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

But this was only the usual routine, and provoked no remark.

When, however, the superintendent came to Cleg Kelly, and that diligent young student began at once to reel off the twenty-third Psalm with vivacity and despatch – the psalm which the entire body of Scottish youth learns long before the A, B, C – it was obviously time to interfere.

"If ye please, sir (or whether or no), that's no the richt yin!" said Tam Rogerson, who ran Cleg close for the place of honour as the "warst loon i' the schule!" This was a post of as great distinction at Hunker Court as the position of clown in a circus.

Cleg's answer was twofold.

To Tam Rogerson he remarked – under his breath, it is true, but with startling distinctness —

"Wait till I get you oot, ma man; I'll warm you."

And Tam Rogerson grew hot from head to foot, for he knew that he was as good as warmed already.

On the other hand, Cleg gave the answer of peace to his teacher:

"Please, sir, Maister Langshanks – penny, I mean – my faither is a Papish – an' he winna let me learn ony ither Psalm but the three-an'-twunty. But I hae learned HER to richts!"

After this exhibition of the rights of the nonconforming conscience in strange places, Cleg continued his lesson in Hunker Court under the vague tutelage of Samson Langpenny. Now Samson was unaware of the strong feeling of resentment which was gathering in the bosoms of his scholars, owing to the length of his "introductory exercises." The Psalm and the "questions" were all in the day's work, but Samson introduced a prayer in the middle of the teaching hour, which Cleg Kelly considered to be wholly uncalled for and indeed little short of impious.

So, as soon as Samson shut his eyes, Cleg silently joined the class nearest him, and the other scholars of the absent Mr. Somerville did likewise. When Samson opened his eyes and awoke to the state of the case, he found himself wholly without a single scholar to whom instruction could be given.

Cleg had betaken himself to the class of Miss Robina Semple, an excellent maiden lady of much earnestness and vigour. She was so busy explaining the Scripture lesson, that she did not at first observe the addition to the number of her scholars in the wholly undesirable person of Master Kelly.

The lesson was the parable of the lame man at the pool of Siloam.

Now in Miss Semple's class there was a lame boy named Chris Cullen. He sat listening with strained attention and invincible eagerness to every word which fell from his teacher. Cleg, to whom all lessons were much alike, listened also – chiefly, it may be, because he saw the reflection of an angel's smile on the face of the lame boy, Chris Cullen.

"What gars ye hearken like that, Chris?" whispered Cleg, with some anxiety. Only the news of a prize fight would have brought such an expression of interest to his own face, or (it might be) the announcement that his father had got ten years.

"It's aboot a man that got a dook, an' then he could walk!" said Chris, speaking hurriedly over his shoulder, being anxious not to miss a word.

"What hindered him to dook afore?" asked Cleg.

"He couldna get doon to the water-edge," said Chris.

"Was the bobby there?" persisted Cleg, to whom the limit of where he might not go or might not do coincided with the beat of the officers of Her Majesty's peace.

"Wheesht!" interjected Chris Cullen, "she's telling it the noo!"

For the lame boy, his teacher existed for this purpose alone.

The calm, high voice of Miss Robina Semple went on – Robina Semple, whom some called "a plain old maid" —

"And so the poor man, who had no one to carry him down to the edge when the angel troubled the water, had to stay where he was, and somebody else got in before him! Are you not sorry for him?"

"Never heed, Chris Cullen," broke in Cleg, "I'll cairry ye doon on my back mysel'! There's naebody will daur to hinder ye dookin' in ony dub ye like, when I'm cairryin' ye!"

Cleg Kelly was certainly acquiring, by contact if in no other way, certain Christian ideas. For the rest he was still frankly pagan.

Now at this particular date Hunker Court Sabbath school was run under a misapprehension. It was the idea of the superintendent that a little sugared advice would tame the young savages of the courts and wynds. Hence the hour of instruction was largely taken up with confused sound and fury. Samson would have been wiser if he had suborned a prize-fighter of good moral principles to teach the young idea of Hunker Court how to shoot head foremost out at the door. Under these circumstances it is conceivable that some good might have been done. But as it was, under the placid consulship of Samson Langpenny, teachers and scholars alike had a good deal of physical exercise of an interesting and healthful sort. But the moral and religious improvement was certainly to seek.

