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

ADVENTURE XXVII.
JANET OF INVERNESS TASTES THE HERB BITTER-SWEET

Janet duly arrived at the house of Mr. Robert Greg Tennant at the hour named in the invitation. She had had a great struggle with herself, but pride had ultimately triumphed. Her fellow-servants had given her no peace. She had, indeed, to dress in her black alpaca. But, sure enough, her hair had been done in the latest fashion by her only friend, the girl with whom the cook had seen her walking, who was an assistant in a hair-dresser's shop. It was so twisted and tortured that Janet felt "as if she had slept on it the wrong way," as she expressed it to herself. She passed and re-passed the end of the Avenue half-a-dozen times, but her courage would not let her ring the bell of the corner house. For there were lights in nearly every window, and a cab had just driven away from the door.

Poor Janet's heart leapt within her, and she had half a mind to turn homeward and confess that she had been romancing. But another cab stopped before the gate, and through the open door she saw a glimpse of lights and flowers that looked to her like Paradise – as she imagined it from the hymn-singing at the Salvation Army meetings.

So as the last cabman came slowly out of the Avenue, Janet called to him. The man was arranging his rugs about him for a long drive back to his stand at the centre of the town.

"I'll give you a sixpence if you will turn about and drive me up to that door you have just been at," said Janet.

"Done," said the man; "and good money for the job."

So, without betraying the least surprise or curiosity, the man turned about his vehicle, and Janet tripped daintily inside. They drove up to the door with prodigious rattle and ceremony. The cabman jumped from his seat and rang the bell in form. When the door was opened, Janet Urquhart paid the man his easily-earned sixpence. He touched his hat, and she went leadenly up the steps.

A trim maid-servant was at the door, who evidently had received very definite orders, for only the faintest curl of the nostril betrayed her own opinion of the affair.

When Janet was shown into the cloak-room her troubles began. Should she take off her hat, or not? She looked about to see if the ladies had left their hats. None were to be seen. Yet she had never seen ladies in the evening, except bareheaded. After long consideration she resolved to keep her hat on. But when she was in the doorway to go up to the drawing-room she saw a lady coming through the outer door with a shawl of soft gauzy wool over her head.

Janet shrank back instantly and turned cold with the thought of her escape. With trembling hands she took off her hat and pinned her veil to it as she had once seen her mistress do. The lady came in, bustling a little like one who knows she is late.

"It is cold to-night," she said affably to the shy girl standing in the doorway, but without looking at her.

"Yes, ma'am," said Janet, and the next moment she could have bitten her tongue out for the mistake.

"Oh, how I wish I had never come," she said a score of times to herself as she went up the stairs.

But it was too late to turn back.

"What name?" said the daintily-capped maiden, with the curl of her nostril a little more accentuated.

For a moment Janet was so taken aback that she could not even remember her own name.

"Janet," she stammered; "Janet – from Bailie Holden's."

The maid's face broadened into a smile, at sight of which poor Janet's lip quivered, and for a moment she thought that she must burst out crying. Scarcely was she able to keep back the welling tears. But the door was a little open, and she saw Miss Celie, whom she already knew and loved. The sight of that pleasant face, dimpling and flashing all over with bright kindness, reassured her.

"Say 'Janet Urquhart'!" she said, with a little faltering return of assurance in her voice.

And the trim maid-servant, with a strong protest in her tone, announced in accents of terrifying distinctness, "Miss Janet Urquhart."

Then she shut the door, and Janet was left standing aghast and speechless in the bright humming place.

"I would not have done it," soliloquised the indignant maid outside, "unless my place had depended on it."

But within Celie Tennant's drawing-room, poor silly little Janet of Inverness was being most pleasantly and charmingly entertained by her hostess. Celie had, in fact, asked only a few of her most intimate friends, whom she could trust with the momentous secret of the loves and sorrows of Cleaver's boy. The fascinating cousin from the tented field was there, ready for love or war. But it was to Donald Iverach that the principal work of the evening had been allotted.

