don’t particularly want to hear about it, Katie.’
‘But why,’ said Kate, ‘it’s an entertaining tale.’
And she began to relate it.
Francie was son to old Jeames Ferguson, who had helped to make the Weatherhouse; and Francie’s taking of a wife had been a seven days’ speak in Fetter-Rothnie. He had been betrothed for two and twenty years. All the countryside knew of the betrothal, but that it should end in marriage was a surprise for which the gossips were not prepared. A joke, too. A better joke, as it turned out, than they had anticipated.
The two and twenty years of waiting were due to Francie’s brother Weelum. Weelum in boyhood had discovered an astounding aptitude for craftsmanship. He had been apprenticed to a painter in Peterkirk, and in course became a journeyman. From that day on Francie referred invariably to his brother as ‘The Journeyman.’ Weelum’s name was never heard to cross his lips; he remained ‘The Journeyman,’ though he did not remain a painter.
Weelum’s career as a journeyman was mute and inglorious. He was a taciturn man: he wasted no words; and when his master’s clients gave orders about the detail of the work he undertook he would listen with an intent, intelligent expression, and reply with a grave and considering nod. Afterwards he did exactly what he pleased. Folk complained. Weelum continued to do what he pleased. In the end his master dismissed him; reluctantly, for he had clever hands.
He established himself with Francie. There was not work on the croft for two men; but as there was no woman on it, Weelum took possession of the domestic affairs. He did what he pleased there too, and made much to-do about his industry. Francie could not see that there was much result from it all. ‘He’s eident, but he doesna win through,’ he would sometimes say sorrowfully. ‘Feel Weelum,’ the folk called him. ‘Oh, nae sae feel,’ said Jonathan Bannochie the souter. ‘He kens gey weel whaur his pottage bickers best.’ To Francie he was still ‘The Journeyman.’
When Weelum came home to bide, Francie was already contracted to a lassie in the fishing village of Bargie, some twenty miles away, down the coast. A bonny bit lass, but her folk were terrible tinks; they had the name of being the worst tinks in Bargie. Weelum had some family pride, if Francie had none, and there were bitter words between the brothers. The Journeyman set his face implacably against the marriage, and stood aggrieved and silent when Francie tried to thresh the matter out. ‘He has ower good a downsit, and he kens it,’ said the folk. Francie’s respect for his brother was profound. On the Sunday afternoons when he cycled across to Bargie, he would slink out in silence by the back way from his own house. One Sunday the brothers came to high words. Francie mounted his cycle, and trusted—as he always did trust—that all would be well on his return. That Weelum did not speak on his return gave him no anxiety: Weelum often stunkit at him and kept silence for days. But this time Weelum kept silence for ever. He never again addressed a word to his brother, though he remained under his roof, eating of his bread, for over twenty years. Through all that time the brothers slept in the same bed, rising each in the morning to his separate tasks.
One afternoon the Journeyman fell over with a stroke. That was an end to the hope of his speaking. ‘I some think he would have liked to say something,’ Francie declared. He climbed in beside his brother to the one bed the room contained, and wakened in the hour before dawn geal cauld to find the Journeyman dead beside him.
Some months later Francie was cried in the kirk. A burr of excitement ran through the congregation. So the Bargie woman had waited for him! When the day of the wedding came, Francie set out in the early morning, with the old mare harnessed to the farm cart.
‘Take her on the hin step o’ yer bike, Francie, man,’ cried one of the bystanders. ‘That would be mair gallivantin’ like than the cairt.’
‘There’s her bits o’ things to fesh,’ Francie answered.
‘She’ll hae some chairs an’ thingies,’ said the neighbours. ‘The hoosie’ll nae be oot o’ the need o’ them. It’s terrible bare.’
Francie had not dreamed of a reception; but when, late in the evening, the bridal journey ended and the cart turned soberly up the cart-road to the croft, he found a crowd about his doors.
Francie bartered words with no man. He handed out his bride, and after her one bairn, and then another; and then a bundle tied up in a Turkey counterpane. The bride and the bairns went in, and Francie shut the door on them; and turned back to tend his mare.
‘She’ll hae been a weeda, Francie?’ said Jonathan Bannochie. A titter ran round the company.
Francie unharnessed the mare.
‘Weel, nae exactly a weeda,’ he said in his slow way; and led the mare to stable.
Next morning he harnessed her again and jogged in the old cart to town. All Fetter-Rothnie watched him come home with a brand-new iron bedstead in the cart. ‘For the bairns,’ they said. ‘He might have made less do with them.’ But the bed was not for the bairns.
‘Aunt Tris was the first of us to see her,’ Kate told Lindsay. ‘She invented an errand over. Aunt Tris would invent an errand to the deil himself, Granny says, if she wanted something from him. She came home and sat down and took off all her outdoor things before she would say a word. And then she said, “He was fond of fish before he fried the scrubber.” She told us about the bed. “She won’t even sleep with him,” she told us. “Him and the laddie sleeps in the kitchen, and her and the lassie’s got the room. It’s six and sax, I’m thinking, for Francie, between the Journeyman and the wife.” And she told us the bairns’ names.’
The bairns’ names were a diversion to Fetter-Rothnie. In a community that had hardly a dozen names amongst its folk, Francie’s betrothed had been known as Peter’s Sandy’s Bell; but she was determined that her children should have individual names, and called the girl Stella Dagmar and the boy Sidney Archibald Eric. Bargie treated the names after its fashion. The children became Stellicky Dagmaricky and Peter’s Sandy’s Bellie’s Sid.
‘Granny sat and listened to Aunt Tris,’ Kate continued. ‘Licked her lips over it. Granny loves a tale. Particularly with a wicked streak. “A spectacle,” she said, “a second Katherine Bran.” Katherine Bran was somebody in a tale, I believe. And then she said, “You have your theatres and your picture palaces, you folk. You make a grand mistake.” And she told us there was no spectacle like what’s at our own doors. “Set her in the jougs and up on the faulters’ stool with her, for fourteen Sabbaths, as they did with Katherine, and where’s your picture palace then?” A merry prank, she called it. Well!— “The faulter’s stool and a penny bridal,” she said, “and you’ve spectacle to last you, I’se warren.” Granny’s very amusing when she begins with old tales.’
Lindsay’s attention was flagging. ‘Besides,’ she thought, ‘I don’t like old tales. Nor this new one either.’ They had come out of the wood on to a crossroad and the country was open for miles ahead.
‘And that’s Knapperley, is it, Katie?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘But we don’t go near it to get to Mrs Hunter’s.’
Snow
