In a moment of expansion, Sheila Armitage confided in me that she has
worked it out, and that we are third cousins twice removed. I accept her
word for this, because I have to work at other things, getting a living
and so forth, while her sole occupation is to acquire a _flair_ as a
hostess, week-ends being her speciality.
I hope that I am not unkind to Sheila when I say that she seems to me
more attractive when she is either in trouble or ill-health; in her more
joyous moods I simply do not belong--and do not want to belong--to her
life. A friend of mine once called her a social pirate, and there is no
doubt that her method of collecting the people whom she wants is to
besiege them until they eventually surrender. Why, however, Bobbie
Outram is always asked to her smartest week-ends was a conundrum to me
until I met her magnificently convalescing after influenza at
Folkestone. For I know Bobbie, and I would run a mile or two any day to
avoid him.
Sheila was in a bath-chair, but looked radiantly well, and at once gave
me a list of her latest victims.
"They sound all right," I said. "But will Bobbie Outram like them?"
At this she gave a little gurgling laugh and put two fingers on my arm.
"Of course you know Bobbie. I forgot."
"I kicked him at school, I loathed him at Cambridge, and let him know
it, and he is still all over me. He brags about you whenever he sees me
before I see him."
"He is the greatest success I have ever had," she declared.
"Then Heaven help you," I replied.
"You don't understand; you think it's quite easy to collect----"
"People tell me you tried to found a _salon_, but only got as far as a
Zoo," I interrupted.
For an instant she frowned, then she gurgled again.
"Brenda Thornton told you that," she protested. "It's just her jealousy.
As a fact I'm quite good at getting only the right people. Fliers have
rather had their day, though they are still useful, and I like an
explorer or two for week-ends, though the best kind seems to be always
exploring. But Brenda was getting ahead of me--I don't mind confessing
that to you--until I thought of Bobbie Outram. He's my one stroke of
genius; even David admits that."
"I never thought much of your husband's taste," I said brutally, and
then, "in men," I added gently, as she was recovering from influenza.
She smiled again and continued:
"There is one thing that is indispensable to a successful week-end."
"It can't be Bobby Outram," I declared.
"It is, or somebody like him; but he is easily the best. Bobbie is my
point of contact."
"He used often to be my boot's," I growled.
"The more you can fuse your guests the better," she went on, as if she
were giving a lecture. "Everyone knows that; it's the A B C of
entertaining; but they must have something to agree about--a sort of
rallying point. And I was the first hostess to discover that no party is
complete unless you have someone in it whom all the others can most
cordially abuse."
"So that is Bobbie's _métier_?" I said.
"The help that man has been to me on wet Sundays is beyond belief," she
replied ecstatically; "and Brenda Thornton is absolutely furious."
"I never expected to be sorry for Outram, but----"
"My dear Jack, you needn't worry about Bobbie. He knows all right. I
told him, and he enjoys it. He's really rather a dear."
But at this my gorge rose. "At any rate," I said, "he's going to Mrs.
Thornton's from next Friday to Tuesday; he told me so yesterday."
"The little worm," said Sheila.
"'Worm' is the word," I said; and as we remained to abuse Bobbie for
another ten minutes with much mutual goodwill I suppose he had once more
justified his existence by a successful feat of "fusing."
* * * * *
[Illustration: "Yes, that's the sort of man they would give work to--A
man wiv no principles! Why, only last week 'e was 'ad up for beating 'is
wife, and now _'E'S WORKIN' ON A CHURCH_!"]
* * * * *