I have some recollection, my dear Bertie, that when I wrote you a
rambling disconnected sort of letter about three weeks ago, I wound up
by saying that I might have something more interesting to tell you next
time. Well, so it has turned out! The whole game is up here, and I am
off upon a fresh line of rails altogether. Cullingworth is to go one
way and I another; and yet I am glad to say that there has not been any
quarrel between us. As usual, I have begun my letter at the end, but
I’ll work up to it more deliberately now, and let you know exactly how
it came about.
And first of all, a thousand thanks for your two long letters, which lie
before me as I write. There is little enough personal news in them, but
I can quite understand that the quiet happy routine of your life reels
off very smoothly from week to week. On the other hand, you give me
plenty of proof of that inner life which is to me so very much more
interesting. After all, we may very well agree to differ. You think
some things are proved which I don’t believe in. You think some things
edifying which do not appear to me to be so. Well, I know that you are
perfectly honest in your belief. I am sure you give me credit for being
the same. The future wilt decide which of us is right. The survival of
the truest is a constant law, I fancy, though it must be acknowledged
that it is very slow in action.
You make a mistake, however, in assuming that those who think as I
do are such a miserable minority. The whole essence of our thought is
independence and individual judgment; so that we don’t get welded into
single bodies as the churches do, and have no opportunity of testing our
own strength. There are, no doubt, all shades of opinion among us; but
if you merely include those who in their private hearts disbelieve the
doctrines usually accepted, and think that sectarian churches tend
to evil rather than good, I fancy that the figures would be rather
surprising. When I read your letter, I made a list of all those men with
whom I ever had intimate talk upon such matters. I got seventeen names,
with four orthodox. Cullingworth tried and got twelve names, with one
orthodox. From all sides, one hears that every church complains of the
absence of men in the congregations. The women predominate three to
one. Is it that women are more earnest than men? I think it is quite the
other way. But the men are following their reason, and the women their
emotion. It is the women only who keep orthodoxy alive.
No, you mustn’t be too sure of that majority of yours. Taking the
scientific, the medical, the professional classes, I question whether it
exists at all. The clergy, busy in their own limited circles, and coming
in contact only with those who agree with them, have not realised how
largely the rising generation has outgrown them. And (with exceptions
like yourself) it is not the most lax, but the BEST of the younger men,
the larger-brained and the larger-hearted, who have shaken themselves
most clear of the old theology. They cannot abide its want of charity,
it’s limitations of God’s favours, its claims for a special Providence,
its dogmatism about what seems to be false, its conflict with what we
know to be true. We KNOW that man has ascended, not descended; so what
is the value of a scheme of thought which depends upon the supposition
of his fall? We KNOW that the world was not made in six days, that the
sun could never be stopped since it was never moving, and that no man
ever lived three days in a fish; so what becomes of the inspiration of a
book which contains such statements? “Truth, though it crush me!”
There, now, you see what comes of waving the red rag! Let me make
a concession to appease you. I do believe that Christianity in its
different forms has been the very best thing for the world during all
this long barbarous epoch. Of course, it has been the best thing, else
Providence would not have permitted it. The engineer knows best what
tools to use in strengthening his own machine. But when you say that
this is the best and last tool which will be used, you are laying down
the law a little too much.
Now, first of all, I want to tell you about how the practice has been
going on. The week after I wrote last showed a slight relapse. I only
took two pounds. But on the next I took a sudden jump up to three pounds
seven shillings, and this last week I took three pounds ten. So it was
steadily creeping up; and I really thought that I saw my road clear
in front of me, when the bolt suddenly fell from the blue. There were
reasons, however, which prevented my being very disappointed when it did
come down; and these I must make clear to you.
I think that I mentioned, when I gave you a short sketch of my dear old
mother, that she has a very high standard of family honour. She really
tries to live up to the Percy-Plantagenet blend which is said to flow
in our veins; and it is only our empty pockets which prevent her
from sailing through life, like the grande dame that she is, throwing
largesse to right and left, with her head in the air and her soul in the
clouds. I have often heard her say (and I am quite convinced that she
meant it) that she would far rather see any one of us in our graves
than know that we had committed a dishonourable action. Yes; for all her
softness and femininity, she could freeze iron-hard at the suspicion of
baseness; and I have seen the blood flush from her white cap to her lace
collar when she has heard of an act of meanness.
