Young Barbarians

by Ian Maclaren

Bailie MacConachie made a mistake when he risked a war with the boys of the Seminary, and it was colossal folly on his part to continue the war after his first defeat in the affair of the advertisement. No doubt it was humiliating to have his respectable place of business filled with the mob of Muirtown demanding whisky as a right, and threatening him with penalties as a covenant-breaker when they did not get it; he had also very good reasons for believing that the unholy inspiration which gathered the vagrants to his shop came from the Seminary. His best policy, however, would have been to treat the matter as a joke; and if the Bailie had stopped on his way to dinner, and told the boys plainly that he knew quite well they were at the bottom of the affair, that they were a set of confounded young rascals, that he had intended to hang six of them and send the rest to penal servitude, that he was going to forgive them for the sake of their unhappy parents, and because it had not been half bad fun after all, that there would be no more policemen before the Seminary, and there must be no more windows smashed in his (the Bailie's) house—the Seminary, which always respected a fellow who took his licking with good humour and didn't squeal, would have given the Bailie the best cheer he ever got in his public career, and a covenant of peace would have been made between him and the boys which would never have been forgotten. Had another pane of glass been broken by a Seminary ball, the value thereof in a packet of halfpence, with an expression of regret, would have been handed in before evening. The honorary freedom of the school would have been conferred on the Bailie, without any public ceremony, but with immense practical advantage, and although the Bailie was surfeited with civic honours, yet even he might have tasted a new pleasure as he passed along the terrace to see the boys suspend a game for an instant to let him pass in stately walk, and to hear Speug cry, "Oot o' the Bailie's road," and to receive a salute from tailless Highland bonnets that were touched to none outside the school, except to the Count and Dr. Manley. If Providence had given a touch of imagination to the Bailie, and his head had not been swollen by a position approaching that of the angels, he would have come to terms at once with the boys, in which case bygones would have been bygones, and he would have been spared much humiliation.

Unfortunately the Bailie allowed his temper to get the better of him, raging furiously in public places, and breathing forth threatenings about what he would do to the plotter, till all Muirtown, which otherwise might have pitied him, held its sides. He kept our single detective at work for a fortnight, who finally extracted from London John that the "boardies" containing the shameful advertisement had been given him by a man uncommonly like the detective himself and that the said "boardies" were not to be compared with those he used to carry in London. The detective also learned, on a somewhat risky visit to Mr. McGuffie's stables, that the Speug had spent the whole day of that historical Saturday till the hour of two—when he called for peppermints at the Bailie's shop—in cleaning out his rabbit-hutch and other domestic duties—this on the testimony of three of Mr. McGuffie's grooms, each of whom was willing to swear the same anywhere, or fight the detective, with gloves or without gloves, in the stable-yard or any other place which might be agreed upon. The Bailie also, going from bad to worse, offered a reward of £5 for any information which would lead to the conviction of the offender, and received thirty letters—so many anonymous, attacking his character, public and private, and so many signed, from various cranks in Muirtown, in which the crime was assigned to Irish Roman Catholics, to the Publicans, to the Morisonians, and to a tribe of gypsies camped outside the city. They were all annoying, but there were two which cut the Bailie to the quick. One was written from the security of Glasgow, in which the writer promised, on receipt of the reward, to send a full account of the conspiracy, and, having got the money, replied briefly that he left the matter to the Bailie's own conscience; and the second, which asked for no reward except the writer's sense of having done his duty, and which hinted that if the Bailie put the question straight to his senior assistant, he might find he had been nourishing a viper in his bosom, and that a young man with such a smug appearance could be little else than a rascal. This letter, which was written in a schoolboy hand, and had five words misspelt, was signed, "An Elder of the Free Kirk." None of the letters seemed to help the matter forward, and life at the Bailie's residence was very troubled during those weeks.

When news of the Bailie's vindictive spirit spread through the Seminary, the boys were much pained, for it was sad to see an old man forgetting himself and harbouring a spirit of revenge. It seemed, indeed, as if all they had done for the Bailie was simply love's labour lost, and that they must begin again to bring him to a proper state of mind. The Seminary loved peace and hated war, being a body of quiet, well-behaved, hard-working lads. Still, if war was forced upon them, and detectives set upon their track, it was a duty to themselves and their families to meet the situation bravely. Nothing could have been more successful than the last campaign; and, although Speug had never boasted, and none dared say that he had anything to do with it, there was a feeling in the Seminary that the conduct of the next campaign was safe in his hands. As it turned out, it was certainly safe, and one ought not to detract from genius, but there can be no doubt that Fortune played into the hands of Speug.

