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

ADVENTURE XXXVI.
THE MADNESS OF HUGH BOY

The young minister put out his hand to Vara and the two walked quietly back to where Boy Hugh was kneeling on the grass, and baby Gavin was sitting grasping a dandelion with one hand and looking with wide deep-set eyes of philosophic calm upon the world.

"Tell me all about it," said her champion. And Vara told the tale with her heart again beginning to beat with terror. "But how is it that you are here?" said he. And Vara explained as much as she could.

"To look for your father in Liverpool?" he said. "It is a long, sad way – a terrible journey." He mused.

He had a passion for setting things right, this young fellow, and it occurred to him that it would be a good thing if he could get these children into a home of some kind, and then communicate with the police on the subject of their father.

But as soon as the young man began to speak in his low, persuasive tones of a home where they could be safe and quiet, Vara stood up.

"O no, sir, I thank you, but we can not bide. Somebody might come and find us."

At the mere thought she began to tremble and hastily to put her scattered belongings together. The young minister made no further objection. He walked with them a little along the way, and before he parted from them he put another shilling into Vara's hand. Then he leaped over the stone dyke on his way to a farmhouse where there was a sick man waiting for him. From the other side of the fence he told Vara shyly to remember that she had another Father to care for her, who could always be found. But he was shy about saying so much, this remarkable young man. However, he had a high sense of duty, and he felt that the circumstances justified the observation.

"Thank ye," said Vara; "I'll no forget."

This, their second day, had become one of brooding heat, and Vara was glad to have enough to buy a good meal for them all at the next little town they passed through. They were fortunate also in the afternoon, for at a little house by the wayside, a cottage with red creepers growing all along the wall, the mistress took them all in and gave them a cup of tea and some of the fresh white scones she was baking. There was milk too for little Gavin. And as they went away a thought seemed to strike the woman. She bade them wait a little while. She climbed up into the attic, and presently returned with a shawl, which she wrapped about Vara, and settled the baby into the nook of it with her own hands.

"But this is a good shawl. We must not take it from you," said Vara.

"Nonsense," said the good woman; "it is a fair exchange. Leave me the auld ane; it will make very decent floor-clouts."

So it was on the whole a good day for them. And it was not till late in the evening that misfortune again befell them. Vara's hands were usually so full of Gavin that she had little thought for anything else. But at one resting place she put her hand into her pocket and her heart stood still because she failed to find the slim coins upon which she had put her trust. She felt the pennies, but not the shilling or the sixpence. She laid Gavin down on the grass and turned the pocket inside out. There was nothing whatever there. But Vara found instead a little slit in the lining, and the thought of her great loss, together with what it meant to them all, turned her faint and sick.

"The man might just as well have had them, after all," she said.

Night fell with them still upon the road. They had found no friendly shelter, and they seemed to be alone on the wide moor, through which the road ran unfenced, like a tangle of string which has been loosely thrown down. Hugh Boy cried bitterly to be allowed to lie down. Vara looked about her anxiously and long. But she could see nothing but the wild moorish hilltops girdling the horizon, too like one another to give her any idea of the direction in which a habited house might lie. She only saw the slow twilight of midsummer in the north creeping down over the brown moors, and in the moist hollows of the bogs shallow pools of mist gathering.

For the distance, the sound of a voice was borne in the still air.

"Hurley, hurley, hie away hame!" it said. And Vara went to the top of a heathery knowe and called loudly. But only the moorbirds, making ready for bed, answered her. They flew round, circling and complaining, especially the peewits, which, being reassured by the small size of the three, came almost offensively near.

Boy Hugh filled his pockets with stones to drive them away. He also got out his whip. He had heard of the Babes in the Wood, and, being a sensible boy, he did not want any Robin Redbreast nonsense. It was not that he so much objected to die, but he felt the humiliation of being covered with leaves by the whaups. He complained bitterly to Vara, who was preoccupied with Gavin, that the Drabble had stolen from him the iron barrel of the pistol which Cleg Kelly had given him. Had it not been for that felony, they would not now have found themselves defenceless in that wild place.

"Boy Hugh thinks there's sure to be lions an' teegers here!" he said.

It was not long before Vara decided that they must spend another night out of doors, and looked about for a suitable spot where they could get water and shelter.

