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

by S. R. Crockett

Vara was not slow in obeying this command. To go to the well meant, at the least, to be for five minutes out of the hearing of the all-compassing tongue of Mistress McWalter, and out of the shrill ding-dong of her vocabulary. It was not much, but still it was something.

The girl took the blue cans readily, and went towards the door.

"Gang some deal quaiter," cried Mistress McWalter, "or, by my faith, I'll thresh ye like a sheaf o' corn when I rise to ye, ye misleared gamester frae the streets! Dinna wauken a' the puir tired bairns, for they were honestly gotten and weel brocht up. And shut the door after ye, when ye gang oot. Ye want us a' to get our deaths o' cauld, nae doot!"

The anger that burned in Vara's breast was healthy and natural, and it would have done her a world of good if she had been able to allow herself the safety valve of intemperate speech. But she only said to herself, "I'll thole awhile yet for Boy Hugh's and wee Gavin' sake, till they can fend for themselves. I need the siller she pays me."

Kit Kennedy met Vara as she crossed the yard. Now in order to reach the well it was necessary to go through the gate at the far angle of the yard, and to walk some distance along the grassy road which led to the next farm. The gusts blew off the lake and twirled Vara's hair becomingly about her face. She was certainly growing a tall, shapely, personable lass. And so thought Kit Kennedy, and said so with his eyes.

Kit was also tall and strong. There was nothing rustic about his appearance. He had the profile and pose of head of the young Apollo of the Bow. He did not, indeed, possess the sinewy, gypsy alertness of Cleg Kelly, nor yet the devil's grit, turned, on the whole, to good intents, which drove that youth safely through so many adventures. Kit Kennedy was slower, more thoughtful, more meditative. Cleg never by any chance wasted a moment in meditation, so long as there was a chance to do anything. And when he did, it was only that he might again dash the more determinedly and certainly into the arena of action.

But Kit Kennedy could call friends out of the visionary air to sit with him in "sessions of sweet silent thought." Often he walked day after day in a world all his own. And the most stinging words of Mistress McWalter did not affect him one whit more than the gusts of wind-born rain which dashed at him across the lake.

In the same circumstances, Cleg would simply have smitten Mistress McWalter with a stone, or, if more convenient, with a poker, and so departed well content. But Kit Kennedy forbore, and made nothing of her persecution. He could dodge her blows by watching her hand. And he could go on calmly rehearsing the adventures of Sir Aylmer de Vallance, while the abuse of his aunt provided a ready-made background of storm and fret, which gave a delicious relish to a victorious single combat in Kit's imagination.

When Kit met Vara on the well road he took the cans naturally out of her hands, as if he had been well accustomed to doing it. He had been waiting for her. In his heart he always called her his lady Gloriana, and it was only with difficulty that he could remember to call her Vara. Kit had been much happier during the years since Vara came. He had now a heroine for his romances, as well as a companion for his hours of ease. For Kit went about acting another life all day long. He fed the bullocks to the clatter of cavalry hoofs. He shepherded the sheep towards pastures new, to the blast of trumpet and the beat of drum. Or, as a great general, he stood gloomily apart upon a knoll, with his staff around him, and sent a barking aide-de-camp here and another there, to direct the woolly battalions how to make their attack upon the bridge. He always thrust one hand into his breast, in order to represent the correct attitude of a great general on such occasions. He was compelled to unloose the third button of his waistcoat in order to do it. This seemed strange. He had never read that this was necessary. He wondered what heroes did in that case. But it struck him afterwards that very likely they had their waistcoats made open on purpose.

Again, in his books of chivalry there was always a lady to be the guiding star of every life of adventure. Each knight, if he was of any respectability at all, provided himself at least with one. The great Don Quixote had done that. For the Knight Dolorous was, in the opinion of Kit Kennedy, as indeed in that of all fair-minded people, a most high-minded and ill-used man.