Much may be allowed to a broad sense of humour, and the walk of the Bailie was marvellous to behold; but it was rather poor business for Speug to walk half the length of the Terrace a yard behind the Bailie in an exact imitation of the magistrate's manner, although the school was hugely delighted. If the Bailie had taken no notice, the score had been on his side; but when he turned round and gave Speug a sound box on the side of the head, he lost himself, and out of that single mistake, by a chain of consequences, arose the scandal which almost drove the Bailie from Muirtown. Speug could not have hoped for anything so good as that foolish blow, and the moment that it came he saw his opportunity. Many a stroke had he endured in his day, from his father and from the grooms, when his mischief was beyond endurance, and from Bulldog when he caught him red-handed, and from the boys in a fight, and there was no one of his age so indifferent to such afflictions. Had the hand been any other than that of Bailie MacConachie, Speug would have made derisive gestures and invited the second stroke. As it was, he staggered across the pavement and fell with a heavy thud upon the street, where, after one sharp, piercing cry of pain, he lay motionless, but his moans could be heard along the Terrace. His one hope was that, when he had seized the occasion with such dramatic success, the Seminary would not fail to play up and support his rôle, and, although they were cleverer at reality than acting they entered heartily into their opportunity.

"Are ye conscious, Peter?" inquired Howieson tenderly, as he stooped over the prostrate figure. "Div ye hear us speakin' to ye? Dinna moan like that, but tell us where ye're hurt. What are ye gatherin' round like that for an keepin' away the air? Hold up his head, Bauldie? Some o' ye lift his feet out o' the gutter? Run to the lade, for ony's sake, and bring some water in yir bonnets."

It was pretty to see Jock and Bauldie lifting the unconscious form of their beloved friend, and carrying him carefully across the pavement, and placing Speug in a sitting position against the railing, and then rendering what would now be called first aid to the wounded, while that ingenuous youth kept his eyes tightly closed and moaned occasionally, to show that he was still living. Never in his life had Providence given him a chance of playing so much mischief, and he was not going to be disobedient. They opened his shirt at the breast to give him air, they anxiously searched the side of his head for the wound, and washed away imaginary blood with very dirty pocket-handkerchiefs. They bathed his forehead with such profuseness that the water ran down his chest, whereat Speug expressed himself in low but stern tones, so Nestie advised them to stick to his head; and some of the smaller boys were only prevented from taking off his boots by a seasonable warning from Bauldie and a reasonable fear of consequences. The Seminary circle was reinforced by all the message-boys within sight, and several ladies who were coming home from the shops. Two maiden ladies, against whose railings Peter had been propped in the hour of his distress, came out—their hearts full of compassion and their hands of remedies. As Jock and Bauldie did not consider it safe that Peter should be moved at once, one maiden lady placed a cushion between his head and the railings, while the other chafed his forehead with scent, and both insisted that Dr. Manley should be sent for at once. This was the first suggestion which seemed to have any effect on Peter, for it would not at all have suited his plans that that matter-of-fact physician should have arrived on the spot. And when a bottle of ferocious smelling-salts was held to the patient's nose, Speug showed signs of returning consciousness.

"Poor dear!" said one lady; "what a mercy he wasn't killed. A blow behind the ear is often fatal. He's coming round nicely. The colour is returning to his cheeks. Bailie MacConachie, did you say?" as Jock Howieson unfolded to the ladies in simple, straightforward, truthful words the story of the murderous attack. "I can't believe that any man would so abuse a poor helpless child." (At this moment Peter, who had been reconnoitring the whole scene through his half-closed eyes, seized the opportunity to wink to the mourners with such irresistible effect as to prove once again the close connection between tears and laughter.) "And him a magistrate," concluded the sympathetic female. "He ought to be ashamed of himself; but if I were the laddie's friends, I would make the Bailie hear about it on the deaf side of his head."

"A Bottle of ferocious smelling-salts was held to the patient's nose."