I face my study window as I write, Bertie. Slate-coloured clouds with
ragged fringes are drifting slowly overhead. Between them one has a
glimpse of higher clouds of a lighter gray. I can hear the gentle swish
of the rain striking a clearer note on the gravel path and a duller
among the leaves. Sometimes it falls straight and heavy, till the air is
full of the delicate gray shading, and for half a foot above the ground
there is a haze from the rebound of a million tiny globules. Then
without any change in the clouds it cases off again. Pools line my walk,
and lie thick upon the roadway, their surface pocked by the falling
drops. As I sit I can smell the heavy perfume of the wet earth, and the
laurel bushes gleam where the light strikes sideways upon them. The
gate outside shines above as though it were new varnished, and along the
lower edge of the upper bar there hangs a fringe of great clear drops.
That is the best that November can do for us in our dripping little
island. You, I suppose, sitting among the dying glories of an American
fall, think that this must needs be depressing. Don’t make any mistake
about that, my dear boy. You may take the States, from Detroit to
the Gulf, and you won’t find a happier man than this one. What do you
suppose I’ve got att his{sic-- at this} moment in my consulting room? A
bureau? A bookcase? No, I know you’ve guessed my secret already. She
is sitting in my big armchair; and she is the best, the kindest, the
sweetest little woman in England.
Yes, I’ve been married six months now--the almanack says months, though
I should have thought weeks. I should, of course, have sent cake and
cards, but had an idea that you were not home from the Islands yet.
It is a good year since I wrote to you; but when you give an amorphous
address of that sort, what can you expect? I’ve thought of you, and
talked of you often enough.
Well, I daresay, with the acumen of an old married man, you have guessed
who the lady is as well. We surely know by some nameless instinct more
about our futures than we think we know. I can remember, for example,
that years ago the name of Bradfield used to strike with a causeless
familiarity upon my ear; and since then, as you know, the course of my
life has flowed through it. And so when I first saw Winnie La Force in
the railway carriage, before I had spoken to her or knew her name, I
felt an inexplicable sympathy for and interest in her. Have you had
no experience of the sort in your life? Or was it merely that she was
obviously gentle and retiring, and so made a silent claim upon all that
was helpful and manly in me? At any rate, I was conscious of it; and
again and again every time that I met her. How good is that saying of
some Russian writer that he who loves one woman knows more of the whole
sex than he who has had passing relations with a thousand! I thought I
knew something of women. I suppose every medical student does. But now I
can see that I really knew nothing. My knowledge was all external. I did
not know the woman soul, that crowning gift of Providence to man, which,
if we do not ourselves degrade it, will set an edge to all that is good
in us. I did not know how the love of a woman will tinge a man’s whole
life and every action with unselfishness. I did not know how easy it is
to be noble when some one else takes it for granted that one will be
so; or how wide and interesting life becomes when viewed by four eyes
instead of two. I had much to learn, you see; but I think I have learned
it.
It was natural that the death of poor Fred La Force should make me
intimate with the family. It was really that cold hand which I grasped
that morning as I sat by his bed which drew me towards my happiness. I
visited them frequently, and we often went little excursions together.
Then my dear mother came down to stay with me for a spell, and turned
Miss Williams gray by looking for dust in all sorts of improbable
corners; or advancing with a terrible silence, a broom in one hand and
a shovel in the other, to the attack of a spider’s web which she had
marked down in the beer cellar. Her presence enabled me to return some
of the hospitality which I had received from the La Forces, and brought
us still nearer together.
I had never yet reminded them of our previous meeting. One evening,
however, the talk turned upon clairvoyance, and Mrs. La Force was
expressing the utmost disbelief in it. I borrowed her ring, and holding
it to my forehead, I pretended to be peering into her past.
“I see you in a railway carriage,” said I. “You are wearing a red
feather in your bonnet. Miss La Force is dressed in something dark.
There is a young man there. He is rude enough to address your daughter
as Winnie before he has ever been----”
“Oh, mother,” she cried, “of course it is he! The face haunted me, and I
could not think where we had met it.”