It was he who first asked Janet to dance with him. It was he who sat out with her after her desperate failure, for she had lacked the courage to say that she had never learned to dance. It was he who found her a handkerchief, when, with the bitterness of disappointment, the tears at last would not keep down, but welled piteously up from the underlips of Janet's blue and childish eyes. It was Mr. Donald Iverach who took her down to supper, where she suffered agonies over the use of fish-knives and the management of a plate upon her knees. It was he who finally took her aside, and so fervidly pursued his wooing that, had Janet Urquhart been mercenary, he might without doubt have had a suit for breach of promise of marriage successfully brought against him. So far did the wooing proceed, and so fervently persistent was this wicked Junior Partner, that, bewildered and dazzled, poor Janet found herself being pressed to name the happy day, and, what is more, in some danger of doing it, too. As for the Junior Partner, that young man was obviously excited, but seemed quite unconscious of the risks he was running. Had the Senior Partner heard him, he would undoubtedly have considered his son to be rapidly qualifying for a strait jacket. But the infatuated youth held on his way. Janet and he were sitting in a little alcove at the top of the stairs, cobwebbed with the latest artistic Japonaiseries of the period.

"And now," urged the reckless youth, when he had sealed in due form the silent acquiescence he had won, "let us go back and tell them all that we are going to be married."

Mr. Donald Iverach was certainly quite mad. But Janet of Inverness was madder still, for instead of accepting the very eligible young man with modest reluctance, she burst out crying all at once without the least warning, and ran downstairs, leaving Donald Iverach standing spellbound looking after her. Down the stair and through the hall she ran. She opened the door and flew out into the night, crying "James! James! I want you, James!"

And the strangest part of the whole is that even as she opened the door two dark forms separated at the outer gate.

"There noo, look you after her," said Cleg Kelly to Cleaver's boy. And James Annan went as he was bidden. The girl's wild cry of "James! James!" hushed into quite another way of saying the same words, when she found herself clasped in the arms of Janet's boy – late Cleaver's. For James Annan not only had the root of the matter in him by nature, but, as we have seen, he was a lad of some little experience.

"What did I tell you, sir?" said Cleg to the Junior Partner, as they stood together on the step, and looked after the pair who had vanished into the darkness.

"It came out all right, I grant," said Mr. Donald Iverach, "but I want no more games with pretty kitchen-maids. I will tell you what – for three full minutes I thought she was going to take me!"

And the Junior Partner went down the street at the rate of five miles an hour.

ADVENTURE XXVIII.
THE ENGINE-DRIVER WITH THE BEARD

What James Annan said to little Janet of Inverness on the way home, and what Janet of Inverness said to James Annan, I know. But since it concerns only themselves, with themselves I will leave it. At all events, it was no long season before they were at one. Miss Cecilia Tennant's exact share in the plot is a harder matter to apportion. But that she had a share in it far beyond the mere issuing of the invitations is certain, for Mr. Donald Iverach was heard saying to the arch-conspirator in the semi-privacy of the dusky angle of the stairs, "But what I want to make out is, what I am to get out of it."

"Virtue is its own reward," replied Miss Celie, sententiously, "and, besides, you make love to that sort of person so well, that it is evident you must have had a great deal of practice."

"Now I call that a little hard on me," said the Junior Partner, who felt that he had made a martyr of himself all the evening, and that he had, indeed, narrowly escaped the sacrificial altar.

"Wait," he said threateningly, "till you want me to do anything else of the kind for you."

Celie Tennant set her pretty head the least bit to the side. It could not be called a cock, but it was the next thing to it. Next she pursed her mouth till it looked like a cherry.

"You would do it just as quick if I asked you to do it all over again," said Celie Tennant, looking pins and needles at Donald Iverach, till the very palms of his hands pingled.

The Junior Partner stamped his foot.

"Oh, hang it all!" he cried, "I believe that's the God's truth – I would."

That night as he walked home, the Junior Partner, who had no gifts for the imparting of religious instruction, but who respected those who had (especially if they were pretty), wondered what could make a Sunday school teacher act in such a perverse manner. He could not understand how it was that Celie Tennant, who upon occasion would weep over the crushing of a fly, and who was all the time worrying her life out over these young rascals of hers, could yet take pleasure in tormenting a fellow-creature, and making his very existence a burden to him.

But when he came to think of it afterwards, he had to confess that on the whole he rather liked it. In fact, that he would rather be made unhappy by Celie Tennant than that anyone else should give him the happiness of Paradise. He was a rankly foolish young man, and he would have hugged his follies if this particular one would have permitted him.

