Peter west, p.1
Peter West, page 1
PETER WEST
D. E. Stevenson
© D. E. Stevenson 1923
Dorothy E. Stevenson has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1923 by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books.
DEDICATED TO ALL WHO LOVE SCOTLAND, HER TEARS AND SMILES, HER DARK WOODS AND SUNLIT MOORS, AND THE PLAIN AND HOMELY FOLK IN THE LONELY VILLAGES OF THE NORTH.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
PART I.
Wings of Gossamer
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PART II.
Wings of Courage
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence chills and blesses,
And for ever, in the hill-recesses,
Her more lovely music
Broods and dies.—R.L.S.
PROLOGUE
Mr Maclaren loved Kintoul. Ever since he had come there, nigh on twenty years ago, the place had “grown on him,” as the saying goes. It had seemed a paradise of rest and quiet to the town-weary minister — a place where a man might regain health and strength of mind and body; where a man might forget the ugly striving and pushing of the city, and steep his very soul in the peace of God.
It was, on the whole, an easy thing to fall in love with Kintoul. There was something alluring about it, something mysteriously feminine. Even in the depths of winter, when the pure white snow covered all the hill-side, hanging on the pine-trees like fleecy blankets, and the river (the only non-white thing in the whole valley) ran like a narrow snake between jagged ice — even then there was something soft about Kintoul. The hills were friendly sentinels for all their rugged crests; the long dark nights were lighted by misted stars; the very snowflakes seemed to caress one’s cheek as they fell.
When spring came, soft, blustery winds blew primroses and cowslips into the sheltered hollows, still moist and green from the late melting of the snows. Soft white clouds drifted across the blue, blue sky, throwing patches of moving shadows on the newly awakening hills.
Summer brought long, drowsy days — days which seemed to have forgotten how to fade into night; when the emerald turf paled to a soft dun colour, and heather bloomed like a purple mist under the golden sun.
Autumn came as a king in full panoply of state, and, in a single night of frost the hill-side glowed with colour like the dream of a demented artist. Here rowan and beech, with their clashing tones, mingled harmoniously, and the dark, unchanging pines stood like quiet tokens of immortality among the gay but transitory foliage of their neighbours. And over all was the mist, the cool, soft white mist, lying sometimes in the valley hollows, sometimes only capping the hills, eddying hither and thither, and enhancing the beauties of the landscape by revealing them afresh and unexpectedly through rents in its clinging folds.
With each season the little minister was more and more captivated with his mountain home. “Give me spring,” he would say, if it happened to be the springtide of the year when you met him, and he would lift up his thin, ascetic face to the hills in silent worship of their beauty; or, if it were winter, he would cry, “Oh, what would I not give for the gift of etching! Look at those trees! See the graceful tracery of their dark twigs, all outlined by hoar-frost! I would like fine to put their beauty down on paper so that other folk, who must dwell in towns and cities, might enjoy it with me.”
Something, he had, of ecstatic praise for every season in turn, loving God in the flowers and trees, and fearing Him in the hills.
The little village of Kintoul lies at the bottom of the picturesque valley to which it gives its name. It grew up round a castle — one of the strongholds of the lawless north — depending for sustenance and protection upon the bounty of its chieftain; rendering him fealty when required, and receiving in return some small and precarious benefits.
“The old order changeth,” however, and the castle has long syne fallen into ruins. Its proud battlements are a moss-grown playground for the village children, its frowning towers are the haunt of the jackdaw; but the little village has now become old enough to fend for itself. It requires no patronage — nay, would bitterly resent anything approaching it; and continues through the years to drowse away its existence in the time-honoured manner of Highland villages.
A river, treacherous in its varying size and power, lingers drowsily round the rock upon which the castle stands, and glides by the thatched cottages and cobbled street of the village, mirroring them and the surrounding pine-trees on its darkly mysterious breast. Once past the village it wakes to life; a natural bar of rock breaks it into a score of silver ribbons, which fall with a soft roar into a pool some forty feet below. This pool is named the Giant’s Quaich, and it is well named, for when the churning foam is brown in spate it is like a vast bowl foaming and frothing with Brobdingnagian beer.
The sound of the waterfall comes softly to Kintoul — softly, but unceasingly. It is a cool, drowsy sound in summer, which lulls the village to sleep on many a warm, breathless night; but it is a loud roar in winter, frightening many a snugly bedded bairn into startled wakefulness.
There is an old house, crooked and lichened with age, but mellow like a sun-ripened plum. It is set in trees, as a jewel is set, close by the river, and divided from the cobbled street of the village by a narrow garden, which in summer is full of bright flowers. The Boat House has belonged to the Kerrs for many generations. It is possessed of a large, roomy boat, and this fact has given the house its name. The boat is used as a ferry by the inhabitants of the village, and by others from far and near, for this is the only ferriable spot for many miles up and down that turbulent stream. Kintoul Ferry is justly famed for its safety in stormy weather, and for the reliable boatman with his broad-beamed craft. There are few days, even in the Highland winter, when John Kerr refuses to ferry a passenger across.
