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

Timothy Kelly rose from among the strawberries with laughter and scorn in his heart. If the bobby had only gone to the back door instead of the front, there was a parcel there, which it would have made him a proud policeman to take to the head office. Tim Kelly stooped at the steps to take up his precious satchel of tools. His hand met the bare stone. His bag was gone! His heart dinned suddenly in his ears. This was not less than witchcraft. He had never been ten yards from them all the time. Yet the tools were gone without sound or sight of human being. Then there was an interval.

During this interval Tim Kelly expressed his opinions upon things in general. The details are quite unfit for publication.

But at that very moment, over at the end of Duddingstone Loch, a small boy was whirling a small but heavy bag round his head.

"Once! Twice! Thrice – and away!" he cried with glee. Something hurtled through the air, and fell with a splash far in the black deeps of the loch. Years after this the antiquary of the thirtieth century may find this bundle, and on the strength of it he will take away the honest character of our ancestors of the Iron Age, proving that burglary was commonly and scientifically practised among them. But the memory of Cleg Kelly will be clear.

Indeed, he was sound asleep when his father came in, breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Tim listened intently with his ear at his son's mouth, for it is well to be suspicious of every one. But Cleg's breathing was as natural and regular as that of an infant.

Yet there is no doubt whatever, that Cleg and not his father had been guilty of both burglary and theft that night; and that Duddingstone Loch was indictable for the reset of the stolen property.

Then Cleg Kelly, burglar, winked an eye at his father's back, and settled himself to sleep the genuine sleep of the just.

ADVENTURE VII.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE COCKROACHES

One day Cleg Kelly became paper-boy at the shop of Mistress Roy, at the top corner of Meggat's Close. And he wanted you to know this. He was no longer as the paper-boys who lag about the Waverley, waiting for stray luggage left on the platforms, nor even as this match-boy. He was in a situation.

His hours were from half-past six in the morning to half-past six in the morning, when he began again. His wages were three shillings a week – and his chance. But he was quite contented, for he could contrive his own amenities by the way. His father had been in a bad temper ever since he lost his tools, and so Cleg did not go home often.

This was the way in which he got his situation and became a member of the established order of things, indeed, the next thing to a voter. There had been a cheap prepaid advertisement in the "Evening Scrapbook," which ran as follows: —

"Wanted, an active and intelligent message-boy, able to read and write. Must be well recommended as a Christian boy of good and willing disposition. Wages not large, but will be treated as one of the family. – Apply No. 2,301, 'Scrapbook' Office."

Now Miss Cecilia Tennant thought this a most interesting and encouraging advertisement. She had been for a long time on the look-out for a situation to suit Cleg. The Junior Partner indeed could have been induced to find a place for Cleg in "The Works," but it was judged better that the transition from the freedom of the streets to the lettered ease of an office desk should be made gradually. So Celie Tennant went after this situation for Cleg in person.

The arrangement with Mistress Roy in the Pleasance was a little difficult to make, but Celie made it. She went down one clammy evening, when the streets were covered with a greasy slime, and the pavements reflected the gloomy sky. In the grey lamp-sprinkled twilight she reached the paper-shop. There were sheafs of papers and journals hung up on the cheeks of the door. Coarsely coloured valentines hung in the window, chiefly rude portraitures of enormously fat women with frying-pans, and of red-nosed policemen with batons to correspond.

Celie Tennant entered. There was a heavy smell of moist tobacco all about. The floor of the little shop was strewn with newspapers, apparently of ancient date, certainly of ancient dirt. These rustled and moved of themselves in a curious way, as though they had untimely come alive. As indeed they had done, for the stir was caused by the cockroaches arranging their domestic affairs underneath. Celie lifted her nose a little and her skirts a good deal. It took more courage to stand still and hear that faint rustling than to face the worst bully of Brannigan's gang in the Sooth Back. She rapped briskly on the counter.

A man came shuffling out of the room in the rear. He was clad in rusty black, and had a short clay pipe in his mouth. His eyes were narrow and foxy, and he looked unwholesomely scaly – as if he had been soaked in strong brine for half a year, but had forgotten either to finish the process, or to remove the traces of the incomplete pickling.

"Servant, m'am!" said he, putting his pipe behind him as he came into the shop.

