The Clicking of Cuthbert | Page 4

is no danger of that," said Adeline scornfully.
"Oh! Well, let me tell you that there is a lot more in me than you
think."
"That might easily be so."
"You think I'm not spiritual and intellectual," said Cuthbert, deeply
moved. "Very well. Tomorrow I join the Literary Society."
Even as he spoke the words his leg was itching to kick himself for
being such a chump, but the sudden expression of pleasure on Adeline's
face soothed him; and he went home that night with the feeling that he
had taken on something rather attractive. It was only in the cold, grey
light of the morning that he realized what he had let himself in for.
I do not know if you have had any experience of suburban literary

societies, but the one that flourished under the eye of Mrs. Willoughby
Smethurst at Wood Hills was rather more so than the average. With my
feeble powers of narrative, I cannot hope to make clear to you all that
Cuthbert Banks endured in the next few weeks. And, even if I could, I
doubt if I should do so. It is all very well to excite pity and terror, as
Aristotle recommends, but there are limits. In the ancient Greek
tragedies it was an ironclad rule that all the real rough stuff should take
place off-stage, and I shall follow this admirable principle. It will
suffice if I say merely that J. Cuthbert Banks had a thin time. After
attending eleven debates and fourteen lectures on vers libre Poetry, the
Seventeenth-Century Essayists, the Neo-Scandinavian Movement in
Portuguese Literature, and other subjects of a similar nature, he grew so
enfeebled that, on the rare occasions when he had time for a visit to the
links, he had to take a full iron for his mashie shots.
It was not simply the oppressive nature of the debates and lectures that
sapped his vitality. What really got right in amongst him was the
torture of seeing Adeline's adoration of Raymond Parsloe Devine. The
man seemed to have made the deepest possible impression upon her
plastic emotions. When he spoke, she leaned forward with parted lips
and looked at him. When he was not speaking--which was seldom--she
leaned back and looked at him. And when he happened to take the next
seat to her, she leaned sideways and looked at him. One glance at Mr.
Devine would have been more than enough for Cuthbert; but Adeline
found him a spectacle that never palled. She could not have gazed at
him with a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child and
he a saucer of ice-cream. All this Cuthbert had to witness while still
endeavouring to retain the possession of his faculties sufficiently to
enable him to duck and back away if somebody suddenly asked him
what he thought of the sombre realism of Vladimir Brusiloff. It is little
wonder that he tossed in bed, picking at the coverlet, through sleepless
nights, and had to have all his waistcoats taken in three inches to keep
them from sagging.
This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous
Russian novelist, and, owing to the fact of his being in the country on a
lecturing tour at the moment, there had been something of a boom in

his works. The Wood Hills Literary Society had been studying them for
weeks, and never since his first entrance into intellectual circles had
Cuthbert Banks come nearer to throwing in the towel. Vladimir
specialized in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened
till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit
suicide. It was tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto
had been Vardon on the Push-Shot, and there can be no greater proof of
the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck it without a cry. But
the strain was terrible and I am inclined to think that he must have
cracked, had it not been for the daily reports in the papers of the
internecine strife which was proceeding so briskly in Russia. Cuthbert
was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which
the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another,
the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out.
One morning, as he tottered down the road for the short walk which
was now almost the only exercise to which he was equal, Cuthbert met
Adeline. A spasm of anguish flitted through all his nerve-centres as he
saw that she was accompanied by Raymond Parsloe Devine.
"Good morning, Mr. Banks," said Adeline.
"Good morning," said Cuthbert hollowly.
"Such good news about Vladimir Brusiloff."
"Dead?" said Cuthbert, with a touch of hope.
"Dead? Of course not. Why should he