The Progress of Cleg Kelly, Mission Worker
by S. R. Crockett
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: The king of Edinburgh's Sooth Back at work.
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Inquiring friends request the latest news of Mr. C. Kelly, of the 'Sooth Back.' We are most happy to supply them, for Cleg is a favourite of our own. Since we revealed how he began to become a Christian, Cleg has felt himself more or less of a public character; but he is modest, and for several weeks has kept out of our way, apparently lest he should be put into another book. A too appreciative superintendent unfortunately read the plain little story of Cleg's gallant knight-errantry to the senior division of his sometime school, and Cleg blushed to find himself famous. Consequently he left Hunker Court for good. But for all that he is secretly pleased to be in a book, and having received our most fervent assurance that he will not be made into a 'tract,' he has signified that he is appeased, and that no legal proceedings will be taken.
Cleg does not so much mind a book, a book is respectable; but he draws the line at tracts. He says that he is 'doon on them tracks.' Even as a reformed character they raise the old Adam in him. A good lady, sweeping by in her carriage the other day, threw one graciously to the ragged lad, who was standing in a moment of meditation pirouetting his cap on the point of his boot, half for the pleasure of seeing that he had actually a boot upon his foot, and half to intimate to all concerned that he has not become proud and haughty because of the fact. The good lady was much surprised by that small boy's action, and has a poorer opinion than ever of the 'lower orders.'
She is now sure that there must be some very careful grading in heaven before it can be a comfortable place of permanent residence. Her idea of doing good has always been to go through the houses of the poor with the gracious hauteur of a visitant from another and a better world, and to scatter broadcast largess of tracts and good advice. The most pleasant way of doing this, she finds, is from a carriage, for some of the indigent have a way of saying most unpleasant things; but a pair of spanking bays can sweep away from all expressions of opinion. Besides, tracts delivered in this way bring with them a sense of proper inferiority as coming from one who would say, 'There, take that, you poor wicked people, and may it do you good!’ Cleg Kelly was 'again' tracks.' But after a single moment of stupefied surprise that this woman should insult him, he rushed for the tract. The lady smiled at his eagerness, and pointed out to her companion, a poor lady whose duty it was to agree with her mistress, the eager twinkling eyes and flushed face of Cleg as he pursued the bays. Cleg at short distances could beat any pair of horses in Edinburgh. He had not raced with bobbies and fire-engines for nothing. He was in fine training, and just as the carriage slackened to turn past the immense conglomerate castle which guards the St. Leonard's Park entrance, Cleg shot up to the side at which his benefactor sat. He swiftly handed her a parcel, and so vanished from the face of the earth. There is no safer hiding-place than the coal-waggons full and empty that stand in thousands just over the wall. The good lady opened the little parcel with her usual complaisance. It was her own tract, and it contained a small selection of articles—the staple product, indeed, of the Pleasance ash-backets— imprimis, one egg-shell filled with herring bones, item — a cabbage top in fine gamey condition, the head of a rat some time deceased, and the tail of some other animal so worn by age as to make identification uncertain. On the top lay the dirtiest of all scrawls. It said, 'With thanks for yer traks.' The lady fell back on her cushions so heavily that the C springs creaked, and the poor companion groped frantically for the smelling-bottle. She knew that she would have a dreadful time of it that night; but her mistress has resolved that she will distribute no more tracts from her carriage. The lower orders may just be left to perish. Their blood be on their own heads; she has once and for all washed her hands of them.
Many people may be of opinion that Cleg Kelly, judging by his first exploit this Friday morning of which we speak, had not advanced very far along the narrow-way of righteousness; but this was not Cleg's own opinion. He felt that he had done a good deed, and he said within himself, 'Them ould women dae mair ill wi' their tracks than twa penny gaffs an' a side-show!’ Then Cleg Kelly went on to his next business. It had to do with keeping the fifth commandment. He had heard about it the Sunday before, not at the forsaken Hunker Court, but at a little class for foot of the Pleasance, in a court there, which his teacher, Miss Celie Tennant, was organising for lads of Cleg's age or a little older. It was a daring undertaking for one so young, and all her friends tried to stop her, and called it foolhardy; but Celie Tennant being, as Cleg admiringly said, 'no' big, but most michty plucky,' had found out her power in managing the most rebellious larrikins that walked on hobnails. Moreover, the work had sought her, not she it. Her praises had been so constantly chanted by Cleg that she had been asked to take pity on a number of the 'Sooth Back gang,' and have a class for them in the evenings. It was manifestly impossible to receive such a number of wild loons at Hunker Court. They were every one upon terms of open war with the Gifford Park train-bands; and had a couple of them shown their faces in the neighbourhood at any hour of the day or night, the 'Cooee-EE' of the Park would have sounded, and fists and brick-bats would have been going in a couple of shakes. Clearly, then, as they could not come to her without breaking her Majesty's peace, it was her duty to go to them. To do them justice, they were quite willing to risk it; but Celie felt that it would hardly be doing herself justice to sow her seed so very near to the fowls of the air. So Cleg proudly took his friend down to the 'Sooth Back,' where there was a kind-hearted watchman who had occasionally let Cleg sleep in some warm place about the 'works' at which he was on night duty. To him Miss Tennant was introduced, and by him was taken into the presence of the junior partner, who was sitting in a very easy attitude indeed, with his back against his desk, and balancing himself precariously on one leg of a stool. He effected a descent successfully, and blushed becomingly, for he was a very junior partner indeed, and he had more than once met Miss Tennant at a West-end evening party. But when Miss Celie, infinitely self-possessed, stated her business in clear-cut accents of maidenly reserve, the Very Junior Partner instantly manifested almost too great an interest in the concern, and offered the use of a disused storeroom where there was a good fireplace.
