Part 11

The Bailie thought on many things out there in the dark as he nuzzled down the glowing ash in the pipe-bowl close under his nose. He thought, for instance, of the year Elizabeth and he were married, when they started at the foot of Morrison Street in one room at the back of the gasfitter's shop. They did not keep a servant then, and Elizabeth had not yet learned to object to the smoking of Bogie roll. Indeed, her father and her three brothers (all honest masons) incessantly smoked nothing else. But when there was need to find a place in the little back-room for another person with no experience in Bogie roll where he came from, then the Bailie had gone out every night to the backyard, sat down on a roll of lead piping and smoked a black pipe, with a babe's little complainings tugging at his heart all the while. And the memory of the Bogie roll outside the window, across which the black shadows went and came, had somehow kept his heart warm all through the years.

And, strange it is to say it, but though he was in many ways a difficult man to serve, yet many a servant had remained another term, simply because the master slipped out to take his smoke away from every one in the evening. This is the whole idyll of the life of Bailie Holden, Convener of the Committee on Cleaning and Lighting and proximate Lord Provost of the city. It is curious that it should be an idyll of Bogie roll.

ADVENTURE XXII.

THE SEDUCTION OF A BAILIE.

So it was at this most favourable of times that Cleaver's boy's kitchen-maid approached her master with her request. It was just at the critical moment when the Bailie was laying aside the Convener and host, and donning the Morrison Street plumber, with the garden coat which carried so strong an atmosphere of the idyllic Bogie roll.

"If ye please, sir, there's a young man——," the voice of the kitchen-maid broke upon his dreams.

"Ah, Janet," said the Convener, getting helped into the garden coat, for he was not now so slim as once he had been, "there always is a young man! And that's how the world goes on!"

"But," said Janet, the kitchen-maid, "this is a very nice young man. You may have seen him, sir. He comes here twice every day from Mr. Cleaver's, the butcher's, sir."

"No, Janet," replied the Bailie, amicably, "I do not know that I have observed him. You see, my duties do not compel me to be cleaning the kitchen steps when nice young men come from Cleaver's!"

"Sir," said Janet, with a little privileged indignation, "James Annan, sir, is a most respectable young man."

"And he asked you to speak to me?"

"Oh no, sir! Indeed, no, sir! But I thought, sir, that in your department you might have need of a steady young man."

"I have, indeed, Janet. You are as right as ever you will be in your life," said the Convener of Cleaning and Lighting, thinking of the ravages which the traditional hospitality of the department sometimes made among his steadiest young men.

"What are his desires, Janet?" said the Bailie; "does he want a chief inspectorship, or will he be content to handle a broom?"

"Oh, not an inspectorship—at first, sir. And he can handle anything, indeed, sir," said Janet, breathlessly, for the Convener had endued himself with his coat and showed signs of moving gardenwards.

"Including your chin, my dear," said the Bailie, touching (it is very regrettable to have to state) one of Janet's plump dimples with the action which used fifty years ago to go by the name of "chucking." He had dined, his wife was safely up stairs out of harm's way, and Bogie roll glowed cloudily before him. Let these be his excuses.

"James Annan, nor no one else, has more to do with my chin than I like to let them, sir," said Janet, who came from Inverness, and had a very clear idea of business.

The Bailie laughed and went out.

"I will bear it in mind, Janet," said he, for he felt that he was wasting time. He did not mean Janet's dimpled chin.

"Better put it down in your notebook—I'll fetch it, sir!" And Janet promptly fetched a black leather case, round-shouldered with importance and bulgy with business.

So the Bailie stood in the half-light which came from the kitchen window, and wetted the stub of a lead-pencil, which Janet had carried for years in the pocket of her working-dresses without ever needing it. He hesitated what to write.

"The young man's name, sir, is James Annan, and you can send the letter in care of me, sir," said Janet, with a subtle suggestiveness. She tiptoed round till she touched his sleeve, so as to look over at what he was writing.

"Thank you, Janet; anything else?" asked the Bailie.

"No, sir," said Janet, hesitating with her finger at her lip, "unless, sir, you could think to put him on this district."

So it happened that in due time Mr. Cleaver lost the services of Cleaver's boy. These valuable assets were simultaneously gained by the city corporation in the department of Cleaning and Lighting. This has been the immemorial method in which subordinate positions have been filled, according to the best traditions of the municipal service. The great thing is, of course, to catch your convener, as it were, between dinner and Bogie roll.

