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

"How splendid," said Kit, "if the devil were just to come for her as he did for poor Faust! He will some day, you may depend. Beelzebubba would be coming after me with a stick. She would run on and on, getting nearer and nearer to the barn end. I would show the devil exactly where to wait for her. Then I should put my hat on a stick and she would come, crawling, crawling slowly – to get a whack at me. By-and-bye she would get to the corner, and then —pouch! the devil would jump at her and catch her, the earth fly open, and nothing be left of Beelzebubba but a smell of sulphur, as there is after a bee-killing."

The vision was monstrously comfortable as Kit painted it. But Vara did not laugh.

"I think it's wicked to speak that gate," she said.

"What?" said Kit, hardly able to believe his ears, yet scenting a new and unsuspected perfection in his lady Gloriana; "it is only my aunt. It is Beelzebubba."

Vara shook her head. She could not give reasons, but she did not think such talk could be right even to imagine.

"She is no that ill after a', if you consider that she keeps us," she said.

Kit did not know that Vara had known intimately a far worse woman than Mistress McWalter.

At the door Kit gave the cans of water to Vara, brimming full as he had carried them, but silently, lest his aunt should hear from her bed above. He touched Vara's hand lightly for reward. For he was a boy as full of sentiment as his books were primed with it. He had brought a dozen of his father's volumes with him, and though his aunt daily prophesied their destruction by fire, Kit thought that she knew better than to do that.

But, while Vara had been gone to the well for the water, momentous things had been happening in the privacy of the chamber shared by Mistress McWalter and her husband. The worm had turned. But, alas! even when worms turn, they do not gain much by it. Except that perhaps they may assist the early bird to wriggle down its breakfast a little more easily.

Mistress McWalter had gone storming along her devious way of abuse after Vara's departure.

"I wish ye wad let that lassie alane!" suddenly broke in John McWalter, awaking out of his deep silence at the thirtieth repetition of the phrase "impident madam of the street." "The lassie's weel eneuch, so far as I see, gin ye wad only let her alane!"

For a long minute Mistress McWalter lay petrified with astonishment. The like of this had not happened since six months after their marriage. But the checked tide of her speech was not long in overflowing the barrier like a bursting flood.

"Is't come to this between you an' me, John McWalter – that I may rise and pack, and tak' awa me and my bairns, puir harmless bits o' things? For it comes to that! After a' my thirty years aboot the hoose o' Loch Spellanderie, that ye should tak' the pairt o' a reckless randy gang-the-road trollop, against your ain married wife! Have I watched and tended ye for this, when ye had the trouble in your inside, and could get rest neither day nor nicht, you wantin' aye mustard plaisters? Is it to be lichtlied for a lichtfit rantipole limmer that I hae fed ye and clad ye – aye, and tended your bairns, washing them back and front ilka Saturday nicht wi' a bit o' flannel and guid yellow soap, forby drying them after that wi' a rough towel? And noo, since I am to hae a besom like this preferred before me – I'll rise and be gaun. I'll bide nae mair aboot this hoose. Guid be thanked there's them in the warld that thinks mair o' me than John McWalter, my ain marriet man!"

"Aye, juist na," said John McWalter, roused at last. "E'en gang your ways, Mistress, if ye can make a better o't. Ye're braw and welcome to trampit as far as this hoose is concerned. I'm thinkin' that your new freends will be brave and sune tired o' ye!"

Mistress McWalter bounced out of bed and began hurriedly to gather her apparel, as though she meditated leaving the house just as she was. She would have given a considerable sum of money if at that moment she could have wept real wet tears. However, she did her best with a dry towel.

"To think," sobbed she, bouncing from chair to chair, "that ye prefer a wandering gypsy's brat o' a hizzie to me! O what for did I ever leave my mither, and the bonny hoose o' Knockshin where I was so muckle thocht on? Waes me, for I am but a puir, heart-broken, deceivit woman!"

At this very moment Vara came in bearing her cans, with a lightened heart after her journey to the well with Kit Kennedy. With a louder voice and more abounding thankfulness, Mistress McWalter took up the burden of her tale.

"Aye, here comes your base limmer. Ye had better be awa doon to her, John McWalter," cried the Mistress of Loch Spellanderie, "or she may tak' the country again, after the thief-like loon wha cam' seekin' her on Monday nicht, nae farther gane."