'I shall see to it, Miss Tennant,' he said, 'that there is a fire for you there whenever you wish to use the room.'
'Thank you, Mr. Iverach,' returned Celie, with just the proper amount of gratitude, 'but I would not dream of troubling you. One of my boys will do that.'
The Very Junior would have liked to say that he did not consider it quite the thing for a young lady to be in the purlieus of the 'Sooth Back' after nightfall. Indeed, he would have been glad to offer his escort; but he did not say so, for he was a very nice Junior Partner indeed, and his ingenuous blush was worth a fortune to him as a certificate of character. He therefore contented himself with saying:
'If there is anything that I can do for you, you will always be good enough to let me know.'
Celie Tennant thanked him, and gave him her hand. He came as far as the street with her, but did not offer to see her home. He was no fool, though so Very Junior a Partner.
Celie Tennant established her night-school in the Sooth Back with Cleg Kelly as her man Friday. Cleg showed at once a great faculty for organisation, and he added the function of police to his other duties. On the principle of 'Set a thief,' etc., he ought to have made the best of policemen, and so he did. He was not by any means the biggest or the heaviest, but he had far more wild-cat in him than any of his mates. Once he had taken the gully on the Salisbury Crags on his way to safety, when he was too much pressed by force of circumstances to go round the ordinary way; and it was quite an everyday habit of his to call upon his friends by way of the roof and the skylights therein.
Celie Tennant was opening her night-school this Friday evening, and Cleg Kelly was on his way thither to get the key from the porter, his good friend at most times. He knew where there was an old soap-box which would make rare kindling, and he had a paraffin cask also in his mind, though as yet he had not made any inquiries as to the ownership of this latter. On his way he rushed up to the seldom-visited garret that was the domicile of his parent, Mr. Timothy Kelly, when he came out of gaol. During these intervals Cleg withdrew himself from night quarters, only occasionally reconnoitring the vicinity, if he wanted any of his hid treasures very keenly. He had as many as twenty 'hidie-holes' in the floor, walls, eaves, and roof of the wretched dwelling that was his only home. Some of these his father frequently broke into, and scattered his poor horde, confiscating the coppers, and sending the other valuables through the glassless windows, but on the whole Cleg could beat his parent at the game of hide-and-seek. When the evening came, however, Cleg hovered in the neighbourhood till he saw whether his father went straight from his lair, growling and grumbling, to Hare's Public, or remained in bed on the floor with certain curious implements around him. If the latter were the case, Cleg vanished, and was seen no more in the neighbourhood for some days, because he knew well that his father was again qualifying for her Majesty's hospitality, and that was a business he always declined to be mixed up in. He knew that his father would in all probability be 'lagged' by the morrow's morn. Cleg hoped that he would be, and the longer sentence his father got, the better pleased his son was. Once when Timothy Kelly got six months for house-breaking, a small boy was ignominiously expelled from the backbenches of the court for saying, 'Hip, Hooray.' It was Cleg. His father, however, heard, and belted him for it unmercifully when he came out, saying between every stroke and bound, 'Take that, ye sorra! Was it for this I brought yez up, ye spalpeen o' the worrld? An' me at all the trubble an' expinse av yer rearin'—you to cry 'hooroosh' when yer own father got a sixer in quod. Be me conscience an' sleeve-buttons, but I'd be dooin' my duty but poorly by Father Brady an' the Tin Commandments if I didn't correct yez!’
So nobody could say that Cleg was not well brought up.
If, however, Cleg saw his father take the straight road for the Public, he knew that there was still a shot in the old man's locker, and that there were enough of the 'shiners for another booze,' as it was expressed classically in these parts. He betook himself to his own devices, therefore, till closing time; but about eleven o'clock he began to haunt the vicinity of Hare's, and to peep within whenever the door opened. On one occasion he opened the door himself, and nearly got his head broken with the pound weight that came towards it. They did not stand on ceremony with small boys in that beershop. They knocked them down, and then inquired their errand afterwards. The landlord came from Jedburgh.
When his father came out of the Public, Cleg saw him home in original fashion. He had a curiously-shaped stick which he employed on these occasions. It was the fork of a tree that he had got from a very kind builder of the neighbourhood whose name was Younger. This stick was only produced at such times, and the police of the district, men with children of their own, and a kindly blind eye towards Cleg's ploys (when not too outrageous), did not interfere with his manifestations of filial piety. Indeed, it was none such a pleasant job to take Tim Kelly to the lock-up, even with 'The Twist' on him, and Cleg harassing the official rear with his crooked stick. So they generally let the father and son alone, though every now and then some energetic young man, new to the district, interfered. He did it just once.
Having seen his father safely into Hare's, Cleg went down the Pleasance with a skip and a jump to light his fire. He found another boy haling off his soap-box. Cleg threw a 'paver' to halt him, much as a privateer throws a shot athwart the bows of a prize as a signal to slacken speed. The boy turned instantly, but seeing Cleg coming with the swiftness of the wind, and his conscience telling him that he could make good no claim to the soap-box; knowing, moreover, that Cleg Kelly could 'lick him into shivereens,' he abandoned his prize and took to his heels, pausing at a safe distance to bandy epithets and information as to ancestors with Cleg. But Cleg marched off without a word, which annoyed the other boy much more than the loss of the box. That was the fortune of war, but what would happen if Cleg Kelly took to getting proud? He stood a moment in thought. A light broke on him. Cleg had a pair of boots with a shine on them. He had it. That was the reason of this aristocratic reserve.
