This House to Let

There was a little convulsive movement of the delicate hands. “And he is such a dear good fellow at heart, wanting I know in the little delicacies that mark a real gentleman. You see a great difference between us, don’t you?”

“A very distinct difference,” assented Pomfret.

“I will explain it to you in a few words. My father was a harum-scarum sort of person, as I told you last time you were here, hard-riding and hard-drinking. When he was a boy of twenty-five he married a woman out of his own class, a shopgirl or a barmaid, I am not quite sure which. George is many years older than myself, as I told you he is really my half-brother. The first wife died, my father married again, this time a lady. I am the daughter of the second marriage. Now, I think you understand.”

Pomfret was delighted at this avowal, it proved his own prescience.

“I am so glad you told me, but as it happens, it was just what I guessed.”

Miss Burton looked at him with admiring eyes. “You are really very clever, you know. Well, I will not exactly say this is a secret, but you will whisper it about discreetly. You need not be quite so frank as I have been about details, but you can hint at a mésalliance. I hate to have to tell you so much, for my brother has been so good to me.”

“Ah!” Mr Pomfret’s air plainly showed that he was eager for further information.

And Miss Burton was quite willing to gratify him. The young man was a pleasant, comfortable sort of person to talk to. He was an admirable listener, and never broke in with unnecessary, or irritating interruptions.

“When my father died he left little behind him but debts; my mother had preceded him some ten years. Poor George had gone into a stockbroker’s office, through the good offices of a distant connection. His salary was very small, but he made a home for me. He would not hear of my earning my own living.”

“That could not have been very long ago,” remarked Pomfret, “because you are not very old now.”

“No, it was not long,” answered the girl, not committing herself to any definite dates. “Well, we had a very hard time, as you can imagine. Then suddenly our luck changed. An uncle of George’s on his mother’s side had gone out to Australia as a boy, and amassed, we won’t say a fortune from your point of view, but what we should look upon as wealth. He had never married, and when he died, a will was found in which he left all he was possessed of to his sister’s children. George was the only child, so he took it all.”

“So he threw up business and went in for a country life.”

“Well, he has thrown it up for a time. I am not quite certain he will not get tired of inactivity, and go back to it. Now that he has capital, it would be easy for him to embark in something that would keep him occupied, and pay him well.”

“Not a sportsman, I suppose, he doesn’t care for hunting or shooting? The country is slow for a man if he doesn’t do something in that line.”

The pretty girl smiled; there was a faint touch of humour in the smile. “Oh, he’s not rich enough to indulge in luxuries of that sort. Besides,” she added hastily, “he has such wretched sight, he would be no good at sport.” Pomfret thought it had been a very pleasant, enlightening conversation. Norah seemed to have been perfectly frank about their past and their present position. She did not pretend to be anything but what she was, the daughter of a spendthrift father, living on what was practically the charity of a good-hearted brother. And that brother was indebted for his good fortune to a relative who must have been a man of the people.

While the two young people were having this confidential chat, Mr Burton was making himself agreeable to the other guest, in his doubtless well-meant, but somewhat undiplomatic, fashion.

“I do envy you young fellows when I see you walking about as if the world belonged to you.”

Hugh drew himself up stiffly. “I was not in the least aware that any one of us conveyed that impression.”

“No offence meant, I assure you.” Hugh’s tone showed him that he had been guilty of bad taste: a blessing Norah had not heard – she would have given him a bad quarter of an hour later on. “But all army men, I think, get a certain kind of swagger. Oh, nothing overbearing or unpleasant about it, of course. They are made so much of that there is no wonder if they do fancy themselves a bit. I’m sure I should if I were one of them.” Murchison made no comment on this frank statement, and the other man rambled on in desultory fashion.

“It’s the life I wanted. As a boy I longed to grow up quickly and go into the army. There was a fair chance of it then, when the old man had still got a bit of money left. But by the time I was old enough the idea had to be knocked on the head. I had to go into a dingy stockbroking office instead.”

Hugh pricked up his ears at the announcement. He had not suspected that the man would be so communicative about his past. Of course he had gone as a clerk. If his father was not well-off enough to put him in the army neither could he have afforded to buy him a share in a business.

“Yes,” pursued Mr Burton, “it was an awful come down after the dreams I had indulged in.”

“It must have been a very bitter disappointment,” assented Hugh politely, in spite of his firm conviction that the army was the very last profession in the world suited to a man of his host’s obvious peculiarities.

“I should have been awfully keen on soldiering,” pursued Mr Burton, under the impression that he had discovered a sympathetic listener. “Don’t you consider it a splendid life?”

