I have missed you very much since your return to America, my dear
Bertie, for you are the one man upon this earth to whom I have ever been
able to unreservedly open my whole mind. I don’t know why it is; for,
now that I come to think of it, I have never enjoyed very much of your
confidence in return. But that may be my fault. Perhaps you don’t find
me sympathetic, even though I have every wish to be. I can only say that
I find you intensely so, and perhaps I presume too much upon the fact.
But no, every instinct in my nature tells me that I don’t bore you by my
confidences.
Can you remember Cullingworth at the University? You never were in the
athletic set, and so it is possible that you don’t. Anyway, I’ll take it
for granted that you don’t, and explain it all from the beginning. I’m
sure that you would know his photograph, however, for the reason that he
was the ugliest and queerest-looking man of our year.
Physically he was a fine athlete--one of the fastest and most determined
Rugby forwards that I have ever known, though he played so savage a game
that he was never given his international cap. He was well-grown, five
foot nine perhaps, with square shoulders, an arching chest, and a quick
jerky way of walking. He had a round strong head, bristling with short
wiry black hair. His face was wonderfully ugly, but it was the ugliness
of character, which is as attractive as beauty. His jaw and eyebrows
were scraggy and rough-hewn, his nose aggressive and red-shot, his eyes
small and near set, light blue in colour, and capable of assuming a
very genial and also an exceedingly vindictive expression. A slight wiry
moustache covered his upper lip, and his teeth were yellow, strong, and
overlapping. Add to this that he seldom wore collar or necktie, that his
throat was the colour and texture of the bark of a Scotch fir, and that
he had a voice and especially a laugh like a bull’s bellow. Then you
have some idea (if you can piece all these items in your mind) of the
outward James Cullingworth.
But the inner man, after all, was what was most worth noting. I don’t
pretend to know what genius is. Carlyle’s definition always seemed to me
to be a very crisp and clear statement of what it is NOT. Far from its
being an infinite capacity for taking pains, its leading characteristic,
as far as I have ever been able to observe it, has been that it allows
the possessor of it to attain results by a sort of instinct which other
men could only reach by hard work. In this sense Cullingworth was the
greatest genius that I have ever known. He never seemed to work, and yet
he took the anatomy prize over the heads of all the ten-hour-a-day
men. That might not count for much, for he was quite capable of idling
ostentatiously all day and then reading desperately all night; but
start a subject of your own for him, and then see his originality and
strength. Talk about torpedoes, and he would catch up a pencil, and on
the back of an old envelope from his pocket he would sketch out some
novel contrivance for piercing a ship’s netting and getting at her side,
which might no doubt involve some technical impossibility, but which
would at least be quite plausible and new. Then as he drew, his
bristling eyebrows would contract, his small eyes would gleam with
excitement, his lips would be pressed together, and he would end by
banging on the paper with his open hand, and shouting in his exultation.
You would think that his one mission in life was to invent torpedoes.
But next instant, if you were to express surprise as to how it was that
the Egyptian workmen elevated the stones to the top of the pyramids, out
would come the pencil and envelope, and he would propound a scheme for
doing that with equal energy and conviction. This ingenuity was joined
to an extremely sanguine nature. As he paced up and down in his jerky
quick-stepping fashion after one of these flights of invention, he would
take out patents for it, receive you as his partner in the enterprise,
have it adopted in every civilised country, see all conceivable
applications of it, count up his probable royalties, sketch out the
novel methods in which he would invest his gains, and finally retire
with the most gigantic fortune that has ever been amassed. And you would
be swept along by his words, and would be carried every foot of the
way with him, so that it would come as quite a shock to you when you
suddenly fell back to earth again, and found yourself trudging the city
street a poor student, with Kirk’s Physiology under your arm, and hardly
the price of your luncheon in your pocket.
I read over what I have written, but I can see that I give you no real
insight into the demoniac cleverness of Cullingworth. His views upon
medicine were most revolutionary, but I daresay that if things fulfil
their promise I may have a good deal to say about them in the sequel.
With his brilliant and unusual gifts, his fine athletic record, his
strange way of dressing (his hat on the back of his head and his throat
bare), his thundering voice, and his ugly, powerful face, he had quite
the most marked individuality of any man that I have ever known.
Now, you will think me rather prolix about this man; but, as it looks
as if his life might become entwined with mine, it is a subject of
immediate interest to me, and I am writing all this for the purpose
of reviving my own half-faded impressions, as well as in the hope of
amusing and interesting you. So I must just give you one or two other
points which may make his character more clear to you.