The lads who came to the class first that night were few and evil. The bulk of the better boys were working in shoe factories in the suburbs, and could not get there at seven. That was a full hour too early for them, and the lads who arrived were there simply 'on for a lark.' But they did not know Miss Cecilia Tennant, and they had reckoned without Mr. C. Kelly, who had resolved that he would be hawk to their larks. The half-dozen louts sat lowering and leering in the neat and clean storeroom in which the Very Young Partner, Mr. Donald Iverach, had arranged with his own hand a chair, a table, and a good many forms, which he had been at the expense of sending the porter to buy from the founder of a bankrupt sect who lately had had a meetinghouse left on his hands. The Very Youngest was prepared to say that he had 'found' these lying about the premises, had he been questioned about the matter. And so he had, but the porter had put them there first. But Celie Tennant took what the gods had sent her, and asked no questions; though, not being simpler than other young women of her determination of character, she had her own ideas as to where they came from. Celie asked the company to stand up as she entered, which with some nudging and shuffling they did, whereupon she astounded them by shaking hands with them. This set them rather on their beam-ends for a moment, and they did not recover any power for mischief till Celie asked them to close their eyes during prayer. Standing up at her desk, she folded her little hands and closed her own eyes to ask the God whom she tried to serve (surely a different God from the one whom the tract-scattering woman worshipped) to aid her and help the lads. Cleg Kelly watched her with adoring eyes. He had heard of the angels. She had often told him about them, but he privately backed his teacher against the best of them. When Celie opened her eyes no one was visible save Cleg, who stood with his eyes aflame. The class had vanished.
'The dirty bliggards,' said Cleg, the tongue of his father coming back to him in his excitement; 'I'll bring them up to the scratch by the scruff av their impident necks!'
So he darted underneath the forms, and shortly reappeared with a couple of much bigger boys clinging on to him, and belabouring him with all their might. Wresting himself clear for a moment, Cleg dashed up the green blind which covered the small single-pane window in the gable, and turned to bay. The two whom he had brought up from the depths made a dash at him as he passed, overturned the teacher's table in their eagerness to prevent him from getting to the door; but it was not the door that Cleg wanted to reach. It was his crook, which he had cunningly hitched to the back of the teacher's chair. With that he turned valiantly to bay, making the table a kind of fortification.
'Sit down, Miss,' he said, reassuringly; 'I'll do for them, shure.'
At this moment the outer door opened, and his friend, the night-watchman, arrived armed with a formidable stick, the sight of which, and the knowledge that they were trapped, took all the tucker out of these very cowardly young men. ‘It was only a bit of fun, Cleg!’ they whined.
'Get out av this!' shouted Cleg, dancing in his fury; and cut of this they got, the watchman's stick doing its bit as they passed, and his dog hanging determinedly on to their ankles.
What surprised them most was a sudden and unexpected hoist they each received, apparently from the door of the yard, which deposited them on the street with their systems considerably jarred. The Very Junior Partner smiled thoughtfully as he rubbed his toe. For the first time in his life he wished that he had worn boots both larger and heavier. 'But 'twill suffice, 'twill serve!’ he quoted, as he turned away into his office; for, by a strange coincidence, he was working late that night. The Senior Partner knew that he had given up an engagement to go to a dance that evening in order to work up some business that had been lying over. He rubbed his hands delightedly.
'Donald is taking to the business at last,' he told his wife as they prepared for bed.
Celie had taken no part in this scene, but she was far too energetic and fearless a young woman to remain long quiescent. She went round the benches, and as she came in sight of each grovelling lout she ordered him to get up, and, abashed and cowed, they rose one by one to their feet. The dust of the floor had made no apparent change in their original disarray. They stood grinning helplessly and inanely, like yokels before a show at a country fair; but there was no heart in their affectation of mirth. The discomfiture of their comrades, and the sound of the watchman's oak 'rung' had been too much for them. Then, for five lively minutes, Miss Cecilia's tongue played like lambent lightning about their ears, and they visibly wilted before her.
It was now eight o'clock, and the genuine members of the class began to put in an appearance, and each of them was welcomed with the most friendly of greetings from the teacher: and as each passed, Cleg's left eyelid drooped suddenly upon his cheek, so decorously that no one could call it a wink. The four malcontents moved for the door, but the clear voice of Miss Tennant brought them to a stand.
'Sit down, all of you, and speak to me at the close of the class.'
So they sat down, being well aware that they had not a sympathiser in the room. It had been their intention to 'raise a dust' before the arrival of the factory brigade, and then to get clear off; and, barring Cleg Kelly, they would have done it. Cleg did not yet go to the factory, for the manager would not believe that he was thirteen, though Cleg had told him so times without number; he had even on one occasion stretched a point and as vainly tried fourteen. Cleg Kelly went to school ever since he became a reformed character; but not every day, so as to prevent the teacher from becoming too conceited. However, he looked in occasionally when he had nothing better to do. If he happened to be cold when he entered, in about half an hour he was quite warm.
What Celie Tennant said to these four louts will never be known—they have never told; but it is sufficient to say that they became pillars of the 'Sooth Back' Mission and Night School, and needed no more attention than any of the others.
