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 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 better not, perhaps. Enough to say that the glamour of
Raymond Devine ceased abruptly in that moment for Adeline, and her most
coherent thought at this juncture was the resolve, as soon as she got
up to her room, to burn the three signed photographs he had sent her
and to give the autographed presentation set of his books to the
grocer's boy.
Mrs. Smethurst, meanwhile, having rallied somewhat, was endeavouring to
set the feast of reason and flow of soul going again.
'And how do you like England, Mr. Brusiloff?' she asked.
The celebrity paused in the act of lowering another segment of cake.
'Dam good,' he replied, cordially.
'I suppose you have travelled all over the country by this time?'
'You said it,' agreed the Thinker.
'Have you met many of our great public men?'
'Yais--Yais--Quite a few of the nibs--Lloyid Gorge, I meet him. But----'
Beneath the matting a discontented expression came into his face, and
his voice took on a peevish note. 'But I not meet your real great
men--your Arbmishel, your Arreevadon--I not meet them. That's what
gives me the pipovitch. Have you ever met Arbmishel and
Arreevadon?'
A strained, anguished look came into Mrs. Smethurst's face and was
reflected in the faces of the other members of the circle. The eminent
Russian had sprung two entirely new ones on them, and 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, trembling in the balance, and
coming up for the third time. In dumb agony Mrs. Smethurst rolled her
eyes about the room searching for someone capable of coming to the
rescue. She drew blank.
And then, from a distant corner, there sounded a deprecating, cough,
and those nearest Cuthbert Banks saw that he had stopped twisting his
right foot round his left ankle and his left foot round his right ankle
and was sitting up with a light of almost human intelligence in his
eyes.
'Er----' said Cuthbert, blushing as every eye in the room seemed to fix
itself on him, 'I think he means Abe Mitchell and Harry Vardon.'
'Abe Mitchell and Harry Vardon?' repeated Mrs. Smethurst, blankly. 'I
never heard of----'
'Yais! Yais! Most! Very!' shouted Vladimir Brusiloff, enthusiastically.
