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

ADVENTURE XXX.
HOW GEORDIE GRIERSON'S ENGINE BROKE ITS BUFFER

"Hoo-r-ray!" shouted Cleg Kelly and Cleaver's boy together, till the cook and little Janet of Inverness smiled at their enthusiasm.

"But there's mair," said the engine-driver.

"It canna be better than that!" said Cleg, to whom the tale was good as new potatoes and salt butter.

"It's better!" said the engine-driver, who knew that nothing holds an audience and sharpens the edge of its appetite better than a carefully cultivated expectancy.

"It was that same day after the Port Andrew train got away, when the cowed drovers were sent to the landing-bank to wait for their cattle train, and the carriage that was coupled on to it for their transport. The driver o' the main line express was Geordie Grierson, an' he was no well-pleased man to be kept waitin' twenty minutes with his whistle yellyhooin' bluefire a' the time. He prided himsel' special on rinnin' to the tick o' the clock. So as soon as the signal dropped to clear he started her raither sharp, and she cam' into the station under a head of steam some deal faster than he had intended. Ye could hae heard the scraichin' o' the auld wood brakes a mile an' mair. But stop her they couldna. And juist as Georgie Grierson's engine was turnin' the curve to come past the facing points to the platform, what should we see but a wee bit ragged laddie, carryin' a bairn, coming staggerin' cross the metals to the near bank. Every single person on the platform cried to him to gang back. But the laddie couldna see Geordie's engine for the way he was carryin' the bairn, and maybe the noise o' the folk cryin' mazed him. So there he stood on the four-foot way, richt between the rails, and the express-engine fair on him.

"It cam' that quick our mouths were hardly shut after crying out, and our hearts had nae time to gang on again, before Muckle Alick, wha was standin' by the side o' the platform, made a spang for the bairns – as far as we could see, richt under the nose o' the engine. He gripped them baith in his airms, but he hadna time to loup clear o' the far rail. So Muckle Alick juist arched a back that was near as braid as the front of the engine itsel', and he gied a kind o' jump to the side. The far buffer o' the engine took him in the broad o' his hinderlands and whammeled him and the bairns in a heap ower on the grass on the far bank.

"Then there was a sough amang us wi' the drawing in o' sae mony breaths, for, indeed, we never looked for yin o' them ever to stir again. Geordie Grierson managed to stop his train after it had passed maybe twenty yairds. He was leanin' oot o' the engine cubby half his length an' lookin' back, wi' a face like chalk, at Muckle Alick and the weans on the bank.

"But what was oor astonishment to see him rise up wi' the bairns baith in his ae arm, and gie his back a bit dust wi' the back o' the ither as if he had been dustin' flour off it.

"'Is there ocht broken, think ye, Geordie?' Muckle Alick cried anxiously to the engine-driver.

"'Guid life, Alick, are ye no killed?' said the engine-driver. And, loupin' frae his engine, Geordie ran doon, if ye will believe it, greeting like a very bairn. And, 'deed, to tell the truth, so was the maist feck o' us.

"'Killed?' says Alick; 'weel, no that I ken o'!'

"And he stepped across the rails wi' the twa weans laughin' in his airms, for a' bairns are fond o' Alick. And says he, 'I think I'll pit them in the left luggage office till we get the express cleared.' So he did that, and gied them his big turnip watch to play wi'. And syne he took the luggage over and cried the name o' the station, as if he had done nocht that day forbye eat his denner.

"Then there cam' a lassie rinnin' wi' a loaf in her airms, and lookin' every road for something.

"'Did ye see twa bairns? Oh, my wee Hugh, what's come to ye?' she cried.

"'Ye'll find them in the luggage office, I'm thinkin', lassie,' says Alick."

And here the engine-driver of the goods train rose to depart. But his audience would not permit him.

"And what cam' o' the bairns?" cried Cleg, white with anxiety, "and what was their names, can ye tell me?"

"Na, I never heard their names, if they had ony," said Duncan Urquhart. "They were but tinkler weans, gaun the country. But Alick could tell ye, nae doot. For I saw him gang doon the street wi' the wee boy in his hand, and the lass carryin' the bairn. An' the folk were a' rinnin' oot o' their doors to shake hands wi' Alick, and askin' him if he wasna sair hurt?"

"'Na,' says he; 'I'll maybe a kennin' stiff for a day or twa, but there's nocht serious wrang – except wi' the spring o' the engine buffer! That's gye sair shauchelt!'