On a warm day in summer the ferry is a drowsy spot, and it is difficult to imagine the wild scenes which must have taken place there. Mr Maclaren says that a book might be written full of wild and stirring tales and yet leave half the stormy history of Kintoul Ferry untold. He will wax eloquent on the subject; he will draw you to the window of his study, which overlooks his beloved river, and will conjure up reivers swimming their stolen herds on moonless nights, or a Lochinvar crossing here, with his noble steed carrying some fair lady of high degree. Here the fierce Macalpine and his raiders fought many a battle; here, also, came the ubiquitous Wade and his road-making army.
If you have shown sufficient enthusiasm for his hobby, Mr Maclaren will turn to his desk (a battered but roomy piece of furniture which fills up a quarter of his small study) and will pull out drawer after drawer to exhibit queer pieces of steel and iron and bone found on the banks of the ferry. Holding these in his thin white hand, he will speak of fights and midnight raids till his old faded eyes blaze with excitement, and he has ruffled his thick white hair into war-like disarray. He is a keen antiquarian, and the good folk of Kintoul find it a strange but lovable eccentricity in their little minister; they like him all the better for what they call his madness. They bring him pieces of bone which they find by the river’s brink, and shake their heads wisely when they see the gleam in his eyes.
Perhaps in the course of Mr Maclaren’s lecture his eye will fall upon the Boat House, and then he will pause and sigh, for, if his mind be in the past and his soul set on Heaven, his heart is most certainly here with the people of his parish. If you have gained his confidence he will tell you a story about the Boat House, not a stirring tale of fighting and robbery, but a sad tale of a young girl’s mistake.
Mary Simpson was a beautiful young girl, the daughter of Mr Maclaren’s predecessor at Kintoul Manse. She was an only child, lonely and high-spirited, and she fell in love with John Kerr of the Boat House. From her window in the manse she could see him venturing forth in all weathers, a romantic figure in his unenviable rôle of Charon. He was much older than she, but he was very handsome in the stern, rugged manner of the north. Tall and strong, battling with the river in its every phase, John Kerr soon filled her girlish dreams, and swept her off her feet before her parents were aware that anything was toward. Mary’s head, which was full of Scott, and not very much else besides, was completely turned. She would not listen to her parents’ pleadings; nor, when pleadings failed, was she less deaf to their threats.
The romantic haze through which Mary saw John Kerr was pitiably soon dissipated when, in defiance of her parents’ wishes, she married him. She found out her mistake when it was too late. They had nothing in common — scarcely a common language. The girl was ter rified; she had spent all her life sheltered and protected from all knowledge of the world and its realities. Mary’s delicacies of feeling at first mystified the good John, and then bored him; they drifted apart. It was then that Mary began to realise the utter friendlessness of her position; there was not a creature to whom she could turn for a word of comfort or advice; it was almost incredible. She was neither fish nor flesh. Her own folk, with their narrow bigotry, had completely cast her off; the villagers looked at her askance. Perhaps if Mary had been less proud or less miserable she might have made friends, but as it was she suffered her loneliness in silence.
John Kerr was good enough to his wife, but his lights were not brilliant; he was a dour Scot, thrifty to the point of meanness, and with the fierce respectability of his kind. Mary made him a dutiful wife and was a good mother to her three children, but there was no vitality in her. She died — if not of a broken heart, of a bruised one — when her youngest child, a daughter, was eight years old.
There is more than that to the story of Mary Kerr, but you will never hear it from Mr Maclaren, though sometimes he will tell you how she died and show you the quiet grave, beautifully kept by the little daughter, in the green kirkyard on the hill-side.
“Well, well!” Mr Maclaren will say at last, looking at you over the top of his spectacles. “We all make mistakes sometimes, and she paid heavy enough for hers.” Or, if he thinks you look young and flighty, he will, perhaps, point a moral to the story of Mary Simpson, and draw your attention to the Fifth Commandment and its promise. Then, to make up for the lecture, he will lend you his favourite trout-rod, and, after a learned discourse on the rival merits of the “gray moth” and the “red spider,” he will send you forth, with his blessing, to work destruction amidst the finny population of the river.
PART I.
Wings of Gossamer
CHAPTER
ONE
I.
One fine day Mr Maclaren was taking his usual walk along the river-bank, keeping a wary eye on the pools for the glitter of a silver fin. Like all keen fishermen, the sight of a fish was to him almost as thrilling as one hooked on his line, and he would return home full of the immense size of some trout which he had seen “louping for all the world like a salmon.” To these confidences Bella, his cook and housekeeper, was always a sympathetic listener.
Suddenly, as he was walking quietly along, Mr Maclaren heard a shout, and, looking up in alarm, saw a huge figure clad in baggy tweeds coming towards him. He carried a bundle under one arm, and with the other was brandishing a large stick covered with knobs. Mr Maclaren’s first instinct was flight, but second thoughts showed him that he could not hope to outdistance the man, who was even now approaching with great strides. So he stood firm, and waited as bravely as he could.