The Very Junior Partner and Cleg Kelly both saw home the teacher that night, walking close together; though, of course, entirely ignoring each other, each some hundred yards behind Miss Tennant, who walked serene in the consciousness of lonely courage, her roll-book in one hand and her skirt daintily held in the other, walking with that charming side-swing which both her escorts thought adorable. They did not communicate this to each other. On the contrary, Cleg took a 'gob' of hard mud in his hand, and stood a moment in doubt, dividing the swift mind, whether or no to 'bust the swell's topper in.' But a consciousness of the excellence of that young man's intentions preserved the shiny crown which it had cost a shilling to have ironed that morning at the Shop-up-three-Steps at the corner of the North Bridge. The Very Junior liked to go spruce to business.
On his return to the yard, Cleg Kelly found that his day's work was not yet done. One of his special chums came to tell him that 'Hole i' the Wa',' the biggest of the louts first expelled, was thirsting for his blood, and had dared him to fight that very night. Now, had Cleg been more advanced in reformation, he would of course have refused, and given his voice for peace; but then, you see, he was only a beginner. He sent his friend to tell 'Hole i' the Wa' that he would wait for him in the 'Polissman's Yard.' This was a court at the back of a police station in the vicinity, which could only be entered by a low 'pend' or vaulted passage, though commanded from above by the high windows of the station-house. It had long been a great idea of Cleg's to have a battle royal under the very nose of the constituted authority of the city.
Thither he resorted, and in a little a crowd of his friends and his foes followed him, all protesting that he could not mean to fight fair so near to the 'bobbies' abode. But Cleg unfolded his scheme, which instantly placed him on the giddy apex of popularity. He got them to roll a heavy barrel which stood in one corner of the yard into the 'pend,' which it almost completely blocked up, and he himself fixed it in position with some of the great iron curved shods which the lorrymen used to stop their coal waggons on the steep streets of the south-side. It stood so firm that nothing short of dynamite could have shifted it.
The fight proceeded, but into its details we need not enter. It was truly Homeric. Cleg flitted here and there like the active insect from which he got his name, and stung wherever he could get an opening. The shouts of the spectators might have been heard in that still place for the better part of a mile, and in a few minutes all the police who were on duty were thundering on the barrel, and all those who had been in bed manned the windows in dishabille, and threatened the combatants and spectators by name.
Cleg Kelly, dancing ever more wildly round his adversary, revolving his fists like the spokes of a bicycle, shouted defiance.
'Come on, Hole,' he cried, 'ye're no' worth a buckie at fechtin!' and as he circled near the 'pend,' and heard the heaves of the labouring officers of justice, he called out: 'You, Langshanks, cast yer coat an' crawl through the bung; ye micht ken that the sergeant's ower fat. Hae ye nae sense?’
There was laughter aloft in the station windows. But somebody at the outside had brought a sledge hammer, and at the first blow the barrel resolved itself into its component staves, and the police tumbled in, falling headlong over Cleg's waggon clamps.
Then there was a wild scurry of the lads up the piles of casks and rubbish at the back of the yard, and over the outhouses and roofs. Cleg was not first in getting away, but he had studied the locality, and he had his plans cut and dried. He would have been ashamed to have been caught now that he was on his way to be a reformed character. In half an hour he was waiting with crooked stick to 'boost' his father home when he was duly cast out of Hare's Public at the stroke of eleven as the completed produce of that establishment.
So in due time, and with many hard words from Timothy, they neared the den which they called home. At the foot of the long stair Timothy Kelly lay down with the grunt of a hog, and refused to move or speak. He would arise for no punchings, however artistic, with the knobbiest portions of the stick, and Cleg paused, for the first time that day, almost in despair. A policeman came round the corner, flashing the light of his bull's-eye right and left. Cleg's heart stood still. It was the lengthy officer whom he had called 'Langshanks,' and invited to come through the bung. He feared that he was too kenspeckle to escape. He went over to him, and taking a tug at his hair, which meant manners, said:
'Please, officer, will ye gie me a lift up the stair wi' my faither?’
The policeman whistled a long’, low whistle, and laughed.
'Officer!’ says he, 'Officer! Be the powers, 'twas ‘Langshanks’ ye called me the last time, ye thief o' the wurrld!’ said the man, who was of national kin to Cleg.
So they twain helped their compatriot unsteadily to his den at the head of the stairs.
'Ye're the cheekiest young shaver I ivver saw,' said Longshanks, admiringly, as he turned away; 'but there's some good in yez!’
Cleg Kelly locked the door on the outside, said his prayers like the reformed character that he was, and laid him down on the mat to sleep the sleep of the just. The Junior Partner always saw Miss Tennant home after this. He calls her 'Celie' now. She has been meaning to tell him for the last month that he must not do so any more.
This story is an excerpt from The Stickit Minister, first published in 1893 and republished in 2014 as Volume 13 of The Galloway Collection. The Collection is available as ebooks from the Ayton Publishing Virtual Bookstore and as paperbacks from Amazon. (The character Cleg Kelly also features in the novel bearing his name, Volume 20, first published in 1896.)
To find out more about S. R. Crockett and his writing, please visit The Galloway Raiders website.
Swearwords: None.
Description: The king of Edinburgh's Sooth Back at work.