“There are many things in its favour, certainly,” was the rather frigid reply.

“But, after all, I don’t think I should have cared to be in the line; there’s not the same glamour about it, is there? You fellows in the cavalry, in a crack regiment like yours, must see the rosy side of life.” He heaved a sigh. “And, of course, you’ve all got pots of money to grease the wheels.”

Hugh fidgeted perceptibly. How very vulgar the man was, with an innate vulgarity that nothing would ever eradicate. But his host, absorbed in his own reflections, did not observe the movement.

“Of course, we know all about you, about the great house of Murchison, you are tiled-in all right.” He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper: “What about that young chap yonder? I suppose he’s rolling in money, too?”

It was growing insufferable. For two pins Hugh would have got up and bidden him good night then and there, but he shrank from making a scene. What a fool he had been to come here, to allow his kindly feeling for that susceptible young donkey of a Pomfret to expose him to such an ordeal as this.

“Really, Mr Burton,” he said in a cutting voice, “I do not discuss the private affairs of my friends on such a brief acquaintance. If you are really anxious to know, I believe Mr Pomfret has considerable expectations from an old aunt who is fairly wealthy. Those expectations depend, I understand, upon his conforming generally to her wishes in all respects.”

“Ah, I understand,” said the unabashed Burton. “Sorry if my question gave you offence. What really put it in my head was the difference between his position and mine when I was his age.”

There was silence for some little time, while the two men applied themselves steadily to their cigars. Then Burton jumped up suddenly.

“This must be a bit slow for you and your friend, and the night is young. What do you say to a game at bridge?”

Yes, Captain Murchison would welcome a game of bridge, anything as a relief to this vulgarian’s conversation.

They played for over two hours, Murchison keenly alert from certain suspicions that had been forming in his mind. At present there was no foundation for these vague suspicions. They played for small stakes, but the visitors rose up the winners, not by a great amount, but still winners.

It was a fine night, the two men walked back to their quarters.

“How did you get on with the charmer? I saw you seemed very confidential together,” asked the older man.

“Splendidly, old chap. She told me a lot about her history.” Pomfret related all he had been told in full. “And how did you get on with the brother?”

“Don’t ask me,” replied Hugh with a groan. “He’s the most insufferable creature I ever came across. I don’t really think I can go there again. At the beginning of the evening he started fairly well, but later he reverted to type.”

“Well, I may as well tell you straight, I shall. The next time we go I’ll take a share of the brother.”

When Pomfret spoke in that tone he meant what he said, and Hugh knew he would have his own wilful way.

There was one piece of information which the young subaltern had not imparted to his friend.

It was this – that after much pressing, and more than one refusal, Miss Burton had agreed to meet him to-morrow afternoon at a very sequestered spot about a mile and a half from Blankfield, with the view of pursuing their acquaintance.

Chapter Five

From the night of that dinner-party Murchison noted a subtle difference in his young friend’s demeanour. Pomfret had always been a harum-scarum sort of young fellow, accustomed to follow erratic and injudicious impulses, not absolutely devoid of brains of a certain order, but of imperfect and ill-balanced mentality.

But in his wildest escapades he had always been frank and above-board. And he was ever the first, when he had overstepped the border-line, to admit that he was in the wrong. And on such occasions, far from justifying his exploits, he had been ready to deplore them.

But his frankness seemed to have departed from that night. He seemed rather to avoid than seek the society of his old friend and mentor. When Hugh brought up the subject of the Burtons, Pomfret seemed anxious to avoid it, to say as little as possible. He seemed to shut himself up within his own soul.

Hugh, of course, was profoundly uneasy. Such a transparent creature as Pomfret would not be likely to retire within his own shell unless there were cogent reasons for the withdrawal. And the reasons were inspired by the attractive personality of the fascinating siren at Rosemount, the charming young woman who explained the presence of an undesirable brother by the narrative of her father’s first unfortunate marriage.

Pomfret had invited the brother and sister to a dinner at the principal hotel in the place, and Hugh had been his friend’s guest. Ladies, of course, could not be asked to the Mess. It had been a happy solution of a somewhat awkward position. Mr Burton no doubt understood, but he accepted the situation with alacrity.

From the dinner they had adjourned to Rosemount. Here they had played cards as before, but they left off fairly even. Hugh’s suspicions about card-sharping were dissipated as before. At the same time, he was still resolved to keep a watchful eye upon the pair. It was firmly engrained upon his mind, and only, of course, from the purest instinct, that he did not trust either of them.