Then Mistress McWalter went down stairs and opened more direct fire. It was certainly a stormy day at Loch Spellanderie, little doubt was there of that. For the winds roared about the farm on the hill above the water. And within Mistress McWalter's tongue thundered like great guns in a naval engagement. Vara went about her work with the tear on her pale cheek all that day, and a wonder in her heart what she had done to deserve such cruelty.

ADVENTURE LIV.

KIT KENNEDY'S FAREWELL

It was about half-past four in the afternoon that Vara was coming round the corner of the barn carrying an armful of hay. She was undisguisedly sobbing now. For though she did not cry in the house where Mistress McWalter could see her, it was too much for her to restrain herself when she was alone out of doors.

John McWalter met her and stopped, with his usual elaborate pretence of being in a hurry and not having a moment to spare. He had really been doing nothing all the afternoon but looking for a chance of speaking to her.

"Vara, dinna greet, my lassie," he said, "ye maunna heed the mistress' tongue. We a' get oor share o't! Can ye no bide for a day or twa what I hae ta'en to bed wi' me every nicht for thirty year?"

"Thank you," said Vara, "I am gaun awa' the nicht."

"Where are ye gaun, my lassie?" asked John McWalter kindly.

"To see Hugh and Gavin, my twa wee brithers at Sandyknowes," said Vara, "and maybe I'll be some use there. An' if not, we will just hae to gang farther on, and look for my faither again."

"Weel," said John McWalter, "Guid kens I dinna blame ye. Maybe, after a', it wad be as weel. I can see plainly there is gaun to be nae peace here, and it was a' my blame no haudin' my tongue this mornin'. But here's something that will help ye on your road wherever ye gang, my lassie, near or far. There's nae better friend in the world that I ken o' than just a pound note."

And he slipped Vara a dirty little square of papers folded hard in his hand.

"I canna tak' it," said Vara protestingly, with the paper in her fingers.

"Hoots," said John McWalter, "I'm no needin' it. I hae plenty. And I canna let ye gang oot o' my hoose unplenished and unprovided, ony mair than if ye war my ain dochter. Tak' the pickle siller, lassie, and welcome. And hark ye, mind and crave the mistress for your full wage forbye. She'll think a heap mair o' ye for doin' that. And forbye, she'll no jalloose9 me so readily."

And that honest man John McWalter slipped like a thief of the night in at the back door of the barn.

Vara promptly announced her intention of going away that evening. "Aye and welcome," said Mistress McWalter; "the like o' you should never hae entered my door."

"I shall want my wages," said Vara, plucking up courage and remembering her master's words.

"Wages, ye randy," cried the good wife of Loch Spellanderie; "wages! Set ye up, indeed, ye crawlin' blastie! Think ye that honest folk's wages are for the like o' you, that canna bide awa' frae your deboshed paramours, and that lies in wait to entrap decent folk's men, silly craiturs that they are?"

"I am but a young lassie," said Vara, calmly, "and think on nane o' thae things. Neither will ony body believe them but yoursel'. But I'm gaun to hae my wages, or I'll gang to the kirk yett next Sabbath, and tell a' the neebours how ye treat your servants, starvin' them on scraps like dogs, making their lives a burden to them to get them no to bide aboot the hoose, and then at the hinder end threatening them to give them nae wages."

This threat, which would have feared no one who was conscious of good intent, somewhat stilled Mrs. McWalter's fury. For she knew that anything of the kind would be greedily listened to, and retailed at all the tea drinking in the neighbourhood. And she felt, also, that she had not quite the character in the country-side upon which such accusations would fall harmless.

She went to a locked drawer.

"Here's your wages," she said, "and an ill wish gang wi' them. Glad am I to be rid of you!"

Even thus Vara took her departure from the house of Loch Spellanderie. John McWalter covertly watched her carrying her bundle out of the yard. He was looking round the corner of a corn stack. He dared not come out and bid the girl farewell because of his wife. But the tear was now in his own eye.

"It micht hae been my ain lassie leavin' anither man's hoose. I am wae for her," he said. "But I'm glad it was a ten-pund note that I slippit her. And whatna state wad the wife no be in, gin she kenned!"

And there came a faint pleasure into his grieved heart as he watched Vara out of sight.

Meanwhile Mistress McWalter stood at the door with victory in the very poise of her ungainly figure. She had disdained to utter a word, as Vara went past her and quietly bade her "Good-night!" But now she cried, "Kit Kennedy! Kit Kennedy! Kit Kennedy!" with all the penetrative power of her voice.