The present chronicler has, be it understood, undertaken to relate the adventures of Cleg's companions as well as those which immediately concern the hero. But these adventures of Cleaver's boy and his Janet of Inverness were not without direct bearing upon the fates of Cleg and of his lost friends the Kavannahs. For it so happened that Duncan Urquhart, the uncle of Janet of Inverness, came one night to see her in the kitchen of Bailie Holden. The cook was pleased with him, for he was a single man and well bearded; in fact, the very kind of man whom all cooks adore. Housemaids, on the other hand, like clean-shaven or moustached men, and as a rule prefer to catch them younger. And this is the reason why cooks marry gardeners while housemaids marry coachmen. While nurses, having had enough of children, live to a good old age in picturesque cottages, with assured pensions and uncertain tempers, eventually dying old maids. At least, so sayeth the philosopher.

Duncan Urquhart was not the chief of a clan. He was an engine-driver in the goods department of the Greenock and South-Eastern Railway. In the course of conversation the engine-driver, chiefly for the sake of the applause of the cook, cast about him for moving tales of the iron road on which his working hours were passed. He had settled in his mind that the cook was a wonderful woman. She could, to his certain knowledge, watch a roast, turn an omelette, taste a soup, and cast a languishing glance over her shoulder at him, all at the same time. He could not help thinking how excellent a thing it would be to come home after a grimy run on the footplate. And then, having washed, sit down in his own house to the soup, the omelette, and the joint, with (so little did he know) as many of the languishing glances as he could wish for, thrown in as a permanent asset of his home. So overcome was he by the idea, that for the moment he forgot that matters had proceeded even further with another cook in the town of Netherby, which formed his alternate stopping-place. It was a pity, he sometimes thought (for an instant only), that the laws of his country did not permit two such homes to be set up, one at either end of his daily journeyings.

Now, as one good effect of Duncan Urquhart's visit to the kitchen of Bailie Holden, the position of Janet of Inverness as kitchenmaid was made a far more tolerable one. It is a thing strongly advisable, that if the junior domestics of a house have presentable brothers or even uncles, unmarried and eligible, they should make haste to produce them. Janet of Inverness quite understood this. She knew, indeed, that Duncan was to marry his cousin Mary in the Black Isle. But she was far too wise a little girl to say anything about a family arrangement like that. And then the cook always allowed her to walk in pleasanter places for several days after the visits of her Uncle Duncan, who, as has been said, was a handsome man with a beard, and in habit very well put on and desirable.

But it is with Duncan's story that we have to do. Duncan had the English of Inverness crossed with the dialect peculiar to the Greenock and South-Eastern – a line whose engines are apple-green and gold, but the speech of whose engineers is blue, with purple patches. Not that Duncan swore before ladies, though Bailie Holden's cook would have forgiven him because of his beard. It was indeed a habit she was rather partial to, thinking it a mighty offset to the conversation of bearded men. There was no denying that Duncan's speech was picturesque. But Cleg could not help feeling that swearing of Duncan's sort was altogether roundabout and unmanly. For himself, when he had need and occasion, he simply said "Dam" and had done with it. Anything more savoured of superfluity to a boy of his simple tastes.

Duncan the engine-driver was talking about feats of strength.

"In my young days," he said, "I could toss the caber with any man. The Black Deil o' Dumfries tak' me, gin I couldna send a young tree birlin' through the air as if it had been a bit spale board. But ye should see Muckle Alick doon at Netherby Junction, where I pit up for the nicht. He's the porter there on the passenger side. An' the mid steeple is no better kenned for twenty miles round Netherby. Hands like the Day o' Judgment comin' in a thunder-cloud – heart like a wee white-faced lammie on the braes o' the Black Isle – that's Muckle Alick o' Netherby.

"As braid across the breast as if he was the gable end o' a bakehoose coming linkin' doon the street its lane. Lord bless me, when the big storm blew doon the distant signals last spring, I declare gin Muckle Alick didna juist stand on the railway brig that sits end on to the Market Hill, and signal in the trains wi' airms like the cross trees o' a man-o'-war!

"I declare to conscience it's a Guid's truth!