Yet in the class of Miss Semple, that excellent woman and good teacher of youth, there was one scholar who that Sunday had heard to profit. It was Cleg Kelly. He carried home little Chris Cullen on his shoulders, and if no angel stirred the waters of the gutter puddles as these two went their way, and if no immediate healing resulted, both Chris and Cleg were the better for the lesson of the troubling of the waters.

Even Samson Langpenny did not go to Hunker Court that day in vain, for he went along with Chris and Cleg part of the way home. Pride was not among Samson's failings, and, as we know, bashfulness was equally absent from the black catalogue of the sins of our hero.

"What for are you carrying Chris?" asked Samson Langpenny, who, though he had many weaknesses, had also large and sufficient virtues of earnestness and self-sacrifice.

"Weel, ye see, sir," said Cleg, trotting alongside cheerily, his burden upon his shoulders, "it's true that Chris can gang himsel'. But ye ken yersel' gin the laddies are verra ceevil when they get oot o' schule. They micht knock the wee yin ower. But when he is up on my shoothers, they juist darena. My certes, but I wad like to fa' acquaint wi' the yin that wad as muckle as lift a 'paver' to him. I wad 'paver' him!"

The superintendent smiled, though as a general rule he deprecated an appeal to arms. Cleg had also a little sound advice to offer his superior.

"Ye dinna lick aneuch in your schule, Maister!" continued Cleg, for he was unselfishly desirous that everyone should succeed in the sphere of life to which Providence had called him. He did not, it is true, see any great reason for a man's having taken to keeping Sunday school. Summer treats in the country might surely have been given without them – likewise tea soirées. But since these things had been mixed up together, the instruction part, however unnecessary, should certainly be carried out in a workmanlike fashion.

"Not lick enough?" queried the superintendent, aghast. He thought he could not have heard aright – the pest of Hunker Court counselling corporal punishment!

"Aye, an' div ye ken," Cleg went on, "div ye ken I can tell ye, wha ye could get to keep the laddies as quaite as pussy."

The superintendent looked at the rebel Head Centre of Hunker Court, bending with the weight of Chris Cullen upon his shoulders. It did not strike him that Cleg might also be able to support his own crippled steps upon his willing heathen shoulders.

"What would you advise?" he asked at last, with a certain pathetic humility.

"There's a maister at oor day schule that's awsome handy wi' the taws, an a' the laddies are feared o' him. He comes to your kirk – I hae seen him gang in the door. Ye micht get him for a teacher in yer Sabbath schule! Then the boys wad hae to be quaite. His name's MacRobb."

"Why would the boys have to be quiet then?" said Samson Langpenny, who did not yet understand what his ragged mentor was driving at.

"Dinna ye see, sir," said Cleg eagerly, "the boys daurna play their capers on Sabbaths at Hunker Court, an' gang to his schule on Mondays. Na, he wad fair skin them alive. It wad mak' an awfu' differ to you, sir."

"But I do not know Mr. MacRobb," said Samson; "how can I get him to give up his Sabbath afternoons to teach in such a noisy place? He will say that he gets enough of teaching through the week."

"Gae 'way!" said Cleg in his vernacular, forgetting for the moment to whom he spoke, "gae 'way, man! Get bonny Miss Tennant, the lass in the yella frock, to speer him. He'll come fast aneuch then. He does naething else in the kirk but glower at her a' the time the minister's preaching."

Thus Cleg jested with love, and used its victims at his pleasure.

ADVENTURE XVII.

THE KNUCKLE DUSTERS

Soon after this Cleg Kelly became a member of a young lady's class, in a manner which has been elsewhere related.3

That young lady was Miss Cecilia Tennant, otherwise known as Celie – a young lady much admired by all who knew her (and by some who did not, but wanted to); and especially admired by Mr. Donald Iverach, junior partner in the firm on whose premises the class was held. I have also related the tragical events which preceded the formation of the boys' class, organised under the guidance and tutelage of Cleg Kelly. But it soon became evident that something more than a night class was necessary, if any impression were to be made on the wild Arabs of the Sooth Back.

"Ye see the way o' it is this, Miss Celie," Cleg explained. "Ye canna keep a boy frae ill-doing by juist telling him aboot Jacob for an hour in the week. There's a' day in the shop, wi' the gaffer swearin' blue murder even on, an' ill-talk an' ither things that I juist canna tell ye. Then there's every nicht, when we drap work. What can we do but stand about the streets, or start the Gang an' look aboot us for a bobby to chivvy, or else for something handy for 'liftin'?'"