Well, there are some things that we don’t talk about to another man,
even when we know each other as well as I know you. Why should we, when
that which is most engrossing to us consists in those gradual shades of
advance from friendship to intimacy, and from intimacy to something
more sacred still, which can scarcely be written at all, far less made
interesting to another? The time came at last when they were to leave
Birchespool, and my mother and I went round the night before to say
goodbye. Winnie and I were thrown together for an instant.
“When will you come back to Birchespool?” I asked.
“Mother does not know.”
“Will you come soon, and be my wife?”
I had been turning over in my head all the evening how prettily I could
lead up to it, and how neatly I could say it--and behold the melancholy
result! Well, perhaps the feeling of my heart managed to make itself
clear even through those bald words. There was but one to judge, and she
was of that opinion.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I walked as far as Oakley Villa
with my mother before I opened my mouth. “Mam,” said I at last, “I have
proposed to Winnie La Force, and she has accepted me.”
“My boy,” said she, “you are a true Packenham.” And so I knew that my
mother’s approval had reached the point of enthusiasm. It was not for
days--not until I expressed a preference for dust under the bookcase
with quiet, against purity and ructions--that the dear old lady
perceived traces of the Munros.
The time originally fixed for the wedding was six months after this; but
we gradually whittled it down to five and to four. My income had risen
to about two hundred and seventy pounds at the time; and Winnie had
agreed, with a somewhat enigmatical smile, that we could manage very
well on that--the more so as marriage sends a doctor’s income up. The
reason of her smile became more apparent when a few weeks before that
date I received a most portentous blue document in which “We, Brown
& Woodhouse, the solicitors for the herein and hereafter mentioned
Winifred La Force, do hereby”--state a surprising number of things,
and use some remarkably bad English. The meaning of it, when all the
“whereas’s and aforesaids” were picked out, was, that Winnie had about a
hundred a year of her own. It could not make me love her a shade better
than I did; but at the same time I won’t be so absurd as to say that I
was not glad, or to deny that it made our marriage much easier than it
would otherwise have been.
Poor Whitehall came in on the morning of the ceremony. He was staggering
under the weight of a fine Japanese cabinet which he had carried round
from his lodgings. I had asked him to come to the church, and the old
gentleman was resplendent in a white waistcoat and a silk tie. Between
ourselves, I had been just a little uneasy lest his excitement should
upset him, as in the case of the dinner; but nothing could be more
exemplary than his conduct and appearance. I had introduced him to
Winnie some days before.
“You’ll forgive me for saying, Dr. Munro, sir, that you are a ---- lucky
fellow,” said he. “You’ve put your hand in the bag, sir, and taken out
the eel first time, as any one with half an eye can see. Now, I’ve had
three dips, and landed a snake every dip. If I’d had a good woman at my
side, Dr. Munro, sir, I might not be the broken half-pay skipper of an
armed transport to-day.”
“I thought you had been twice married, captain.”
“Three times, sir. I buried two. The other lives at Brussels. Well, I’ll
be at the church, Dr. Munro, sir; and you may lay that there is no one
there who wishes you better than I do.”
And yet there were many there who wished me well. My patients had
all got wind of it; and they assembled by the pew-full, looking
distressingly healthy. My neighbour, Dr. Porter, was there also to lend
me his support, and old General Wainwright gave Winnie away. My mother,
Mrs. La Force, and Miss Williams were all in the front pew; and away
at the back of the church I caught a glimpse of the forked beard and
crinkly face of Whitehall, and beside him the wounded lieutenant,
the man who ran away with the cook, and quite a line of the strange
Bohemians who followed his fortunes. Then when the words were said,
and man’s form had tried to sanctify that which was already divine, we
walked amid the pealings of the “Wedding March” into the vestry, where
my dear mother relieved the tension of the situation by signing the
register in the wrong place, so that to all appearance it was she who
had just married the clergyman. And then amid congratulations and kindly
faces, we were together, her hand on my forearm, upon the steps of the
church, and saw the familiar road stretching before us. But it was
not that road which lay before my eyes, but rather the path of our
lives;--that broader path on which our feet were now planted, so
pleasant to tread, and yet with its course so shrouded in the mist. Was
it long, or was it short? Was it uphill, or was it down? For her, at
least, it should be smooth, if a man’s love could make it so.