"And guid nicht to ye a', an' a guid sleep. That's a' I ken," said Duncan Urquhart from the kitchen door, where he was saying good-bye to the cook in a manner calculated to advance materially the interests of his niece, Janet of Inverness.

"And I'm gaun the morn's mornin' to see Muckle Alick!" cried Cleg. And he went out with the engine-driver.

ADVENTURE XXXI.
THE "AWFU' WOMAN."

A sore heart had Vara Kavannah as she sat in the hut in Callendar's yard the night her mother had appeared at the gate of Hillside Works.

"I can never go back among them – no, never, never!" said Vara to herself again and again.

And already she saw the sidelong glance, the sneering word thrown over the shoulder, as the companions from whom she had held herself somewhat aloof reminded her of her mother's disgrace. "O father, father, come back to us – come back to us!" she cried over and over again till it became a prayer.

She sat with her hands before her face so long that little Hugh repeatedly came and stirred her arm, saying "What ails sister? Hugh Boy not an ill boy!"

Vara Kavannah's thoughts ran steadily on Liverpool, to which her father had gone to find work. She remembered having seen trains with carriages marked "Liverpool" starting from the rickety old station at the end of Princes Street. She knew that they went out by Merchiston and Calder. That must, therefore, be the way to Liverpool. Vara did not remember that it must also be the way to a great many other places, since many carriages with other superscriptions passed out the same way.

As it darkened in the little construction hut, Vara listlessly rose to set the room to rights, and to give the baby its bottle. Nothing now seemed any use, since her mother had come back into her life. Yet Vara did not cry, for that also was no use. She had lost her place at the works, or at least she could never go back any more. Her world was at an end.

Hugh Boy still lingered outside, though it was growing latish, and the swallows that darted in and out of the stacked rafters and piled squares of boards began one by one to disappear from the vaulted sky. Hugh was busy watering the plants, as he had seen Cleg do. And he kept one hand in his pocket and tried to whistle as like his model as possible. Vara was just laying the baby in its cot when she heard a scream of pain from Hugh at the door.

"Mercy me!" she said, "has the laddie tumbled and hurt himsel'?"

She flew to the open door, which was now no more than a dusky oblong of blue-grey. A pair of dark shapes stood in front of her. Little Hugh lay wailing on the ground. A hard clenched hand struck Vara on the mouth, as she held up her hands to shield the baby she had carried with her in her haste, and a harsh thick voice screamed accumulated curses at her.

"I hae gotten ye at last, ye scum, you that sets yourself up to be somebody. You that dresses in a hat and feather, devil sweep ye! Come your ways in, lad, and we will soon take the pride out of the likes o' her, the besom!"

The man hung back and seemed loth to have part in the shame. But Sal Kavannah seized him by the hand and dragged him forward.

"This is your new faither, Vara," she said; "look at him. He is a bonny-like man beside your poor waff wastrel runnagate faither, Sheemus Kavannah!"

The man of whom Sal Kavannah spoke was a burly low-browed ruffian, with the furtive glance of one who has never known what it is to have nothing to conceal.

But Vara thought he did not look wholly bad.

"Come in, mother!" she said at last in a low voice. Then she went out to seek for Boy Hugh, who had run into the dark of the yard and darned himself safely among the innumerable piles of wood, which stood at all angles and elevations in Callendar's wide quadrangle.

"Hugh! Boy Hugh!" she cried. And for a long time she called in vain. At last a low and fearful voice answered her from a dark corner, in which lay the salvage of a torn-down house.

"Is she gane away?" said the Boy Hugh.

"No, but ye are to come hame," said Vara, holding the babe closer to her bosom.

"Then Hugh Boy is no comin' hame the nicht till the 'awfu' woman' is gane away!" said the lad, determinedly.

"Come, boy, come," she said again; "my heart is wae for us a'. But come wi' your Vara!"

"Na, Hugh Boy is no comin'. Ye will hae to hist me oot wi' big dogs afore I will come hame to the 'awfu' woman,'" said Hugh Boy, who was mightily set when his mind was made up.

So Vara had perforce to drag her feet back to the horrors which awaited her within the construction hut. The man and her mother had been pledging one another when she entered. A couple of black bottles stood between them, and Sal Kavannah looked up at her daughter with a fleering laugh.