"I was referred here – to this address – from the office of the 'Evening Scrapbook,'" said Celie, with great dignity, standing on her tiptoes among the papers. "I called about the situation of message-boy you advertised for."

"Ye wasna thinkin' o' applyin' yersel'!" said the man, with a weak jocularity. "For my ain part I hae nae objections to a snod bit lass, but the mistress michtna like it."

Miss Cecilia Tennant looked at him in a way that would have frozen a younger man, but the frowsy object from the back shop only smirked and laughed. With care, the jest would serve him a week. He made up his mind to whom he would tell it when the lady was gone.

"I wish to recommend one of the boys from my class for the position. His name is Charles Kelly. He is a smart boy of thirteen, and he is anxious to get good and steady work. What are the wages you offer?"

The man looked cunningly all about the shop. He craned his neck over the counter and looked up the street. He had a long-jointed body, and a neck that shut up and pulled out like a three-draw telescope. Celie Tennant shrank instinctively when the man protruded his head past her in this curious manner, as she might have shrunk from some loathly animal.

Then, having resumed his normal slouch behind the counter, he looked at his visitant and said, "The wage is half a croon a week, and his chance o' the drawer – the same as mysel'."

"His chance of the drawer!" said Celie, not understanding.

"When she's oot," the man continued, laying his finger against the side of his nose and winking with meaning and expression at his visitor. The expression of disgust at the corner of Miss Tennant's nose threatened to result in a permanent tilt, which might have been unbecoming, and which certainly must have frightened the Junior Partner.

"When she's oot," repeated the frowsy one, confidentially, "your friend is welcome to his chance o' the drawer – if," he added, with infinite caution, "she was to leave it unlocked, which she seldom does. It's lock'd the noo! See!" And he shook a greasy knob under the counter till the drawer rattled against the bolt of the lock. "Oh, it's just like her! She aye does that when she gangs oot. She's an awsome near woman! She has nae confidence, nae open-hearted leeberality, sic' as a wife ought to hae wi' the husband of her bosom."

"Do you want a message-boy, or do you not?" said Celie, who felt that in the interests of Cleg she would face a battery of artillery, but who really could not stand the rustling among the papers on the floor very much longer.

"Certain she do that!" said the man, "an active boy, an intelligent boy, a Christian boy – half a croon a week – and his chance o' the drawer."

Once more he protruded his head in that monstrously serpentine manner round the corner of the low shop-door. But this time he retracted it quick as lightning, and shuffled back into the room behind. Celie heard him throw himself on a chair, which groaned under him.

"I'm sleepin' noo," he said, "sleepin' soond. Dinna say that I ever spoke till ye, for I'll deny it if ye do!" he said.

Cecilia Tennant stood her ground bravely, though the newspapers on the floor rustled continuously. She wondered why the path of duty was such a cockroachy one. A moment afterward a grim-looking, hard-faced woman entered. She was a tall woman, with a hooked nose and broad masculine face. The eyes were at once fierce and suspicious. She marched straight round the counter, lifting the little flap at the back and letting it fall with a bang. The cat was sitting on the end of the counter nearest the door of the inner room. The woman took her hand and swept it from the counter, as though she had merely knocked off a little dust. The cat went into the inner room like a projectile.

Then, having entrenched herself at the back of the counter, the fierce-eyed woman turned sharp round and faced Celie Tennant.

"Well?" she said, with a certain defiance in her tone such as women only use to one another, which was at once depreciatory and pitiful. The Junior Partner would have turned and fled, but Celie Tennant was afraid of no woman that walked.

"I came," she said, clearly and coldly, "to ask about the situation of message-boy for one of my Mission lads. I was sent here from the office of the newspaper. Has the situation been filled?"

"What is the boy's name?" asked the woman, twitching the level single line of her black brows at her visitor.

"His name is Charles Kelly."

"Son o' Tim Kelly that leeves in the Brickfield?" asked the woman quickly.

"I believe that is his father's name," said Celie, giving glance for glance.

"Then we dinna want the likes o' him here!" said the woman, half turning on her heel with a certain dark contempt.

"But my name is Cecilia Tennant of Glenleven Road, and I am quite willing to give security for the boy – to a reasonable amount, that is – " continued Celie, who had a practical mind and much miniature dignity.