"Aye, an' when that puir trembling chicken-hearted crowl, Tam Mac Wheeble, that drives the Port Andrew passenger, stood still, wi' the bull's-eyes o' his wee blue engine juist looking round the corner, an' whistled and yelled for the proper signal, pretendin' that he didna see Muckle Alick (him belongin' to anither kirk), Alick cried doon at him off the brig, so that they could hear him half a mile, 'Ye donnert U. P., come on wi' your auld steam-roller an' your ill-faured cargo o' Irish drovers, or I'll come doon an' harl ye a' in mysel'!'

"Fac' as daith! I was there, talkin' to a nice bit lass that stands in the Refresh'!

"You weakly toon-bred loons" (here Duncan Urquhart looked at Cleg and Cleaver's boy) "thinks me a strong man. But Alick, though his shooders are gettin' a wee bowed and his craw-black hair is noo but a birse o' grey, could tak' half-a-dozen like me and daud our heads thegither till we couldna speak. True as the 'Reason Annexed' to the Third Commandment! I hae seen him wi' thae een that's in my head the noo!"

"Tell us mair," said Cleg, standing with his mouth open, for the relation of feats of strength is every unlearned man's "Iliad." So Duncan went on to tell mighty things of the wrath of Muckle Alick.

"But, lads, ye maun ken Alick is no a ramblin' wastrel like the rest o' us. He's an elder amang the Cameronians. Haith! a weel-learned man is Alick, an' guid company for a minister – or ony other man. And never an ill word oot o' the mouth o' him. Na, no even when yince there was twa trains at different platforms, an' the station-maister cried to Alick to tak' the tickets frae baith o' them at the same time. 'Juist tak' the Port Road train yoursel', gin ye are in sic a fidge!' quoth Alick. An' it was the station-maister that swore – Alick was even mair pleased-like than usual.

"But nae man ever saw Muckle Alick angry. The ill-set callants o' the Clearin' Hoose tries whiles to provoke him. Alick, he says little – only looks at them like a big sleepy dog when the pups are yelping. Then after a while he says, 'Ye are like Tam Purdy's cat, when it ate the herrin' he had for his breakfast the time he was askin' the blessin', ye are "gettin' raither pet!"'

"And then, if they winna take a telling, Alick will grip them in his loofs, gie them a shake and a daud thegither as if he was knockin' the stour aff a couple o' books, syne stick their heads in a couple o' bags o' Indian meal, an' leave them wi' their heels in the air. But Alick is never oot o' temper. And ceevil – fresh kirned butter is no sweeter at eighteenpence a pund!"

ADVENTURE XXIX.
MUCKLE ALICK'S BANNOCKBURN

"But what was I gaun to tell ye? Oh, aboot the Irish drovers. Ye maun ken they are no a very weel-liked class doon aboot Netherby. For they come in squads to the Market Hill on Mondays, and whiles their tongues and their sticks are no canny. Though some, I'm no denyin', are ceevil chiels. But them that I'm gaun to tell ye aboot were no that kind.

"It was the middle o' the day and Alick was away for his denner. There had been a bad market that day. Baith the marts were through hours afore their usual. So the drovers swarmed up to the station to get the afternoon train for Port Andrew. And on the platform the drinkin' frae bottles an' the swearin' was fair extraordinar'! So I am telled. Then, when the train cam' in, there was eight or nine o' the warst o' them that wadna be served but they maun a' get into a first-class compartment. And oot o' that they wadna get!

"The station-maister was a young man then and newly gotten on. He thocht a heap o' himsel' – as a young station-maister aye does when he first gets on the stemmed bonnet, and comes oot frae the office like Lord Almichty wi' a pen ahint his lug.

"Weel, at ony rate, the Netherby station-maister was that kind. An' he was determined that naebody should cross him in his ain station.

"'I'll juist lock them in and let them fecht it oot,' said the guard, 'and by the time we are through the big cutting at the Stroan they'll hae shuggled doon as quaite as a session.'