But there was no answer. Kit was not to be found.

For Kit Kennedy was in a better place. He was bidding his lady Gloriana adieu. He had, indeed, never let Vara know that he had distinguished her by that name, nor, indeed, save by his kindness and help, that he thought of her at all.

But now she was going away for ever. Her little bundle was in her hand. Her all was in it, and what Loch Spellanderie would be without her, Kit did not like to think just yet.

It was under the orchard apple trees, at the place where they overhang the wall, that Kit was waiting.

"I'm vexed, Vara, I'm sair vexed that ye are gaun awa' to leave us!" said Kit Kennedy, hanging his head. "I do not ken what we will do without you. It will no be the same place ava!"

"Fare ye weel, lad," Vara said, holding out her hand; "ye hae been kind to me. Aye, juist past speakin' o'!"

"I'll carry your bundle as far as the march dyke, gin ye'll let me," said Kit, for once, bashfully. "I canna bear to think on ye gangin' like this!"

"Ye had better no," said Vara, "she micht see ye!"

"Her!" said Kit, with a scornful look over his shoulder; "I wadna care a buckie gin she was walkin' up the loan ahint us!"

Yet, in spite of this gallant defiance, Vara turned round to make sure that the goodwife of Loch Spellanderie was not in the place designated.

They walked a long while in silence. It was Kit who spoke first.

"Vara," he said, "will ye whiles think on me?"

"Of course I will that," said Vara readily; "ye hae been verra kind to me here."

"I'm but a laddie, I ken," said Kit, "but ye micht no a'thegither forget me. I'll never forget you, lassie!"

There fell another silence between them.

"Ye'll be gaun back to be near him?" said Kit, a little sullenly.

"Aye," replied Vara, in a voice that was almost a whisper, "maybe! Ye see, we hae kenned yin anither a' oor lives. And he kens hoo I was brocht up – and a' aboot my folk! And I ken his."

"I'm jalloosin' ye'll be desperate fond o' him?" said Kit, in the same hang-dog way, as if he were taking pleasure in his own pain.

"He fed the bairns wi' milk and bread," replied Vara softly; "aye, and gied us a' that he had when we were starvin'! He gied up the very roof abune his heid to shelter us when we were turned oot on the street. I canna help bein' fond o' him, Kit. 'Deed I canna."

Kit Kennedy thought a long time, till indeed they had walked quite across a field. Then he spoke.

"I canna feed ye, nor yet look after the bairns for ye. I hae nae hoose to put ye in, Vara. But O, I am that fond of ye, it's like to break my heart."

Vara stretched out her hand.

"An' I'm fond o' you too, laddie!" she said.

"Aye, but no the way I mean!" said Kit sadly, with a sob in his voice.

"I'll be aye thinkin' on ye," said Vara. "I wish ye war awa' frae this place."

"Dinna gie that a thocht!" said Kit, bravely; "I'm no mindin' a hair for my auntie – at least, I wadna if ye had only bided, so that whiles I could hae looked at ye, Vara!"

They had been walking hand in hand for some time. Kit Kennedy was tingling with a great desire. His heart was beating violently, as he nerved himself for the plunge.

They were at the march-dyke, just where it plunged into the wood of birches and alders. The path went down close along the lake shore from that point. The trees made a green haze of dusk there, with airs blowing cool from off the lake.

"Gloriana," said Kit suddenly, "will ye gie me a bit kiss to mind ye by?"

Vara looked at the lad with eyes of shy terror. This was indeed something new. Even Cleg, who would readily have died for her, or given her his coat or his house, if he had one, had never offered to kiss her. So at the sound of Kit's voice her heart also drummed in her ears emptily, as if her head were deep under water.

She stood still, looking away from him, but not turning her head down. Kit bent his head and kissed her fairly.

A strange pang ran responsively to Vara's heart – a flash of rapture to Kit's. They parted without a word, the girl walking sedately out of the shadows in one direction, and the lad running with all his might back to the farm in the other.

Each had their own several communings.

Vara said to herself, "Why does not Cleg think to speak to me like that?"

It was a great blunder on Cleg's part, certainly, and, if heart-aches were to be spared, one which he should speedily set himself to repair.

And as Kit Kennedy went home he said, over and over, "I hae kissed her. I hae kissed her. Naething and naebody can take that from me, at least."