"Will ye leave the money?" asked the woman, as if a thought struck her.

"Certainly not," replied Celie, "but I will write you a line stating that I hold myself responsible for anything he is proved guilty of stealing, to the extent of ten pounds."

It was thus that Cleg Kelly became newsboy and general assistant to Mistress Roy and her husband at Roy's corner.

As Celie went out, she heard Mr. Roy stretching himself and yawning, as though awakening out of a deep sleep.

"Wha's that ye hae had in?" he inquired pleasantly.

"What business is that o' yours, ye muckle slabber?" returned his wife with instant aggression.

And the cockroaches continue to rustle all the time beneath the carpet of old newspapers.

ADVENTURE VIII.

THE FLIGHT OF SHEEMUS

Next morning Cleg Kelly entered upon his duties. He carried orders to the various publishing offices for about two hundred papers in all. He had often been there before upon his own account, so that the crowd and the rough jocularity were not new to him. But now he practised a kind of austere, aristocratic hauteur. He was not any longer a prowler on the streets, with only a stance for which he might have to fight. He was a newsvendor's assistant. He would not even accept wager of battle upon provocation offered. He could, however, still kick; and as he had an admirable pair of boots with tackety soles an inch thick to do it with, he soon made himself the most respected boy in the crowd.

On returning to the Pleasance, he was admitted through the chink of the door by Mistress Roy, who was comprehensively dressed in a vast yellow flannel bed-gown, which grew murkier and murkier towards her feet. Her hair was tumbling about her eyes. That, too, was of a yellow grey, as though part of the bed-gown had been ravelled out and attached loosely to her head. Feathers and woolly dust were stuck impartially over hair and bed-gown.

"Write the names on the papers as I cry them," she said to Cleg, "and look slippy."

Cleg was quick to obey. He had, in fact, his pencil ready.

"Cready, number seventeen – three stairs back. Dinna write a' that. Write the name, an' mind the rest," said Mistress Roy.

"MacVane, twenty-wan, shop," and so on went the list interminably.

Mistress Roy kept no books, but in her memory she had the various counts and reckonings of all grades of her customers. She retained there, for instance, the exact amounts of the intricate scores of the boys who took in the "Boys of the City." She knew who had not paid for the last chapter of "Ned Kelly; or, the Iron-clad Australian Bushranger." She had a mental gauge on the great roll of black twist tobacco which lay on the counter among old "Evening Scraps." She knew exactly how much there was in the casks of strong waters under the stairs, from which, every Sunday, her numerous friends and callers were largely entertained.

When Cleg went out to deliver his papers he had nearly a hundred calls to make. But such was his sense of locality and his knowledge of the district that, with the help of a butcher's boy of his acquaintance (to whom he promised a reading of the "Desperadoes of New Orleans; or, the Good Ku Klux"), he managed to deliver all – except a single "Scotsman" to one Mackimmon, who lived in a big land at the corner of Rankeillor Street. Him he was utterly unable to discover.

Upon his return Mistress Roy was waiting for him.

"Did ye deliver them a'?" she asked, bending forward her head in a threatening manner as if expecting a negative reply.

"A' but yin!" said Cleg, who was in good spirits, and pleased with himself.

His mistress took up a brush. Cleg's hand dropped lightly upon a pound weight. He did not mean to play the abused little message-boy if he knew it.

"And what yin might that be?" said Mistress Roy.

"Mackimmon," said the boy briefly, "he's no in Rankeillor Street ava'."

The hand that held the brush went back in act to throw. Now this was, from the point of view of psychological dynamics, a mistake in tactics. A woman should never attempt to throw anything in controversy, least of all a brush. Her stronghold is to advance to the charge with all her natural weapons and vigour. But to throw a brush is to abdicate her providential advantages. And so Mistress Roy found.

A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, and that was the course described by the pound weight on which Cleg Kelly dropped his hand. It sped fair and level from his hand, flung low as he had many a time skimmed stones on Saint Margaret's Loch in the hollow under the Crags.

"Ouch!" suddenly said Mistress Roy, taken, as she herself said, "in the short of the wind." The hearth-brush with which she had been wont to correct her former message boys fell helplessly to the ground.

"Fetch me a toothfu' frae the back o' the door. Oh, ye villain, Cleg Kelly! I'm a' overcome like!" she said.