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Inquiring friends request the latest news of Mr. C. Kelly, of the 'Sooth Back.' We are most happy to supply them, for Cleg is a favourite of our own. Since we revealed how he began to become a Christian, Cleg has felt himself more or less of a public character; but he is modest, and for several weeks has kept out of our way, apparently lest he should be put into another book. A too appreciative superintendent unfortunately read the plain little story of Cleg's gallant knight-errantry to the senior division of his sometime school, and Cleg blushed to find himself famous. Consequently he left Hunker Court for good. But for all that he is secretly pleased to be in a book, and having received our most fervent assurance that he will not be made into a 'tract,' he has signified that he is appeased, and that no legal proceedings will be taken.
Cleg does not so much mind a book, a book is respectable; but he draws the line at tracts. He says that he is 'doon on them tracks.' Even as a reformed character they raise the old Adam in him. A good lady, sweeping by in her carriage the other day, threw one graciously to the ragged lad, who was standing in a moment of meditation pirouetting his cap on the point of his boot, half for the pleasure of seeing that he had actually a boot upon his foot, and half to intimate to all concerned that he has not become proud and haughty because of the fact. The good lady was much surprised by that small boy's action, and has a poorer opinion than ever of the 'lower orders.'
She is now sure that there must be some very careful grading in heaven before it can be a comfortable place of permanent residence. Her idea of doing good has always been to go through the houses of the poor with the gracious hauteur of a visitant from another and a better world, and to scatter broadcast largess of tracts and good advice. The most pleasant way of doing this, she finds, is from a carriage, for some of the indigent have a way of saying most unpleasant things; but a pair of spanking bays can sweep away from all expressions of opinion. Besides, tracts delivered in this way bring with them a sense of proper inferiority as coming from one who would say, 'There, take that, you poor wicked people, and may it do you good!’ Cleg Kelly was 'again' tracks.' But after a single moment of stupefied surprise that this woman should insult him, he rushed for the tract. The lady smiled at his eagerness, and pointed out to her companion, a poor lady whose duty it was to agree with her mistress, the eager twinkling eyes and flushed face of Cleg as he pursued the bays. Cleg at short distances could beat any pair of horses in Edinburgh. He had not raced with bobbies and fire-engines for nothing. He was in fine training, and just as the carriage slackened to turn past the immense conglomerate castle which guards the St. Leonard's Park entrance, Cleg shot up to the side at which his benefactor sat. He swiftly handed her a parcel, and so vanished from the face of the earth. There is no safer hiding-place than the coal-waggons full and empty that stand in thousands just over the wall. The good lady opened the little parcel with her usual complaisance. It was her own tract, and it contained a small selection of articles—the staple product, indeed, of the Pleasance ash-backets— imprimis, one egg-shell filled with herring bones, item — a cabbage top in fine gamey condition, the head of a rat some time deceased, and the tail of some other animal so worn by age as to make identification uncertain. On the top lay the dirtiest of all scrawls. It said, 'With thanks for yer traks.' The lady fell back on her cushions so heavily that the C springs creaked, and the poor companion groped frantically for the smelling-bottle. She knew that she would have a dreadful time of it that night; but her mistress has resolved that she will distribute no more tracts from her carriage. The lower orders may just be left to perish. Their blood be on their own heads; she has once and for all washed her hands of them.
Many people may be of opinion that Cleg Kelly, judging by his first exploit this Friday morning of which we speak, had not advanced very far along the narrow-way of righteousness; but this was not Cleg's own opinion. He felt that he had done a good deed, and he said within himself, 'Them ould women dae mair ill wi' their tracks than twa penny gaffs an' a side-show!’ Then Cleg Kelly went on to his next business. It had to do with keeping the fifth commandment. He had heard about it the Sunday before, not at the forsaken Hunker Court, but at a little class for foot of the Pleasance, in a court there, which his teacher, Miss Celie Tennant, was organising for lads of Cleg's age or a little older. It was a daring undertaking for one so young, and all her friends tried to stop her, and called it foolhardy; but Celie Tennant being, as Cleg admiringly said, 'no' big, but most michty plucky,' had found out her power in managing the most rebellious larrikins that walked on hobnails. Moreover, the work had sought her, not she it. Her praises had been so constantly chanted by Cleg that she had been asked to take pity on a number of the 'Sooth Back gang,' and have a class for them in the evenings. It was manifestly impossible to receive such a number of wild loons at Hunker Court. They were every one upon terms of open war with the Gifford Park train-bands; and had a couple of them shown their faces in the neighbourhood at any hour of the day or night, the 'Cooee-EE' of the Park would have sounded, and fists and brick-bats would have been going in a couple of shakes. Clearly, then, as they could not come to her without breaking her Majesty's peace, it was her duty to go to them. To do them justice, they were quite willing to risk it; but Celie felt that it would hardly be doing herself justice to sow her seed so very near to the fowls of the air. So Cleg proudly took his friend down to the 'Sooth Back,' where there was a kind-hearted watchman who had occasionally let Cleg sleep in some warm place about the 'works' at which he was on night duty. To him Miss Tennant was introduced, and by him was taken into the presence of the junior partner, who was sitting in a very easy attitude indeed, with his back against his desk, and balancing himself precariously on one leg of a stool. He effected a descent successfully, and blushed becomingly, for he was a very junior partner indeed, and he had more than once met Miss Tennant at a West-end evening party. But when Miss Celie, infinitely self-possessed, stated her business in clear-cut accents of maidenly reserve, the Very Junior Partner instantly manifested almost too great an interest in the concern, and offered the use of a disused storeroom where there was a good fireplace.
'I shall see to it, Miss Tennant,' he said, 'that there is a fire for you there whenever you wish to use the room.'