"But, Cleg," cried Celie, much alarmed, "surely I do not understand you to say that you steal?"

"Na," said Cleg, "we dinna steal. We only 'nick' things whiles!"

Celie had heard, indeed, of the "mobs," the "unions," the "gangs," the "crowds." But she thought them simply amiable and rather silly secret societies, such as her own brothers used to make a great deal of unnecessary secrecy about – calling themselves "Bloody Bill of the Ranch," "Navajo Tommy," and other stupid names. She had remarked the same mania in Cleg sometimes, and had some reason to believe that all boys are alike, whatever may be their station in life.

But Cleg soon put his friend out of the danger of any such mistake.

"Mind, say 'As sure as daith,' an' ye'll cut your throat gin ye tell," said Cleg, very earnestly, "an' I'll tell ye, aye, an' make ye a member!"

Cleg was about to reveal state secrets, and he did not want to run any risks. Celie promised faithfully the utmost discretion.

"Weel, Miss Celie, I can see that ye are no gaun to do muckle guid amang us boys, if I dinna tell ye. An' I want ye no to believe ony lees, like what are telled to the ministers an' folk like them. There's mair ill in the Sooth Back than can be pitten richt wi' a track. I canna bide them tracks – "

The distribution of tracts was an old grievance of Cleg's. But Celie earnestly and instantly put him on the plain way again, for if he once began upon "tracks," there was no telling if ever she would get any nearer to her promised lesson on the good and evil of the boys' unions.

Celie found herself as eager as ever was her first mother Eve, to eat of the tree of the forbidden knowledge.

"Gie us your han', Miss Celie, I'll no hurt ye," said Cleg.

Celie drew off her dainty glove, and instantly extended a hand that was white and small beyond all the boy's imagining. Cleg took it reverently in his dirty, work-broadened paw. He touched the slender fingers as if they were made of thistle-down and might blow away accidentally. So he held his breath. Then he took out his knife, one with a point like a needle, which had been used in a shoe factory.

Perhaps Celie winced a little as he opened the blade, but, if it were so, it was very little indeed. Yet it was enough to be perceptible to her very sincere admirer.

Cleg let her hand drop, and without a pause thrust the sharp point into the ball of his own thumb, squeezing therefrom a single drop of blood.

"It's no juist exactly richt, no to hae your ain blood, ye ken!" he explained gravely; "but as ye dinna tell so mony lees as the boys, maybe mine will do as weel this time to take the oath with."

With a clean new pen from Celie's desk, Cleg made on her palm the sign of a cross, and for her life the initiated dared not so much as let her hand quiver or her eyelid droop.

She knew that the occasion was an entirely critical one. But in a moment it was over, and Celie Tennant was admitted a bonâ fide acting member of the Sooth Back Gang, with full right in its secrets and to the disposal of one full and undivided share of its profits. No questions to be asked as to how these profits were come by. Indeed, from that moment there is little doubt that Celie Tennant might have been indicted for reset, conspiracy, and crimes infinitely various.

That night at Miss Tennant's class there was a full attendance, and the opening was delayed owing to necessity arising for the expulsion of a boy, apparently in no way offending against discipline.

Celie looked the question she dared not speak.

"He's no yin o' us!" explained Cleg in a whisper. "He belongs to the Potter-raw gang – a low lot."

Celie felt morally raised by the consciousness of belonging to a gang of the most high-toned "nickums" in the whole city.

Then Cleg, after the briefest opening exercises had been endured, explained that there remained for that evening only the ceremony of reception of a new member who had already been sworn in. In this Celie had to concur with as good a grace as possible. She was then and there appointed, with acclamation, a full member of the honourable (or dishonourable, according to the point of view) society of the Knuckle Dusters of the Sooth Back. It was generally felt after this, that Jacob (the Patriarch of that name) could very well afford to wait over for a little.

But, after the ceremony, when Celie looked again at her class, she could hardly believe her eyes. Were these the lads who night after night had stood before her with faces sleeked and smugged with arrant hypocrisy, or had looked up at her after some bout of intolerable mischief, as demure as kittens after spilling a saucer of milk?

A certain seriousness and comradeship pervaded the meeting. But Cleg was not yet at the end of his surprises.