Cleg went to the back of the door where there was a keg with a spigot. He brought his mistress a drink in a little tinnikin.

She seemed to have forgotten to be angry, and bent her brows upon him more pleasantly than she had yet done.

"I thocht that ye were a religious boy," she said.

Cleg stood back a little with Mackimmon's paper still in his hand.

"Pund wecht for besom shank is good religion," said the imperfect Christian but excellent message-boy.

"Gang and deliver that paper!" Mistress Roy commanded, again looking up.

"I want my breakfast," said Cleg, with an air of sullen determination.

His mistress looked at him a moment, still sitting with the tinnikin of undutied whisky in her hand, and occasionally taking a sip. Cleg eyed her level-fronted.

She gave in all at once.

"Tak' the knife and help yoursel'," she said, pointing to a loaf and a piece of yellow cheese.

She went into a back room.

"Get up, Jock," she said, giving the clothes a jerk over the foot of the bed, and seizing a water can. Her husband rose to his feet on the floor without a word. Thus was business begun in Mistress Roy's paper-shop on the Pleasance.

And so that day went on, the first of many. When Celie Tennant asked Cleg how he was getting on, he said, as the manner of his kind is, "Fine!" And no word more could she get out of him. For Cleg was not a boy to complain. His father, Timothy Kelly, was safely in gaol, and that was enough to give Cleg an interest in life. Moreover, he could save some of his three shillings a week to give to Vara Kavannah to help her with the children.

He had not as yet taken advantage of the "chance of the drawer" offered by Mr. Roy. But, on the other hand, he had stuck out for three shillings and his keep.

Also, as the advertisements which he read every day in the papers said, he meant to see that he got it.

Vara Kavannah was a friend of Cleg's. She lived with her mother in a poor room in the Tinklers' Lands, and tried to do her duty by her little baby brother Gavin and her younger brother Hugh. Her mother was a friend of Mr. Timothy Kelly's, and there is no more to be said. The only happy time for all of them was when both Mr. Kelly, senior, and Sal Kavannah were provided for in the gaol on the Calton. But this did not happen often at one time. When it did, Cleg went up the long stairs and told Vara. Then they started and took the baby and Hugh for a long walk in the Queen's Park. Cleg carried the baby. The boys of his own age did not mock him to his face for doing this. The Drabble had done it once, and severely regretted it for several days, during which time his face conveyed a moral lesson to all beholders.

It was also a happy time for Vara Kavannah when her mother was safely locked up on a long sentence, or when for some weeks she disappeared from the city. Her father, a kindly, weak man, stood the dog's life his wife led him as long as possible.

Sheemus Kavannah was a poet. The heart was in him which tells men that the world is wide and fair. He had endured his wife in the bitterness of his heart, till late one evening he rose, and with his wife lying on the floor, a log, he awaked his little lass. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. His daughter started from her bed with her hair all about her. She was used to sudden and painful wakenings.

"Vara," he said, speaking in Irish, "daughter of Sheemus, Vara Kavannah, hark to me. Mavourneen, my heart is broke with your mother. It's no good at all to stay. I am going to Liverpool for work, and when I get it I shall come back and take you away – you, Vara, and Hugh and little Gavin. Lonely shall my road be and far. But I shall return, I shall return!"

Now Vara, being bred where they spoke not the tongue of the old country, understood nothing but the last words, "I shall return, I shall return!"

So it was in this way that Cleg Kelly became father and mother to the little company of three in the Tinklers' Lands.

As he went on the way of his duty, he found out some things about the business capacity of Mistress Roy that would have astonished the police. He had, in the impetuous ardour of youth, cleared away the accumulated papers on the floor, and raided the swarming cockroaches.

"Hullo, mother, what's the matter here?" cried one of the customers of the place, coming to Mistress Roy, who sat in the little den at the back.

"Naething," said that lady. "It's only that daft laddie. He disna think I gie him aneuch to do, so he's ta'en to finding wark for himsel'."

The customer, a burly, clean-shaven man, took a long look at Cleg.

"Tim Kelly's kid," said the woman, by way of explanation.

The man whistled – a long, mellow whistle – with an odd turn at the end.

