The Weatherhouse. Nan Shepherd

She’ll be grand pleased at the tree. She’s like a bairn when you give her a thing.’

      Kate went to make ready, and Lindsay would have followed; but as she passed, her grand-aunt detained her with a look. Mrs Craigmyle had few gestures; she held herself still; only her eyes glittered and her lips moved, and often her fingers went to and fro as she knitted—a spider stillness. The film of delicate lace upon hair as fine as itself was not the only thing about her that betokened the spider. One had the sense of being caught upon a look, lured in and held.

      Lindsay drew up to her, and stood.

      ‘So, so, you are to turn my house into a market, Leezie Lindsay?’

      ‘Why do you call me that, Aunt Leeb?’

      Lang Leeb sang from the old ballad.

      ‘Surely you know,’ she said, ‘that Leezie Lindsay came to Kingcausie with that braw lad she ran away with, and it’s not far from Kingcausie that you’ve come, Mistress Lindsay.’

      The scarlet rushed on Lindsay’s brow and stood in splat-ches over neck and chin.

      She pushed back her mop of curls and stared at the old woman; and her words seemed to be drawn from her without her will.

      ‘Kingcausie? That’s—isn’t that the place among trees, a line of beeches and then some scraggy firs? Beyond the Tower there.’

      ‘Hoots! Never a bit. That’s Knapperley. Daft Bawbie Paterson’s place. Kingcausie lies to the river.’

      The scarlet had deepened on Lindsay’s throat. ‘Have I given myself away?’ she was thinking.

      She had discovered what she had wanted to know since ever she came to Fetter-Rothnie. Often as she had visited the Weatherhouse, she had not stayed there, and its surroundings were unfamiliar. It had seemed so easy, in imagination, when she walked with Kate, to ask it in a careless way, ‘Isn’t that Knapperley over there, Katie?’ or ‘What place is that among the trees?’ But when the moment came her heart had thumped too wildly; she was not strong enough to ask. Now that she knew she sheered off nervously from the subject, as though to linger were deadly. And she plunged, ‘But why a market, Aunt Leeb? I’m sure we shan’t be very rowdy.’

      ‘A lot you know about the fisher folk, if that’s your way of thinking. It was them that cracked the Marykirk bell, jingle-janglin’ for a burying.’

      ‘But they’re not fisher folk here—Francie?’

      ‘She is.’

      And Lindsay, because she was afraid to hear further of the lady who had brought the black-eyed bairns as a wedding gift to her husband, glanced rapidly around, and saw Mrs Falconer put her head in at the door and look at them. There was something pathetic about Cousin Ellen, Lindsay thought—her straying gaze, her muttering to herself. A poor old thing. And what was she wanting now, watching them both like that?

      A poor young thing, Ellen was thinking. She must protect her from her mother’s sly and studied jests. So she said, ‘Kate must be off, Linny,’ and the girl fled gladly.

      Francie was shouting a lusty song as he worked:

      I’ll never forget till the day that I dee

      The lumps o’ fat my granny gied me,

      The heids o’ herrin’ an’ tails o’cats—

      He broke off abruptly and cried, ‘Are ye cleanin’ yersels, littlins? Here’s ladies to see you.’

      The children hove in sight, drying their half-washed hands on opposite ends of a towel. Bold-eyed youngsters, with an address unusual in country bairns. Each hurried to complete the drying first and so be saved from putting away the towel; and both dropping it at one moment, it fell in a heap. The children began to quarrel noisily.

      ‘Put you it by, Stellicky,’ said the man, who stood watching the bickering bairns for awhile with every appearance of content. Francie had a soft foolish kindly face, and while the girl, with black looks, did as she was bidden, he swung the loonie to his shoulder and said, ‘He’s a gey bit birkie, isna he, to be but five year auld?’

      ‘And how’s the wife?’ said Kate.

      Francie confided in her that whiles she took a tig, and he thought it was maybe no more than that.

      ‘They were only married in August,’ said Kate, laughing, as the girls followed a field path away from the croft.

      ‘Oh, look,’ cried Lindsay. ‘A bramble leaf still. Blood-red.’

      ‘So it is,’ Kate replied. ‘And engaged for over twenty years.’

      ‘I 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