My dear old chap, things have been happening, and I must tell you all
about it. Sympathy is a strange thing; for though I never see you, the
mere fact that you over there in New England are keenly interested in
what I am doing and thinking, makes my own life in old England very much
more interesting to me. The thought of you is like a good staff in my
right hand.
The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased
to deserve the name. You remember that in my last I had received my
dismissal, and was on the eve of starting for the little country town
of Stockwell to see if there were any sign of a possible practice there.
Well, in the morning, before I came down to breakfast, I was putting one
or two things into a bag, when there came a timid knock at my door, and
there was Mrs. Cullingworth in her dressing-jacket, with her hair down
her back.
“Would you mind coming down and seeing James, Dr. Munro?” said she. “He
has been very strange all night, and I am afraid that he is ill.”
Down I went, and found Cullingworth looking rather red in the face, and
a trifle wild about the eyes. He was sitting up in bed, with the neck of
his nightgown open, and an acute angle of hairy chest exposed. He had a
sheet of paper, a pencil, and a clinical thermometer upon the coverlet
in front of him.
“Deuced interesting thing, Munro,” said he. “Come and look at this
temperature chart. I’ve been taking it every quarter of an hour since I
couldn’t sleep, and it’s up and down till it looks like the mountains in
the geography books. We’ll have some drugs in--eh, what, Munro?--and by
Crums, we’ll revolutionise all their ideas about fevers. I’ll write a
pamphlet from personal experiment that will make all their books clean
out of date, and they’ll have to tear them up and wrap sandwiches in
them.”
He was talking in the rapid slurring way of a man who has trouble
coming. I looked at his chart, and saw that he was over 102 degrees. His
pulse rub-a-dubbed under my fingers, and his skin sent a glow into my
hand.
“Any symptoms?” I asked, sitting down on the side of his bed.
“Tongue like a nutmeg-grater,” said he, thrusting it out. “Frontal
headache, renal pains, no appetite, and a mouse nibbling inside my left
elbow. That’s as far as we’ve got at present.”
“I’ll tell you what it is, Cullingworth,” said I. “You have a touch of
rheumatic fever, and you will have to lie by for a bit.”
“Lie by be hanged!” he cried. “I’ve got a hundred people to see to-day.
My boy, I must be down there if I have the rattle in my throat. I didn’t
build up a practice to have it ruined by a few ounces of lactic acid.”
“James dear, you can easily build up another one,” said his wife, in her
cooing voice. “You must do what Dr. Munro tells you.”
“Well,” said I, “you’ll want looking after, and your practice will want
looking after, and I am quite ready to do both. But I won’t take the
responsibility unless you give me your word that you will do what you
are told.”
“If I’m to have any doctoring it must come from you, laddie,” he said;
“for if I was to turn my toes up in the public square, there’s not a man
here who would do more than sign my certificate. By Crums, they might
get the salts and oxalic acid mixed up if they came to treat me, for
there’s no love lost between us. But I want to go down to the practice
all the same.”
“It’s out of the question. You know the sequel of this complaint. You’ll
have endocarditis, embolism, thrombosis, metastatic abscesses--you know
the danger as well as I do.”
He sank back into his bed laughing.
“I take my complaints one at a time, thank you,” said he. “I wouldn’t be
so greedy as to have all those--eh, Munro, what?--when many another
poor devil hasn’t got an ache to his back.” The four posts of his bed
quivered with his laughter. “Do what you like, laddie--but I say, mind,
if anything should happen, no tomfoolery over my grave. If you put so
much as a stone there, by Crums, Munro, I’ll come back in the dead of
the night and plant it on the pit of your stomach.”
Nearly three weeks passed before he could set his foot to the
ground again. He wasn’t such a bad patient, after all; but he rather
complicated my treatment by getting in all sorts of phials and powders,
and trying experiments upon his own symptoms. It was impossible to keep
him quiet, and our only means of retaining him in bed was to allow him
all the work that he could do there.
He wrote copiously, built up models of his patent screen, and banged
off pistols at his magnetic target, which he had rigged tip on the
mantelpiece. Nature has given him a constitution of steel, however, and
he shook off his malady more quickly and more thoroughly than the most
docile of sufferers.
In the meantime, Mrs. Cullingworth and I ran the practice together. As
a substitute for him I was a dreadful failure. They would not believe in
me in the least. I felt that I was as flat as water after champagne.