"No," said Mistress Roy, shaking her head, "the lad's square. And what's mair, I'm no gaun to hae him meddled. He's the first boy that ever took oot the papers without cheatin'." A good character is a valuable asset, even in a shebeen.

ADVENTURE IX.

THE WARMING OF THE DRABBLE

The Kavannahs lived in the Tinklers' Lands at the foot of Davie Dean's Street. That was where Sheemus Kavannah left them when he went to Liverpool to seek work. Originally they had lived on the second floor of this great rabbit-warren of a land, but now they had sunk till they occupied one room of the cellar. Their sole light came from an iron grating let into the pavement.

The Kavannahs had no furniture. It was just possible for Vara to get some little things together during the periods when her mother was under the care of the authorities. But as soon as Sal Kavannah came out, everything that would sell or pawn was instantly dissolved into whisky.

At all times it was a sore battle in the Tinklers' Lands, for these were the days before city improvements. In his wildest days Cleg Kelly had always befriended the Kavannahs, and he had been as much Vara's friend on the sly as a boy could be who valued the good opinion of his companions. But when Cleg grew stronger in his muscles and less amenable to public opinion, he publicly announced that he would "warm" any boy who said a word to him about the Kavannahs.

One day he heard that Archie Drabble had kicked over the Kavannahs' family bed, and left it lying, when Vara was out getting some things for the children. Cleg started out to look up the Drabble. He had formerly had an interview with that gentleman, which has been chronicled elsewhere.1 Cleg Kelly was on the way to reformation now, so would not kick him. But as a faithful friend he would "warm" him for his soul's good. Cleg did not mind doing this. It was a congenial sphere of Christian work.

The Drabble was found trying to steal collars off a clothes-line at the back of Arthur Street. Cleg Kelly had no objections to this feat. He was not a policeman, and if the Drabble wished to get into the lock-up, it was not his business. But first of all he must settle the matter of the Kavannahs' bed. After that the Drabble, an it liked him, might steal all the collars in the Pleasance.

"Drabble," cried Cleg, "come here, I want ye!"

"Want away," cried the Drabble, "gang and say yer prayers!"

This was intended for an insult, and so Cleg took it.

"Ye had better say yours!" he retorted. "When I catch you it'll no be ordinar' prayers that will help you!"

Cleg had a disbelief in the efficacy of the prayers of the wicked which was thoroughly orthodox. The Drabble was of the wicked. Once he had thrown mud at a Sunday school teacher. Cleg only threw snow, as soft as he could get it.

There was a wall between Cleg and the Drabble, a wall with a place for your toes. With his boots off Cleg could have shinned up like a cat. But three-shilling boots with toe caps are tender things and need to be treated with respect. Whereupon Cleg had resort to guile.

"Hae ye seen the last number o' 'Gory Dick, the Desprader of the Prairies,' Drabble?" cried Cleg over the wall.

"Gae 'way, man, an' eat sawdust, you paper boy!" cried the Drabble over the wall.

The Drabble was of the more noble caste of the sneak thief. He had still his eye on the collars. Cleg raged impotently. All his Irishry boiled within him.

"Be the powers, Archie Drabble, wait till I catch ye. I'll not leave a leevin' creature on ye from head to fut!"

The completeness of this threat might have intimidated the Drabble, but he was on the safe side of the wall, and only laughed. He had a vast contempt for Cleg, inasmuch as he had forsaken the good and distinguished ways of Timothy Kelly, his father, and taken to missions and Sunday schools. Cleg foamed in helpless fury at the foot of the wall. He grew to hate his boots and his mended clothes, in his great desire to get at the Drabble. To the original sin with regard to the bed of the Kavannahs, the Drabble had now added many actual transgressions. Cleg was the vindicator of justice, and he mentally arranged to a nicety where and how he would punch the Drabble.

But just then the Drabble came over the wall at a run. He had been spotted from a distance by an active young officer, Constable Gilchrist, who was noted for his zeal in providing for the youth of the south side. The Drabble dropped to the ground like a cat, with the drawn pale face and furtive eyes which told Cleg that the "poliss" were after him.

Without doubt Cleg ought to have given the offender up to justice, as a matter of private duty. He might thus have settled his own private matters with the pursued. But the traditional instincts of the outlaw held. And, seeing the double look which the Drabble turned up and down the street, he said softly —