James Annan was placed on the southern district, and his duty was to mark in a notebook, less important but a good deal cleaner than the Bailie's, the names of the streets which were attended to in their order, and also the exact moment when each final ash-backet was heaped upon the cart.

What precise benefit trim Janet of Inverness got from the arrangement is not clear. For, being occupied during the night, Cleaver's boy could no more come for the orders early in the morning, nor yet trot whistling down the area steps an hour later with the laden basket upon his arm. So that Janet, supposing the matter interested her at all, seemed definitely to be the loser.

Yet one never knows. For the ways of girls from Inverness are deep as the sea is deep in the unplumbed places in the middle, which are painted the deepest indigo on the atlases. James Annan continued to be called Cleaver's boy, in spite of the fact that a successor at six shillings a week had been appointed, who now wore Cleaver's boy's discarded blue aprons. In other ways he would have been glad to succeed to the perquisites of Cleaver's boy. But he was a sallow-faced youth with straight hair, who used his tobacco without the aid of a pipe. So Janet did not deign to bandy a single word with the new boy. He was no more than a penny-in-the-slot machine, wound up to deliver so many pounds of steak every day. The kitchen steps were now always cleaned in the early dawn, and Janet went about in her old wrapper all the morning and most of the afternoon.

She had taken a saving turn, she said, as if it had been the measles. It was all very well for the table-maid always to wear a black frock.

But though she saw less of Cleaver's boy (the original and only genuine article), it is possible, and indeed likely, that Janet of Inverness knew more of the romance of Susy and Sal than Cleaver's boy gave her credit for. Let those who try to run three or four love affairs abreast, like horses in a circus ring, take warning. Janet of Inverness had never heard of either Sal or Susy from the lips of Cleaver's boy. Nevertheless, there was not much of importance to her schemes which was not familiar to the wise little head set upon the plumply demure shoulders of Janet of Inverness.

ADVENTURE XXIII.

THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT-SHIFT MAN.

An interview which Cleaver's boy had to endure may throw some light upon this. By some strange law of contrary, the undisputed possession of James Annan's affections damped Sal's ardour. She became flighty and difficult in her moods. Cleaver's boy could not take her to enough places of resort, or at least, not to the right ones. So long as he slighted her and rubbed her face with snow as a regular method of courtship, she could not love him enough. But now, when she was formally engaged to him and the alliance had been acknowledged by Providence and Miss Cecilia Tennant, Sal suddenly found that she did not care so much about Cleaver's boy after all. This happened in the second week of the new situation in the department of Cleaning and Lighting.

Sal came home from the mill at six. James went on duty at eight. Consequently it was now usually about seven when James called. It was an unhappy and ill-chosen time, as anybody but a man would have known. For Sal appeared to be in some undress, and was indeed engaged in frizzling her front hair with a pair of hot knitting needles, occasionally burning her fingers and her forehead in the process.

"Hoo are ye the nicht, Sal?" said James, standing at the cheek of the door and crossing his legs comfortably. Someone (he forgot who) had told him he looked well that way.

"Naething the better for seein' you!" retorted Sal over her shoulder. She never took her eyes off the fragment of mirror which was secured to the wall by two long nails and the broken end of another knitting needle.

"Wy Sal, what's wrang wi' ye?" began Cleaver's boy, anxiously. For though in the affairs of men, as between boy and boy, his voice was most for open war, yet in the things of love he liked peace and sacrificed much to secure it.

Sal humped up the shoulder next him and turned sharply away from him with a gesture indicative of the greatest disdain—without, however, taking her eyes from the faint blue smoke which went up from the left side of her fringe, to which she had at that moment applied a fresh pair of red-hot knitting needles.

"Tell me what's the maitter wi' ye, Sal," said James humbly. For the spirit seemed to have departed out of him.

Sal tossed her head and made a sound which, though inarticulate, indicated that much might be said upon that subject. She could and she would.

Slowly Cleaver's boy extracted from his pocket a neat parcel done up in paper.

"Hae, Sal!" he said, going forward to her elbow and offering them to her; "hae, here are some sweeties I fetched ye."