"I perpose," he said, "that we hae a Club a' for oorsels."

The meeting with unanimous palm and hoof signified its approval of this grand proposal, obviously one which had been discussed before.

"We will hae it in here, and we'll pay to be members – an' that will do for the coals, and we'll hae smokin' – "

Celie sat aghast. Events were precipitating themselves with a vengeance. Indeed, surprise sat so manifest on her countenance that Cleg thought it wise to point out its genuine character to his brother members. It would never do for them to believe that the great idea of the club had not originated with themselves.

"She kens nocht aboot it, but I ken fine she's gaun to stan' in wi' us!" he explained, putting her, as it were, on her honour and under the solemn seal of the bloody cross of the Knuckle Dusters.

In this Celie, bound by her oath, had indeed no choice.

She must of a surety stand by them. But a serious difficulty occurred to her.

"Lads," she said, "we have only the right to this place for one night in the week. How can we occupy it every night?"

All the boys laughed loud. The question was mightily amusing. Indeed, Celie was often most amusing to them when she had no intention of being so.

"Of coorse, we ken, ye hae only to ask him!" they said, with one solid voice of general concurrence.

Celie felt herself beginning to burn low down on her neck, and it made her angry to think that in a minute more she would blush like a great baby just out of the senior class of the Ladies' College. The boys watched her maliciously till she looked really distressed, and then Cleg struck gallantly into the breach.

"Chaps," he cried, "I think we should ask for oorsels. We are gaun to elec' a commy-tee and run the show. Dinna let us begin by troublin' Miss Tennant. We'll gang an' ask oorsels. Gin ye are feared, I'm no!"

Crash! came a stone through the window. All leapt to their feet in a moment.

"It's that dirty scoondrel frae the Potter-raw. Oot after him!" cried Cleg.

Whereupon the newly constituted Knuckle Dusters' Club tumultuously detached itself for police duty. There was a scurry along the highway, a fight at a street corner. Two boys got a black eye apiece. A policeman was assaulted in the half-humorous way peculiar to the district. A letter-deliverer sat down suddenly on the pavement, to the delay of Her Majesty's mails, and after five well-spent and happy minutes, the Club re-entered, wiping its brow, and Cleg cried:

"Three cheers for the Knuckle Dusters' Club! Miss Celie to be the president for ever an' ever. We'll meet the morn's nicht to elec' the commy-tee. And there's twenty meenits left for Jacob!"

And so the Knuckle Dusters' Club sat patiently down to endure its Scripture lesson.

ADVENTURE XVIII.

BIG SMITH SUBDUES THE KNUCKLE DUSTERS

The reader of this random chronicle has not forgotten the Troglodytes – the Cave Dwellers, the Railing Roosters – alien to the race of men, with manners and customs darkly their own.

These are they with whom Cleg had to do, when he amused himself all that summer day opposite the house of the sergeant. Of the Troglodytes the chief were Tam Luke, who for a paltry consideration gave his time during the day to furthering the affairs of Tamson, the baker; Cleaver's boy, who similarly conducted the butcher's business next door; and the grocer's boy, who answered to the name of "Marg" – that is, if he who used it was very much bigger and stronger than himself. In other circumstances "Marg" chased and hammered according to his ability the boy who called the name after him – for it was contracted from "margarine," and involved a distinct slur upon his line of business.

But each man of the Troglodytes was a Knuckle Duster. In the Club they were banded together for offence and defence. In the days before Cleg took in hand to reorganise the club, they had a good many things in common besides the fear of the constable.

Now, each boy was most respectable during his hours of business. There was no "sneaking" the goods of their own masters. The till was safe, and they did not carry away the stock-in-trade to sell it. But that was pretty much all the way their honour went. Their kind of honesty, it is to be feared, was chiefly of the "best policy" sort. Fun was fun, and "sneaking" was the breath of life; but it was one thing to "fake an apple," and altogether another to be "nicked" for stealing from one's master. The latter meant the loss of situation without a character. Now a character is a valuable asset. It is negotiable, and must be taken care of. To steal does not hurt one's character – only to be found out. To break a plate-glass window with a stone does not harm a character as much as it damages the window; but to be an hour late three mornings running is fatal. So Cleaver's boy had a character; "Marg" had a character, and even Tam Luke had a character. They were all beauties. Our own Cleg had half a dozen different characters – most of them, however, rather indifferent.