I could not address them from the stairs, nor push them about, nor
prophesy to the anaeemic women. I was much too solemn and demure after
what they had been accustomed to. However, I held the thing together
as best I could, and I don’t think that he found the practice much the
worse when he was able to take it over. I could not descend to what I
thought was unprofessional, but I did my very best to keep the wheels
turning.
Well, I know that I am a shocking bad story-teller, but I just try to
get things as near the truth as I can manage it. If I only knew how to
colour it up, I could make some of this better reading. I can get along
when I am on one line, but it is when I have to bring in a second line
of events that I understand what C. means when he says that I will never
be able to keep myself in nibs by what I earn in literature.
The second line is this, that I had written to my mother on the same
night that I wrote to you last, telling her that there need no longer be
a shadow of a disagreement between us, because everything was arranged,
and I was going to leave Cullingworth at once. Then within a couple
of posts I had to write again and announce that my departure was
indefinitely postponed, and that I was actually doing his whole
practice. Well, the dear old lady was very angry. I don’t suppose she
quite understood how temporary the necessity was, and how impossible it
would have been to leave Cullingworth in the lurch. She was silent for
nearly three weeks, and then she wrote a very stinging letter (and she
handles her adjectives most deftly when she likes). She went so far
as to say that Cullingworth was a “bankrupt swindler,” and that I had
dragged the family honour in the dirt by my prolonged association
with him. This letter came on the morning of the very last day that my
patient was confined to the house. When I returned from work I found him
sitting in his dressing-gown downstairs. His wife, who had driven home,
was beside him. To my surprise, when I congratulated him on being
fit for work again, his manner (which had been most genial during his
illness) was as ungracious as before our last explanation. His wife,
too, seemed to avoid my eye, and cocked her chin at me when she spoke.
“Yes, I’ll take it over to-morrow,” said he. “What do I owe you for
looking after it?”
“Oh, it was all in the day’s work,” said I.
“Thank you, I had rather have strict business,” he answered. “You know
where you are then, but a favour is a thing with no end to it. What
d’you put it at?”
“I never thought about it in that light.”
“Well, think about it now. A locum would have cost me four guineas a
week. Four fours sixteen. Make it twenty. Well, I promised to allow you
a pound a week, and you were to pay it back. I’ll put twenty pounds to
your credit account, and you’ll have it every week as sure as Saturday.”
“Thank you,” said I. “If you are so anxious to make a business matter
of it, you can arrange it so.” I could not make out, and cannot make out
now, what had happened to freeze them up so; but I supposed that they
had been talking it over, and came to the conclusion that I was settling
down too much upon the old lines, and that they must remind me that I
was under orders to quit. They might have done it with more tact.
To cut a long story short, on the very day that Cullingworth was able to
resume his work I started off for Stockwell, taking with me only a bag,
for it was merely a prospecting expedition, and I intended to return for
my luggage if I saw reason for hope. Alas! there was not the faintest.
The sight of the place would have damped the most sanguine man that
ever lived. It is one of those picturesque little English towns with
a history and little else. A Roman trench and a Norman keep are its
principal products. But to me the most amazing thing about it was the
cloud of doctors which had settled upon it. A double row of brass plates
flanked the principal street. Where their patients came from I could not
imagine, unless they practised upon each other. The host of the “Bull”
where I had my modest lunch explained the mystery to some extent by
saying that, as there was pure country with hardly a hamlet for nearly
twelve miles in every direction, it was in these scattered farm-houses
that the Stockwell doctors found their patients. As I chatted with him a
middle-aged, dusty-booted man trudged up the street. “There’s Dr. Adam,”
said he. “He’s only a new-comer, but they say that some o’ these days
he’ll be starting his carriage.” “What do you mean by a new-comer?”
I asked. “Oh, he’s scarcely been here ten years,” said the landlord.
“Thank you,” said I. “Can you tell me when the next train leaves for
Bradfield?” So back I came, rather heavy at heart, and having spent
ten or twelve shillings which I could ill afford. My fruitless journey
seemed a small thing, however, when I thought of the rising Stockwellite
with his ten years and his dusty boots. I can trudge along a path,
however rough, if it will but lead to something; but may kindly Fate
keep me out of all cul-de-sacs!
The Cullingworths did not receive me cordially upon my return. There was
a singular look upon both their faces which seemed to ME to mean that
they were disappointed at this hitch in getting rid of me. When I think
of their absolute geniality a few days ago, and their markedly reserved
manner now, I can make no sense out of it. I asked Cullingworth point
blank what it meant, but he only turned it off with a forced laugh, and
some nonsense about my thin skin. I think that I am the last man in the
world to take offence where none is meant; but at any rate I determined
to end the matter by leaving Bradfield at once. It had struck me, during
my journey back from Stockwell, that Birchespool would be a good place;
so on the very next day I started off, taking my luggage with me, and
bidding a final good-bye to Cullingworth and his wife.
