, all the time she was foddering the cattle Vara had a strange consciousness that she heard voices somewhere over towards the marsh. The crisp air of coming frost sharpened her hearing, and as the stars pricked themselves out, the whole night rang like a bell with unknown and far-away sounds.

Voices Vara certainly did hear. But she thought that it might be only a lad and lass on their way to the dancing-school, or a herd talking aloud to his dog for company as he went homeward. Yet the sounds did not resemble any of those with which Vara had been recently acquainted. Some awful dread, inherited from a former and a more terrible existence, returned upon her.

Her breath came hard and quick. She grew first hot and then cold, as she stole down by the barn-end to listen. She was nearer to the voices there. The murmur of them came more instant and terrible up from the swamp above which Sandyknowes sat on its hill. Vara stole on tiptoe nearer and nearer. The old hut in the hollow was a deserted cot-house of the General's – a mere but-and-ben – which Muckle Alick had been accustomed to use for storing old railway sleepers in. For these are the winter fuel of men who work upon the railway.

Presently Vara saw its white gable-end staring out at her through the bare branches of the underbrush. The angry voices became louder and more threatening. A ray of light stole through a chink in the boarded-up window. Stealthily Vara went on tiptoe round the gable till she could put her eye to the chink. A cloth had been hung up over the window, past one corner of which Vara could just see a fire flickering in the grateless fireplace of the deserted cottage.

But her heart sank within her at the words she heard, which rang like the very trump of doom in her ears: "Timothy Kelly," cried a voice which Vara well knew – even that of her mother – "I tell ye I will have no murder done! And on your own son! Shame on ye! It is enough to bring a judgment on us all just to talk about it. I tell ye we can get the stuff out of the house o' the loony General without the like of that."

Then the piping voice of the weasel-faced Tim Kelly answered, "'Tis little that ye know, Sal Kavannah, you that never were at the taking of a farthing's worth in your life, except off boosy softies in the street. I tell ye, woman, that if Clig Kelly were to come in my road when I am getting out the cargo I'd spit him like a rat!"

"But, maybes," said the other voice, which thrilled Vara the most, "maybes, if ye was to speak peaceable-like to the lad ye might get him to stand in with us."

"Sorra a fear of him," replied Tim; "Clig Kelly might have been like a lump of paving-stone, for all the kindness he ever showed to his kin. Aye, and after all that I have done for the boy!"

"Childer! poison them!" cried Sal Kavannah, "'tis little you have had to suffer with your childer, Timothy Kelly! It's me that knows to the roots of my heart. But wait till we have this stuff lifted and safe in Mistress Roy's tea-kettle. Then we'll bring sweating sorrow on them that's the proud ones this day."

"Set a match to the house this very night, and burn it about their ears," said Tim Kelly. "Say the word and I'll do the job for you, and that willin', Sal."

"I declare my heart's broke entirely with ungrateful children," said Sal Kavannah; "but when once we get clear away with the old General's jewels, we will have time and to spare to bring them to their senses."

Vara listened, now with fire glowing hot in her heart, and the next moment she was again cold as a stone. She had her ear close down against the bottom of the window-sill, and thus for a time she stood, the thought that her enemy had found her out once more overwhelming all other thoughts.

But presently the knowledge of Cleg Kelly's instant and terrible danger came to her. Cleg was in sole charge of the great house of Barnbogle with all its wonderful treasures. The master of it was reported to be away. But, so strange and unaccountable were his comings and goings, that no one knew whether General Theophilus Ruff was really in the neighbourhood or not.

At all events, any way that Vara thought about it, there was little doubt that Cleg was in imminent peril of his life. For if he refused to give up the treasures of the General, his father would certainly kill him. And if he were frightened or tortured into telling, then no one would believe anything else than that he had been sent by his father to worm himself into the confidence of the mad General and so open the house to the robber.

Vara meditated what she should do. Could she get to the house of Barnbogle before Tim Kelly, she might be able to put Cleg on his guard. But a curious something, more disabling than fear, kept her chained to the spot.

