Well, my dear Bertie, here I am again in your postbox. It’s not a
fortnight since I wrote you that great long letter, and yet you see I
have news enough to make another formidable budget. They say that the
art of letter-writing has been lost; but if quantity may atone for
quality, you must confess that (for your sins) you have a friend who has
retained it.
When I wrote to you last I was on the eve of going down to join the
Cullingworths at Avonmouth, with every hope that he had found some
opening for me. I must tell you at some length the particulars of that
expedition.
I travelled down part of the way with young Leslie Duncan, whom I think
you know. He was gracious enough to consider that a third-class carriage
and my company were to be preferred to a first class with solitude. You
know that he came into his uncle’s money a little time ago, and after a
first delirious outbreak, he has now relapsed into that dead heavy state
of despair which is caused by having everything which one can wish for.
How absurd are the ambitions of life when I think that I, who am fairly
happy and as keen as a razor edge, should be struggling for that which
I can see has brought neither profit nor happiness to him! And yet, if I
can read my own nature, it is not the accumulation of money which is my
real aim, but only that I may acquire so much as will relieve my mind
of sordid cares and enable me to develop any gifts which I may have,
undisturbed. My tastes are so simple that I cannot imagine any advantage
which wealth can give--save indeed the exquisite pleasure of helping a
good man or a good cause. Why should people ever take credit for charity
when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their
guineas in any other fashion? I gave my watch to a broken schoolmaster
the other day (having no change in my pocket), and the mater could not
quite determine whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I
could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one
nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little
dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from
my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow
brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the thirty shillings had
been useful?
Leslie Duncan got out at Carstairs, and I was left alone with a hale,
white-haired, old Roman Catholic priest, who had sat quietly reading his
office in the corner. We fell into the most intimate talk, which lasted
all the way to Avonmouth--indeed, so interested was I that I very nearly
passed through the place without knowing it. Father Logan (for that was
his name) seemed to me to be a beautiful type of what a priest should
be--self-sacrificing and pure-minded, with a kind of simple cunning
about him, and a deal of innocent fun. He had the defects as well as the
virtues of his class, for he was absolutely reactionary in his views.
We discussed religion with fervour, and his theology was somewhere
about the Early Pliocene. He might have chattered the matter over with
a priest of Charlemagne’s Court, and they would have shaken hands after
every sentence. He would acknowledge this and claim it as a merit.
It was consistency in his eyes. If our astronomers and inventors and
law-givers had been equally consistent where would modern civilisation
be? Is religion the only domain of thought which is non-progressive, and
to be referred for ever to a standard set two thousand years ago?
Can they not see that as the human brain evolves it must take a wider
outlook? A half-formed brain makes a half-formed God, and who shall say
that our brains are even half-formed yet? The truly inspired priest is
the man or woman with the big brain. It is not the shaven patch on the
outside, but it is the sixty ounces within which is the real mark of
election.
You know that you are turning up your nose at me, Bertie. I can see you
do it. But I’ll come off the thin ice, and you shall have nothing but
facts now. I’m afraid that I should never do for a story-teller, for the
first stray character that comes along puts his arm in mine and walks me
off, with my poor story straggling away to nothing behind me.
Well, then, it was night when we reached Avonmouth, and as I popped my
head out of the carriage window, the first thing that my eyes rested
upon was old Cullingworth, standing in, the circle of light under a
gas-lamp. His frock coat was flying open, his waistcoat unbuttoned at
the top, and his hat (a top hat this time) jammed on the back of his
head, with his bristling hair spurting out in front of it. In every way,
save that he wore a collar, he was the same Cullingworth as ever.
He gave a roar of recognition when he saw me, bustled me out of my
carriage, seized my carpet bag, or grip-sack as you used to call it, and
a minute later we were striding along together through the streets.
I was, as you may imagine, all in a tingle to know what it was that he
wanted with me. However, as he made no allusion to it, I did not care to
ask, and, during our longish walk, we talked about indifferent matters.
It was football first, I remember, whether Richmond had a chance against
Blackheath, and the way in which the new passing game was shredding the
old scrimmages. Then he got on to inventions, and became so excited that
he had to give me back my bag in order that he might be able to slap all
his points home with his fist upon his palm. I can see him now stopping,
with his face leaning forward and his yellow tusks gleaming in the
lamplight.
“My dear Munro” (this was the style of the thing), “why was armour
abandoned, eh? What! I’ll tell you why. It was because the weight of
metal that would protect a man who was standing up was more than he
could carry. But battles are not fought now-a-days by men who are
standing up. Your infantry are all lying on their stomachs, and it would
take very little to protect them. And steel has improved, Munro! Chilled
steel! Bessemer! Bessemer! Very good. How much to cover a man? Fourteen
inches by twelve, meeting at an angle so that the bullet will glance.
