Chapter Three

As a result of his visit to Rosemount, Hugh Murchison was very perturbed in his mind. He blamed himself severely for having been tempted into that rather intimate conversation at the tea-shop. Miss Burton was attractive enough, and ladylike enough, to excuse any man for taking advantage of his obvious opportunities, but he had been a fool to go farther. He ought never to have set his foot in the house of people of whom he knew nothing.

It was all Jack Pomfret’s fault, he decided hastily. It was his influence, his keen desire to make the girl’s acquaintance, that had weighed down his friend’s prudence. For, if left to himself, Hugh was quite sure that he would have dallied and dallied till all inclination to call at Rosemount had died down.

And Pomfret had owned to being greatly impressed with the fair young châtelaine. He had admitted that he had never met a girl who had appealed to him in quite the same sort of way. In fact, it was easy to see he had fallen desperately in love with her.

And Jack was just one of those light-hearted, susceptible sort of chaps who have not an atom of common-sense in their composition, who will obey their impulses, regardless of consequences.

And he was not his own master. His career was practically at the disposal of his somewhat puritanical aunt. It was just on the cards that Jack would be mad enough to propose to this girl who had so bewitched him. One could imagine how the aunt would receive such a communication.

There was one little ray of hope, however. If Jack did commit such a crowning folly, he would be far too honourable not to acquaint Miss Burton with his circumstances. Hugh was fairly convinced that the young lady knew how to take care of herself. And, even if she did fall in love with Jack, as he had done with her, and be inclined to make a fool of herself, there was the objectionable brother to be reckoned with. He would certainly not allow his sister to engage herself to a man, except with the consent of that man’s family.

All the same, it was as well to avoid any embarrassing entanglements, if possible. It is easy to retrace your steps when you have only just started.

With this object in view, Murchison sought his friend on the Sunday preceding the day on which they were to present themselves at Rosemount.

“Jack, old man, I have been thinking – ” he began.

Mr Pomfret lifted a warning finger. “My dear friend and mentor, don’t indulge in such violent processes. It’s very bad for you.”

“Don’t be an ass, Jack. You are not really funny when you say that sort of thing. I’ve been thinking over this business to-morrow, and, frankly, I don’t relish the prospect. We had better cut it out.”

Pomfret’s face took on an obstinate expression. “You are speaking for yourself, of course. For my part, I don’t intend to break my appointment. In my opinion, it would be an awfully low-down thing to do. If you didn’t want to go, you shouldn’t have accepted.”

It was evident the young man was not in a very reasonable frame of mind, equally evident he would require very careful handling.

“Now, Jack, don’t get off the handles. You know you are an awfully impetuous chap, and that I have much the cooler head of the two. I have been thinking it all out the last day or two, and I don’t like the look of it.”

“You informed me just now that you had been thinking,” replied Mr Pomfret in the same sarcastic strain. “There is no need to dwell upon the fact. It is obvious.”

But the elder man was not to be ruffled. If anything unpleasant came of this sudden acquaintance he would lay the blame on himself for having mentioned that little incident of the tea-shop, and inspired the mercurial Jack’s love of the daring and adventurous.

“I don’t know that I did accept, as a matter of fact, except by implication. I was about to return an evasive answer, leave it in the air, so to speak, when you cut in and jumped at the invitation for both.”

This was true, and Mr Pomfret’s air lost a little of its jaunty confidence. “Well, if you think I lugged you in, get out of it yourself. Of course you will have to tell some beastly lie that they will see through at once. Anyway I am going, and that’s flat.”

“If you go, I shall go,” said Hugh firmly. “But I would like you to listen to me for a few moments, and put things before you as they present themselves to me.”

“Fire away, then,” was Pomfret’s answer, but it was delivered in a very ungracious tone.

“Of course we are both agreed about the brother,” began Hugh mildly.

The other interrupted impatiently: “The brother be hanged. We are not going to the house for the brother’s sake, but because of the sister. What’s the use of blinking the fact? If you had met him in the tea-shop instead of her, I don’t suppose you would have wasted a word on him, no more should I. But I don’t see why that pretty girl should be ostracised because of him.”

“I don’t quite see, under the circumstances, how you can separate them,” pursued the obstinate Hugh. “I should like to turn off, just for a moment to the sister, and consider her.”

“Go ahead,” said Mr Pomfret in a somewhat sullen tone. He was keeping his impulsive and fiery nature under control, out of his great respect for his friend. But it was very doubtful if he would stand much criticism even from one so respected.