“You rely upon me, laddie,” said C. with something of his old geniality,
as we shook hands on parting. “You get a good house in a central
position, put up your plate and hold on by your toe-nails. Charge little
or nothing until you get a connection, and none of your professional
haw-dammy or you are a broken man. I’ll see that you don’t stop steaming
for want of coal.”
So with that comforting assurance I left them on the platform of the
Bradfield station. The words seem kind, do they not? and yet taking this
money jars every nerve in my body. When I find that I can live on bread
and water without it, I will have no more of it. But to do without it
now would be for the man who cannot swim to throw off his life-belt.
I had plenty of time on my way to Birchespool to reflect upon my
prospects and present situation. My baggage consisted of a large
brassplate, a small leather trunk, and a hat-box. The plate with my name
engraved upon it was balanced upon the rack above my head. In my box
were a stethoscope, several medical books, a second pair of boots, two
suits of clothes, my linen and my toilet things. With this, and the five
pounds eighteen shillings which remain in my purse, I was sallying out
to clear standing-room, and win the right to live from my fellow-men.
But at least there was some chance of permanency about this; and if
there was the promise of poverty and hardship, there was also that of
freedom. I should have no Lady Saltire to toss up her chin because I had
my own view of things, no Cullingworth to fly out at me about nothing. I
would be my own--my very own. I capered up and down the carriage at the
thought. After all, I had everything to gain and nothing in the whole
wide world to lose. And I had youth and strength and energy, and the
whole science of medicine packed in between my two ears. I felt as
exultant as though I were going to take over some practice which lay
ready for me.
It was about four in the afternoon when I reached Birchespool, which
is fifty-three miles by rail from Bradfield. It may be merely a name to
you, and, indeed, until I set foot in it I knew nothing of it myself;
but I can tell you now that it has a population of a hundred and
thirty thousand souls (about the same as Bradfield), that it is mildly
manufacturing, that it is within an hour’s journey of the sea, that it
has an aristocratic western suburb with a mineral well, and that the
country round is exceedingly beautiful. It is small enough to have a
character of its own, and large enough for solitude, which is always the
great charm of a city, after the offensive publicity of the country.
When I turned out with my brass plate, my trunk, and my hat-box upon the
Birchespool platform, I sat down and wondered what my first move should
be. Every penny was going to be of the most vital importance to me,
and I must plan things within the compass of that tiny purse. As I
sat pondering, there came a sight of interest, for I heard a burst of
cheering with the blare of a band upon the other side of the station,
and then the pioneers and leading files of a regiment came swinging on
to the platform. They wore white sun-hats, and were leaving for Malta,
in anticipation of war in Egypt. They were young soldiers--English by
the white facings--with a colonel whose moustache reached his shoulders,
and a number of fresh-faced long-legged subalterns. I chiefly remember
one of the colour-sergeants, a man of immense size and ferocious face,
who leaned upon his Martini, with two little white kittens peeping over
either shoulder from the flaps of his knapsack. I was so moved at the
sight of these youngsters going out to do their best for the dear old
country, that I sprang up on my box, took off my hat, and gave them
three cheers. At first the folk on my side looked at me in their bovine
fashion--like a row of cows over a wall. At the second a good many
joined, and at the third my own voice was entirely lost. So I turned to
go my way, and the soldier laddies to go theirs; and I wondered which of
us had the stiffest and longest fight before us.
I left my baggage at the office, and jumped into a tramcar which was
passing the station, with the intention of looking for lodgings, as
I judged that they would be cheaper than an hotel. The conductor
interested himself in my wants in that personal way which makes me think
that the poorer classes in England are one of the kindliest races on
earth. Policemen, postmen, railway guards, busmen, what good helpful
fellows they all are! This one reckoned the whole thing out, how this
street was central but dear, and the other was out-of-the-way but cheap,
and finally dropped me at a medium shabby-genteel kind of thoroughfare
called Cadogan Terrace, with instructions that I was to go down there
and see how I liked it.