They were her favourite brandy-balls, and on a suitable day, with a light wind and strong sun, their perfume carried a quarter of a mile. James had never known them fail of their effect before. But now, with a swift half-turn, Sal snatched them out of his hand and flung them behind the fire. Cleaver's boy stood aghast. They had cost him fourpence-halfpenny at Tam Luke's shop, and would have cost twice as much but for Tam's good offices in the weighing department.

"What's wrang wi' the brandy-balls, Sal?" he cried in despair. The like of this had never happened before in his experience. Thus Time works out its revenges.

"Did ye get them oot o' an ash-backet?"[4] at last cried Sal, breaking her indignant silence.

"No," said innocent James, "I got them at Tam Luke's for fourpence-halfpenny."

"So ye say!" returned Sal, who was determined not to be appeased.

The brandy-balls were now flaming up the chimney, and fast dissolving into their elements with a sickly smell and a fizzling noise.

"Tell us what ye hae against us, Sal; oot wi' it!" said Cleaver's boy, who recognised the great truth that with a woman it is always better to be at the bottom of what she knows, and that at once.

"I'm no gaun to keep company wi' ony man that gangs on the nicht shift!" cried Sal, turning with the needles in her hand and stamping her foot. "I'll let ye ken that Sal Mackay thinks mair o' hersel' than that. I hae some pride!"

The murder was out. But poor James, who thought that he had done a fine thing in attaining promotion, knew not what to reply.

"And what differ does that make, Sal?" asked Cleaver's boy in astonishment.

"What differ does it make? Hear to the cuddy! Differ—juist this differ, that ye'll walk oot wi' some dafter lass than Sal Mackay. I hae mair respect for mysel' than to bemean mysel' to gang wi' a nicht-shift man!"

"But," said James, "I get far better pay. Think o' that, Sal!"

"I'm no carin' for that, when I canna be there when ye spend it," said the mercenary Sal, with, however, commendable straightforwardness.

"But I fetched ye the brandy-balls, Sal," persisted the once proud boy of Cleaver's.

"Brandy-balls! _That_ for your brandy-balls!" cried Sal, pointing to the fireplace, in which a little blue flame was still burning, at the spot where the Tam Luke's sweetmeats had been so irregularly consumed. "D'ye think that Sal Mackay is to be dependent every nicht on a chap that has to gang on duty at half-past seven?——"

"Eight o'clock!" said Cleaver's boy, eagerly.

"At half-past seven," said Sal, jerking her head pugnaciously at each syllable, "he pits on claes that are a disgrace to be seen forbye smelled. And what's to come o' the lemonades noo, I wad like to ken—or o' the gallery at the theaytre?"

"There's Saturday afternoon, Sal," said James placably, with a sudden access of cheerfulness. He had scored a point.

"Aye, there's Saturday afternune," replied Sal, with chilling cynicism, "and what will ye do with your Saturday afternoon? Ye'll maybe tak' me ower to Aberdour again in the boat, and be sae dazed and sleepy-like that ye'll faa asleep on the road, as ye did the last time. And hae everybody sayin', 'My word, Sal, but ye hae a blythe young chap there. Ye maun hae been fine heartsome company to him?' D'ye think ony lass that thinks onything o' hersel' wad stand the like o' that?"

Sal stamped her foot and paused for a reply. It was certainly an awkward question. Sal, like most women (thought James) was a demon at "casting-up" when she began.

Cleaver's boy scratched his curly head and advanced towards Sal. He felt that in the war of words he was going to have very distinctly the worst of it. But he thought that he might fare better nearer at hand. It was one of his favourite axioms that "it is aye best to argue wi' the weemen at close grips." Which, whether it be true or not, at least shows that Cleaver's boy was a youth of some experience—but Sal Mackay chose to misinterpret his action.

She turned instantly, and, snatching up an iron goblet of hot water which stood on the hearth, she advanced to meet him, crying, "I'll gie ye your fill o' throwin' water on decent folk. An' this water will keep ye fine and warm on the nicht shift, my lad!"

At this Cleaver's boy turned and fled. But as he scudded down the stairs, bent nearly double, the boiling water from Sal Mackay's pan fell in stinging drops upon the back of his neck, and, what was worse, upon his suit of new clothes, bought with his week's wages and donned for the first time.