We were away for several weeks in the Isle of Man, and then came back
to Oakley Villa, where Miss Williams was awaiting us in a house in which
even my mother could have found no dust, and with a series of cheering
legends as to the crowds of patients who had blocked the street in my
absence. There really was a marked increase in my practice; and for the
last six months or so, without being actually busy, I have always had
enough to occupy me. My people are poor, and I have to work hard for a
small fee; but I still study and attend the local hospital, and keep my
knowledge up-to-date, so as to be ready for my opening when it comes.
There are times when I chafe that I may not play a part upon some
larger stage than this; but my happiness is complete, and if fate has
no further use for me, I am content now from my heart to live and to die
where I am.
You will wonder, perhaps, how we get on--my wife and I--in the matter
of religion. Well, we both go our own ways. Why should I proselytise? I
would not for the sake of abstract truth take away her child-like faith
which serves to make life easier and brighter to her. I have made myself
ill-understood by you in these discursive letters if you have read in
them any bitterness against the orthodox creeds. Far from saying that
they are all false, it would express my position better to say that they
are all true. Providence would not have used them were they not the best
available tools, and in that sense divine. That they are final I deny. A
simpler and more universal creed will take their place, when the mind of
man is ready for it; and I believe it will be a creed founded upon those
lines of absolute and provable truth which I have indicated. But the old
creeds are still the best suited to certain minds, and to certain ages.
If they are good enough for Providence to use, they are good enough for
us to endure. We have but to wait upon the survival of the truest. If I
have seemed to say anything aggressive against them, it was directed
at those who wish to limit the Almighty’s favour to their own little
clique, or who wish to build a Chinese wall round religion, with no
assimilation of fresh truths, and no hope of expansion in the future. It
is with these that the pioneers of progress can hold no truce. As for my
wife, I would as soon think of breaking in upon her innocent prayers, as
she would of carrying off the works of philosophy from my study table.
She is not narrow in her views; but if one could stand upon the very
topmost pinnacle of broad-mindedness, one would doubtless see from it
that even the narrow have their mission.
About a year ago I had news of Cullingworth from Smeaton, who was in the
same football team at college, and who had called when he was passing
through Bradfield. His report was not a very favourable one. The
practice had declined considerably. People had no doubt accustomed
themselves to his eccentricities, and these had ceased to impress them.
Again, there had been one or two coroner’s inquests, which had spread
the impression that he had been rash in the use of powerful drugs. If
the coroner could have seen the hundreds of cures which Cullingworth had
effected by that same rashness he would have been less confident with
his censures. But, as you can understand, C.’s rival medical men
were not disposed to cover him in any way. He had never had much
consideration for them.
Besides this decline in his practice, I was sorry to hear that
Cullingworth had shown renewed signs of that curious vein of suspicion
which had always seemed to me to be the most insane of all his traits.
His whole frame of mind towards me had been an example of it, but as far
back as I can remember it had been a characteristic. Even in those
early days when they lived in four little rooms above a grocer’s shop,
I recollect that he insisted upon gumming up every chink of one bedroom
for fear of some imaginary infection. He was haunted, too, with a
perpetual dread of eavesdroppers, which used to make him fly at the door
and fling it open in the middle of his conversation, pouncing out into
the passage with the idea of catching somebody in the act. Once it was
the maid with the tea tray that he caught, I remember; and I can see her
astonished face now, with an aureole of flying cups and lumps of sugar.
Smeaton tells me that this has now taken the form of imagining that some
one is conspiring to poison him with copper, against which he takes the
most extravagant precautions. It is the strangest sight, he says, to
see Cullingworth at his meals; for he sits with an elaborate chemical
apparatus and numerous retorts and bottles at his elbow, with which he
tests samples of every course. I could not help laughing at Smeaton’s
description, and yet it was a laugh with a groan underlying it. Of all
ruins, that of a fine man is the saddest.
I never thought I should have seen Cullingworth again, but fate has
brought us together. I have always had a kindly feeling for him, though
I feel that he used me atrociously. Often I have wondered whether, if I
were placed before him, I should take him by the throat or by the hand.
You will be interested to hear what actually occurred.
One day, just a week or so back, I was starting on my round, when a
boy arrived with a note. It fairly took my breath away when I saw the
familiar writing, and realised that Cullingworth was in Birchespool. I
called Winnie, and we read it together.