'Thank you, Mr. Iverach,' returned Celie, with just the proper amount of gratitude, 'but I would not dream of troubling you. One of my boys will do that.'
The Very Junior would have liked to say that he did not consider it quite the thing for a young lady to be in the purlieus of the 'Sooth Back' after nightfall. Indeed, he would have been glad to offer his escort; but he did not say so, for he was a very nice Junior Partner indeed, and his ingenuous blush was worth a fortune to him as a certificate of character. He therefore contented himself with saying:
'If there is anything that I can do for you, you will always be good enough to let me know.'
Celie Tennant thanked him, and gave him her hand. He came as far as the street with her, but did not offer to see her home. He was no fool, though so Very Junior a Partner.
Celie Tennant established her night-school in the Sooth Back with Cleg Kelly as her man Friday. Cleg showed at once a great faculty for organisation, and he added the function of police to his other duties. On the principle of 'Set a thief,' etc., he ought to have made the best of policemen, and so he did. He was not by any means the biggest or the heaviest, but he had far more wild-cat in him than any of his mates. Once he had taken the gully on the Salisbury Crags on his way to safety, when he was too much pressed by force of circumstances to go round the ordinary way; and it was quite an everyday habit of his to call upon his friends by way of the roof and the skylights therein.
Celie Tennant was opening her night-school this Friday evening, and Cleg Kelly was on his way thither to get the key from the porter, his good friend at most times. He knew where there was an old soap-box which would make rare kindling, and he had a paraffin cask also in his mind, though as yet he had not made any inquiries as to the ownership of this latter. On his way he rushed up to the seldom-visited garret that was the domicile of his parent, Mr. Timothy Kelly, when he came out of gaol. During these intervals Cleg withdrew himself from night quarters, only occasionally reconnoitring the vicinity, if he wanted any of his hid treasures very keenly. He had as many as twenty 'hidie-holes' in the floor, walls, eaves, and roof of the wretched dwelling that was his only home. Some of these his father frequently broke into, and scattered his poor horde, confiscating the coppers, and sending the other valuables through the glassless windows, but on the whole Cleg could beat his parent at the game of hide-and-seek. When the evening came, however, Cleg hovered in the neighbourhood till he saw whether his father went straight from his lair, growling and grumbling, to Hare's Public, or remained in bed on the floor with certain curious implements around him. If the latter were the case, Cleg vanished, and was seen no more in the neighbourhood for some days, because he knew well that his father was again qualifying for her Majesty's hospitality, and that was a business he always declined to be mixed up in. He knew that his father would in all probability be 'lagged' by the morrow's morn. Cleg hoped that he would be, and the longer sentence his father got, the better pleased his son was. Once when Timothy Kelly got six months for house-breaking, a small boy was ignominiously expelled from the backbenches of the court for saying, 'Hip, Hooray.' It was Cleg. His father, however, heard, and belted him for it unmercifully when he came out, saying between every stroke and bound, 'Take that, ye sorra! Was it for this I brought yez up, ye spalpeen o' the worrld? An' me at all the trubble an' expinse av yer rearin'—you to cry 'hooroosh' when yer own father got a sixer in quod. Be me conscience an' sleeve-buttons, but I'd be dooin' my duty but poorly by Father Brady an' the Tin Commandments if I didn't correct yez!’
So nobody could say that Cleg was not well brought up.
If, however, Cleg saw his father take the straight road for the Public, he knew that there was still a shot in the old man's locker, and that there were enough of the 'shiners for another booze,' as it was expressed classically in these parts. He betook himself to his own devices, therefore, till closing time; but about eleven o'clock he began to haunt the vicinity of Hare's, and to peep within whenever the door opened. On one occasion he opened the door himself, and nearly got his head broken with the pound weight that came towards it. They did not stand on ceremony with small boys in that beershop. They knocked them down, and then inquired their errand afterwards. The landlord came from Jedburgh.
When his father came out of the Public, Cleg saw him home in original fashion. He had a curiously-shaped stick which he employed on these occasions. It was the fork of a tree that he had got from a very kind builder of the neighbourhood whose name was Younger. This stick was only produced at such times, and the police of the district, men with children of their own, and a kindly blind eye towards Cleg's ploys (when not too outrageous), did not interfere with his manifestations of filial piety. Indeed, it was none such a pleasant job to take Tim Kelly to the lock-up, even with 'The Twist' on him, and Cleg harassing the official rear with his crooked stick. So they generally let the father and son alone, though every now and then some energetic young man, new to the district, interfered. He did it just once.
Having seen his father safely into Hare's, Cleg went down the Pleasance with a skip and a jump to light his fire. He found another boy haling off his soap-box. Cleg threw a 'paver' to halt him, much as a privateer throws a shot athwart the bows of a prize as a signal to slacken speed. The boy turned instantly, but seeing Cleg coming with the swiftness of the wind, and his conscience telling him that he could make good no claim to the soap-box; knowing, moreover, that Cleg Kelly could 'lick him into shivereens,' he abandoned his prize and took to his heels, pausing at a safe distance to bandy epithets and information as to ancestors with Cleg. But Cleg marched off without a word, which annoyed the other boy much more than the loss of the box. That was the fortune of war, but what would happen if Cleg Kelly took to getting proud? He stood a moment in thought. A light broke on him. Cleg had a pair of boots with a shine on them. He had it. That was the reason of this aristocratic reserve.
