Chapter III: Hector Ross

"A man of integrity, sincerity and good nature can never be concealed, for his character is wrought into his countenance." Marcus Aurelius.

ROWENA and Di were on the lawn in front of the house when Hector Ross arrived.

The children were all out on the loch with Donald. It was a very hot afternoon; Rowena was sewing, and Di was lazily reclining in a hammock under the old cedar tree. The car had gone to the station to meet an earlier train, but he had not come by that. Now he walked up to the house, and came striding across the lawn directly he saw the white-gowned figures under the old cedars.

Rowena rose to meet him in her usual happy way.

"My husband had to attend a quarterly parish meeting this afternoon," she said, "or he would be here to welcome you. You must accept my welcome instead."

She introduced him to Di, who was rather taken aback by his youthful figure and brisk alertness of his speech and manner.

Hector Ross was a good-looking man, with blue eyes and fair hair. His face was tanned and rather weather-beaten. One could see he had had an open-air life for many years. As Rowena looked at him, the determination of his mouth and chin, the resolute look in his eyes, and the quick short way in which he clipped his words, showed her that, whatever else he might be, he was very wide awake.

"Couldn't wait to be driven," he said, "so I left my baggage to follow. I'm not a stranger in these parts, you know."

Then he turned to Di.

"Can you be Hugh's daughter?"

Di laughed frankly and freely.

"My good man, his daughter is still in the submissive stage. Her years demand it. Can you see me as the General's daughter, Rowena? What high jinks I would lead him! I'm just a stray visitor, Mr. Ross; and your cousin will be more relieved than otherwise when I've gone!"

Then she swung herself lightly out of the hammock and, leaning against the tree, took out her silver cigarette case and began to smoke.

"Have one?" she said, offering her case to the newcomer.

He shook his head with a smile.

"I go in for a pipe."

He looked at her reflectively, then at Rowena.

"I'm taking stock of you both," he said pleasantly. "Mrs. Macdonald is the old order of woman, and you are the new. I've come across plenty of the modern girls, but the old-fashioned ones are rare."

"I suppose I am old-fashioned," said Rowena laughing, "but it gives me rather a shock to hear you say it. I used not to be considered so a few years back."

"It's good manners does it," said Hector tersely.

"Complimentary to me," laughed Di.

In a few minutes he was talking to them as if he had known them all his life. Incidentally he touched upon his ranch life.

"Why have you given it up?" Di asked. "If you were making your pile, and having a jolly free life out, there, why on earth didn't you keep on a few years longer?"

"I sold up when I went over to France—or, rather, when I went over to Canada to train. I went out with the Canadians, and had a stiff two years at the Front. Then I went back, for I'd a few things to settle up; and I came over here three months ago. I meant to look up Hugh when my aunt had had enough of me. I'm going to my people's old place. It came into the market the beginning of this year, and I was able to buy it in the nick of time."

"And you're going to settle down as a laird, I suppose?" said Di. "Everybody is a laird over here. I've seen some funny specimens."

"And here's another," he returned. "My good aunt told me solemnly, when I left her, that she had never seen my like before. I was a complete bewilderment to her—I believe that was the word she used. I'm going to take her in my pocket when I go back to Kestowknockan; she'll keep house for me and look after my morals and manners."

Rowena looked at him with fresh interest.

"You'd better get a wife to keep house for you," said Di carelessly. "Aunts are out of fashion."

"Same as parents, I suppose," he said, with a slight curl coming to his lips. "I came over with some flappers all intent upon a high old time in London. I asked them if they were orphans. You should have heard them yell."

"Oh, the world is out of gear," said Rowena, "but the pendulum will swing back again. And here, amongst our lochs and glens, we do not see much to puzzle or alarm us. Here come the children! Now you will see Hugh's little daughter. And shall we go indoors to tea? We are having it in the hall to-day. It is cooler than out here."

They moved towards the house. The children met them on the way. Mysie looked up frankly into Hector's face when she was introduced to him.

"Did you know Dad when he was a boy? He says you did. What was he like? Always good, or did he sometimes get into scrapes?"

"Ah! Ask him to tell you about Adolph and the cave, or the night he was left alone, and his parents were in town."

"What cave?" gasped Mysie. "Mine? Oh, do you, know the caves about here? Do tell me all about them."

She seized hold of him, and during tea he enlivened them all by tales of boyish pranks in the holidays.

Towards the close of it General Macdonald came in, and the younger members of the household slipped out into the garden again.

Before the evening was over Hector was a universal favourite, and his hearty laugh and cheery talk caused Di to say to Rowena—

"Make him stay on, do; I like him, and he wakes the General up!"

