Читать книгу This House to Let - Le Queux William - Страница 5

Eight o’clock was the hour appointed for dinner, this fact scoring in the Burtons’ favour, as evincing a knowledge of the habits of good society. Even a few of the most select hostesses in Blankfield, who ought to have known better, made a base compromise with half-past seven.

The two men arrived about five minutes before the time. The young hostess was awaiting them in the drawing-room, attired in some filmy creation that made her look very charming and ethereal. Soft lights from shaded lamps played about her, and lent a touch of perfection to the picture.

Mr Burton was attired in the usual conventional evening dress of the English gentleman. One would have guessed him the sort of man who would wear a ready-made tie. Not at all. He had tied the bow himself, and with a masterly hand. Pomfret even, who was admitted to be the Beau Brummel of his regiment, could not have done it better.

It is generally supposed that a common man looks more common still when he dons evening attire. “George” was an exception to the rule. His black clothes became him, and lent him a certain air of dignity, which was wanting when he assumed everyday garments. Even Murchison, prejudiced as he was against him, was forced to admit to himself that the “bounder” for once looked quite respectable. Pomfret, ever leaning to the charitable side, felt quite enthusiastic over him, and contrasted him favourably with his own cousin, who could boast blue blood on both sides.

Norah Burton played the hostess as to the manner born, greeting the visitors with just the right degree of cordiality, quite free from the effusiveness of most of the Blankfield hostesses. And Burton, taking his cue from her, was hearty without boisterousness.

The young subaltern’s heart warmed to her, she was so gracious, so sweet, and about her there hovered such an air of calm dignity. Rosemount, no doubt, was honoured by the introduction of such distinguished visitors, viewed merely from the social point of view, but she did not permit a suspicion of this to escape her. Rather, judging by her demeanour, the visitors were honoured by being admitted to Rosemount.

“Rather reminds me of a young queen entertaining her subjects,” Pomfret remarked afterwards to his friend in a rather enthusiastic outburst. “I’m not speaking of the ‘county’ of course, but these Blankfield women make you feel they are overwhelmed with your condescension in coming to their houses, that they are hardly fit to sit at the same table with you.”

The dinner was plain, but well-cooked. The appointments were perfect, snowy napery, elegant glass and cutlery. One neat-handed maidservant waited, and waited well. Mr Burton carved the dishes that were carvable, there was no pretence at an à la Russe banquet. Their small establishment could not cope with that, and they did not attempt it. There was a generous supply of wines: hock, burgundy and champagne.

And Mr Burton, strangely subdued, was quite a good host, hospitable but not pressing. Murchison thought he must have been having some lessons from his sister, who seemed intuitively to do the right thing Still suspicious, he was sure that she had been steadily coaching him how to comport himself on this important night.

For, after all, it must be a feather in their caps, that after having been coldly cast aside by the élite of Blankfield, they had captured for their dining acquaintance two of the most popular officers of the exclusive Twenty-fifth.

And Murchison, ever on the watch for any little sign or symptom to confirm his suspicions, had to admit the pair were behaving perfectly. Not the slightest sign of elation at the small social triumph manifested itself in the demeanour of either. Dinner-parties like this might be a common occurrence for all they showed to the contrary.

The substantial portion of the meal was over. Dessert was brought in, with port, claret and sherry, all of the most excellent vintage. The house was a small one, and not over-staffed, but there was no evidence of lack of means. Perhaps the Burtons were wise people in not keeping up a great show, but spending the greater part of their income on their personal enjoyments.

While the men were still lingering over their dessert, Miss Burton rose.

“There are no ladies to support me, so I shall feel quite lonely by myself,” she said in her pretty, softly modulated voice. “Shall we have coffee in the drawing-room? You men can smoke. It is quite Liberty Hall here. My brother smokes in every room of the house.”

Murchison noted the subtle difference between the brother and sister. If Burton had given the invitation, he would certainly have said, “you gentlemen.” The beautiful Norah would not make a mistake like that.

Five minutes afterwards, the three men trooped into the pretty drawing-room with its subdued, shaded lights. Norah was sitting at a small table, on which were set the coffee equipage with an assortment of liqueurs. Decidedly, the Burtons knew how to do things when they received guests.