"Aye, here she comes that sets up for being better than your mother! But we'll show you before we are through with you, my man and me, you – "

However, it does not enter into the purpose of this tale to blacken a page with the foul excrement of a devilish woman's hate of her own child. The Scripture holdeth – the mother may forget. She may indeed have no compassion on the child of her womb. And Vara Kavannah sat still and listened, till the burning shame dulled to a steady throbbing ache somewhere within her. The woman's threats of future torture and outrage passed idly over her, meaningless and empty. The man drank steadily, and grew ever silenter and more sullen; for, to his credit be it said, the situation was not to his taste, and he looked but seldom at Vara. The girl sat clasping the babe to her bosom with a secret sense that in little Gavin she had her best and indeed her only protector. For even the very bad man in his senses will hardly hurt an infant – though a bad woman will, as we may read in the records of our police courts.

So Vara sat till the man reeled to the door, carrying the unfinished bottle with him, and Sal Kavannah, her orgie logically completed, sank in a fœtid heap on the floor with the empty one beside her.

The man as he stumbled out left the door open, and in a little while Vara could hear Boy Hugh's plaintive voice, asking from the wood-pile in the corner whether the "awfu' woman" was gone yet.

As Vara sat and listened all through the short hours of that midsummer night to the clocks of the city churches, the stertorous breathing of her mother and the babe's occasional feeble wail were the only sounds within the hut itself. But Boy Hugh's plaint detached itself fitfully from the uneasy hum of the midnight city without. A resolve, new-born indeed, but seemingly old and determinate as the decrees of the God she had learned about in the Catechism, took hold upon her.

It seemed to Vara that it did not matter if she died – it did not even matter whether Hugh and Gavin died, if only she could find her father, and die far away from her mother and all this misery.

The girl was so driven to the last extremity by the trials of the day and the terrors of the night that she rose and put on her hat as calmly as though she had been going for a walk with Cleg and the children across the park. As calmly also she made her preparations, stepping carefully to and fro across her mother on the floor. She put all the scraps of bread that were left from Cleg's windfall into her pocket, together with the baby's feeding bottle and a spare tube. Then she added Hugh's whistle and a certain precious whip with a short bone handle and a long lash, which Cleg had given him. Vara was sure that Hugh Boy would cry for these, and want to go back if she did not take them with her. She had nothing of her own to take, except the indiarubber umbrella ring which Cleg Kelly had given her. So she took that, though she had never possessed an umbrella in her life. Groping in Gavin's crib, she found her shawl, and wrapped it about her with a knowing twist. Then she deftly took up the baby. The shawl went over her left shoulder and was caught about her waist at the right side, in a way which all nurses and mothers know, but which no man can ever hope to describe. The babe was still asleep, and Vara's tender touch did not awake it as she stepped out into the night to walk to Liverpool to find her father.

But as a first step she must find Boy Hugh. And that young man was exceedingly shy. He had got it in his obstinate little head that his sister wished to drag him back to the "awfu' woman." It was not, therefore, till Vara had managed to persuade him in the most solemn way that she had no intention of ever going back that he consented to accompany her upon her desperate quest.

At last Boy Hugh took her hand and the three bairns left Callendar's yard behind them for ever. What happened there that night after they left we already know. It is with the children's wanderings that we now have to do.

ADVENTURE XXXII.
MAID GREATHEART AND HER PILGRIMS

It was grey day when the children fared forth from the city. Vara's chief anxiety was lest they should not be able to escape out of the town before the light came, so that some officious neighbour might be able to direct her enemy upon their track. It was not long before they emerged out of the side-alleys on a broad paved street which led towards the south.

Vara paused and asked a policeman if this was the way to Liberton.

"And what are you going to do at Liberton so early in the morning?" said the policeman. He asked because he was a Lothian man, who always puts a second question before he can bring himself to answer the first.

"We are gaun to see our faither," said Vara, speaking the truth.

"Weel," said the policeman, "that is the road to Liberton. But if I was you I would wait till the milk-cairts were drivin' hame. Then I could get ye a lift to Liberton fine."

He was a kind-hearted "poliss," and in fact the same officer who had looked over the screen by the watch-shelter behind which Tyke was spinning his yarns to Cleg Kelly.

So that – thus strange is the working of events when they take the reins into their own hands – at the very moment when Cleg Kelly was sleeplessly turning over in his mind the problem of the life-fate of Vara and the children by the dying fire at the Grange crossing, Vara herself with the baby on her arm was trudging down the pavement opposite. As she passed she looked across, and only the timbered edge of the shelter prevented her from seeing Cleg Kelly.

Thus, without the least hindrance or observation, the three children escaped out of their thrice-heated fiery furnace into the cool of the country hedges and upon the clean hard surface of the upland roads.

With the inevitable instinct of hunted things Vara turned aside whenever she heard the brisk clapper of the hoofs of a milk-cart, or the slower rumble of a market waggon. For she knew that it was of such early comers into the city that questions would be asked. So, when Cleg set about his inquisition, he was foiled by the very forethought which had only desired to defeat an enemy, not to mystify a friend.