“Thunder and lightning!” cried the huge man when he came within speaking distance of the little minister — “thunder and lightning! if it isn’t Mr Maclaren himself! Not a day older — man, you’re a wonder!”
Mr Maclaren found his two hands seized and shaken vigorously, while a running stream of questions poured from the giant’s lips.
“Why, I believe it is Brownlow Forth,” he said at last, when he had found his breath.
“Of course,” said the big man. “Didn’t you know me? There aren’t many people of my size in the world, are there?”
“I did not know you at first,” owned the minister. “I dare say you have changed more than I have in — let me see — is it fifteen years?”
“Nineteen, to be exact,” was the reply.
“Well, to be sure, is it nineteen?” repeated Mr Maclaren, nodding his head. “It does not feel as much to me.”
“To me it feels like a hundred.”
“Ah, well! Time goes quickly with the old; but tell me, Brownlow, where have you come from? Can you stay at the manse for a little?”
“Sure I can, if you can have me, Mr Maclaren,” said Brownlow, answering the last question first; “if it won’t put you out to have me for a bit. As for your other question, I’ve got ‘demobbed’ at last, so I’m feeling at a loose end. I’ve been all through France since ‘Fourteen,’ with never a scratch — though you’d think I was a big enough target for the blighters to aim at, wouldn’t you?” and the laugh that followed woke answering echoes in the pine-clad hills, so that it seemed to Mr Maclaren’s bewildered mind that the whole valley of Kintoul was laughing at Brownlow’s joke.
“You were fortunate to come safely through so many dangers,” said Mr Maclaren in his quiet way.
“Perhaps,” replied the ex-soldier, with a sudden return to gravity. “Though there’s a tag of Latin — just about all the Latin that ever stuck in my head, for I was never a book-learner, as you know well, Mr Maclaren — Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori. I used to feel sometimes that it would be a good end, you know — and there was no one to miss me.”
Mr Maclaren hardly knew what to answer, so he was wisely silent. They turned and walked back to the manse together, the big man suiting his long strides to the feeble steps of his old friend. They made a strange couple as they strolled along in earnest and eager conversation, quite unconscious of the glances of the villagers, who were all dying of curiosity to know who the “meenister’s freend” might be.
Brownlow Forth looked what he was — an adventurer; one who had travelled to the edges of the world, and had looked upon strange sights. He had been in several wars and in more tight corners than he had fingers on his huge hands. His sun-browned face and blue eyes, with crow’s-foot creases at the corners, reminded one of a sailor. He had, in point of fact, tried life at sea, joining up as an A.B., but he found it too monotonous. So when his ship came to Hong Kong he deserted, and fled up-country, where he had come in for a Boxer rising, and had narrowly escaped being burned to death. This was but one of the many adventures which were strung on Brownlow’s life like beads upon a thread. He was always on the spot when trouble was brewing; always ready to lend his help to the weaker side. His hot-headed, generous, and impulsive nature landed him in a hundred scrapes, which his huge frame and fierce appearance carried him through more or less victoriously.
II.
“Well, well!” said Brownlow Forth, as he sank into the minister’s chair, making it creak lugubriously. “Nothing altered, nothing changed; everything exactly the same as when I was here — nineteen years ago.”
“Not quite, Brownlow,” said Mr Maclaren in his quiet voice, which contrasted so strangely with the giant’s thundering tones. “Not quite. I am older, and you, I hope, are wiser.”
“I see you are not too optimistic about me,” cried Brownlow Forth, trying to hide a certain amount of embarrassment with a laugh which made the house tremble.
Mr Maclaren shook his head smilingly, for Brownlow’s coming had sent his thoughts chasing back nearly twenty years: twenty years which had fled swiftly for him in the quiet hamlet — twenty years of peace.
It seemed only yesterday that the giant, a big, romantic boy of two-and-twenty, had stayed with him for a summer in his lonely manse. Brownlow was an orphan, and had been sent to Mr Maclaren by his guardian to read Latin, and also to recuperate after a serious attack of influenza, which had sapped the strength of the overgrown youth. Brownlow was a breath from the life which Mr Maclaren had just left — the life of towns and schools. He was full of enthusiasms, shy and impulsive at the same moment, awkward and clumsy as an overgrown puppy, yet with the most sensitive and gentle soul ever contained in a human body. “Don Quixote” Mr Maclaren had called him in a whimsical moment, and the simile was apt. He was always tilting at windmills, always ready to mix himself up in other people’s troubles, and he was usually left to bear the brunt alone.
Perhaps it was inevitable that this quixotic boy should fall in love with Mary Kerr. She was so small and frail, so pathetic in her helplessness, and in her resignation to her fate. The boatman seemed a bully — the most despicable trait in the boy’s eyes; sympathy for her came to him at their first meeting, a passionate pity that wrung his tender heart, and love followed with startling rapidity.