Well, she had heard some details about the Cullingworths which
displeased her when I first knew them. Then came the smash-up at
Avonmouth, and my mother liked them less and less. She was averse to my
joining them in Bradfield, and it was only by my sudden movement at the
end that I escaped a regular prohibition. When I got there, the very
first question she asked (when I told her of their prosperity) was
whether they had paid their Avonmouth creditors. I was compelled to
answer that they had not. In reply she wrote imploring me to come away,
and saying that, poor as our family was, none of them had ever fallen so
low as to enter into a business partnership with a man of unscrupulous
character and doubtful antecedents. I answered that Cullingworth spoke
sometimes of paying his creditors, that Mrs. Cullingworth was in favour
of it also, and that it seemed to me to be unreasonable to expect that I
should sacrifice a good opening on account of things with which I had
no connection. I assured her that if Cullingworth did anything from then
onwards which seemed to me dishonourable, I would disassociate myself
from him, and I mentioned that I had already refused to adopt some of
his professional methods. Well, in reply to this, my mother wrote a
pretty violent letter about what she thought of Cullingworth, which led
to another from me defending him, and showing that there were some deep
and noble traits in his character. That produced another still more
outspoken letter from her; and so the correspondence went on, she
attacking and I defending, until a serious breach seemed to be opening
between us. I refrained from writing at last, not out of ill temper, but
because I thought that if she were given time she would cool down, and
take, perhaps, a more reasonable view of the situation. My father, from
the short note which he sent me, seemed to think the whole business
absolutely irregular, and to refuse to believe my accounts of
Cullingworth’s practice and receipts. This double opposition, from the
very people whose interests had really been nearest my heart in the
whole affair, caused me to be less disappointed than I should otherwise
have been when it all came to an end. In fact, I was quite in the humour
to finish it myself when Fate did it for me.
Now about the Cullingworths. Madam is as amiable as ever; and yet
somehow, unless I am deceiving myself, she has changed somewhat of late
in her feelings towards me. I have turned upon her suddenly more than
once, and caught the skirt of a glance which was little less than
malignant. In one or two small matters I have also detected a hardness
in her which I had never observed before. Is it that I have intruded
too much into their family life? Have I come between the husband and the
wife? Goodness knows I have striven with all my little stock of tact to
avoid doing so. And yet I have often felt that my position was a false
one. Perhaps a young man attaches too much importance to a woman’s
glances and gestures. He wishes to assign a definite meaning to each,
when they may be only the passing caprice of the moment. Ah, well, I
have nothing to blame myself with; and in any case it will soon be all
over now.
And then I have seen something of the same sort in Cullingworth; but
he is so strange a being that I never attach much importance to his
variations. He glares at me like an angry bull occasionally; and then
when I ask him what is the matter, he growls out, “Oh, nothing!” and
turns on his heel. Then at other times he is so cordial and friendly
that he almost overdoes it, and I find myself wondering whether he is
not acting. It must seem ungracious to you that I should speak so of a
man who has been my benefactor; and it seems so to me also, but still
that IS the impression which he leaves upon me sometimes. It’s an
absurd idea, too; for what possible object could his wife and he have
in pretending to be amiable, if they did not really feel so? And yet you
know the feeling that you get when a man smiles with his lips and not
with his eyes.
One day we went to the Central Hotel billiard-room in the evening to
play a match. Our form is just about the same, and we should have bad an
enjoyable game if it had not been for that queer temper of his. He had
been in a sullen humour the whole day, pretending not to hear what
I said to him, or else giving snappy answers, and looking like a
thunder-cloud. I was determined not to have a row, so I took no notice
at all of his continual provocations, which, instead of pacifying him,
seemed to encourage him to become more offensive. At the end of the
match, wanting two to win, I put down the white which was in the jaws of
the pocket. He cried out that this was bad form. I contended that it was
folly to refrain from doing it when one was only two off game, and, on
his continuing to make remarks, I appealed to the marker, who took the
same view as I did. This opposition only increased his anger, and he
suddenly broke out into most violent language, abusing me in unmeasured
terms. I said to him, “If you have anything to say to me, Cullingworth,
come out into the street and say it there. It’s a caddish thing to speak
like that before the marker.” He lifted his cue, and I thought he was
going to strike me with it; but he flung it clattering on the floor, and
chucked half a crown to the man. When we got out in the street, he began
at once in as offensive a tone as ever.
“That’s enough, Cullingworth,” I said. “I’ve stood already rather more
than I can carry.”