He had a dash of the heroic in him. On one occasion he was placed in
such a position that he must choose between compromising a lady, or
springing out of a third-floor window. Without a moment’s hesitation he
hurled himself out of the window. As luck would have it, he fell through
a large laurel bush on to a garden plot, which was soft with rain, and
so escaped with a shaking and a bruising. If I have to say anything that
gives a bad impression of the man, put that upon the other side.
He was fond of rough horse-play; but it was better to avoid it with him,
for you could never tell what it might lead to. His temper was nothing
less than infernal. I have seen him in the dissecting-rooms begin to
skylark with a fellow, and then in an instant the fun would go out of
his face, his little eyes would gleam with fury, and the two would be
rolling, worrying each other like dogs, below the table. He would
be dragged off, panting and speechless with fury, with his wiry hair
bristling straight up like a fighting terrier’s.
This pugnacious side of his character would be worthily used sometimes.
I remember that an address which was being given to us by an eminent
London specialist was much interrupted by a man in the front row, who
amused himself by interjecting remarks. The lecturer appealed to his
audience at last. “These interruptions are insufferable, gentlemen,”
said he; “will no one free me from this annoyance?” “Hold your
tongue--you, sir, on the front bench,” cried Cullingworth, in his
bull’s bellow. “Perhaps you’ll make me,” said the fellow, turning a
contemptuous face over his shoulder. Cullingworth closed his note-book,
and began to walk down on the tops of the desks to the delight of the
three hundred spectators. It was fine to see the deliberate way in which
he picked his way among the ink bottles. As he sprang down from the last
bench on to the floor, his opponent struck him a smashing blow full in
the face. Cullingworth got his bulldog grip on him, however, and rushed
him backwards out of the class-room. What he did with him I don’t know,
but there was a noise like the delivery of a ton of coals; and the
champion of law and order returned, with the sedate air of a man who had
done his work. One of his eyes looked like an over-ripe damson, but we
gave him three cheers as he made his way back to his seat. Then we went
on with the dangers of Placenta Praevia.
He was not a man who drank hard, but a little drink would have a very
great effect upon him. Then it was that the ideas would surge from his
brain, each more fantastic and ingenious than the last. And if ever
he did get beyond the borderland he would do the most amazing things.
Sometimes it was the fighting instinct that would possess him,
sometimes the preaching, and sometimes the comic, or they might come
in succession, replacing each other so rapidly as to bewilder his
companions. Intoxication brought all kinds of queer little peculiarities
with it. One of them was that he could walk or run perfectly straight,
but that there always came a time when he unconsciously returned upon
his tracks and retraced his steps again. This had a strange effect
sometimes, as in the instance which I am about to tell you.
Very sober to outward seeming, but in a frenzy within, he went down to
the station one night, and, stooping to the pigeon-hole, he asked the
ticket-clerk, in the suavest voice, whether he could tell him how far
it was to London. The official put forward his face to reply when
Cullingworth drove his fist through the little hole with the force of a
piston. The clerk flew backwards off his stool, and his yell of pain and
indignation brought some police and railway men to his assistance.
They pursued Cullingworth; but he, as active and as fit as a greyhound,
outraced them all, and vanished into the darkness, down the long,
straight street. The pursuers had stopped, and were gathered in a knot
talking the matter over, when, looking up, they saw, to their amazement,
the man whom they were after, running at the top of his speed in their
direction. His little peculiarity had asserted itself, you see, and
he had unconsciously turned in his flight. They tripped him up, flung
themselves upon him, and after a long and desperate struggle dragged
him to the police station. He was charged before the magistrate next
morning, but made such a brilliant speech from the dock in his own
defence that he carried the Court with him, and escaped with a nominal
fine. At his invitation, the witnesses and the police trooped after
him to the nearest hotel, and the affair ended in universal
whisky-and-sodas.
Well, now, if, after all these illustrations, I have failed to give
you some notion of the man, able, magnetic, unscrupulous, interesting,
many-sided, I must despair of ever doing so. I’ll suppose, however, that
I have not failed; and I will proceed to tell you, my most patient of
confidants, something of my personal relations with Cullingworth.