I could not complain of a limited selection, for a “to let” or
“apartments” was peeping out of every second window. I went into the
first attractive house that I saw, and interviewed the rather obtuse
and grasping old lady who owned it. A sitting-bed-room was to be had for
thirteen shillings a week. As I had never hired rooms before, I had no
idea whether this was cheap or dear; but I conclude it was the latter,
since on my raising my eyebrows as an experiment she instantly came down
to ten shillings and sixpence. I tried another look and an exclamation
of astonishment; but as she stood firm, I gathered that I had touched
the bottom.
“Your rooms are quite clean?” I asked, for there was a wooden panelling
which suggested possibilities.
“Quite clean, Sir.”
“No vermin?”
“The officers of the garrison come sometimes.”
This took some thinking out. It had an ugly sound, but I gathered that
she meant that there could be no question about the cleanliness since
these gentlemen were satisfied. So the bargain was struck, and I ordered
tea to be ready in an hour, while I went back to the station to fetch up
my luggage. A porter brought it up for eightpence (saving fourpence on
a cab, my boy!) and so I found myself in the heart of Birchespool with
a base of operations secured. I looked out of the little window of my
lodgings at the reeking pots and grey sloping roofs, with a spire or
two spurting up among them, and I shook my teaspoon defiantly at them.
“You’ve got to conquer me,” said I, “or else I’m man enough to conquer
you.”
Now, you would hardly expect that a fellow would have an adventure on
his very first night in a strange town; but I had--a trivial one, it is
true, but fairly exciting while it lasted. Certainly it reads more like
what might happen to a man in a book, but you may take it from me that
it worked out just as I set it down here.
When I had finished my tea, I wrote a few letters--one to Cullingworth,
and one to Horton. Then, as it was a lovely evening, I determined to
stroll out and see what sort of a place it was upon which Fate had
washed me up. “Best begin as you mean to go on,” thought I; so I donned
my frock-coat, put on my carefully-brushed top-hat, and sallied forth
with my very respectable metal-headed walking stick in my hand.
I walked down to the Park, which is the chief centre of the place, and I
found that I liked everything I saw of it. It was a lovely evening, and
the air was fresh and sweet. I sat down and listened to the band for an
hour, watching all the family parties, and feeling particularly lonely.
Music nearly always puts me into the minor key; so there came a time
when I could stand it no longer, and I set off to find my way back to my
lodgings. On the whole, I felt that Birchespool was a place in which a
man might very well spend a happy life.
At one end of Cadogan Terrace (where I am lodging) there is a wide open
space where several streets meet. In the centre of this stands a large
lamp in the middle of a broad stone pedestal, a foot or so high, and ten
or twelve across. Well, as I strolled along I saw there was something
going on round this lamppost. A crowd of people had gathered, with a
swirl in the centre. I was, of course, absolutely determined not to get
mixed up in any row; but I could not help pushing my way through the
crowd to see what was the matter.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. A woman, pinched and bedraggled, with a baby
on her arm, was being knocked about by a burly brute of a fellow whom I
judged to be her husband from the way in which he cherished her. He was
one of those red-faced, dark-eyed men who can look peculiarly malignant
when they choose. It was clear that he was half mad with drink, and that
she had been trying to lure him away from some den. I was just in time
to see him take a flying kick at her, amid cries of “Shame!” from the
crowd, and then lurch forward again, with the evident intention of
having another, the mob still expostulating vaguely.
If, Bertie, it had been old student days, I should have sailed straight
in, as you or any other fellow would have done. My flesh crept with my
loathing for the brute. But I had also to think of what I was and where
I was, and what I had come there to do. However, there are some things
which a man cannot stand, so I took a couple of steps forward, put my
hand on the fellow’s shoulder, and said in as conciliatory and genial a
voice as I could muster: “Come, come, my lad! Pull yourself together.”
Instead of “pulling himself together,” he very nearly knocked me
asunder. I was all abroad for an instant. He had turned on me like a
flash, and had struck me on the throat just under the chin, my head
being a little back at the moment. It made me swallow once or twice, I
can tell you. Sudden as the blow was, I had countered, in the automatic
sort of way that a man who knows anything of boxing does. It was only
from the elbow, with no body behind it, but it served to stave him off
for the moment, while I was making inquiries about my windpipe. Then
in he came with a rush; and the crowd swarming round with shrieks of
delight, we were pushed, almost locked in each other’s arms on to that
big pedestal of which I have spoken. “Go it, little ‘un!” “Give him
beans!” yelled the mob, who had lost all sight of the origin of the
fray, and could only see that my opponent was two inches the shorter
man. So there, my dear Bertie, was I, within a few hours of my entrance
into this town, with my top-hat down to my ears, my highly professional
frock-coat, and my kid gloves, fighting some low bruiser on a pedestal
in one of the most public places, in the heart of a yelling and hostile
mob! I ask you whether that was cruel luck or not?