We were in the bright light of a shop window at that moment. He looked
at me, and looked a second time, uncertain what to do. At any moment I
might have found myself in a desperate street row with a man who was my
medical partner. I gave no provocation, but kept myself keenly on the
alert. Suddenly, to my relief, he burst out laughing (such a roar as
made the people stop on the other side of the road), and passing his arm
through mine, he hurried me down the street.
“Devil of a temper you’ve got, Munro,” said he. “By Crums, it’s hardly
safe to go out with you. I never know what you’re going to do next. Eh,
what? You mustn’t be peppery with me, though; for I mean well towards
you, as you’ll see before you get finished with me.”
I have told you this trivial little scene, Bertie, to show the strange
way in which Cullingworth springs quarrels upon me; suddenly, without
the slightest possible provocation, taking a most offensive tone, and
then when he sees he has goaded me to the edge of my endurance, turning
the whole thing to chaff. This has occurred again and again recently;
and, when coupled with the change in Mrs. Cullingworth’s demeanour,
makes one feel that something has happened to change one’s relations.
What that something may be, I give you my word that I have no more
idea than you have. Between their coldness, however, and my unpleasant
correspondence with my mother, I was often very sorry that I had not
taken the South American liner.
Cullingworth is preparing for the issue of our new paper. He has carried
the matter through with his usual energy, but he doesn’t know enough
about local affairs to be able to write about them, and it is a question
whether he can interest the people here in anything else. At present we
are prepared to run the paper single-handed; we are working seven hours
a day at the practice; we are building a stable; and in our odd hours we
are practising at our magnetic ship-protector, with which Cullingworth
is still well pleased, though he wants to get it more perfect before
submitting it to the Admiralty.
His mind runs rather on naval architecture at present, and he has been
devising an ingenious method of preventing wooden-sided vessels from
being crippled by artillery fire. I did not think much of his magnetic
attractor, because it seemed to me that even if it had all the success
that he claimed for it, it would merely have the effect of substituting
some other metal for steel in the manufacture of shells. This new
project has, however, more to recommend it. This is the idea, as put in
his own words; and, as he has been speaking of little else for the last
two days, I ought to remember them.
“If you’ve got your armour there, laddie, it will be pierced,” says he.
“Put up forty feet thick of steel; and I’ll build a gun that will knock
it into tooth-powder. It would blow away, and set the folk coughing
after I had one shot at it. But you can’t pierce armour which only drops
after the shot has passed through. What’s the good of it? Why it
keeps out the water. That’s the main thing, after all. I call it the
Cullingworth spring-shutter screen. Eh, what, Munro? I wouldn’t take
a quarter of a million for the idea. You see how it would work. Spring
shutters are furled all along the top of the bulwarks where the hammocks
used to be. They are in sections, three feet broad, we will say, and
capable when let down of reaching the keel. Very well! Enemy sends a
shot through Section A of the side. Section A shutter is lowered. Only
a thin film, you see, but enough to form a temporary plug. Enemy’s ram
knocks in sections B, C, D of the side. What do you do? Founder? Not
a bit; you lower sections B, C, and D of Cullingworth’s spring-shutter
screen. Or you knock a hole on a rock. The same thing again. It’s a
ludicrous sight to see a big ship founder when so simple a precaution
would absolutely save her. And it’s equally good for ironclads also. A
shot often starts their plates and admits water without breaking them.
Down go your shutters, and all is well.”
That’s his idea, and he is busy on a model made out of the steels of
his wife’s stays. It sounds plausible, but he has the knack of making
anything plausible when he is allowed to slap his hands and bellow.
We are both writing novels, but I fear that the results don’t bear
out his theory that a man may do anything which he sets his will to.
I thought mine was not so bad (I have done nine chapters), but
Cullingworth says he has read it all before, and that it is much too
conventional. We must rivet the attention of the public from the start,
he says. Certainly, his own is calculated to do so, for it seems to me
to be wild rubbish. The end of his first chapter is the only tolerable
point that he has made. A fraudulent old baronet is running race-horses
on the cross. His son, who is just coming of age, is an innocent youth.
The news of the great race of the year has just been received.
“Sir Robert tottered into the room with dry lips and a ghastly face.
“‘My poor boy!’ he cried. ‘Prepare for the worst!’
“‘Our horse has lost!’ cried the young heir, springing from his chair.
“The old man threw himself in agony upon the rug. ‘No, no!’ he screamed.
‘IT HAS WON!’”