When Cleaver's boy reached the pavement, he dusted the water splashes off as well as he could, and walked thoughtfully and determinedly across Nicholson Street.

"It'll be an awesome savin' in lemonade," he said, "an' that dreadfu' expensive bottle lemonade too!"

A tramcar was passing. A wild thought ran through his brain.

"Dod," he said, "I declare I'll save that muckle by giein' up Sal—I'll risk it."

And he hailed the car and walked very slowly towards it when it stopped. The conductor waved to him to come on.

"Could ye no hae run, man, an' no wasted a' this time?" he said, when Cleaver's boy had at last got himself upon the platform.

"I was gettin' my twopence-worth," said James Annan, with dignity; "I am an inside passenger!" And he went through the glass door and sat beside Bailie Holden, who was going home to dinner and was already thinking of Bogie roll.

The Bailie and Cleaver's boy got out at the same place. They made their way to the same house. The Bailie let himself in by the front door. Cleaver's boy went equally unannounced to the back. But Cleaver's boy knew that he had pretty Janet of Inverness waiting for him, whereas the Bailie only had his wife. And in these circumstances most people would have preferred to enter by the back door with James Annan.

Janet of Inverness was standing by the kitchen-window polishing a brass preserving pan in which she could admire her dimpled chin, and the hair which, curling naturally, did not need the intervention of red-hot knitting needles to be beautiful.

Janet ran hastily to the door.

"Do you want to see the maister?"

"No," said James Annan; "wull ye hae me, Janet?"

Janet of Inverness looked him a moment in the eyes. What she read there, Janet only knows. At any rate it seemed to be satisfactory enough, for, with all the ardour of love's young dream, she fell on his neck, and murmured, "Aye, Jamie, when—" (here Janet of Inverness sobbed)—"when ye get a rise!"

ADVENTURE XXIV.

THE CROOK IN THE LOT OF CLEAVER'S BOY.

I should have mentioned before that Inverness Janet's other name was Urquhart, but for the fact that second names do not seem to matter anywhere, except in those grades of society where persons require calling cards to remind them of each others' names.

It was only a natural precisian like Mr. Cleg Kelly who always insisted on the second name. But Cleg had a reason for that. He was himself in the curious position of having no ascertained first name. There was a tradition in the family that he had been baptized Bryan, but his mother had never used the name. And since his father and everyone else had always called him Cleg, Cleg Kelly he remained all his life—or at least, as they say commercially, "to date."

But it is with Inverness Janet and the faithless and easily consoled James Annan, late assistant to Mr. Cleaver, butcher, that we have presently to do. Janet's conditional acceptance of his devotion seemed in a fair way to being made absolute. For Cleaver's boy proved a success at the night work. But in spite of this, and of his apparently assured success, both in the fields of practical sanitation and in those of love, James Annan was clearly not happy.

Judging by some past experience of his own, Cleg thought he must be pining for his old freedom.

"What for do ye no rin away, if ye want to be rid o' Janet?" was Cleg's contribution to the problem.

"Haud your tongue! I dinna want to get rid o' Janet!" said Cleaver's boy, loyally, but without indignation. Such things had been, and might be again.

"It's aboot Janet onyway," said wise Cleg, shaking his head; "hae Sal or Susy been botherin' her?"

"Na," said Janet's lover, "they ken better. My certes, Janet wad gie them the door in their faces and then send for a polissman."

"Ye had better tell me, at ony rate," said Cleg.

And with a little pressing, James Annan did unburden his sore heart.

"Ye see," he said, "Janet's bonny—or I think sae——"

"It is the same thing exactly!" interjected Cleg.

"She's bonny, an' easy to be doin' wi'. She's no sair ava' in the way o' expense. She is a natural saver hersel', an' she's aye at me to be puttin' by the siller. O, in some ways it is juist like heeven—nae leemonades, nae swing rides, nae merry-go-rounds, nae shows! I declare she cares no a buckie for Pepper's Ghost. In that respect there's no a mair agreeabler lass in the toon. Janet is aye pleased to tak' a walk on the Calton, or maybe in the Gardens, or to the Museum, or doon the shore to Leith to see the ships, or, what pleases her best, juist doon to the Waverley Station to see the Heelant train come in. O, Cleg, she is sic a weel-dooin', couthy, kindly lass, that ony man micht hae been prood o' her."