But she and he had some pitched battles about the present generation. Di was for progress and liberty of speech, and action for all women; he was by way of relegating them to the back shelf. Sometimes he amused himself by rousing her ire, and would be dogmatic in denouncing modern habits with which he was really in sympathy.

Rowena listened to the two, and smiled to herself. It did not hurt Di to hear a man of the world's impression of the present race of girls. She had had very few who had hitherto dared to criticize and contradict her. One bond they had in common was their love for horses. Hector said he meant to breed them when he took possession of his place.

"I'm having proper stables built before I get in," he said. "I'm sick of these cars. Give me a horse, and I want nothing more."

"Hear! Hear!" said Di, and the next morning she and he rode off together. Hector was very sociably inclined—a marked contrast to the General. In a few days' time, he was friends with the Arnold Rashleighs, and with several of the other neighbours round. He had invitations to shoot and fish and to dine and sleep, and sometimes his host did not see him for three or four days.

But on Sundays he invariably turned up at the morning service in the little church of Abertarlie.

Di laughed at him for it one day.

"You are going back to the training of your youth," she said. "Church-going is not the fashion now."

"Neither is heaven or hell," he retorted; "but I'm not a man of fashion—never was."

She looked at him meditatively.

They were smoking together on the terrace. It was Sunday afternoon, and there was a peculiar stillness in the air and scene. Rowena always had Mysie for an hour after lunch in her boudoir upstairs. She had told her frankly that she was going to try to teach her to love her Bible. Milly and Bertha had asked to come too, so the hour's Bible reading was now quite an institution. Sometimes George joined them, but upon this occasion he had gone for a walk with the General. Hector raised his eyes, and when they met Di's, he smiled.

"Well, what's the verdict?"

She shook her head.

"You're too complex for me!"

"I'll give you a chink of light to help you on. I was three years in the war. As you say, religion is now not the fashion, and it isn't good form to talk about it; but in the trenches we did a good bit of talking, and we didn't care a hang if a chap started a yarn about life and death and hereafter, for we were all interested in it. Of course we were. We were shot out of this world into the next all day long. We all had our theories; but in my section at one time there was a parson who knew his job, and did it; and he was a jolly good fellow all round. He made us believe in him, and then he got us to believe in the things he believed. And my belief has stuck ever since; see?"

There was for a second a wistful gleam in Di's eye. Then she said coolly:

"Oh, yes, I see. And Rowena is doing the same with me as your parson did with you. But I'm as hard as nails, and she has a tough job."

"They say," said Hector, as he leant over the stone balustrade, and puffed away at his pipe, "that we all drift back in time to our starting-point. I was an irreligious little beggar when I was a boy, but every Scotchman is brought up in the way in which he should go. I had the head knowledge, and then I chucked it and ran amok for a few years. I found that didn't pay, and settled down to be steady. But it was at the Front I found my early Faith was the only one worth having. And our parson taught us how to live as well as how to die. I never shall be a shining light as, for instance, my cousin Hugh is; but I've got the comfort of settled and rooted convictions. And they make life a bigger and a more understandable thing!"

Di was mute. If a bolt from the blue had tumbled down at her feet she couldn't have been more amazed. She began to wonder if she was always going to be beset with people who would worry her with their religious convictions. To her great relief Hector did not pursue the subject, and she listened with interest to an account he gave her of a journey of his across the Rocky Mountains, when he was shooting bears. But the following Sunday she accompanied the others to church, and never missed a service from that time forward.

Hector only stayed a fortnight with them. He and Di had a long ride together the afternoon before he went, and when they were returning, he said:

"You'll have to come and see my horses one day, when I'm settled in. I shall give a house-warming about Christmas time. Will you come?"

"Is this a bona fide invitation?"

"Rather!"

"Then I accept, with thanks. I'm wondering what kind of a house you'll run. You'll be a bit of a despot I know."

"I jolly well will. I mean to be master in my house, I can tell you."

"Don't try to take to yourself a wife; disaster will follow if you do."

"Why?"

"Because now no woman will lie down for a man to walk over her."

"That's a bit of clap-trap."

"No; it's real fact. You want a wife who will meekly do her lord's will, and that kind of women are out of date. They don't exist."

"I'll wait till they come into fashion again. I'm in no hurry."

"You're so cocksure of yourself!"

"I'm not going to make a mess of my life now," he responded with emphasis. "Look through the daily papers and see the result of these modern wives and husbands. They both want to rule, they both want their own ways, and they go them, and then the fat is in the fire, there is a flare up, and divorce follows."