At last she settled upon the lee of a large boulder, and began to give Gavin what remained of his milk. Boy Hugh thought this was his opportunity to make sure that they were well defended against their enemies. The moon was rising, and he remembered that Cleg Kelly had told him how lions and tigers always hunted by moonlight. That widely-read journal, "The Bully Boys of New York," was Cleg's authority for this statement.

There was certainly an appalling silence on the face of the moorland. Boy Hugh could see, indeed, the rock behind which Vara and Gavin were. But he tried to forget it. He wanted the sensation of perfect loneliness. Then the devil entered into Boy Hugh, and he wanted to explore. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and everything became bleached and flat, melting away into vague immensities and nerve-shaking mysteries which vanished as you approached. Of course that was not the way Boy Hugh put it to himself. It only made him want to run away. But suddenly a vague fear struck him to the heart, and he started to run back (as he thought) towards Vara and Gavin. He imagined that he could hear the sound of some animal trampling about the moss in search of wandering little boys. And it occurred to him that he had no means of defence except the whip, and even that served him not so well now, for the lash was broken. So this was the reason why Boy Hugh ran away.

Though, indeed, his progress could hardly be called running. For at every few steps he tripped in some intricate twist of heather, tough as wire, and, falling forward, he instinctively bent his body into a half-hoop, like a young hedgehog. Thus he rolled down the brae, often coming upon his feet at the bottom and continuing his flight with energy unabated and without pausing a single moment even to ascertain damages.

And so soon as she missed him Vara stood up, with Gavin in her arms, and cried, "Come back, Boy Hugh!" But Boy Hugh continued his wild flight, driven by the unreasoning terror of the vast and uncomprehended which had seized him suddenly and without warning.

At last Boy Hugh paused, not so much because he wished it as because he had fallen into a moss-hole up to the neck, and so could run no further. He sustained himself by grasping a bush of blaeberry plants, and he dug his toes into the soft black peat.

Then Boy Hugh, who had not gone to Hunker Court for nothing, bethought him that, since there was nothing else that he could do, it was time to say his prayers. "O Lord!" he prayed – "O Lord, forgive us our sins, and remember not our trans-somethings against us! Look down from heaven and help" – (so far his supplications had run in the accustomed groove in which Samson Langpenny conducted the "opening exercises" of Hunker Court, but at this point Boy Hugh diverged into originality, as Samson did sometimes when he stuck in the middle of the Lord's prayer) – "Look down from heaven and help – a – wee laddie in a moss-hole. Keep him frae teegers and lions, and bogles and black horses that come oot o' lochs and eat ye up, and frae the green monkeys that hing on to trees and claw ye as ye gang by. And gie me something to eat, and Vara and Gavin after me. For I'm near dead o' hunger, and I want nae mair yesterday's bread, and help me to find my whup-lash. And make me grow up into a man fast, for I want to do as I like – and then, my certes, but I'll warm the Drabble for stealin' my pistol. And bless Vara and Gavin, my faither and Cleg Kelly, and a' inquirin' freends. Amen."

And if anybody knows a more comprehensive prayer, let him instantly declare it, or, as the charge runs, be for ever silent.

ADVENTURE XXXVII.
BOY HUGH FINDS OUT THE NATURE OF A KISS

Vara always looks back upon that night of fear and loneliness as the worst in all their wanderings. She wrapped Gavin tightly in the shawl, till only a little space was left for him to breathe. Then she ran from knowe-top to knowe-top to look for Boy Hugh, and to call him to come back to her. She dared not go far from the boulder lest she should miss her way, and so not be able to find her way to the baby.

While Vara was wandering distracted over the moor, calling pitifully to him, Boy Hugh was comfortably asleep beneath a heather bush. And the June nights are brief and merciful in Scotland. It was not long before a broad bar of light lay across the eastern hills. The pale sea-green lingering in the west where the sun had gone down had not altogether faded into the ashy grey of uncoloured night ere the eastern sky began to flame.

The clouds of sunrise are like ocean-rollers on a wide beach – long, barred, and parallel – for the sun rises through them with majestic circumspection. But the clouds of sunset are apt to converge to a point, like the wake which the sun draws after him in his tumultuous downward plunge.