"What is't, then," said Cleg, "since she's sae perfect? Is't the poetry?" To Cleg "the poetry" was a trouble which might seize a victim at any moment, like the toothache. "And then where are ye?" he would add, cogently.

But it was not the poetry. It was a deeper grief. It appeared from the tale which Cleg laboriously extracted from the reluctant and deeply wounded suitor, that Janet, though a well-doing lass in every respect, had one grave fault.

All day she was at work quietly and willingly. It was the nature of James's occupation that he should be in the neighbourhood in the early morning. At that hour Janet, in her working gown, was all that heart could desire. But when Cleaver's boy chanced to go round in the afternoon, or met Janet by appointment, some malicious pixie had wrought a sea-change in the lass of Inverness.

She would then tell, with the greatest candour and engaging innocence, tales which even a faithful lover could not otherwise characterise than as "whoppers." This mania appeared to come upon her whenever she had taken off her morning wrapper and put on her company dress. She was going (so she declared) to "the mistress" to ask for a few evenings off in order to fulfil her innumerable social engagements. Every house where at any time she had been engaged (as kitchen-maid) opened wide its doors to her as a welcome guest. She told the cook, who listened with unconcealed scorn, how she had been at balls and suppers galore in "the best houses" in Melville Street and Princes Street. She must really, she said, begin to remodel and refashion some of her many silks and satins for the approaching season.

Only the evening before, she had entertained the servants' hall at Bailie Holden's with an account of a dinner she had been at the night before in the Grange. She had even got off early in order to have her hair done by the hairdresser.

"The hairdresser, as a great favour, is going to arrange it in the latest style for five shillings, instead of ten-and-six, his usual charge," said Janet of Inverness, with a glance like an angel's for innocence. Then she described her drive to the house in a four-wheeler. "My hair would have got so blown about, or I should have gone in a hansom, which is much more distinguished." Her former master had, it appeared, come into the hall to receive her. Two gentlemen had almost quarrelled as to who should see her home. A handsome and distinguished gentleman and a member of Parliament for the city, celebrated for his gallantry to the ladies, had, however, forestalled them both, arranged the shawl deliciously about her shoulders with well-accustomed fingers, and had thereafter driven home with her in a hansom.

"It did not matter about the hair then, you know," said gay Janet of Inverness, looking daringly at Cleaver's boy.

At this the cook had laughed out loud. She then said that it was all lies, and that she had seen Janet walking along the Bridges with another girl at the supposed hour of the dinner. Thus was shame brought upon Cleaver's boy and upon the pride and good name of his sweetheart.

"An' what do ye think I should do, Cleg?" asked James Annan.

"I wad gie her a lickin' and gar her stop," said Cleg, who had still prehistoric notions as to the discipline of women.

"Na," said Cleaver's boy; "I hae thocht o' that. But, man, she's no like Susy or Sal. Ye couldna lift a hand to her when she looks at ye wi' yon e'en, an' tells ye that her faither was either a Highland Chief or a Toon Councillor o' Inverness. I couldna do it, Cleg."

"Hoot," said Cleg, "then I wad try no to heed. She may grow oot o't. An' thae Heelant folk are aye leein' onyway. Think on a' the lees they tell aboot their Bonny Prince Chairlie!"

"I hae tried no to mind," answered Cleaver's boy, sadly; "but when I see the ither yins a' laughin' at her an' her no seeing it, but gaun straight on wi' her daft-like story, I tell ye, Cleg, it pits me fair wild. There'll be murder dune, Cleg, gin it's no stoppit."

"Weel, Cleaver," said Cleg philosophically, "I think I see the reason on't. She disna gang to shows an' theaytres, to save the siller; but she says she gangs, an' that costs naething. I dinna see what ye hae to compleen o'!"

"If that's a' ye can tell me," said Cleaver's boy indignantly, "I wadna hae missed muckle if ye had stayed at hame."

"Hoots, butcher," said Cleg, with indulgence, "dinna gang a aff like the fuff o' a match. There's little sense and nae siller in that. But I'll tell ye what, butcher: I'll speak to Miss Celie. She will ken what ye had better do."

It was thus indirectly that Providence was appealed to in the Sooth Back.

ADVENTURE XXV.

A COMELY PROVIDENCE IN A NEW FROCK.