But with the stilling of his leaping and rejoicing heart came the thought, "But had I the right? He fed them and clothed them, and never asked as much. He is better than I. I will not trouble them any more. For he is better and worthier than I."

So Kit's dreams and imaginings helped him to something more knightly in his renunciation than in the brief rapturous flash of possession.

ADVENTURE LV.

A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY

Meanwhile Cleg was looking after the General's interests when, had he known it, he ought rather to have been looking after his own. He closed the doors of the great house that afternoon, as he had done for many months, and left his master in his strange bed. He was not afraid now, any more. For, in spite of his madness, there was something engaging about the General, something at once childlike and ingenuous, which came out in the close intercourse of two people living altogether alone.

Cleg went into the little brick addition at the back, and the barred doors of the great house shut mechanically behind him.

Cleg was making up his mind to ask the General to let him live out of the house. Cleg was thinking, also, of speaking to Vara. But then Vara might not agree. Had he ever asked her? Of course he had not. It was "soft" – so he had held up to this point to speak to a girl about such things. But yet the idea had its pleasures, and some day he would speak to her about it. Had he been hidden that day in the little copse by the march-dyke, on the road from Loch Spellanderie, he might have heard something very much to his advantage, which might have spurred him on to speak for himself, even at the risk of being considered exceedingly "soft."

But the mere fact that he thought of it at all, argued a mighty change in this Cleg of ours. He was no more only an Arab of the city all these years. He had given Mirren half his wages and saved the rest, so that, with the Christmas presents the General had given him, he had nearly a hundred pounds in the bank.

Cleg pushed his way through the thickly matted copses of spurge laurel and wet-shot alder. He was going to Sandyknowes. The lush green Solomon's seal was growing all around, with its broad-veined green leaves. A little farther on he came on the pure white blossoms of bog trefoil, with its flossy, delicate petals, lace-edged like feminine frilleries.

A thought came into Cleg's mind at the time which bore fruit afterwards. He thought that, if at any time he should lose his position with the General, he knew what he should do. For Cleg was an optimist, and a working, scheming optimist as well. The man who succeeds in this world is doubtless the man who, according to the copybook maxim, gives his undivided attention to the matter in hand. But he is also the man who has always a scheme or two in reserve. He is the man who is ready, if need be, to "fight it out on this line all summer," but who has also at the same time other fighting lines in reserve for the autumn and winter campaigns.

So Cleg, with his ready brain, turned the wild flowers into a means of getting the little house in the background for Vara and himself, even if the General's kindness should vanish away as quickly and unexpectedly as it had come.

The house of Sandyknowes was very quiet. Mirren Douglas had put away vain regrets even as she had laid away Muckle Alick's things – and that was as neatly as if he was to need them next Sabbath when he made ready for the kirk. She had reviewed her position. And for four years, with Vara's and Cleg's help, she had owed no man anything, and had brought up Hugh and Gavin as if they were her own. But she never thought of herself as Alick's widow. She was his wife still.

Alick and she had been saving people. Also he had been, as was said, "a weel-likit man aboot the station," and he had left her nearly four hundred pounds in the bank. But this Mirren, like a prudent woman, had resolved not to touch if she could help it. She had still six years to run of the nineteen years' lease of Sandyknowes – its grass parks and its gardens, its beeskeps and little office houses. But she was often a little wearied at night, cumbered with much service. She felt that now she needed help.

Her thoughts fell on Vara. Should she not bring her home? But yet how could she take her away till the term from Mistress McWalter of Loch Spellanderie?

At that very moment Vara herself opened the door and walked in.

"Wi' lassie!" cried the astonished Mirren Douglas, "what for hae ye left your place? Hae ye gotten leave to bide a' nicht?"

"I hae gotten my fee an' my leave, like the brownie Kit Kennedy sings aboot!" said Vara pleasantly.

"And what's the reason o' that?" said Mirren, with great anxiety in her motherly face.

"The master and the mistress fell oot aboot me," said Vara simply.

"Then I needna ask what yin o' them was in your favour," said Mirren, sharply.

"I must look out for a place," said Vara. "Oh, Mirren Douglas, ye hae been kind to me. But I couldna think o' puttin' you to fash and trouble ony longer, noo that I'm woman muckle, and able to be doin' for mysel'."

"Lassie," said little Mistress Mirren Douglas of Sandyknowes, "will ye hae this place here? I was gaun awa' to look for a lass this very minute. Will ye bide at Sandyknowes, at least till ye will be wantin' to leave us o' your ain accord some day?"

