“Well, he’s been dead seven years, and fifty nets dipping into his
little fish-pond. However, when I passed I thought my best move was to
come down to the old place, and see whether I couldn’t piece the thing
together again. The name ought to be worth something, I thought. But it
was no use doing the thing in a half hearted way. Not a bit of use in
that, Munro. The kind of people who came to him were wealthy, and must
see a fine house and a man in livery. What chance was there of gathering
them into a bow-windowed forty pound-a-year house with a grubby-faced
maid at the door? What do you suppose I did? My boy, I took the
governor’s old house, that was unlet--the very house that he kept up at
five thousand a year. Off I started in rare style, and sank my last cent
in furniture. But it’s no use, laddie. I can’t hold on any longer. I
got two accidents and an epileptic--twenty-two pounds, eight and
sixpence--that’s the lot!
“What will you do, then?”
“That’s what I wanted your advice about. That’s why I wired for you. I
always respected your opinion, my boy, and I thought that now was the
time to have it.”
It struck me that if he had asked for it nine months before there would
have been more sense in it. What on earth could I do when affairs were
in such a tangle? However, I could not help feeling complimented when so
independent a fellow as Cullingworth turned to me in this way.
“You really think,” said I, “that it is no use holding on here?”
He jumped up, and began pacing the room in his swift jerky way.
“You take warning from it, Munro,” said he. “You’ve got to start yet.
Take my tip, and go where no one knows you. People will trust a stranger
quick enough; but if they can remember you as a little chap who ran
about in knickerbockers, and got spanked with a hair brush for stealing
plums, they are not going to put their lives in your keeping. It’s all
very well to talk about friendship and family connections; but when a
man has a pain in the stomach he doesn’t care a toss about all that. I’d
stick it up in gold, letters in every medical class-room--have it carved
across the gate of the University--that if a man wants friends be
must go among strangers. It’s all up here, Munro; so there’s no use in
advising me to hold on.”
I asked him how much he owed. It came to about seven hundred pounds.
The rent alone was two hundred. He had already raised money on the
furniture, and his whole assets came to less than a tenner. Of course,
there was only one possible thing that I could advise.
“You must call your creditors together,” said I; “they can see for
themselves that you are young and energetic--sure to succeed sooner or
later. If they push you into a corner now, they can get nothing. Make
that clear to them. But if you make a fresh start elsewhere and succeed,
you may pay them all in full. I see no other possible way out of it.”
“I knew that you’d say that, and it’s just what I thought myself. Isn’t
it, Hetty? Well, then, that settles it; and I am much obliged to you for
your advice, and that’s all we’ll say about the matter to-night. I’ve
made my shot and missed. Next time I shall hit, and it won’t be long
either.”
His failure did not seem to weigh very heavily on his mind, for in a few
minutes he was shouting away as lustily as ever. Whiskey and hot water
were brought in, that we might all drink luck to the second venture.
And this whiskey led us to what might have been a troublesome affair.
Cullingworth, who had drunk off a couple of glasses, waited until his
wife had left the room, and then began to talk of the difficulty of
getting any exercise now that he had to wait in all day in the hope of
patients. This led us round to the ways in which a man might take his
exercise indoors, and that to boxing. Cullingworth took a couple of
pairs of gloves out of a cupboard, and proposed that we should fight a
round or two then and there.
If I hadn’t been a fool, Bertie, I should never have consented. It’s
one of my many weaknesses, that, whether it’s a woman or a man, anything
like a challenge sets me off. But I knew Cullingworth’s ways, and I told
you in my last what a lamb of a temper he has. None the less, we pushed
back the table, put the lamp on a high bracket, and stood up to one
another.
The moment I looked him in the face I smelled mischief. He had a gleam
of settled malice in his eye. I believe it was my refusal to back his
paper which was running in his head. Anyway he looked as dangerous as he
could look, with his scowling face sunk forward a little, his hands
down near his hips (for his boxing, like everything else about him, is
unconventional), and his jaw set like a rat-trap.
I led off, and then in he came hitting with both hands, and grunting
like a pig at every blow. From what I could see of him he was no boxer
at all, but just a formidable rough and tumble fighter. I was guarding
with both hands for half a minute, and then was rushed clean off my legs
and banged up against the door, with my head nearly through one of the
panels. He wouldn’t stop then, though he saw that I had no space to get
my elbows back; and he let fly a right-hander which would have put me
into the hall, if I hadn’t slipped it and got back to the middle of the
room.
“Look here, Cullingworth,” said I; “there’s not much boxing about this
game.”
“Yes, I hit pretty hard, don’t I?”
“If you come boring into me like that, I’m bound to hit you out again,”
I said. “I want to play light if you’ll let me.”
The words were not out of my mouth before he was on me like a flash. I
slipped him again; but the room was so small, and he as active as a cat,
that there was no getting away from him. He was on me once more with
a regular football rush that knocked me off my balance. Before I knew
where I was he got his left on the mark and his right on my ear. I
tripped over a footstool, and then before I could get my balance he had
me on the same ear again, and my head was singing like a tea-kettle.
He was as pleased as possible with himself, blowing out his chest and
slapping it with his palms as he took his place in the middle of the
room.
“Say when you’ve had enough, Munro,” said he.
This was pretty stiff, considering that I had two inches the better of
him in height, and as many stone in weight, besides being the better
boxer. His energy and the size of the room had been against me so far,
but he wasn’t to have all the slogging to himself in the next round if I
could help it.
In he came with one of his windmill rushes. But I was on the look-out
for him this time. I landed him with my left a regular nose-ender as he
came, and then, ducking under his left, I got him a cross-counter on
the jaw that laid him flat across his own hearthrug. He was up in an
instant, with a face like a madman.
