William Le Queux - This House to Let

She leaned closer to him, and her voice sank to a whisper. “There is a stumbling-block, I know. You are too kind and generous to state what it is, you could not, as to-night he is your host. It is my brother.”

And then poor, infatuated Pomfret sought no further refuge in subterfuge. He blurted out the truth. “Some of our chaps wouldn’t stand him, you know,” he said simply.

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.