Most of it, however, is poor stuff, and we are each agreed that the
other was never meant for a novelist.
So much for our domestic proceedings, and all these little details which
you say you like to hear of. Now I must tell you of the great big change
in my affairs, and how it came about.
I have told you about the strange, sulky behaviour of Cullingworth,
which has been deepening from day to day. Well, it seemed to reach a
climax this morning, and on our way to the rooms I could hardly get a
word out of him. The place was fairly crowded with patients, but my
own share was rather below the average. When I had finished I added a
chapter to my novel, and waited until he and his wife were ready for the
daily bag-carrying homewards.
It was half-past three before he had done. I heard him stamp out into
the passage, and a moment later he came banging into my room. I saw in
an instant that some sort of a crisis had come.
“Munro,” he cried, “this practice is going to the devil!”
“Ah!” said I. “How’s that?
“It’s going to little pieces, Munro. I’ve been taking figures, and I
know what I am talking about. A month ago I was seeing six hundred
a week. Then I dropped to five hundred and eighty; then to
five-seventy-five; and now to five-sixty. What do you think of that?”
“To be honest, I don’t think much of it,” I answered. “The summer is
coming on. You are losing all your coughs and colds and sore throats.
Every practice must dwindle at this time of year.”
“That’s all very well,” said he, pacing up and down the room, with his
hands thrust into his pockets, and his great shaggy eyebrows knotted
together. “You may put it down to that, but I think quite differently
about it.”
“What do you put it down to, then?”
“To you.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Well,” said he, “you must allow that it is a very queer coincidence--if
it is a coincidence--that from the day when your plate was put up my
practice has taken a turn for the worse.”
“I should be very sorry to think it was cause and effect,” I answered.
“How do you think that my presence could have hurt you?”
“I’ll tell you frankly, old chap,” said he, putting on suddenly that
sort of forced smile which always seems to me to have a touch of a
sneer in it. “You see, many of my patients are simple country folk, half
imbecile for the most part, but then the half-crown of an imbecile is
as good as any other half-crown. They come to my door, and they see two
names, and their silly jaws begin to drop, and they say to each other,
‘There’s two of ‘em here. It’s Dr. Cullingworth we want to see, but if
we go in we’ll be shown as likely as not to Dr. Munro.’ So it ends in
some cases in their not coming at all. Then there are the women. Women
don’t care a toss whether you are a Solomon, or whether you are hot from
an asylum. It’s all personal with them. You fetch them, or you don’t
fetch them. I know how to work them, but they won’t come if they think
they are going to be turned over to anybody else. That’s what I put the
falling away down to.”
“Well,” said I, “that’s easily set right.” I marched out of the room and
downstairs, with both Cullingworth and his wife behind me. Into the yard
I went, and, picking up a big hammer, I started for the front door, with
the pair still at my heels. I got the forked end of the hammer under my
plate, and with a good wrench I brought the whole thing clattering on to
the pavement.
“That won’t interfere with you any more,” said I.
“What do you intend to do now?” he asked.
“Oh, I shall find plenty to do. Don’t you worry about that,” I answered.
“Oh, but this is all rot,” said he, picking up the plate. “Come along
upstairs and let us see where we stand.”
We filed off once more, he leading with the huge brass “Dr. Munro”
under his arm; then the little woman, and then this rather perturbed
and bemuddled young man. He and his wife sat on the deal table in the
consulting room, like a hawk and a turtle-dove on the same perch, while
I leaned against the mantelpiece with my hands in my pockets. Nothing
could be more prosaic and informal; but I knew very well that I was at a
crisis of my life. Before, it was only a choosing between two roads. Now
my main track had run suddenly to nothing, and I must go back or find a
bye-path.
“It’s this way, Cullingworth,” said I. “I am very much obliged to you,
and to you, Mrs. Cullingworth, for all your kindness and good wishes,
but I did not come here to spoil your practice; and, after what you have
told me, it is quite impossible for me to work with you any more.”
“Well, my boy,” said he, “I am inclined myself to think that we should
do better apart; and that’s Hetty’s idea also, only she is too polite to
say so.”
“It is a time for plain speaking,” I answered, “and we may as well
thoroughly understand each other. If I have done your practice any
harm, I assure you that I am heartily sorry, and I shall do all I can to
repair it. I cannot say more.”
“What are you going to do, then?” asked Cullingworth.
“I shall either go to sea or else start a practice on my own account.”