Thus hour by hour they left quiet, kindly red-tiled villages behind, set in heartsome howes and upon windy ridges. And, as they went ever forwards, morning broadened into day; day crept dustily forward to hot noon; noon drowsed into afternoon; with the scent of beanfields in the air, dreamily sweet. Vara's arm that held the baby grew numb and dead. Her back ached acutely from the waist downwards as though it would break in two. Sometimes the babe wailed for food. Little Hugh dragged leadenly upon her other hand, and whinged on, with the wearisome iteration of the corncrake, that he wished to go back to Callendar's yard, till Vara had to remind him, because nothing else would stay his plaining, of the "awfu' woman" waiting for him there.

Vara did not rest long that whole day. They sat down as seldom as possible, and then only for a few minutes. Vara poured a little of the water from a wayside spring upon the crumbs that were left, and gave them to little Gavin, mixing them with the remaining milk in his bottle. Hugh begged incessantly that Vara would let him take off his boots and walk barefoot. But his sister knew that he would certainly become lame in a mile or two. Yet there might have been pleasure in it too, for they sat down in the pleasantest places all that fine, bough-tossing day. The shadows were sprinkled on the grassy hillsides, like a patchwork quilt which Vara had once seen in their house when Hugh was very little, but which had long ago become only a memory and a lost pawn-ticket.

Never before had the children seen such quaint woodland places – nooks where the rabbits tripped and darted, or sat on the bank washing faces pathetically innocent and foolish. Little runnels of water trickled down the gullies of the banks and dived under the road. But for Vara there was no enjoyment, no resting all that day. They soon spent their store of food. By noon Hugh had eaten all the cold potatoes. The babe had taken, at first with difficulty, then, under the pressure of hunger, greedily, the thin water and milk with the crushed crumbs in it which Vara had made at the brook-side. So that also was finished. Hunger began, not for the first time, to grip them.

But they could not rest long. In a little, just as Hugh Boy was beginning to drop asleep and lean heavily against Vara, there came again upon her without warning a terrible fear. She looked down the road they had come, and she seemed to see the cruel eyes of her mother, to hear again the foul threats of the life she was to be compelled to lead for "setting herself up to be better than her mother," all the words which she had listened to during those last hours of terror and great darkness in the old construction hut.

So Vara shook Hugh awake, stroking his cheeks down gently till his eyes opened. She settled the shawl over her other shoulder, and the bairns were soon on their way again. The dusty road beneath appeared to stream monotonously between their feet, and so weary did they grow that sometimes they seemed to be only standing still. Sometimes, on the contrary, they appeared to be going forward with incredible speed. Vara bore the aching of her carrying-arm till it became agony unspeakable, and the weight of Gavin dragged on her very brain. Then, for a treat, she would shift him to the other arm, and for a few minutes the keen twingeing ache deadened to a dull ache, as the tired wrist and elbow dropped to her side. But soon in the other arm the same stounding agony began.

Still the children fared on, spurred forward by the fear of that which was behind them. The thought and hope of their father had greatly died out of Vara's mind, though not altogether. But the mighty instinct of hiding from days and nights like those which had gone over her head recently drove her restlessly forward. Yet she began sadly to acknowledge that, though she might be able to stumble on a little longer that night, little Hugh could not go much further. He began to lag behind at every turn, and whenever they stopped a moment he fairly dropped asleep on his feet, and his head fell flaccidly against her side.

The bells of a little town on the slope of a hill were just striking six and the mill-folk were streaming homeward, when the children had their first great piece of luck. They were just by a stone watering-trough at the curve of a long brae, when a smart light cart with yellow wheels came past. It was driven by a young man, who sat, looking very bright and happy, with his sweetheart beside him. As the pair came slowly up the brae they had been talking about the children, whom they could see dragging on before them weary-foot, sick with pain and weariness.

Perhaps the young man's heart was touched. Or mayhap his sweetheart asked him to give them a penny, and he wished to show his generosity. But in either case certain it is that as he passed up the hill he nodded brightly back to the children and threw them a coin. It rolled on its edge to Vara's feet, who stooped and picked it up, solacing her independent soul as the silver lay apparent in her hands by telling herself that she had not asked for it. Her mother had found all her savings the night before, and had emptied them into the hand of her companion, out of the cup in which they had stood on the shelf which served for the mantelpiece of the construction hut. So that but for this happy young man's sixpence Vara and her charges were absolutely penniless.