The Clicking of Cuthbert

king of

ouse, and flung his bag with a clatter on the floor.

ite

ir

at the bag with ever

ke them away. If you don't want them you

hrough the smoke of his pipe. His eye was deep and dreamy-the eye of

ving up gol

the terrace above the ninth green he had observed him start out on the afternoon's round and had se

ammit! Footling game! Blanked infernal fat-headed

age w

ay that,

reign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf! What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's

e smile

name a

wil

the innumerable memories that rush to

heard o

he Oldest Member. "You are

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ous houses, standing in their own grounds, and enjoy so many luxuries-such as gravel soil, main drainage, electric light, telephone, baths (h. and c.), and company's own water, that you might be pardoned for imagining life to be so ideal for them that no possible improvement could be added to their lot. Mrs. Willoughby Smethurst was under no such delusion. What Wood Hills needed to make it perfect, she realized, was Culture. Material comforts

ed, had also tripled its membership; and the division of the community into two rival camps, the Golfers and the Cultured, had become more marked

had foozled his drive owing to sudden loud outbursts of applause coinciding with his down-swing. And not long before this story opens a sliced ball, whizzing in at the open window, had come within an ace of incapacitating Ray

isted on playing his ball where it lay, and, what with the shock of the lecturer's narrow escape and the spectacle of the intruder standing on the table and working away with a niblick, the afternoon's session ha

d down from the table after his stroke, he was suddenly aware that a beautiful girl was looking at him intently. As a matter of fact, everyone in the room was looking at him intently, none more so than Raymond Parsloe Devine,

drainage, and company's own water, was going to be a pretty poor affair if he did not see her again. Yes, Cuthbert was in love: and it is interesting to record, as showing the effect o

local Cottage Hospital, the only occasion during the year on which the lion, so to speak, lay down with the lamb, and the Golfers an

girl could not see

e said, "I will

ahead," asse

nsible as

hat. But, passing lightly over all that guff, what

not eve

u're right off it. Love--" And he was about t

girl of

ce, too," sa

realize that the fulfilment of my ambitions must c

the queen of your sex. You can't have been looking in a glass lately. You

ening a trifle, "I believe

fairly good-looking would describe

arry a nonentity I shall be a nonentity myself for

reasoning, you think

u done anything, or are you likel

rt hes

n in the Open, and I was knocked out in the semi-final

e-w

n Championship.

ying golf. I admire a man who is m

lousy rent Cu

-name Devine?" h

be a great man. Already he has achieved much. The critics sa

s that

rse it'

would be to be more English than

ot to be Russian or Spanish or something to be a real success.

Russians, I should hate t

r of that," said A

ou that there is a lot m

ght easi

ual," said Cuthbert, deeply moved. "Very w

pleasure on Adeline's face soothed him; and he went home that night with the feeling that he had taken on something

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 tim

ldom-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 h

e 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 ter

nly exercise to which he was equal, Cuthbert met Adeline. A spasm of anguish flitted th

, Mr. Banks,"

," said Cuthb

s about Vladim

uthbert, with

ager after his lecture at Queen's Hall yesterday, and he has promi

said Cuthb

anaged it. I think she

uld be there

e was coming,"

Raymond Devine, "of the oppor

he will be very glad of the

etent critics have said that my work closely

chology i

s,

ur atmo

ui

was shining brightly, but the world was black to him. Birds sang in the tree-tops, but

r. Banks?" said Adeli

ight," sai

hile able to feast his gaze on Adeline, he had a sporting chance of being overlooked or mistaken for a piece of furniture, he pe

aled behind a dense zareba of hair, but his eyes were visible through the undergrowth, and it seemed to Cuthbert that there was an expression in them not unlik

the fact that this was the eighty-second suburban literary reception he had been compelled to attend since he had landed in the country on his lecturing tour, and he was sick to death of it. When his agent had first suggested the trip, he had signed on the dotted line without an instant's hesitation. Worked out in roubles, the fees offered had seemed just about right. But now, as he peered through the brushwood at th

in horn-rimmed spectacles at her side. There was in Mrs. Smethurst's demeanour something of the unction of th

t you to meet Mr. Raymond Parsloe Devine, whose work I

nking how exactly like Mr. Devine was to the eighty-one other younger novelists to whom he had been introduced at various ham

y poor efforts contain a good deal of the Russian spirit. I owe much

an who prattled readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression that each word was excavated from his in

tski n

machinery working again, and del

me of So

p. 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

shaken, but he made an adroit att

l. A young writer commits many follies. I have long since passed through that phase. The false gla

, we cannot expect old heads on young shoulders, and a lapse at the outset of

imir Brusiloff, coldly. He pau

worse than

used

of Nastikof

nocence 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 viole

lizing his situation, turned and slunk to the door. Ther

iloff proceed

of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse an

a slab of cake from a near-by plate, steer

t-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 a

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 following as a celebrity, and then you run up against another bigger celebrity and your admirers desert you. One could moralize on this at considerable length, but

somewhat, was endeavouring to set the fe

ke England, Mr. Br

n the act of lowering

he replied

ravelled all over the

t," agreed

many of our gr

n came into his face, and his voice took on a peevish note. "But I not meet your real great men-your Arbmishel,

they felt that their ignorance was about to be exposed. What would Vladimir Brusiloff think of the Wood Hills Literary Society? The reputation of the Wood Hills Literary Society was at stake

t Banks saw that he had stopped twisting his right foot round his left ankle and his left foot

in the room seemed to fix itself on him, "I

n?" repeated Mrs. Smethurst,

!" shouted Vladimir Bru

don. You know them, ye

Mitchell often, and I

last yea

ttered a cry that s

chfully of Mrs. Smethurst, "was I not been int

red Mrs. Smethurst. "

ilof

thout hurting anyone's feelings, that she had always regarde

!" thundered

ertainly, of cours

appealingly

prompted

imir Brusiloff. "No

aboot?" asked Mrs.

it's Cu

r a moment eyeing him excitedly, then, stooping swiftly, kissed him on both cheeks before Cuthbert could get his guard up. "My dear young man, I saw you win ze F

aside one or two intellectuals who were in

great man

aid Cuthber

he way you lay your approac

don't

f drew his c

ries to assassinate Lenin with a rewolwer-you know that is our great national sport, trying to assassinate Lenin with rewolwers-and the bang puts Trotsky off his stroke and he goes five yards past the hole, and then Lenin, who is rather shake

the fact that they realized that they were about as much out of it at this re-union of twin souls as cats at a dog-show. From time to

hundred-to-one shot had walked away with the race. A rush of tender admiration for Cuthbert Banks flooded her heart. She saw that she had been all wrong. Cuthbert

r Vladimir and Cu

or a most charming visit. My friend Cootaboot and me we go now

you w

t I use most. Goot-a-b

hbert felt a light touch on his arm. A

oo, and walk r

's bosom

in his voice, "that you would

yes m

pered, softly, "it

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ourhood immediately, and is now, I believe, writing scenarios out in California for the Flicker Film Company. Adeline is married to Cuthbert, and it was only his earnest pleading which prevented her from h

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door and out into the passage. Through the open door he could h