The “bounder” brother, as Hugh always called him to himself, had drunk very heavily at dinner of every wine: hock, burgundy and champagne. But evidently he could carry a big quantity. It would take more than a small dinner-party like this to knock him over. When he entered the drawing-room his mien was as subdued as when he had first received his visitors.

They drank their coffee round the fair-sized octagonal table, and then they broke up. Miss Burton retired to a Chesterfield, whither Pomfret followed her, as he was bound to do.

Burton bustled out of the room, and returned with a huge box of expensive cigars. He offered the box to Hugh, who took one with a deprecating look at the young hostess.

“We dare not, Miss Burton. Think of your curtains in the morning.”

“Don’t trouble, Captain Murchison,” she said, with her charming smile. “The curtains have to take what comes in this house. George doesn’t often sit in this room, but when he does he always smokes cigars. I told you this was Liberty Hall, you know.”

The box was offered to Pomfret, who took one. “Do you smoke, Miss Burton?” he asked.

“Once in a blue moon. I think I will have one to-night, as a little treat. It is terribly tempting, when I see all you men smoking.” The enamoured Pomfret fetched her a cigarette, hovered over her with a match, till it was properly lighted, and settled himself again on the Chesterfield. If that silly old Hugh didn’t butt in, he was going to have a nice little chat with this charming girl, who had played the young hostess to such perfection.

But Hugh was safely out of the way. Burton had piloted him to a comfortable easy-chair at the extreme end of the drawing-room, and these two antipathetic persons were apparently engaged in an interesting conversation. Anyway, Murchison’s laugh rang out frequently.

Pomfret, it must be confessed, was not very great at conversation. If the ball were opened, he could set it rolling, but he lacked initiative. He looked at Miss Burton with admiring eyes, but although he had got her comfortably to himself on that convenient Chesterfield, he could think of nothing to say to her.

And then a brilliant inspiration came to him. “I say, how gracefully you smoke.” The young woman burst into a pleasant peal of quite spontaneous laughter. She always had a ready smile at command, but her laughter was generally a little forced. This time it was perfectly genuine.

“Oh, you are really comical,” she cried. “How can any girl smoke a cigarette gracefully? In the first place, it is a most unfeminine thing to do. All people must smoke them in the same way, and there can never be anything graceful in the act.”

“Women don’t smoke them the same way,” replied the young subaltern, with the air of a man who has observed and learned. “Most of them chew them, and hold them at arm’s length, as if they were afraid of being bitten.”

“It’s because they don’t like smoking, really, and only do it to be in the fashion. Now, when I am quite in the mood, I actually revel in a cigarette. I am in the mood to-night.”

Pomfret leaned forward, with a tender expression on his rather homely, but good-humoured, countenance.

“That means that you feel happy to-night, eh?”

She nodded brightly. “Oh, ever so happy! It is seeing new faces, you know, after weeks of isolation,” she added with a touch of almost girlish gaiety. “It seems such ages since we gave a dinner-party. And you and Captain Murchison are so nice. It seems almost like a family gathering.”

“You like my friend Murchison, then? I am glad, because it is to him I owe the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

“I think he is a dear, he seems so honest, straightforward, and so reliable.” She spoke with apparent conviction. “Were you not dreadfully shocked when he told you, for of course he must have told you, how we got to know each other?”

“Not in the least,” said Mr Pomfret stoutly. “I explained to him that people can become acquainted, without being properly introduced in the conventional sort of way.”

“Ah, then, he had some doubts himself?” flashed Miss Burton. “I expect he was a little shocked, if you were not.”

“Not in the slightest, I assure you,” replied Mr Pomfret easily. He was not above telling a white lie upon occasions. He remembered too well the remarks that his friend had made upon the girl’s unconventional behaviour, but he was not going to admit anything.

Miss Burton spoke softly, after a brief pause.

“You and Captain Murchison are very great friends, are you not?”

“Awful pals,” was the genuine response. “You see, he knows all my family. And when I joined the regiment, they deputed him to look after me. He has got a hard task,” he added with a laugh.

“Oh, not so very hard really, I am sure of that.” Norah’s voice was very sweet, very caressing. “But you and your friend are of very different temperaments.”

“In what way?”

She smiled. “Oh, in half a hundred ways. Captain Murchison is as true as steel, but also as hard as steel. You, now, are not in the least hard. You are very kind and compassionate, you think the best of everybody.”