When I first made a casual acquaintance with him he was a bachelor. At
the end of a long vacation, however, he met me in the street, and told
me, in his loud-voiced volcanic shoulder-slapping way, that he had just
been married. At his invitation, I went up with him then and there to
see his wife; and as we walked he told me the history of his wedding,
which was as extraordinary as everything else he did. I won’t tell it
to you here, my dear Bertie, for I feel that I have dived down too many
side streets already; but it was a most bustling business, in which the
locking of a governess into her room and the dyeing of Cullingworth’s
hair played prominent parts. Apropos of the latter he was never quite
able to get rid of its traces; and from this time forward there was
added to his other peculiarities the fact that when the sunlight
struck upon his hair at certain angles, it turned it all iridescent and
shimmering.
Well, I went up to his lodgings with him, and was introduced to Mrs.
Cullingworth. She was a timid, little, sweet-faced, grey-eyed woman,
quiet-voiced and gentle-mannered. You had only to see the way in which
she looked at him to understand that she was absolutely under his
control, and that do what he might, or say what he might, it would
always be the best thing to her. She could be obstinate, too, in a
gentle, dove-like sort of way; but her obstinacy lay always in the
direction of backing up his sayings and doings. This, however, I was
only to find out afterwards; and at that, my first visit, she impressed
me as being one of the sweetest little women that I had ever known.
They were living in the most singular style, in a suite of four
small rooms, over a grocer’s shop. There was a kitchen, a bedroom,
a sitting-room, and a fourth room, which Cullingworth insisted upon
regarding as a most unhealthy apartment and a focus of disease, though
I am convinced that it was nothing more than the smell of cheeses from
below which had given him the idea. At any rate, with his usual energy
he had not only locked the room up, but had gummed varnished paper over
all the cracks of the door, to prevent the imaginary contagion from
spreading. The furniture was the sparest possible. There were, I
remember, only two chairs in the sitting-room; so that when a guest came
(and I think I was the only one) Cullingworth used to squat upon a pile
of yearly volumes of the British Medical Journal in the corner. I can
see him now levering himself up from his lowly seat, and striding about
the room roaring and striking with his hands, while his little wife
sat mum in the corner, listening to him with love and admiration in her
eyes. What did we care, any one of the three of us, where we sat or how
we lived, when youth throbbed hot in our veins, and our souls were all
aflame with the possibilities of life? I still look upon those Bohemian
evenings, in the bare room amid the smell of the cheese, as being among
the happiest that I have known.
I was a frequent visitor to the Cullingworths, for the pleasure that I
got was made the sweeter by the pleasure which I hoped that I gave. They
knew no one, and desired to know no one; so that socially I seemed to be
the only link that bound them to the world. I even ventured to interfere
in the details of their little menage. Cullingworth had a fad at the
time, that all the diseases of civilisation were due to the abandonment
of the open-air life of our ancestors, and as a corollary he kept his
windows open day and night. As his wife was obviously fragile, and yet
would have died before she would have uttered a word of complaint, I
took it upon myself to point out to him that the cough from which she
suffered was hardly to be cured so long as she spent her life in a
draught. He scowled savagely at me for my interference; and I thought
we were on the verge of a quarrel, but it blew over, and he became more
considerate in the matter of ventilation.
Our evening occupations just about that time were of a most
extraordinary character. You are aware that there is a substance, called
waxy matter, which is deposited in the tissues of the body during the
course of certain diseases. What this may be and how it is formed has
been a cause for much bickering among pathologists. Cullingworth had
strong views upon the subject, holding that the waxy matter was really
the same thing as the glycogen which is normally secreted by the liver.
But it is one thing to have an idea, and another to be able to prove
it. Above all, we wanted some waxy matter with which to experiment. But
fortune favoured us in the most magical way. The Professor of Pathology
had come into possession of a magnificent specimen of the condition.
With pride he exhibited the organ to us in the class-room before
ordering his assistant to remove it to the ice-chest, preparatory to its
being used for microscopical work in the practical class. Cullingworth
saw his chance, and acted on the instant. Slipping out of the classroom,
he threw open the ice-chest, rolled his ulster round the dreadful
glistening mass, closed the chest again, and walked quietly away. I have
no doubt that to this day the disappearance of that waxy liver is one of
the most inexplicable mysteries in the career of our Professor.
That evening, and for many evenings to come, we worked upon our liver.