The lads who came to the class first that night were few and evil. The bulk of the better boys were working in shoe factories in the suburbs, and could not get there at seven. That was a full hour too early for them, and the lads who arrived were there simply 'on for a lark.' But they did not know Miss Cecilia Tennant, and they had reckoned without Mr. C. Kelly, who had resolved that he would be hawk to their larks. The half-dozen louts sat lowering and leering in the neat and clean storeroom in which the Very Young Partner, Mr. Donald Iverach, had arranged with his own hand a chair, a table, and a good many forms, which he had been at the expense of sending the porter to buy from the founder of a bankrupt sect who lately had had a meetinghouse left on his hands. The Very Youngest was prepared to say that he had 'found' these lying about the premises, had he been questioned about the matter. And so he had, but the porter had put them there first. But Celie Tennant took what the gods had sent her, and asked no questions; though, not being simpler than other young women of her determination of character, she had her own ideas as to where they came from. Celie asked the company to stand up as she entered, which with some nudging and shuffling they did, whereupon she astounded them by shaking hands with them. This set them rather on their beam-ends for a moment, and they did not recover any power for mischief till Celie asked them to close their eyes during prayer. Standing up at her desk, she folded her little hands and closed her own eyes to ask the God whom she tried to serve (surely a different God from the one whom the tract-scattering woman worshipped) to aid her and help the lads. Cleg Kelly watched her with adoring eyes. He had heard of the angels. She had often told him about them, but he privately backed his teacher against the best of them. When Celie opened her eyes no one was visible save Cleg, who stood with his eyes aflame. The class had vanished.
'The dirty bliggards,' said Cleg, the tongue of his father coming back to him in his excitement; 'I'll bring them up to the scratch by the scruff av their impident necks!'
So he darted underneath the forms, and shortly reappeared with a couple of much bigger boys clinging on to him, and belabouring him with all their might. Wresting himself clear for a moment, Cleg dashed up the green blind which covered the small single-pane window in the gable, and turned to bay. The two whom he had brought up from the depths made a dash at him as he passed, overturned the teacher's table in their eagerness to prevent him from getting to the door; but it was not the door that Cleg wanted to reach. It was his crook, which he had cunningly hitched to the back of the teacher's chair. With that he turned valiantly to bay, making the table a kind of fortification.
'Sit down, Miss,' he said, reassuringly; 'I'll do for them, shure.'
At this moment the outer door opened, and his friend, the night-watchman, arrived armed with a formidable stick, the sight of which, and the knowledge that they were trapped, took all the tucker out of these very cowardly young men. ‘It was only a bit of fun, Cleg!’ they whined.
'Get out av this!' shouted Cleg, dancing in his fury; and cut of this they got, the watchman's stick doing its bit as they passed, and his dog hanging determinedly on to their ankles.
What surprised them most was a sudden and unexpected hoist they each received, apparently from the door of the yard, which deposited them on the street with their systems considerably jarred. The Very Junior Partner smiled thoughtfully as he rubbed his toe. For the first time in his life he wished that he had worn boots both larger and heavier. 'But 'twill suffice, 'twill serve!’ he quoted, as he turned away into his office; for, by a strange coincidence, he was working late that night. The Senior Partner knew that he had given up an engagement to go to a dance that evening in order to work up some business that had been lying over. He rubbed his hands delightedly.
'Donald is taking to the business at last,' he told his wife as they prepared for bed.
Celie had taken no part in this scene, but she was far too energetic and fearless a young woman to remain long quiescent. She went round the benches, and as she came in sight of each grovelling lout she ordered him to get up, and, abashed and cowed, they rose one by one to their feet. The dust of the floor had made no apparent change in their original disarray. They stood grinning helplessly and inanely, like yokels before a show at a country fair; but there was no heart in their affectation of mirth. The discomfiture of their comrades, and the sound of the watchman's oak 'rung' had been too much for them. Then, for five lively minutes, Miss Cecilia's tongue played like lambent lightning about their ears, and they visibly wilted before her.
It was now eight o'clock, and the genuine members of the class began to put in an appearance, and each of them was welcomed with the most friendly of greetings from the teacher: and as each passed, Cleg's left eyelid drooped suddenly upon his cheek, so decorously that no one could call it a wink. The four malcontents moved for the door, but the clear voice of Miss Tennant brought them to a stand.
'Sit down, all of you, and speak to me at the close of the class.'
So they sat down, being well aware that they had not a sympathiser in the room. It had been their intention to 'raise a dust' before the arrival of the factory brigade, and then to get clear off; and, barring Cleg Kelly, they would have done it. Cleg did not yet go to the factory, for the manager would not believe that he was thirteen, though Cleg had told him so times without number; he had even on one occasion stretched a point and as vainly tried fourteen. Cleg Kelly went to school ever since he became a reformed character; but not every day, so as to prevent the teacher from becoming too conceited. However, he looked in occasionally when he had nothing better to do. If he happened to be cold when he entered, in about half an hour he was quite warm.
What Celie Tennant said to these four louts will never be known—they have never told; but it is sufficient to say that they became pillars of the 'Sooth Back' Mission and Night School, and needed no more attention than any of the others.
The Very Junior Partner and Cleg Kelly both saw home the teacher that night, walking close together; though, of course, entirely ignoring each other, each some hundred yards behind Miss Tennant, who walked serene in the consciousness of lonely courage, her roll-book in one hand and her skirt daintily held in the other, walking with that charming side-swing which both her escorts thought adorable. They did not communicate this to each other. On the contrary, Cleg took a 'gob' of hard mud in his hand, and stood a moment in doubt, dividing the swift mind, whether or no to 'bust the swell's topper in.' But a consciousness of the excellence of that young man's intentions preserved the shiny crown which it had cost a shilling to have ironed that morning at the Shop-up-three-Steps at the corner of the North Bridge. The Very Junior liked to go spruce to business.