Cullingworth told me before I started that Birchespool was a lively
place. For the next few minutes it struck me as the liveliest I had ever
seen. The fellow was a round hand hitter, but so strong that he needed
watching. A round blow is, as you know, more dangerous than a straight
one if it gets home; for the angle of the jaw, the ear, and the
temple, are the three weakest points which you present. However, I took
particular care that my man did not get home; but, on the other hand, I
fear that I did not do him much harm either. He bored in with his
head down; and I, like a fool, broke my knuckles over the top of his
impenetrable skull. Of course, theoretically I should either have
stepped back and tried an undercut, or else taken him into chancery; but
I must confess to feeling flurried and rattled from the blow I had
had, as well as from the suddenness of the whole affair. However, I was
cooling down, and I daresay should in time have done something rational,
when the affray came to a sudden and unexpected end.
This was from the impatience and excitement of the crowd. The folk
behind, wishing to see all that was going on, pushed against those in
front, until half-a-dozen of the foremost (with, I think, a woman among
them) were flung right up against us. One of these, a rough, sailor-like
fellow in a jersey, got wedged between us; and my antagonist, in his
blind rage, got one of his swinging blows home upon this new-comer’s
ear. “What, you----!” yelled the sailor; and in an instant he had taken
over the whole contract, and was at it hammer and tongs with my beauty.
I grabbed my stick, which had fallen among the crowd, and backed my way
out, rather dishevelled, but very glad to get off so cheaply. From the
shouting which I could hear some time after I reached the door of my
lodgings, I gathered that a good battle was still raging.
You see, it was the merest piece of luck in the world that my first
appearance in Birchespool was not in the dock of the police-court. I
should have had no one to answer for me, if I had been arrested, and
should have been put quite on a level with my adversary. I daresay you
think I made a great fool of myself, but I should like to know how
I could have acted otherwise. The only thing that I feel now is my
loneliness. What a lucky fellow you are with your wife and child!
After all, I see more and more clearly that both men and women are
incomplete, fragmentary, mutilated creatures, as long as they are
single. Do what they may to persuade themselves that their state is
the happiest, they are still full of vague unrests, of dim, ill-defined
dissatisfactions, of a tendency to narrow ways and selfish thoughts.
Alone each is a half-made being, with every instinct and feeling
yearning for its missing moiety. Together they form a complete and
symmetrical whole, the minds of each strongest where that of the other
needs reinforcing. I often think that if our souls survive death (and I
believe they do, though I base my believe on very different grounds from
yours), every male soul will have a female one attached to or combined
with it, to round it off and give it symmetry. So thought the old
Mormon, you remember, who used it as an argument for his creed. “You
cannot take your railway stocks into the next world with you,” he said.
“But with all our wives and children we should make a good start in the
world to come.”
I daresay you are smiling at me, as you read this, from the vantage
ground of your two years of matrimony. It will be long before I shall be
able to put my views into practice.
Well, good-bye, my dear old chap! As I said at the beginning of my
letter, the very thought of you is good for me, and never more so than
at this moment, when I am alone in a strange city, with very dubious
prospects, and an uncertain future. We differ as widely as the poles,
you and I, and have done ever since I have known you. You are true
to your faith, I to my reason--you to your family belief, I to my own
ideas; but our friendship shows that the real essentials of a man, and
his affinity for others, depends upon quite other things than views on
abstract questions. Anyway, I can say with all my heart that I wish I
saw you with that old corncob of yours between your teeth, sitting
in that ricketty American-leather armchair, with the villanous
lodging-house antimacassar over the back of it. It is good of you to
tell me how interested you are in my commonplace adventures; though if I
had not KNOWN that you were so, you may be sure that I should never have
ventured to inflict any of them upon you. My future is now all involved
in obscurity, but it is obvious that the first thing I must do is to
find a fitting house, and my second to cajole the landlord into letting
me enter into possession of it without any prepayment. To that I will
turn myself to-morrow morning, and you shall know the result. Whom
should I hear from the other day but Archie McLagan? Of course it was a
begging letter. You can judge how far I am in a state to lose money; but
in a hot fit I sent him ten shillings, which now, in my cold, I bitterly
regret. With every good wish to you and yours, including your town, your
State, and your great country, yours as ever.