The Clicking of Cuthbert | Page 6

Mr. Devine, and allowed three words to
drop out of him.
"Sovietski no good!"
He paused for a moment, set the machinery working again, and
delivered five more at the pithead.
"I spit me of Sovietski!"
There was a painful sensation. The lot of a popular idol is in many
ways an enviable one, but it has the drawback of uncertainty. Here
today and gone tomorrow. Until this moment Raymond Parsloe
Devine's stock had stood at something considerably over par in Wood
Hills intellectual circles, but now there was a rapid slump. Hitherto he
had been greatly admired for being influenced by Sovietski, but it
appeared now that this was not a good thing to be. It was evidently a
rotten thing to be. The law could not touch you for being influenced by
Sovietski, but there is an ethical as well as a legal code, and this it was
obvious that Raymond Parsloe Devine had transgressed. Women drew
away from him slightly, holding their skirts. Men looked at him
censoriously. Adeline Smethurst started violently, and dropped a
tea-cup. And Cuthbert Banks, doing his popular imitation of a sardine
in his corner, felt for the first time that life held something of sunshine.

Raymond Parsloe Devine was plainly shaken, but he made an adroit
attempt to recover his lost prestige.
"When I say I have been influenced by Sovietski, I mean, of course,
that I was once under his spell. A young writer commits many follies. I
have long since passed through that phase. The false glamour of
Sovietski has ceased to dazzle me. I now belong whole-heartedly to the
school of Nastikoff."
There was a reaction. People nodded at one another sympathetically.
After all, we cannot expect old heads on young shoulders, and a lapse
at the outset of one's career should not be held against one who has
eventually seen the light.
"Nastikoff no good," said Vladimir Brusiloff, coldly. He paused,
listening to the machinery.
"Nastikoff worse than Sovietski."
He paused again.
"I spit me of Nastikoff!" he said.
This time there was no doubt about it. The bottom had dropped out of
the market, and Raymond Parsloe Devine Preferred were down in the
cellar with no takers. It was clear to the entire assembled company that
they had been all wrong about Raymond Parsloe Devine. They had
allowed him to play on their innocence and sell them a pup. They had
taken him at his own valuation, and had been cheated into admiring
him as a man who amounted to something, and all the while he had
belonged to the school of Nastikoff. You never can tell. Mrs.
Smethurst's guests were well-bred, and there was consequently no
violent demonstration, but you could see by their faces what they felt.
Those nearest Raymond Parsloe jostled to get further away. Mrs.
Smethurst eyed him stonily through a raised lorgnette. One or two low
hisses were heard, and over at the other end of the room somebody
opened the window in a marked manner.

Raymond Parsloe Devine hesitated for a moment, then, realizing his
situation, turned and slunk to the door. There was an audible sigh of
relief as it closed behind him.
Vladimir Brusiloff proceeded to sum up.
"No novelists any good except me. Sovietski--yah! Nastikoff--bah! I
spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G.
Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists
any good except me."
And, having uttered this dictum, he removed a slab of cake from a
near-by plate, steered it through the jungle, and began to champ.
It is too much to say that there was a dead silence. There could never be
that in any room in which Vladimir Brusiloff was eating cake. But
certainly what you might call the general chit-chat was pretty well
down and out. Nobody liked to be the first to speak. The members of
the Wood Hills Literary Society looked at one another timidly.
Cuthbert, for his part, gazed at Adeline; and Adeline gazed into space.
It was plain that the girl was deeply stirred. Her eyes were opened wide,
a faint flush crimsoned her cheeks, and her breath was coming quickly.
Adeline's mind was in a whirl. She felt as if she had been walking gaily
along a pleasant path and had stopped suddenly on the very brink of a
precipice. It would be idle to deny that Raymond Parsloe Devine had
attracted her extraordinarily. She had taken him at his own valuation as
an extremely hot potato, and her hero-worship had gradually been
turning into love. And now her hero had been shown to have feet of
clay. It was hard, I consider, on Raymond Parsloe Devine, but that is
how it goes in this world. You get a