"But it's all wrong," said Di with sudden heat. "Why should men be selfish brutes? Why should they make life impossible for their wives unless they are their slaves and tools? Women will never again be subjugated by men, never! And I hope you'll never marry; I hope you'll never get a girl whom you are able to crush and mould according to your liking."

He looked at her with a gleam of mischief in his eyes. "Women really like to meet their masters," he said. "I've knocked about the world a good bit, and I assure you they do. There's still the instinct of the ages left in most of them, that they're really made to be loved and protected. You've only to read some of the present-day novels written by your sex to see that the strong man always prevails."

"I shan't argue with you any more," said Di a little huffily. "But you'll meet with your deserts one day, I hope." She parted with him later in the most friendly fashion, and when he had gone told Rowena she felt quite flat.

"He kept us alive; and though I hate some of his principles, he's good company," she said.

She was the next to go. She had been with Rowena much longer than she had intended.

Rowena came into her bedroom the last evening of her stay.

"I'm sorry to lose you," she said; "but you must come again, if you don't find we are too quiet for you."

Di squeezed her hand.

"You're a trump. I wish I could tell you that all your talks have had the effect you want, but I'm too old to change my ways. And I don't want to, if I could. You have made me believe that I'm living on a lower level than you. You're in touch with Unseen Things, and I'm not. And you've made me see I'm a useless cumberer of the earth, and I'm not fulfilling the purpose of my creation. But I've no ability to alter my line, or any desire in that direction. I think you've left me a little more hopeless than when you found me."

"Oh, how dreadful!" exclaimed Rowena. "What can I do to remedy that? After all, dear Di, it's only a question of your will. You know Who will help you to adjust your life differently. You have only to ask, and it will be done."

"I know! I know! And you're a dear old thing to care a snap about me. No one else does." Then, with a change of tone, she said, "I mean to spend next Christmas with Hector Ross. He's a rum sort, isn't he? My word, how he'll bully that little aunt of his! He wants some one to stand up to him. I wish he'd give me carte blanche to bring a few girls to add to his house-party. I know some who would make him sit up. But I don't care for girls myself, as you know. Give me men, even if they're rotten. And he's hardly that, is he? I rather fancy he'll turn into a man like your good husband if left to develop his own line. These Scotchmen are like blocks of granite. You only hammer yourself if you try to hammer them."

Di left and Rowena thought about her much.

Then the young Holts went back to their grandmother. She was living in Mrs. Burke's country house which had been left to her, and meant to stay there. Marion had returned, and took up lessons again, and the house settled down to a very quiet life, much to the General's satisfaction.

Rowena had a long talk with Marion upon the first evening of her return.

"I feel now that your mother is in such comfortable circumstances that you ought not to be out teaching," she said. "Doesn't she want to have you with her?"

"She has Bertha and Milly. She does not need me. I shall never forget your goodness in getting me this work. Why should I give it up? I've never been so happy in my life as I am with you. And I love Mysie, and she is a real pleasure to teach. If you are satisfied with my teaching, don't try to send me away."

"My dear Marion, I'm only too delighted to keep you. We will say no more about it."

"It is so delicious to see mother living in ease and comfort at last," Marion went on. "Of course she's sad still, and sometimes I think grudges herself the little luxuries she can have, because of the thought of my father and of all that he had to be denied. But she is taking increasing interest in the children, and she loves helping the poor in the village and continuing Aunt Caroline's village charities. I often thank God that you were led to live with my aunt. If you had not gone, how different things would have been with us I don't believe she would have left any money to mother at all, because she was so angry that she refused to be helped for so many years."

"I think it was rather quixotic of her," said Rowena.

"Perhaps it was; but she felt my aunt's marriage was everything that was sinful, and she would have nothing to do with it. I think she and my father were rather too strict in their judgments. You lived with her, and loved her, before she changed her life so."

"Yes," said Rowena thoughtfully. "I do not regret it, though, perhaps, I would not advise others to do the same. The life we lived was very deadening to the soul. I do not know what it was, but the very first day I saw your aunt, there was something peculiarly childish and appealing in her face. I felt she was one who wanted a real friend. And then I soon discovered that underneath all her gaiety and love of fun she was really an unhappy woman. I determined to help her if I could; and that determination helped me in many a bad time when I felt inclined to run away and leave it all."

"You were wonderful!" exclaimed Marion.

"Not at all. I undertook a job, and I stuck to it, just as you are sticking to your job now."

The conversation ended, and Marion took up the lessons happily. She was, as she said, only too happy in the present life to wish to change it, and Mysie adored her.