But the sun rose quite sharply this morning, as though he must be businesslike and alert, in spite of the fact that he had a whole long day before him. As he did so the shadows of every bush of bog-myrtle and each tuft of heather started westwards with a rush. And the cool blue image of a lonely boulder, like a Breton menhir, lay far half a mile across the moor. On the sunny side of this landmark the red rays fell on a bare and curly head. There was dew upon the draggled hair, just as there was upon the yellow bent grass upon which it pillowed itself.

Boy Hugh lay curled up, like a collie drowsing in the sun. He continued to sleep quietly and naturally the undisturbed sleep of childhood. Nor did he waken till the dew had dried from the bent and from off the tangles of his hair.

At last he awoke, when the sun was already high. He uncoiled him like a lithe young animal, and started to find himself under the open heaven instead of under a roof. With a shake and a toss of his head he made his toilet. Then suddenly he remembered about Vara, and hoped vaguely that he would soon find her. But, alas! the day was bright. The sunshine began to run in his veins, and all the moorland world was before him. He did not think much more about her at all. For the moment he was as merry as the larks singing above him. He hallooed to the plovers, and occasionally he threw stones at them, just as the mood took him. By-and-bye Boy Hugh came to a wide burn, and at once proceeded to cross it, as many a time he had crossed a plank in Callendar's yard, upon all-fours like a monkey.

The burn was fringed, like many of the watercourses of the southern uplands, with a growth of sparse and ill-favoured birches. Hugh Boy found one of these which leaned far over the water, having had its roots undermined by the winter spates. He crawled out upon its swaying top without hesitation till it became too slender to bear him. He counted upon the slender trunk bending like a fishing-rod and depositing him near enough to the opposite bank to drop safely to the ground. But just when Hugh Boy was ready to leap, the treacherous birch gave way entirely, and fell souse into the water, with the small human squirrel still clinging to it. The birch lay across the pool, and Boy Hugh held fast. He was up to the neck in water. He wondered how he would get out. First he managed to kick his legs free of the twigs which clutched him and tried to drag him down.

"Here, nice little boy!" suddenly a voice above him cried. "Take hold of my hand, and I will pull you out of the water."

It was the clearest little voice in the world, and it spoke with a trill which Boy Hugh seemed to have heard somewhere before. It conveyed somehow, indeed, a reminiscence of Miss Celie Tennant. But the little lady who spoke was only a year or two older than Boy Hugh himself, and she was dressed in the daintiest creamy stuff, fine like cobweb. Boy Hugh looked at her in such amazement that he came near to letting go the birch-tree altogether. She seemed to him to be all wonderful, with yellow hair like summer clouds, and blue eyes full of pity.

Boy Hugh recalled certain things which he had heard at Hunker Court.

"Are you an angel?" he said, quite seriously.

"Oh no, silly!" cried the maiden gaily, shaking her fleece bewilderingly at him. "Of course, I am only a little girl. I just tooked my parolsol and comed a walk. And you are the very nicest little boy that ever I saw – quite a child, of course," she added patronisingly. "But take hold of my parolsol. Be careful not to splash me when you shake yourself. And after that I'll give you a kiss. I like nice little boys!"

"What is a kiss?" asked Boy Hugh.

They did not deal in the commodity in the Tinklers' Lands. And even if his sister Vara did kiss him to sleep every night, and was for ever kissing the baby as if its mouth was a sweetmeat, she did not think it becoming or menseful to mention the word. So that, quite sincerely, Boy Hugh asked again, "What is a kiss, little girl?"

"Come up here, nice boy, and I will show you!" replied the maiden promptly.

And somehow Hugh knew that this was an invitation by no means to be declined.

ADVENTURE XXXVIII.
OF MISS BRIGGS AND HER TEN CATS

"Now then, do you like it?" asked this frank young person. But Hugh Boy was silent as to what he thought of his first knowledgable kiss. Not that it mattered, for the gay little lady rattled on regardless. "And what is your name, little boy? You are very ragged, and you have come a long way. But you are clean, and Aunt Robina can't scold me, for she tells me to be kind to the poor, especially when they are quite clean."

Boy Hugh bashfully answered that his name was Hugh Kavannah. "And a very nice name it is, nice little boy!" the maid rattled on, heeding him but little, but loving the sound of her own twitter.

The children went over the moor together, till it began to feather into sparse birch-woods and thicker copses towards the plain. Sometimes as they went the little girl's hair whipped Boy Hugh's brow. He had forgotten all about Vara and the baby.