“But you have no money.”
“Neither had you when you started.”
“Ah, that was different. Still, it may be that you are right. You’ll
find it a stiff pull at first.”
“Oh, I am quite prepared for that.”
“Well, you know, Munro, I feel that I am responsible to you to some
extent, since I persuaded you not to take that ship the other day.”
“It was a pity, but it can’t be helped.”
“We must do what we can to make up. Now, I tell you what I am prepared
to do. I was talking about it with Hetty this morning, and she thought
as I did. If we were to allow you one pound a week until you got your
legs under you, it would encourage you to start for yourself, and you
could pay it back as soon as you were able.”
“It is very kind of you,” said I. “If you would let the matter stand
just now, I should like just to take a short walk by myself, and to
think it all over.”
So the Cullingworths did their bag-procession through the doctors’
quarter alone to-day, and I walked to the park, where I sat down on one
of the seats, lit a cigar, and thought the whole matter over. I was down
on my luck at first; but the balmy air and the smell of spring and the
budding flowers soon set me right again. I began my last letter among
the stars, and I am inclined to finish this one among the flowers, for
they are rare companions when one’s mind is troubled. Most things on
this earth, from a woman’s beauty to the taste of a nectarine, seem to
be the various baits with which Nature lures her silly gudgeons. They
shall eat, they shall propagate, and for the sake of pleasing themselves
they shall hurry down the road which has been laid out for them. But
there lurks no bribe in the smell and beauty of the flower. It’s charm
has no ulterior motive.
Well, I sat down there and brooded. In my heart I did not believe that
Cullingworth had taken alarm at so trifling a decrease. That could not
have been his real reason for driving me from the practice. He had found
me in the way in his domestic life, no doubt, and he had devised
this excuse for getting rid of me. Whatever the reason was, it was
sufficiently plain that all my hopes of building up a surgical practice,
which should keep parallel with his medical one, were for ever at an
end. On the whole, bearing in mind my mother’s opposition, and the
continual janglings which we had had during the last few weeks, I was
not very sorry. On the contrary, a sudden curious little thrill of
happiness took me somewhere about the back of the midriff, and, as a
drift of rooks passed cawing over my head, I began cawing also in the
overflow of my spirits.
And then as I walked back I considered how far I could avail myself of
this money from Cullingworth. It was not much, but it would be madness
to start without it, for I had sent home the little which I had saved at
Horton’s. I had not more than six pounds in the whole world. I reflected
that the money could make no difference to Cullingworth, with his large
income, while it made a vast one to me. I should repay him in a year
or two at the latest. Perhaps I might get on so well as to be able to
dispense with it almost at once. There could be no doubt that it was the
representations of Cullingworth as to my future prospects in Bradfield
which had made me refuse the excellent appointment in the Decia. I need
not therefore have any scruples at accepting some temporary assistance
from his hands. On my return, I told him that I had decided to do so,
and thanked him at the same time for his generosity.
“That’s all right,” said he. “Hetty, my dear, get a bottle of fez in,
and we shall drink success to Munro’s new venture.”
It seemed only the other day that he had been drinking my entrance into
partnership; and here we were, the same three, sipping good luck to
my exit from it! I’m afraid our second ceremony was on both sides the
heartier of the two.
“I must decide now where I am to start,” I remarked. “What I want is
some nice little town where all the people are rich and ill.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t care to settle here in Bradfield?” asked
Cullingworth.
“Well, I cannot see much point in that. If I harmed you as a partner,
I might do so more as a rival. If I succeeded it might be at your
expense.”
“Well,” said he, “choose your town, and my offer still holds good.”
We hunted out an atlas, and laid the map of England before us on the
table. Cities and villages lay beneath me as thick as freckles, and yet
there was nothing to lead me to choose one rather than another.
“I think it should be some place large enough to give you plenty of room
for expansion,” said he.
“Not too near London,” added Mrs. Cullingworth.
“And, above all, a place where I know nobody,” said I. “I can rough it
by myself, but I can’t keep up appearances before visitors.”
“What do you say to Stockwell?” said Cullingworth, putting the amber of
his pipe upon a town within thirty miles of Bradfield.
I had hardly heard of the place, but I raised my glass. “Well, here’s to
Stockwell!” I cried; “I shall go there to-morrow morning and prospect.”
We all drank the toast (as you will do at Lowell when you read this);
and so it is arranged, and you may rely upon it that I shall give you a
full and particular account of the result.