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

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.

At midday the boy vanished and reported himself at the police-sergeant's. He asked for a "piece," and the sergeant's wife told him to be off. She was busy and he might come back when the weans came in for their dinners. She had not time to be always giving the likes of him "pieces" in the middle of the day.

Cleg did not care. He was not particularly hungry. But he hung about all afternoon in the neighbourhood of the police-station, and so pestered the good-natured policemen off duty, that one of them threatened him with "a rare belting" if he did not quit.

Whereupon Cleg buttoned up his jacket, made to himself a paper helmet, and with a truncheon in his hand stalked about in front of the station, taking up stray dogs in the name of the law. One of these he had previously taught to walk upon its hind legs. This animal he arrested, handcuffed with a twist of wire, and paraded over against the station in a manner killingly comic – much to the amusement of the passers-by, as well as detrimental to the sobriety and discipline of the younger officers themselves. But Cleg was seldom meddled with by the police. He was under the protection of the sergeant's wife, who so often gave him a "piece." She also gave "pieces" sometimes to the officers at the station-house. For according as a policeman is fed, so is he. And it was the sergeant's wife who stirred the porridge pot. Therefore Cleg was left alone.

In this manner Cleg amused himself till dark, when he stole home. His father was already coming down the stairs. Cleg rapidly withdrew. His father passed out and took the narrowest lanes southward till he entered the Queen's Park under the immanent gloom of the Salisbury Crags. Cleg followed like his shadow. Tim Kelly often looked behind. He boasted that he could hear the tramp of the regulation police boot at least half a mile, and tell it from the tread of a circus elephant, and even from the one o'clock gun at the Castle. But he saw no silent boy tracking him noiselessly after the fashion of the Indian scout, so vividly described in the "Bully Boys' Journal."

Tim Kelly bored his way into the eye of a rousing south wind that "reesled" among the bare bones of Samson's Ribs, and hurled itself upon Edinburgh as if to drive the city off its long, irregular ridge into the North Sea. Bending sharply to the right, the burglar came among buildings again. He crossed the marshy end of Duddingstone Loch. It was tinder-dry with the drought. At the end of a long avenue was to be seen the loom of houses, and the gleam of lights, as burgess's wife and burgess moved in this order to their bedrooms and disarrayed themselves for the night.

Tim Kelly hid behind a wall. Cleg crouched behind his father, but sufficiently far behind not to attract his attention. Cleg was taking his first lessons in the great craft of speculation – which is the obtaining of your neighbour's goods without providing him with an equivalent in exchange. The trifling matter of your neighbour's connivance, requisite in betting and stock transactions, escaped the notice of the Kellys. But perhaps after all that did not matter.

Aurelia Villa, the home of Miss Cecilia Tennant (incidentally also of her father, Mr. Robert Grey Tennant), darkened down early; for Mr. Robert Tennant was an early riser, and early rising means early bedding (and a very good thing too).

Tim Kelly knew all that, for his local knowledge was as astonishing as his methods of obtaining it were mysterious. It was not twelve of the clock when Tim drew himself over the wall out of the avenue, and dropped lightly as a cat upon the pocket-handkerchief lawn, which all the summer had been worn at the corners by the egg-spoon tennis of Cecilia and the Junior Partner.

Tim Kelly was at the back door in a minute. It was down three steps. He laid a bag of tools, which clinked a little as he took them out of his pocket, on the stone ledge of the step. It might be safer, he thought, to take a look round the house and listen for the hippopotamus tread of the regulation bull-hide. In a moment after Tim was round at the gable end flat among the strawberries. There it came! Clear and solemnising fell the tread of the law in all its majesty – a bull's-eye lantern swinging midships a sturdy girth, which could hardly, even by courtesy, be called a waist. Flash! Like a search-light ran the ray of the lantern over the front of the property of Mr. Robert Grey Tennant.

But the regulation boots were upon the feet of a man of probity. The wearer opened the front gate, tramped up the steps, conscientiously tried the front door and dining-room window of the end house in the row. They were fast. All was well. Duty done. The owners might sleep sound. They paid heavy police rates to a beneficent local authority. Why should they not sleep well? But, alas! the regulation boots did not take any cognisance of Tim Kelly with his nose among the strawberries, or of a small boy who was speeding over the waste fields and back yards into the Park. The small boy carried a parcel. He was a thief. This small boy was Cleg Kelly, the hero of this tale.