“I have not a word to say against her appearance or her manners. I will go further, and say there is not a girl in Blankfield, or for the matter of that in the ‘county’ itself, who gives the impression of a thorough gentlewoman more convincingly than she does.” Pomfret’s face brightened at these words. “Oh, then you admit that, and you have knocked about the world a few years longer than I have. I am of the same opinion, but if you say it, it must be so.”

“I do say it unhesitatingly, but mind you, I am only judging from outside appearances. Now, how comes it that such a refined and ladylike girl as that should have such a bounder of a brother? There is a mystery there.”

Jack Pomfret prepared to argue. “I don’t quite agree that he is a bounder, he is not quite boisterous enough for that. Let us agree on a common definition – namely, that he is bad form. That fits him, I think.”

“And the sister is very good form. You can’t deny that there is a mystery.”

But the young subaltern developed a quite surprising ingenuity in argument.

“She just simply calls him her brother,” sharply, “but she has told you he is her half-brother by a first marriage – father a gentleman, mother a common person, hence the bad form. A second time, the father married a woman of his own class, hence Norah Burton. Norah knows him for a good sort, if a bit rough, and sticks to him. That’s a reasonable theory, anyway.”

“More ingenious than reasonable perhaps,” commented Murchison with an amused smile.

Pomfret went on, warming to his subject. “And, hang it all, if we speak of bounders – and mind you, I won’t admit he is a bounder in the strict sense of the term – is there a family in England without them?”

“Quite the same sort, do you think?” was Hugh’s question.

“Look here, I’m not going to be impertinent, and ask if you can point to any amongst your own connections, but I know something of my own family. I’ve got a cousin, good blood on both sides. He’s been a bounder from the time he learned to talk, sets your teeth on edge; as some fellow said, every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot into it. By Gad, this fellow Burton is a polished gentleman to him. If George showed his nose in this regiment they would send him to Coventry in five minutes.”

“As they did that chap last year,” remarked Hugh, alluding to an offensive young man who had been compelled to send in his papers, owing to the fact that his general demeanour had not come up to the somewhat exalted standard of the gallant Twenty-fifth.

“Precisely,” assented Pomfret. “But you were going to give me some views about the girl. Again I say, fire away.”

“Well, to go back to that meeting in the tea-shop. It was, to say the least, a little unconventional for a young girl to invite an utter stranger to call upon her.”

“You were not an utter stranger,” retorted Jack doggedly. “She had heard who you were, perhaps from the tradespeople. She knew you were a gentleman, she knew your name, Captain Murchison. Hang it all, if you had met her in one of these dull Blankfield houses, and she had been introduced by a hostess about whom you both knew precious little, and asked you to call, being the mistress of her brother’s house, you would have thought it quite the correct and proper thing. So would every man in the barracks. Don’t people strike up acquaintances in hotels, and sometimes trains?”

“They generally find out something about each other before they pursue the acquaintance,” suggested Murchison. “Look here, old man, you know as well as I do, you are arguing all round the point. It would be precious easy for the Burtons to say who and what they were, and furnish some proper credentials. If they did that, I daresay all Blankfield would call upon them, and swallow the brother for the sake of the very charming sister.”

“Well, I’ll pump her to-night, and get out all you want to know,” retorted Mr Pomfret confidently. “I don’t go so far as to say they will be able to refer us to Burke or Debrett. Decent middle-class people, I expect.”

It was useless to argue with such an optimist. “You’ve accounted for the brother, I remember, by your ingenious theory. Well, you’ve made up your mind to go then?”

“Most certainly I have. You do as you like, but while we are on the subject of good form, it is not a pretty thing to accept an invitation, and then excuse yourself at the eleventh hour by an obvious lie.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, you would be quite right. It has not occurred to you that we were rather rushed into this dinner, then – that we were, so to speak, jumped at?”

“It might look like it at first blush,” admitted Mr Pomfret reluctantly. “But here are two poor devils, marooned, as it were, in this snobbish town, and they naturally jump at the first people who show them the slightest civility. They must simply be aching to exchange a word with their fellow-creatures. Well, I am going to exchange several with them, I promise you.”

Hugh felt it was useless. When Pomfret got in these moods, it was waste of time to reason with him. He felt uneasy, however. He had promised his family to look after him, and he felt a certain responsibility. It was to be hoped the sudden infatuation for a pretty face would expire as quickly as it had been born.

Perhaps a closer association with the bounder brother would produce a chastening influence. But then Jack seemed bounder-proof. Had he not alluded to a well-born cousin, beside whom Burton shone as a polished gentleman?

Anyway, he must not desert his young and very impulsive friend. But it was with considerable reluctance that he accompanied him to Rosemount on the Monday night.