"The thing is easy as throat-slitting," said Tim emphatically. "I tell you the lad has the keys; for I know he can let himself out and in at his pleasure. Now, he shall give up the keys willingly, or I know a way to make him. If the mad ould General comes in the road, I have that in my pocket which will settle him dead for life. But I hear he's off again on his thundering rounds, restless devil that he is!"

"But how," said Sal Kavannah, "is the like o' me to hold the boy? He will be as strong as a young bullock by now."

"He'll be wake – wake as pump-water – when I get him in them hands," whispered Timothy Kelly, so that the listener barely heard him.

But Vara could see his narrow, weasel face thrust forward and hear the hateful jar in his voice. "God's truth!" he said, "do I not owe him wan? See them holes?" he cried more loudly, his hate mastering him, "pockmarks ye could lose sixpence in. 'Twas the whelp that did that to me! Ah! a fine man was Tim Kelly before that sorra came into the world."

"Vara! Vara!" cried suddenly a shrill voice behind the listening girl, as she stood with her brow down on the window-sill. Her heart leaped with wild terror; for it was the voice of little Gavin, come out to seek her, and she feared that he would suddenly appear at the door of the house on the bog. He had a curious faculty for following his sister and finding her. Ever since she came back from Loch Spellanderie he had not cared to let her out of his sight.

"Vara! Vara!" the shrill childish voice came again. She could hear Gavin coming nearer, pushing his way through the crackling copsewood. The wrangling voices within stilled themselves. The tell-tale light went out at the crack in the board, and Vara knew that the wild beasts inside would be after her in a moment.

If she could only silence Gavin, she thought. She rose to her feet and dashed towards him.

"Vara! Vara!" rose the child's voice, clear on the frost-bitten air; "where are ye, Vara?"

She could hear him beating gleefully with a stick on a wire fence which ran down into the marsh, so that the very hills gave back the clear humming sound. The wire was Gavin's telegraph, and he pleased himself with the thought that he could always communicate with Vara by means of it. The girl ran towards him, leaping over the frozen ditches, and speeding through the briars, heedless of how she might hurt herself. She came on Gavin at the edge of the wood, beating on the wire with his stick and shouting boldly, "Vara, Vara, come forth!" as he had heard the Netherby minister do in church.

"Hush, hush, Gavin!" she cried anxiously, holding out her arms to him, "for God's sake, hush!"

And, in an agony of apprehension, she lifted him and strained him to her breast. There came the sound of footsteps running through the wood, and Vara dragged Gavin back into the shelter of the alders which grew thick and rank in the marsh at the end of the fence. She covered Gavin's mouth with her shawl as the flying footsteps clattered nearer.

Presently the dark figure of Tim Kelly ran past them, with his head set very far forward, scenting from side to side like a beast of prey hunting upon a hot trail. He held a knife point downwards in his hand. Vara stood still while the terrifying vision passed. Tim Kelly was running towards the house of Barnbogle. She could hear another – and heavier – foot following. And before she had time to move, lo! Sal Kavannah moved into the grey-litten space, and stood still within ten yards of her children.

"The Awfu' Woman!" came from Gavin's lips, even through the folds of the shawl. All terrifying things were summed up for him in that phrase he had learned from his brother Hugh. Something seemed to tell Sal Kavannah that she was near her children. She stood for what seemed an eternity, stark and staring, rooted to the spot, only turning her head slowly from side to side and straining her ears to hear the crack of a twig or the rustle of a leaf.

Vara prayed as she had never done before. Gavin's eyes were fixed in his head with terror. The end of the world had indeed come. "The Awfu' Woman" was back again, and in a moment the quiet and safety of Sandyknowes had ended for them.

But Vara stood the test. And Gavin had no words which were not shut within him by the soul-terrifying proximity of Boy Hugh's "Awfu' Woman." So silently did they stand that Sal Kavannah heard nothing; and with her ears still on the stretch she moved slowly away, following Tim Kelly in the direction of Barnbogle.