"Aye, that I will, and heartily!" cried Vara, smiling gladly.

And the tender-hearted little woman in black fairly took Vara in her arms and wept over her.

"I canna think what's come ower me thae days," she said; "I greet that easy. And everything that I tak' in my fingers breaks. Since Alick gaed awa' I think whiles that my fingers hae a' grown to be thumbs!"

There was a rap at the door. Vara rose naturally and went to it as if she had never been away. It was Cleg Kelly.

All his greeting was just "Weel, Vara!" He did not so much as offer to take her hand. Clever as he thought himself, Cleg Kelly had a great deal to learn. Yet that very moment he had been dreaming of the little house which was to grow out of the General's bounty, and out of the trefoil and forget-me-not in the bog. Yet, when he found his sweetheart at the back of the door, he could only mutter "Weel, Vara!" Nothing more.

Cleg and Vara went in together, without speaking. Mirren rose to shake hands. But little Hugh was before her. He distinguished himself by summarily tumbling Gavin heels over head and scrambling towards the visitor.

"Cleg Kelly! Cleg Kelly!" he cried. "I want ye to fecht the Drabble and gar him gie me back my pistol. I'm big enough noo! There's an awesome heap o' wild beasts here to shoot if only I had a pistol. In the wood at the back there's lots o' elephants, and leepards, and – and teegars," he added, when he found that Cleg looked sufficiently credulous.

"And how do ye get on with the daft General?" asked Mirren, with great interest in her face.

Cleg was amused at her question. He had become quite accustomed to the wonder on people's faces, usually shading into awe, when they asked him concerning his position in the household of the redoubtable General Theophilus Ruff.

"Fine," said Cleg. "Him and me 'grees fine. I hae nae faut to the General."

"Preserve us," said Mirren, "I never heard the like. The auld wizard hadna had a leevin' soul aboot him before you came, since his Indian servant Copper-Blackie died. And that's ten year since. And to think that ye hae nae faut to him!"

She looked at Cleg again.

"Noo, come," she said, "sit doon and tell us a' aboot what's inside the hoose."

But Cleg remained uninterestingly discreet. He said nothing about the General's bedroom; but he filled up the tale with the most minute details concerning the vaulted passages, the iron-barred casements in the hall, and the camp-like conveniences of the little brick building at the back.

Vara and Mirren Douglas listened with close attention. Hugh stopped teasing the cat with a feather, as it was trying to go to sleep on the hearthrug. Gavin was already asleep, with a brass door-knob and a whip clutched in his hands.

"Aweel," said Mirren, when Cleg had finished, "I thought it was a deal waur than that. But he maun be a fearsome creature to leeve wi', the General. Yet he is nane so ill a neebour to me."

Cleg uncrossed his legs and became instantly at ease. Mirren looked affectionately at Vara.

"Heard ye," she said, "that I hae gotten a new servant lass? I am able to do withoot her wage. And it is worth far mair for the company," she added.

"I wish I could bide and help ye too, for Alick's sake," said Cleg, shyly.

Mirren rose and ran to the boy. Hastily Cleg held out his hand, and Mirren Douglas clasped it. He was afraid that she was going to kiss him, and though he admitted the thing as an abstract possibility of the future, it had not quite come to that with him yet.

"Cleg," she said, "ye are a kind, good lad."

"Aye, that he is," chimed in Vara; "and ye wad say so if ye kenned him as I do."

Cleg began to expand in this atmosphere of appreciation. He decided to wait for tea. The hours sped all too swiftly, and the appointed time arrived before he knew it, when he must return to the great barred prison with the little brick martin's nest attached to the back of it.

But before Cleg went away he brought in the water for the night, filling all the cans. He scoured the milk pails ready for the milking of Mirren Douglas's three cows. He split abundance of kindling wood. He brought in the peats off the stack – enough to do for all the following day. He swept the yard clean as a hearth, with a worn stable brush. He promised to come back on the morrow and sweep the chimney, when Mirren puffed her cheeks at the smoke which blew down it occasionally. Then he brought home the cows, assisted by Hugh, Vara watching meanwhile a little wistfully from the gate. She felt sure that if it had been Kit Kennedy, he would not have chosen Hugh to help him. Mirren watched the girl with sharp, kindly eyes, but she said nothing.