“You swine!” he shouted. “Take those gloves off, and put your hands up!”
He was tugging at his own to get them off.
“Go on, you silly ass!” said I. “What is there to fight about?”
He was mad with passion, and chucked his gloves down under the table.
“By God, Munro,” he cried, “if you don’t take those gloves off, I’ll go
for you, whether you have them on or not.”
“Have a glass of soda water,” said I.
He made a crack at me. “You’re afraid of me, Munro. That’s what’s the
matter with you,” he snarled.
This was getting too hot, Bertie. I saw all the folly of the thing. I
believed that I might whip him; but at the same time I knew that we were
so much of a match that we would both get pretty badly cut up without
any possible object to serve. For all that, I took my gloves off, and I
think perhaps it was the wisest course after all. If Cullingworth
once thought he had the whiphand of you, you might be sorry for it
afterwards.
But, as fate would have it, our little barney was nipped in the bud.
Mrs. Cullingworth came into the room at that instant, and screamed out
when she saw her husband. His nose was bleeding and his chin was all
slobbered with blood, so that I don’t wonder that it gave her a turn.
“James!” she screamed; and then to me: “What is the meaning of this,
Mr. Munro?”
You should have seen the hatred in her dove’s eyes. I felt an insane
impulse to pick her up and kiss her.
“We’ve only been having a little spar, Mrs. Cullingworth,” said I. “Your
husband was complaining that he never got any exercise.”
“It’s all right, Hetty,” said he, pulling his coat on again. “Don’t be a
little stupid. Are the servants gone to bed? Well, you might bring some
water in a basin from the kitchen. Sit down, Munro, and light your pipe
again. I have a hundred things that I want to talk to you about.”
So that was the end of it, and all went smoothly for the rest of the
evening. But, for all that, the little wife will always look upon me
as a brute and a bully; while as to Cullingworth----well, it’s rather
difficult to say what Cullingworth thinks about the matter.
When I woke next morning he was in my room, and a funny-looking object
he was. His dressing-gown lay on a chair, and he was putting up a
fifty-six pound dumb-bell, without a rag to cover him. Nature didn’t
give him a very symmetrical face, nor the sweetest of expressions; but
he has a figure like a Greek statue. I was amused to see that both his
eyes had a touch of shadow to them. It was his turn to grin when I
sat up and found that my ear was about the shape and consistence of a
toadstool. However, he was all for peace that morning, and chatted away
in the most amiable manner possible.
I was to go back to my father’s that day, but I had a couple of hours
with Cullingworth in his consulting room before I left. He was in his
best form, and full of a hundred fantastic schemes, by which I was to
help him. His great object was to get his name into the newspapers. That
was the basis of all success, according to his views. It seemed to
me that he was confounding cause with effect; but I did not argue the
point. I laughed until my sides ached over the grotesque suggestions
which poured from him. I was to lie senseless in the roadway, and to be
carried into him by a sympathising crowd, while the footman ran with a
paragraph to the newspapers. But there was the likelihood that the
crowd might carry me in to the rival practitioner opposite. In various
disguises I was to feign fits at his very door, and so furnish fresh
copy for the local press. Then I was to die--absolutely to expire--and
all Scotland was to resound with how Dr. Cullingworth, of Avonmouth, had
resuscitated me. His ingenious brain rang a thousand changes out of
the idea, and his own impending bankruptcy was crowded right out of his
thoughts by the flood of half-serious devices.
But the thing that took the fun out of him, and made him gnash his
teeth, and stride cursing about the room, was to see a patient walking
up the steps which led to the door of Scarsdale, his opposite neighbour.
Scarsdale had a fairly busy practice, and received his people at home
from ten to twelve, so that I got quite used to seeing Cullingworth fly
out of his chair, and rush raving to the window. He would diagnose
the cases, too, and estimate their money value until he was hardly
articulate.
“There you are!” he would suddenly yell; “see that man with a limp!
Every morning he goes. Displaced semilunar cartilage, and a three
months’ job. The man’s worth thirty-five shillings a week. And there!
I’m hanged if the woman with the rheumatic arthritis isn’t round in
her bath-chair again. She’s all sealskin and lactic acid. It’s simply
sickening to see how they crowd to that man. And such a man! You haven’t
seen him. All the better for you. I don’t know what the devil you are
laughing at, Munro. I can’t see where the fun comes in myself.”
Well, it was a short experience that visit to Avonmouth, but I think
that I shall remember it all my life. Goodness knows, you must be sick
enough of the subject, but when I started with so much detail I was
tempted to go. It ended by my going back again in the afternoon,
Cullingworth assuring me that he would call his creditors together as
I had advised, and that he would let me know the result in a few days.
Mrs. C. would hardly shake hands with me when I said goodbye; but I like
her the better for that. He must have a great deal of good in him, or he
could not have won her love and confidence so completely. Perhaps there
is another Cullingworth behind the scenes--a softer, tenderer man, who
can love and invite love. If there is, I have never got near him. And
yet I may only have been tapping at the shell. Who knows? For that
matter, it is likely enough that he has never got at the real Johnnie
Munro. But you have, Bertie; and I think that you’ve had a little too
much of him this time, only you encourage me to this sort of excess by
your sympathetic replies. Well, I’ve done as much as the General Post
Office will carry for fivepence, so I’ll conclude by merely remarking
that a fortnight has passed, and that I have had no news from Avonmouth,
which does not in the very slightest degree surprise me. If I ever do
hear anything, which is exceedingly doubtful, you may be sure that I
will put a finish to this long story.