On his return to the yard, Cleg Kelly found that his day's work was not yet done. One of his special chums came to tell him that 'Hole i' the Wa',' the biggest of the louts first expelled, was thirsting for his blood, and had dared him to fight that very night. Now, had Cleg been more advanced in reformation, he would of course have refused, and given his voice for peace; but then, you see, he was only a beginner. He sent his friend to tell 'Hole i' the Wa' that he would wait for him in the 'Polissman's Yard.' This was a court at the back of a police station in the vicinity, which could only be entered by a low 'pend' or vaulted passage, though commanded from above by the high windows of the station-house. It had long been a great idea of Cleg's to have a battle royal under the very nose of the constituted authority of the city.
Thither he resorted, and in a little a crowd of his friends and his foes followed him, all protesting that he could not mean to fight fair so near to the 'bobbies' abode. But Cleg unfolded his scheme, which instantly placed him on the giddy apex of popularity. He got them to roll a heavy barrel which stood in one corner of the yard into the 'pend,' which it almost completely blocked up, and he himself fixed it in position with some of the great iron curved shods which the lorrymen used to stop their coal waggons on the steep streets of the south-side. It stood so firm that nothing short of dynamite could have shifted it.
The fight proceeded, but into its details we need not enter. It was truly Homeric. Cleg flitted here and there like the active insect from which he got his name, and stung wherever he could get an opening. The shouts of the spectators might have been heard in that still place for the better part of a mile, and in a few minutes all the police who were on duty were thundering on the barrel, and all those who had been in bed manned the windows in dishabille, and threatened the combatants and spectators by name.
Cleg Kelly, dancing ever more wildly round his adversary, revolving his fists like the spokes of a bicycle, shouted defiance.
'Come on, Hole,' he cried, 'ye're no' worth a buckie at fechtin!' and as he circled near the 'pend,' and heard the heaves of the labouring officers of justice, he called out: 'You, Langshanks, cast yer coat an' crawl through the bung; ye micht ken that the sergeant's ower fat. Hae ye nae sense?’
There was laughter aloft in the station windows. But somebody at the outside had brought a sledge hammer, and at the first blow the barrel resolved itself into its component staves, and the police tumbled in, falling headlong over Cleg's waggon clamps.
Then there was a wild scurry of the lads up the piles of casks and rubbish at the back of the yard, and over the outhouses and roofs. Cleg was not first in getting away, but he had studied the locality, and he had his plans cut and dried. He would have been ashamed to have been caught now that he was on his way to be a reformed character. In half an hour he was waiting with crooked stick to 'boost' his father home when he was duly cast out of Hare's Public at the stroke of eleven as the completed produce of that establishment.
So in due time, and with many hard words from Timothy, they neared the den which they called home. At the foot of the long stair Timothy Kelly lay down with the grunt of a hog, and refused to move or speak. He would arise for no punchings, however artistic, with the knobbiest portions of the stick, and Cleg paused, for the first time that day, almost in despair. A policeman came round the corner, flashing the light of his bull's-eye right and left. Cleg's heart stood still. It was the lengthy officer whom he had called 'Langshanks,' and invited to come through the bung. He feared that he was too kenspeckle to escape. He went over to him, and taking a tug at his hair, which meant manners, said:
'Please, officer, will ye gie me a lift up the stair wi' my faither?’
The policeman whistled a long’, low whistle, and laughed.
'Officer!’ says he, 'Officer! Be the powers, 'twas ‘Langshanks’ ye called me the last time, ye thief o' the wurrld!’ said the man, who was of national kin to Cleg.
So they twain helped their compatriot unsteadily to his den at the head of the stairs.
'Ye're the cheekiest young shaver I ivver saw,' said Longshanks, admiringly, as he turned away; 'but there's some good in yez!’
Cleg Kelly locked the door on the outside, said his prayers like the reformed character that he was, and laid him down on the mat to sleep the sleep of the just. The Junior Partner always saw Miss Tennant home after this. He calls her 'Celie' now. She has been meaning to tell him for the last month that he must not do so any more.
This story is an excerpt from The Stickit Minister, first published in 1893 and republished in 2014 as Volume 13 of The Galloway Collection. The Collection is available as ebooks from the Ayton Publishing Virtual Bookstore and as paperbacks from Amazon. (The character Cleg Kelly also features in the novel bearing his name, Volume 20, first published in 1896.)
To find out more about S. R. Crockett and his writing, please visit The Galloway Raiders website.
About the Author
S. R. Crockett was born in Balmaghie, Galloway, in 1859 and died in France on April 16th, 1914. During his life, he had over 60 novels published (many of them serialised) and hundreds of short stories/sketches appeared in the popular magazines. He was one of Scotland’s bestselling and best known authors in his day, but now is barely known of. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of his death, The Galloway Raiders has been set up and a major collection of 32 of his Galloway-based fictional works has been republished by Ayton Publishing Limited.
To find out more about S. R. Crockett, you can join The Galloway Raiders for FREE at www.gallowayraiders.co.uk
To find out more about S. R. Crockett, you can join The Galloway Raiders for FREE at www.gallowayraiders.co.uk