“Yes,” I responded, taking out a slip of paper the Countess had handed me on the previous day, giving the names of some thirty persons, with the dates of their arrival and departure.
Having scanned them down quickly he gave a grunt of distinct dissatisfaction, for certain of the names were of persons of whom I knew he did not approve.
“I see she’s asked Goffe, after all—hang the fellow. You must put him off, Willoughby. I won’t have such a blackguard under my roof—and I told her I wouldn’t! I’m no saint myself, but I’m not going to ask my guests to meet such a person. It’s simply a marvel to me,” he added, striding up and down the room, his spurs clinking as he walked, “how the papers talk about him. To-day you read he is staying with Lord This, and to-morrow he is at the Duchess of That’s house-party, and the next day he meets the King at Doncaster. People must really think he’s the most popular man alive.”
“Sends the paragraphs to the editor himself, I suppose,” I remarked.
“Suppose so. There’s Marigold’s friend Lady Laxton, who boasts that she pays two hundred a year to some poor devil of a journalist up in town to puff her every other day in the papers, and scatter her portraits about in the ladies’ journals. That’s why you see ‘Lady Laxton at Home,’ ‘Lady Laxton on her motor,’ ‘Lady Laxton and her Chow,’ ‘Lady Laxton walking,’ ‘Lady Laxton riding,’ and all the rest of it,” he laughed. “The Laxton boom costs a couple of hundred a year, but it’s cheap to a draper’s wife, for it’s put her into a good set where she wouldn’t otherwise have been.”
I joined in his laughter, for like all his class he hated cheap notoriety, and was far too conservative to discern that no success, social or commercial, is achieved in these modern days without judicious advertising.
“Oh, by the way!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I see she hasn’t put Smeeton on the list—write it down, David Smeeton. You’ve never met him, I think. He’s a good fellow. I asked him down for a fortnight’s shooting. He’s a magnificent shot—was with me up the Zambesi.”
“When does he come?”
“To-morrow—five-forty at Kettering. See after him, won’t you? Introduce him, and all that. I shall shoot over at Harringworth, and can’t be back till late.”
“Very well,” I said, for it usually fell to me to put guests in the ways of that enormous house.