Chapter 5: Rowena’s Power

You are endowed with Faculties which bear
Annexed to them as ‘twere a dispensation
To summon meaner spirits to do their will
And gather round them at their need; inspiring
Such with a love themselves can never feel.
Browning.

“HERE you are! It’s good to see you both. Now come and be introduced to my little aunt.”

Rowena and her husband were in the big hall of Kestowknockan, and Hector was welcoming them both in his cheerful, hearty manner.

There was a group of his guests round the big fire, and tea was just beginning. Miss Ross rose from her chair behind the silver urn, and shook hands with Rowena. She was a little grey-haired woman with happy smiling eyes, but she appeared a little flustered. Something in Rowena’s face made her say in a low tone to her:

“Come and sit by me, Mrs. Macdonald. I have heard all about you from my cousin Hugh. You will help me. Three utter strangers have arrived to-day. Hector knows them, but I don’t.”

Rowena took a seat by her, but Di Dunstan seized hold of her.

“Here I am! The bad half-penny back again! I came this morning, and Allan Graeme joined me at Euston, so we’ve been fellow companions all the way. Also Hawtry Norris; do you know him? I’ve only met him once at the Graemes’—but it seems that he and Mr. Ross ran a ranch together once.”

Di was looking very handsome in a dark blue cloth costume with fur trimming. Her fair hair and fresh complexion were set off by the sombreness of her gown. Captain Graeme was delighted to see Rowena again:

“We owe your husband a grudge for carrying you off to these lonely wilds,” he said. “Several have been asking ‘Where is that bright, jolly girl with the Saxon name, that used to be about town so much with Mrs. Burke?’ And I’ve answered sadly, ‘Married and done for.’”

“Do I look done for?” Rowena demanded; then Hector came up and introduced Mr. Norris to her and a Sir William and Lady Bampford. Sir William had been the English Minister at Panama. He was a thin, wiry little man, a great talker; his wife was a silent, stately woman, who seemed rather out of her element in Hector’s free and easy household. The only other guest was a young widow, a Scotch cousin of the Rosses, a Mrs. McClintock.

They were all in very good spirits, and Hector was standing a good deal of chaff about his “ancestral halls.”

“I own it isn’t up to much at present,” he said, looking round his rather empty hall with a grimace of disgust. “The last tenant took away everything with him, and my aunt and I have just got a few things together from Glasgow for the time being. I’ll furnish it in good style later on.”

“What style do you call good?” asked Mrs. McClintock.

“My own, of course. And I shall go in for simplicity and comfort and not have Birmingham suits of armour, and sham tapestry, and faked bronzes. If I haven’t the real article—and I haven’t—I shan’t counterfeit them.”

“You’ve got a few bearskins of your own,” said Mr. Norris. “I should have them stuffed and placed about the hall. Try a few natural attitudes. They would keep away burglars, perhaps.”

Through this talk Miss Ross was dispensing tea and talking to Rowena.

“Do help me,” she said. “I have never visited country houses and I don’t know how to entertain. Hector laughs at me if I ask him who is to take who in to dinner. ‘Let them sort themselves out,’ he says, ‘I’m not going to run the place like the fashionable johnnies! It’s to be Liberty Hall.’ But if you have guests, you must treat them with courtesy and consideration; and I’m too old to be ignorant. I don’t like it.”

“I think we all enjoy unconventionality sometimes,” said Rowena. “If I can help you, I will; but every one seems very happy at present.”

Hector’s house was like himself, simple and unpretending. There was an absence of soft couches and cushions, and of all the little knick-knacks that women gather round them. Miss Ross sighed for her comfortable little Terrace home, when she encountered the blasts of air through the long draughty passages and big windows that flanked every room. She had never lived in this house; for Hector’s father had taken possession of it when she and her sister were living in London; and he had kept it, till his many debts had forced him to sell it. But she valiantly tried to do her best, and she was so anxious and deferential in her efforts to please her nephew’s guests, that they could not but respond to her nervous and timid advances.

That evening Di asked Rowena to come into her bedroom the last thing at night. When she did so Di planted her in an easy-chair before the fire and began to talk.

“Isn’t it queer that I should be down here so soon again? Why did he ask me, I wonder? What an odd fish he is! Did you hear his butler come to him for orders for to-morrow morning. ‘How many for church, sir?’ he asked. ‘Will the wagonette be sufficient?’ And then he looked round the hall and counted us all. ‘Ten,’ he said, and the widow looked up sharply: ‘How do you know we all mean to go?’ she said. And he laughed and thrust his hands in his pockets in his Colonial way: ‘Oh, everybody goes to church in my house,’ he said. ‘And I give notice to you all that there’ll be no billiards and bridge going to-morrow. I’m going to keep Sunday as it used to be kept when I was a kid.’”