A notch at one side for the rifle. There you have it, laddie--the
Cullingworth patent portable bullet-proof shield! Weight? Oh, the weight
would be sixteen pounds. I worked it out. Each company carries its
shields in go-carts, and they are served out on going into action. Give
me twenty thousand good shots, and I’ll go in at Calais and come out at
Pekin. Think of it, my boy! the moral effect. One side gets home every
time and the other plasters its bullets up against steel plates. No
troops would stand it. The nation that gets it first will pitchfork the
rest of Europe over the edge. They’re bound to have it--all of them.
Let’s reckon it out. There’s about eight million of them on a war
footing. Let us suppose that only half of them have it. I say only half,
because I don’t want to be too sanguine. That’s four million, and I
should take a royalty of four shillings on wholesale orders. What’s
that, Munro? About three-quarters of a million sterling, eh? How’s that,
laddie, eh? What?”
Really, that is not unlike his style of talk, now that I come to read it
over, only you miss the queer stops, the sudden confidential whispers,
the roar with which he triumphantly answered his own questions, the
shrugs and slaps, and gesticulations. But not a word all the time as to
what it was that made him send me that urgent wire which brought me to
Avonmouth.
I had, of course, been puzzling in my mind as to whether he had
succeeded or not, though from his cheerful appearance and buoyant talk,
it was tolerably clear to me that all was well with him. I was, however,
surprised when, as we walked along a quiet, curving avenue, with great
houses standing in their own grounds upon either side, he stopped and
turned in through the iron gate which led up to one of the finest of
them. The moon had broken out and shone upon the high-peaked roof,
and upon the gables at each corner. When he knocked it was opened by
a footman with red plush knee-breeches. I began to perceive that my
friend’s success must have been something colossal.
When we came down to the dining-room for supper, Mrs. Cullingworth was
waiting there to greet me. I was sorry to see that she was pale and
weary-looking. However, we had a merry meal in the old style, and her
husband’s animation reflected itself upon her face, until at last we
might have been back in the little room, where the Medical Journals
served as a chair, instead of in the great oak-furnished, picture-hung
chamber to which we had been promoted. All the time, however, not one
word as to the object of my journey.
When the supper was finished, Cullingworth led the way into a small
sitting-room, where we both lit our pipes, and Mrs. Cullingworth her
cigarette. He sat for some little time in silence, and then bounding up
rushed to the door and flung it open. It is always one of his strange
peculiarities to think that people are eavesdropping or conspiring
against him; for, in spite of his superficial brusqueness and frankness,
a strange vein of suspicion runs through his singular and complex
nature. Having satisfied himself now that there were no spies or
listeners he threw himself down into his armchair.
“Munro,” said he, prodding at me with his pipe, “what I wanted to tell
you is, that I am utterly, hopelessly, and irretrievably ruined.”
My chair was tilted on its back legs as he spoke, and I assure you that
I was within an ace of going over. Down like a pack of cards came all my
dreams as to the grand results which were to spring from my journey to
Avonmouth. Yes, Bertie, I am bound to confess it: my first thought was
of my own disappointment, and my second of the misfortune of my friends.
He had the most diabolical intuitions, or I a very tell-tale face, for
he added at once--
“Sorry to disappoint you, my boy. That’s not what you expected to hear,
I can see.”
“Well,” I stammered, “it IS rather a surprise, old chap. I thought from
the... from the...”
“From the house, and the footman, and the furniture,” said he. “Well,
they’ve eaten me up among them... licked me clean, bones and gravy. I’m
done for, my boy, unless...”--here I saw a question in his eyes--“unless
some friend were to lend me his name on a bit of stamped paper.”
“I can’t do it, Cullingworth,” said I. “It’s a wretched thing to have to
refuse a friend; and if I had money...”
“Wait till you’re asked, Munro,” he interrupted, with his ugliest
of expressions. “Besides, as you have nothing and no prospects, what
earthly use would YOUR name on a paper be?”
“That’s what I want to know,” said I, feeling a little mortified, none
the less.
“Look here, laddie,” he went on; “d’you see that pile of letters on the
left of the table?”
“Yes.”
“Those are duns. And d’you see those documents on the right? Well, those
are County Court summonses. And, now, d’you see that;” he picked up a
little ledger, and showed me three or, four names scribbled on the first
page.
“That’s the practice,” he roared, and laughed until the great veins
jumped out on his forehead. His wife laughed heartily also, just as she
would have wept, had he been so disposed.
“It’s this way, Munro,” said he, when he had got over his paroxysm. “You
have probably heard--in fact, I have told you myself--that my father had
the finest practice in Scotland. As far as I could judge he was a man of
no capacity, but still there you are--he had it.”