But there is no mistake that, under the influence of Celie Tennant and the new Knuckle Dusters' Club, they were all in the way of improvement. The good character of their hours of work already began to lap over into their play-time. But thus it was not always.

Just before its re-inauguration the Sooth Back "mob" had been rather down on its luck. Cleg was among them only intermittently. They had had a fight with Bob Sowerby's gang, which frequented the Pleasance lands, and had been ignominiously defeated.

Worse than all, they had come across "Big" Smith, the athletic missionary of the Pleasance. He was so called to distinguish him from "Little" Smith, a distinguished predecessor of the same name, who was popularly understood to have read every book that was. Big Smith was not distinguished in the same way. All the same, he was both distinguished and popular.

On this occasion he was addressing his weekly meeting underneath one of the great houses. The Knuckle Dusters thought it good sport to ascend to the window of the common stair, and prepare missiles both fluid and solid. This was because they belonged to the Sooth Back, and did not know Big Smith.

Big Smith's mode of exhortation was the prophetic denunciatory. He was no Jeremiah – a Boanerges of the slums rather. He dealt in warm accusations and vigorous personal applications. He was very decidedly no minor prophet, for he had a black beard like an Astrakhan rug, and a voice that could outroar a Gilmerton carter. Also he was six feet high, and when he crossed his arms it was like a long-range marker trying to fold his arms round a target.

"Sinners in Number Seventy-three!" cried Big Smith, and his voice penetrated into every den and corner of that vast rabbit warren, "you will not come out to hear me, but I'll make ye hear me yet, if I scraich till the Day of Judgment. Sinners in Number Seventy-three, ye are a desperate bad lot. I hae kenned ye this ten year – but – "

Clash! – came a pail of dirty water out of the stair window where the Knuckle Dusters, yet completely unregenerate, were concealed.

Big Smith was taking breath for his next overwhelming sentence, but he never got it delivered. For as soon as he realised that the insult was meant for him, Big Smith pushed his hat firmly down on the back of his head and started up the stair. He had his oak staff in his hand, a stick of fibre and responsibility, as indeed it had need to be.

The first he got his hands upon was Tam Luke.

Tam was standing at the back of a door, squeezing himself against the wall as flat as a skate.

"Come oot!" said Big Smith, in commanding tones.

"It wasna me!" said Tam Luke, who very earnestly wished himself elsewhere.

"Come oot!" said Big Smith, missionary.

Tam Luke came – not wholly by his own will, but because the hand of Big Smith seemed to gather up most of his garments at once. And he grasped them hard too. Tam Luke's toes barely touched the ground.

"It wasna me!" repeated Tam Luke.

"What's a' this, then?" queried Big Smith, shaking him comprehensively, as the coal-man of the locality empties a hundredweight sack into the bunker. Half a dozen vegetables, more or less gamey in flavour, dropped out of his pockets and trotted irregularly down the stair.

Then Tam Luke, for the first time in his life, believed in the power of the Church militant. The Knuckle Dusters on the landing above listened with curious qualms, hearing Tam singing out his petitions in a kind of inappeasable rapture. Then, suddenly, they bethought them that it was time they got out of their present invidious position, and they made a rush downstairs.

But Big Smith stood on the steps, still holding Tam Luke, and with a foot like a Sutton's furniture van, he tripped each one impartially as he passed, till quite a little haycock of Knuckle Dusters was formed at an angle of the stair.

Then Big Smith, in a singularly able-bodied way, argued with the heap in general for the good of their souls; and the noise of the oak stick brought out all the neighbours to look on with approbation. They had no sympathy with the Knuckle Dusters whatever. And though they continually troubled the peace of mind of Big Smith with their goings on, yet they were loyal to him in their own way, and rejoiced exceedingly when they saw him "dressing the droddums" of the youths of the Sooth Back Gang.

"Lay on till them, Maister Smith! – bringin' disgrace on oor stair," cried a hodman's wife from the top landing, looking over with the brush in her hand. And Maister Smith certainly obeyed her. Each Knuckle Duster crawled hurriedly away as soon as he could disentangle himself. And as each passed the lower landings the wives harassed his retreat with brushes and pokers for bringing shame on the unstained good name of Number Seventy-three in the Pleasance.