"Do they make you say your prayers in the morning as well as at night?" she asked; "they do me – such a bother! Aunt Robina, she said last week, that it was self-denial week, and we must give up something for the Lord. So I said I did not mind giving up saying my prayers in the morning. 'Oh, but,' said cousin Jimmy, 'you must give up something you like doing.' Horrid little boy, Jimmy, always blowing his nose – you don't, well, I don't believe you have a handkerchief – and Aunt Robina, she says, 'Well, and what do you think God would say if you gave up saying your prayers?' 'God has said already,' I told her. 'What has God said?' she wanted to know, making a face like this – . So I told her that God said, 'Pray don't mention it, Miss Briggs.' My name is Miss Briggs, you know. I have ten cats. Their names are Tom and Jim, and Harry and Dick, and Bob and Ben and Peter. But Peter's an awful thief."

She paused for breath, and shook her head at the same time. Hugh Boy listened with the open mouth of unbounded astonishment.

"Yes, indeed," said Miss Briggs, "and I fear he will come to a bad end. I've thrown him into the mill-dam three times already, like Jonah out of the ship of Tarshish. Aunt Robina says I may play Bible stories on Sundays, you know. So I play Jonah. But he always gets out again. Next time I'm going to sit squash on him till he's dead. Once I set on a nestful of eggs because I wanted some dear wee fluffy chickens – but I need not tell you about that. I got whipped, but Aunt Robina had to buy me a new pair of – oh, I forgot, I was telling you about wicked Peter. Peter is not a house-cat like the rest, you see. He is a bad, wicked cat. He lives in the barn or in the coach house and eats the pigeons. And he lies on the cows' backs on cold nights. But in the daytime Peter sleeps on the roof of the outhouses, and when any one of the other cats gets anything nice to eat, Peter comes down on them like a shot – "

"Oh aye!" cried Boy Hugh, excited to hear about something he understood, "I hae seen them do like that. Then there's a graund fecht, lying on their backs and tearing at ane anither wi' their claws, and spittin' and rowin' ower yin anither like a ba' – "

"My cats are not horrid creatures like that!" said Miss Briggs, in a dignified manner, "as soon as ever they see Peter coming they take to their heels and – oh, you should just see them run for the kitchen door! And their tails are just like the fox's brush that Aunt Robina dusts the pictures with. And then in a minute after you can see wicked Peter sitting on the rigging of the barn eating my poor darling house-cat's nice breakfast."

"Three cheers for Peter!" cried Hugh, who did not know any better than to express his real sentiments to a lady.

Miss Briggs instantly withdrew her hand from his. Her nose turned up very much, till its expression of scorn became almost an aspiration.

"I am afraid you are not such a nice little boy after all," she said, severely.

As they went on together the children came to the very edge of the moorland. They ascended a few steps to a place where there were many tumbled crags and cunning hiding-places. From the edge of these they looked down upon a plain of tree tops, in the midst of which peeped out the front of a considerable mansion. The lower windows and the door were hidden in a green haze of beech leaves.

"That is where I live, little boy," said Miss Briggs, grandly. "The propriety will belong to me some day. And then I shall send Peter away for good."

Miss Briggs looked down on the house and gardens with the eye of the possessor of a "propriety."

"Tissy, wissy – tissy – wissy!" she cried, suddenly forgetting her dignity.

There was a stirring here and there among the trees. And lo! from off the roofs of the barn and the byre, out of the triangular wickets, from off round-topped corn-stacks and out of different doors in the dwelling-house, there sprang a host of cats. "See them," said Miss Briggs, impressively, "every one of them comes to meet me. That's Peter, wicked Peter," she said, pointing to a large brindled pussy which led the field by half-a-dozen lengths. Over the bridge they came, all mewing their best, and all arching their tails.

"Their ten tails over their ten backs!" said Miss Briggs, as if she found much spiritual comfort in the phrase.

The cats rubbed themselves against her. Some of them leaped upon her shoulder and sat there, purring loudly. Hugh Boy was unspeakably delighted.

"I wish Vara could see," he said, remembering for the first time his sister and Gavin.

A harsh voice broke in upon them.

"Elizabeth Briggs! Elizabeth Briggs! What is all this play-acting? And what gangrel loon is this that ye are bringing to the door by the hand? Is there not enough wastry and ruination aboot the house of Rascarrel already, without your wiling hame every gypsy's brat and prowling sorrow of a gutter-bluid? Think shame o' yoursel', Elizabeth Briggs!"