"It was doubtless good advice. But the station-maister was mainly angered. He gaed to the door o' the compartment and threatened the drovers wi' the law. And they juist pelted him wi' auld sodjers and ill talk. Then he cried for a' the porters and clerks, till there was a knot o' ten or a dozen o' them aboot the door – and a' the folk in the train wi' their heads oot o' the windows, askin' what on earth (an' ither places) was keepin' the train. And doon the main line the express was fair whustling blue-fire and vengeance because the signals were against her. But nae farther could they get. The station-maister he was determined to hae the drovers oot. And they were as set no to come – being gye and weel filled wi' the weedow's cheapest market whusky that she keepit special for the drovers, for faith it wad hae scunnert a decent Heelant sow! I tried it yince and was I the waur o't for a fortnicht. But ony whusky is guid enough for an Irishman, if only ye stir plenty o' soot amang it! They think they're hame again if they get that.

"So here the hale traffic o' Netherby Junction was stelled for maybe a quarter o' an hour, and the station-maister was nearly daft to think what he wad hae to enter on his detention sheet. A' at ance somebody cries, 'Here's Muckle Alick coming up the street.' And sure enough there he was, coming alang by the hill dyke wi' his hands in his pooches. For ye see this wasna his train, and he had ten minutes to spare. So wi' that the station-maister and the guaird and half-a-dozen lads frae the offices rins to the far side o' the platform, waving on Alick and crying on him to come on. Alick he juist looks aboot to see wha was late for the train. But no' seein' onybody he steps leisurely alang, drawin' on his weel-gaun pipe, proud-like as ye hae seen an elephant at the head o' a show.

"And the mair they cried and waved, the mair Alick looked aboot him for the man that was late for the train.

"'It maun be the provost at the least, wi' a' this fuss,' said he to himself; 'he'll be gaun to Loch Skerrow to fish!'

"At last a wee upsettin' booking-clerk, the size o' twa scrubbers, cam rinning and telled Alick a' aboot the drovers and the state the station-maister was in.

"'I'm no on duty at this train,' says Alick, 'but I'll come and speak to them.'

"So they made way for him, and Alick gaed through the crowd at the platform like a liner through the herring-fleet below the Tail o' the Bank.

"'Lads,' says he to the drovers, 'what's this? – what's this?'

"Then they mocked and jeered at him. For it so happened that nane o' them had been often at Netherby Market, and so no a man o' them was acquaint wi' Muckle Alick. Providence was no kind to the Paddies that time whatever.

"'Boys,' says Alick, as canny as if he had been courtin' his lass, 'this wull never do ava', boys. It's no nice conduck! It's clean ridiculous, ye ken. Ye'll hae to come oot o' that, boys!'

"But they were fair demented wi' drink and pridefulness at keepin' the train waitin', and so they miscaa'ed Alick for a muckle nowt-beast on stilts. And yin o' them let on to be an auctioneer, and set Alick up for sale.

"'Hoo muckle for this great lumbering Galloway stirk?' says he.

"'Thrip!' says another, 'and dear at the money.'

"'Boys,' says Alick again, like a mither soothin' her weans when she hears the guidman's fit, 'boys, ye'll hae to come oot!'

"But they only swore the waur at him.

"'Aweel,' says Alick, 'mind I hae warned ye, boys – '

"And he made for the carriage-door in the face o' a yell like a' Donnybrook broken lowse. Then what happened after that it is no' juist easy to tell. Alick gaed oot o' sicht into the compartment, fillin' the door frae tap to bottom. There was a wee bit buzzing like a bee-skep when a wasp gets in. Then presently oot o' the door o' the first-class carriage there comes a hand like the hand o' Providence, and draps a kickin' drover on the platform, sprawlin' on his wame like a paddock. Then, afore he can gather himsel' thegither, oot flees anither and faa's richt across him – and so on till there was a decent pile o' Irish drovers, a' neatly stacked cross-and-across like sawn wood in a joiner's yaird. Certes, it was bonny to see them! They were a' cairded through yin anither, and a' crawling and grippin' and fechtin' like crabs in a basket. It was a heartsome sicht!

"Then, after the hindermost was drappit featly on the riggin', oot steps Muckle Alick – edgeways, of course, for the door wasna wide aneuch for him except on the angle. He was, if onything, mair calm and collected than usual. Muckle Alick wasna angry. He juist clicked his square key in the lock o' the door and stood lookin' doon at the crawlin' pile o' drovers. Folk says he gied a bit smile, but I didna see him.

"'Ye see, boys, ye had to come oot!' said Muckle Alick."