Then was Vara's heart fairly torn in twain. Should she go first to Mirren Douglas and Boy Hugh? Or should she strike across through the dark woods towards Barnbogle? Then, like sweet music, there fell on her ears the loud, hearty accents of the voice of Mistress Fraser.

"Weel, Mirren, an' hoo's a' wi' ye the nicht? Hearty, thank ye! I hae brocht my guidman an' Gibby, oor auldest callant, ower by to hearten ye up. Gibby is a brave bullock-baned hullion, no bonny ony mair than the daddy o' him – but that like Tam Fraser, that he could na deny him even if he was willin'. And that is a guid thing for a decent woman's reputation!"

Vara could not catch Mirren Douglas's reply, but she could hear Mistress Fraser's next words; for that voluble lady always spoke as if it were all important that the next two parishes should have a chance of benefiting by her wisdom.

"Hoots, no! Gie yoursel' nae thocht aboot the lassie. She has Gavin wi' her, and I'se warrant she'll be keepin' her bit trysts, just as you and me had in the days that's lang bygane. Come your ways in, Gibby. Dinna stand hingin' a leg there!"

Sandyknowes was therefore safe so long as the Frasers remained. The way was clear for Vara to run through the woods to warn Cleg. So, plucking Gavin to her, she lifted him in her arms and ran towards Barnbogle as hard as she could. But the wild beast and the "Awfu' Woman" had a long start of her.

ADVENTURE LVII.

FIGHTING THE BEASTS

General Theophilus Ruff was at home. He had, in fact, never been away. That very morning his lawyer had visited Barnbogle, and had stayed all day in the little brick addition, with two of his clerks within call in the kitchen behind, writing and witnessing deeds. The General sent Cleg into Netherby in the forenoon upon half-a-dozen errands, and in the afternoon he told him that he was free to do what he wished with his time. Whereupon Cleg went and got a pail of whitewash to brighten up the byre and stables of Sandyknowes, a job which he had been promising himself as a treat for a long time.

After the General had dismissed the solicitor and his two clerks to go back to the town of Drumnith, he withdrew into his room and occupied himself with the arrangement and docketing of multitudinous papers. When Cleg came back he made his supper by himself in the brick addition, and was just sitting down with the paper-covered threepenny novel which represented literature to him, when the door opened and the General came in with a roll of papers in his hand. His hair stood nearly straight up, and his eyes were bloodshot and starting from his head. A great change had come over him since the morning.

"Cleg," he said abruptly, "you are going to lose your place."

Cleg stood on his feet respectfully. He was not much astonished. He had been waiting for an announcement like this ever since he found what manner of man his impulsive master was. His first thought was that he would be able largely to increase the flower business.

"Verra weel, sir," said Cleg, glancing straight at the General, who stood commandingly in the doorway, looking, in spite of his disarray, imposing enough in his undress uniform; "verra weel, sir. Ye hae been kind to me."

"Ah," said the General, "I mean that ye are going to lose your master, not that he wishes you to leave your place. I have a long journey to depart upon. I am going upon active service in another world. Three times yestreen I heard the black dog summon me below the window."

"That maun hae been Tam Fraser's collie," said Cleg promptly, "nesty brute that he is. I'll put a chairge o' number five in his tail the next time he comes yowlin' and stravagin' aboot here!"

"No," said the General, without paying much attention, "it was the Death Dog, which only appears when one of my race is about to die. My hours of life are numbered, or at least I believe they are, which is exactly the same thing. You will find that you are not left with the empty hand, Cleg, my man. See that ye use it as wisely as ye have used my money. For I have proved you an honest lad, and that to the hilt – never roguing your master of a pennyworth, high or low, indoor or out, and saving of the Danish butter when you fried the fish."

"Thank ye," said Cleg, "I am no o' high family, ye see. Nae dowgs come aboot when the Kellys dee that I ken o', but if your yin bothers ye I'll shoot him. Gin Rab Wullson the polissman hears tell o' it, he'll be at us to tak' oot a leesence for him."