“Don’t flatter me too much, please,” interjected the bashful Pomfret.

“Oh, pardon me, I know just the kind of man you are.” The sweet face was very close to his own, the beautiful, rather sad eyes were looking steadily into his. “You are a rich man, or you would not be in this expensive regiment. But, if you were a poor man, and you had only ten pounds in your pocket, you would lend an impecunious friend five of them, and not trouble whether he repaid you or not.”

“I think you have fitted me, Miss Burton. My dear old chum Hugh is never tired of telling me I am an awful ass.”

“You are both right, really,” answered Miss Burton.

“You see, we look at life from two different standpoints.”

“I fancy you come from two different classes?” queried the charming young woman.

Pomfret felt a little embarrassed. He did not want to give away his particular chum. But there were no doubt certain inherited commercial instincts in Hugh that sometimes offended the descendant of a more careless and aristocratic family.

“You see, Hugh has come from the trading class, originally. His ancestors, no doubt, were close-fisted people. Hugh is not close-fisted himself: he is, in a certain way, the soul of generosity, but sometimes the old Adam peeps out in little things.”

He had a swift pang of remorse when he had said this. For he suddenly remembered Hugh’s generous offer of the two hundred which Pomfret, by a very diplomatic letter, was going to cajole out of the octogenarian great-aunt.

“Believe me,” added he fervently, “Hugh is one of the best. He is a little peculiar sometimes in small things. I ought not to have spoken as I have done. I am more than sorry if I have conveyed a wrong impression of him.”

“But you have not,” cried Norah Burton swiftly. “He would be hard in some things: I am sure – for instance – he would never forgive a really dishonourable action, even in the case of his best friend.”

“No, I am sure he would not,” assented Pomfret. “But I don’t fancy he has been much tried that way. We don’t get many ‘rotters’ amongst our lot.”

“Noblesse oblige,” quoted Miss Burton, lightly. Then she added more seriously: “And I am sure he is very kind-hearted and thoughtful. I was impressed with his reluctance to smoke because of the curtains. Of course, he did not remember that it did not matter in the least, as we never have callers.”

She was getting on the theme of their social isolation, but Pomfret was sure that, unlike her brother, strangely subdued to-night from his usual boisterousness, she would handle the subject with her customary tact and good taste.

“Ah, of course, all that is very regrettable. It is not so much your loss, as the loss of Blankfield. I suppose you won’t stay very long here.”

For a moment there came a blazing light in the soft, beautiful eyes. “A few days ago, I advised my brother to pack up and clear out. The snobbish plutocracy of Blankfield had beaten us, made up of retired shopkeepers and merchants. To-night, with you and Captain Murchison as our guests, I think we have beaten Blankfield with its fat mothers and plain daughters.”

She looked superb, as she drew her slender form up to its full height, the glow of indignant triumph blazing on her cheek. At the moment she was extremely beautiful. If Pomfret had been attracted before, he was infatuated now.

“I will help you to beat the Blankfield people, for whom I don’t care a row of pins. I will come, whenever you want me.”

“And your friend Captain Murchison, will he come, too?”

Pomfret smiled whimsically. “Oh yes, he will come, if I make a point of it. Old Hugh thinks he leads me, but I really lead him.” She leaned forward eagerly. “Can you bring some of your brother officers, Mr Pomfret? Please don’t think I am bold and forward and presumptuous. But I do long to be even with these Blankfield people. I would love to make a little sort of salon of my own. I know it is useless to expect the women at present, but they might come in time. Mind you, I don’t want them.”

“I will try,” said Pomfret slowly. “I think I may say that Hugh and I are the two most popular men in the regiment; I say it without vanity. And I don’t suppose we care a snap of the fingers about the Blankfield people. Still, I don’t want to raise hopes that may never be fulfilled. I can only say, I will try.” There was a pause. Then she spoke, and there was a far-away look in her eyes. “You hesitate, I see. Oh, I quite believe you when you say you will try. But there is some stumbling-block in the way, isn’t there?” Pomfret had perforce to dissemble. “There is no stumbling-block that I know of, except running the risk of offending Blankfield. That is not a great one, as we shall be out of here in about two months.”

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.

“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.