Hugh Boy dropped the hand which held his. He would not bring disgrace on the friend who had helped him.

"Aunt Robina, you forget yourself," interposed the young lady with prim dignity, "and you forget 'what sayeth the Scripture.'"

She took Boy Hugh's hand again, and held it tighter. "Forget the Scripture," cried a tall dark-browed woman who came limping out from a seat under a weeping elm. She was leaning heavily with both hands upon a staff, which she rattled angrily on the ground as she spoke.

"Yes," said Miss Briggs, "do you not know that I am Pharaoh's daughter, and this is little Moses that I drew out of the water?"

"Hold your tongue, Elizabeth Briggs, and come here instantly!" said the dark woman, tapping the ground again with her staff.

Hugh Boy knew the tone. He had heard something like this before.

"Is that your 'awfu' woman'?" he said aloud, pointing with his finger at the woman leaning upon the stick.

"Elizabeth Briggs," she commanded again, pointing at the little girl with her stick, "come in to your lesson this minute. And you, whatever you may call yourself, take yourself off at once or I'll get the police to you!"

"Yes, do go away, nice little boy," said Miss Briggs; "but when you grow big, come back to the house of Rascarrel and Miss Briggs will marry you. And I will give you another kiss at the garden stile – and so will Peter!" she added. For she felt that some extra kindness and attention was due from her, to make up for the most unscriptural hardheartedness of her Aunt Robina.

So the children took their way together to the garden stile, and as they went out of sight, Boy Hugh turned round to the dark-browed woman:

"My name is Boy Hugh," he said, "but I'm not a beggar, awfu' woman!"

The children went slowly and sorrowfully along a gravel walk thickly overgrown with chickweed and moss. Their feet made no sound upon it. On either side box borders rose nearly three feet, straggling untended over the walks. Still further over were territories of gooseberry bushes, senile and wellnigh barren, their thin-leaved, thorny branches trailing on the ground and crawling over each other. Beyond these again was a great beech hedge rising up into the sky. Boy Hugh looked at the dark Irish yews standing erect at the corner of every plot. He thought they were like the sentinels at the gate of Holyrood, at whom he used to look as often as he could slip away from the Tinklers' Lands.

Then all suddenly and unexpectedly he began to cry. Miss Briggs stopped aghast. She was, like all womenfolk, well accustomed to her own sex's tears. But a male creature's emotion took her by surprise.

"What is the matter?" she said; "tell me instantly, nice little boy."

"This maun be heaven, after a'," said he, "an' your awfu' woman winna let Boy Hugh bide."

Presently they came out upon a circular opening where the bounding beech edge bent into a circle, and the gloomy yew tree sentinels stood wider about. Overhead the crisp leafage of the beeches clashed and rustled.

Here was a great garden seat of stone, and there at the back rose a fountain with stone nymphs – a fountain long since dry and overgrown with green moss. It seemed to Boy Hugh as if they could never get out of this vast enclosure.

There was also a little stone building at the end down the vista of the gravel walk. Its door stood open and Boy Hugh looked within. It was empty like a church. The floor was made of unpainted wood in squares and crosses. There were painted pictures on the walls, and a shining thing with candles standing upon it at the far end. Behind this the sun shone through a window of red, and yellow, and blue.

"Is that God?" said Hugh Boy, after gazing a long time at the glory of the shining crimson and violet panes and the shining gold upon the altar.

But Miss Briggs dragged him away without making him any answer.

Presently they came to half-a-dozen steps in an angle, which led over the outer wall. They had slipped under a mysterious archway of leaves and so through the beech hedge in order to reach this ladder of stone.

"Good-bye!" said Miss Briggs; "remember – come back, nice little boy, as soon as you are growed up, and I will marry you. And then we will send Aunt Robina to the poorhouse. Kiss me, nice boy – and now kiss Peter."

With that Miss Briggs disappeared, running as hard as ever she could, so that she would not need to cry within sight.

But as soon as she got to the great circle of the beeches and yews, she burst out sobbing. "He was the very nicest boy – the nicest boy. But of course there could be nothing in it. For he is only a mere child, you know!"

But Boy Hugh walked stolidly up the steps, and so out of Paradise.

"I am very hungry!" he said.