For our experiments it was necessary to subject it all to great heat
in an endeavour to separate the nitrogenous cellular substance from the
non-nitrogenous waxy matter. With our limited appliances the only way
we could think of was to cut it into fine pieces and cook it in a frying
pan. So night after night the curious spectacle might have been seen of
a beautiful young woman and two very earnest young men busily engaged in
making these grim fricassees. Nothing came of all our work; for though
Cullingworth considered that he had absolutely established his case, and
wrote long screeds to the medical papers upon the subject, he was never
apt at stating his views with his pen, and he left, I am sure, a very
confused idea on the minds of his readers as to what it was that he was
driving at. Again, as he was a mere student without any letters after
his name, he got scant attention, and I never heard that he gained over
a single supporter.
At the end of the year we both passed our examinations and became duly
qualified medical men. The Cullingworths vanished away, and I never
heard any more of them, for he was a man who prided himself upon never
writing a letter. His father had formerly a very large and lucrative
practice in the West of Scotland, but he died some years ago. I had a
vague idea, founded upon some chance remark of his, that Cullingworth
had gone to see whether the family name might still stand him in good
stead there. As for me I began, as you will remember that I explained
in my last, by acting as assistant in my father’s practice. You know,
however, that at its best it is not worth more than L700 a year, with no
room for expansion. This is not large enough to keep two of us at work.
Then, again, there are times when I can see that my religious opinions
annoy the dear old man. On the whole, and for every reason, I think
that it would be better if I were out of this. I applied for several
steamship lines, and for at least a dozen house surgeonships; but there
is as much competition for a miserable post with a hundred a year as
if it were the Viceroyship of India. As a rule, I simply get my
testimonials returned without any comment, which is the sort of thing
that teaches a man humility. Of course, it is very pleasant to live with
the mater, and my little brother Paul is a regular trump. I am teaching
him boxing; and you should see him put his tiny fists up, and counter
with his right. He got me under the jaw this evening, and I had to ask
for poached eggs for supper.
And all this brings me up to the present time and the latest news. It is
that I had a telegram from Cullingworth this morning--after nine months’
silence. It was dated from Avonmouth, the town where I had suspected
that he had settled, and it said simply, “Come at once. I have urgent
need of you. CULLINGWORTH.” Of course, I shall go by the first train
to-morrow. It may mean anything or nothing. In my heart of hearts I hope
and believe that old Cullingworth sees an opening for me either as his
partner or in some other way. I always believed that he would turn up
trumps, and make my fortune as well as his own. He knows that if I am
not very quick or brilliant I am fairly steady and reliable. So that’s
what I’ve been working up to all along, Bertie, that to-morrow I go to
join Cullingworth, and that it looks as if there was to be an opening
for me at last. I gave you a sketch of him and his ways, so that you may
take an interest in the development of my fortune, which you could not
do if you did not know something of the man who is holding out his hand
to me.
Yesterday was my birthday, and I was two and twenty years of age.
For two and twenty years have I swung around the sun. And in all
seriousness, without a touch of levity, and from the bottom of my soul,
I assure you that I have at the present moment the very vaguest idea as
to whence I have come from, whither I am going, or what I am here for.
It is not for want of inquiry, or from indifference. I have mastered
the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the
violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of
any one of them. Their ethics are usually excellent. So are the ethics
of the common law of England. But the scheme of creation upon which
those ethics are built! Well, it really is to me the most astonishing
thing that I have seen in my short earthly pilgrimage, that so many
able men, deep philosophers, astute lawyers, and clear-headed men of
the world should accept such an explanation of the facts of life. In the
face of their apparent concurrence my own poor little opinion would not
dare to do more than lurk at the back of my soul, were it not that
I take courage when I reflect that the equally eminent lawyers and
philosophers of Rome and Greece were all agreed that Jupiter had
numerous wives and was fond of a glass of good wine.
Mind, my dear Bertie, I do not wish to run down your view or that of any
other man. We who claim toleration should be the first to extend it
to others. I am only indicating my own position, as I have often done
before. And I know your reply so well. Can’t I hear your grave voice
saying “Have faith!” Your conscience allows you to. Well, mine won’t
allow me. I see so clearly that faith is not a virtue, but a vice. It is
a goat which has been herded with the sheep. If a man deliberately shut
his physical eyes and refused to use them, you would be as quick as any
one in seeing that it was immoral and a treason to Nature. And yet you
would counsel a man to shut that far more precious gift, the reason, and
to refuse to use it in the most intimate question of life.
“The reason cannot help in such a matter,” you reply. I answer that to
say so is to give up a battle before it is fought. My reason SHALL help
me, and when it can help no longer I shall do without help.
It’s late, Bertie, and the fire’s out, and I’m shivering; and you, I’m
very sure, are heartily weary of my gossip and my heresies, so adieu
until my next.