“Dear Munro,” it said, “James is in lodgings here for a few days. We are
on the point of leaving England. He would be glad, for the sake of old
times, to have a chat with you before he goes.
“Yours faithfully,
“HETTY CULLINGWORTH.”
The writing was his and the style of address, so that it was evidently
one of those queer little bits of transparent cunning which were
characteristic of him, to make it come from his wife, that he might not
lay himself open to a direct rebuff. The address, curiously enough, was
that very Cadogan Terrace at which I had lodged, but two doors higher
up.
Well, I was averse from going myself, but Winnie was all for peace and
forgiveness. Women who claim nothing invariably get everything, and so
my gentle little wife always carries her point. Half an hour later I was
in Cadogan Terrace with very mixed feelings, but the kindlier ones at
the top. I tried to think that Cullingworth’s treatment of me had been
pathological--the result of a diseased brain. If a delirious man had
struck me, I should not have been angry with him. That must be my way of
looking at it.
If Cullingworth still bore any resentment, he concealed it most
admirably. But then I knew by experience that that genial loud-voiced
John-Bull manner of his COULD conceal many things. His wife was more
open; and I could read in her tightened lips and cold grey eyes, that
she at least stood fast to the old quarrel. Cullingworth was little
changed, and seemed to be as sanguine and as full of spirits as ever.
“Sound as a trout, my boy!” he cried, drumming on his chest with his
hands. “Played for the London Scottish in their opening match last
week, and was on the ball from whistle to whistle. Not so quick on a
sprint--you find that yourself, Munro, eh what?--but a good hard-working
bullocky forward. Last match I shall have for many a day, for I am off
to South America next week.”
“You have given up Bradfield altogether then?”
“Too provincial, my boy! What’s the good of a village practice with
a miserable three thousand or so a year for a man that wants room to
spread? My head was sticking out at one end of Bradfield and my feet at
the other. Why, there wasn’t room for Hetty in the place, let alone
me! I’ve taken to the eye, my boy. There’s a fortune in the eye. A man
grudges a half-crown to cure his chest or his throat, but he’d spend his
last dollar over his eye. There’s money in ears, but the eye is a gold
mine.”
“What!” said I, “in South America?”
“Just exactly in South America,” he cried, pacing with his quick little
steps up and down the dingy room. “Look here, laddie! There’s a great
continent from the equator to the icebergs, and not a man in it who
could correct an astigmatism. What do they know of modern eye-surgery
and refraction? Why, dammy, they don’t know much about it in the
provinces of England yet, let alone Brazil. Man, if you could only see
it, there’s a fringe of squinting millionaires sitting ten deep round
the whole continent with their money in their hands waiting for
an oculist. Eh, Munro, what? By Crums, I’ll come back and I’ll buy
Bradfield, and I’ll give it away as a tip to a waiter.”
“You propose to settle in some large city, then?”
“City! What use would a city be to me? I’m there to squeeze the
continent. I work a town at a time. I send on an agent to the next to
say that I am coming. I ‘Here’s the chance of a lifetime,’ says he,
‘no need to go back to Europe. Here’s Europe come to you. Squints,
cataracts, iritis, refractions, what you like; here’s the great Signor
Cullingworth, right up to date and ready for anything!’ In they come of
course, droves of them, and then I arrive and take the money. Here’s
my luggage!” he pointed to two great hampers in the corner of the room.
“Those are glasses, my boy, concave and convex, hundreds of them. I test
an eye, fit him on the spot, and send him away shouting. Then I load
up a steamer and come home, unless I elect to buy one of their little
States and run it.”
Of course it sounded absurd as he put it; but I could soon see that he
had worked out his details, and that there was a very practical side to
his visions.
“I work Bahia,” said he. “My agent prepares Pernambuco. When Bahia
is squeezed dry I move on to Pernambuco, and the agent ships to Monte
Video. So we work our way round with a trail of spectacles behind us.
It’ll go like clock-work.”
“You will need to speak Spanish,” said I.
“Tut, it does not take any Spanish to stick a knife into a man’s eye.
All I shall want to know is, ‘Money down--no credit.’ That’s Spanish
enough for me.”
We had a long and interesting talk about all that had happened to both
of us, without, however, any allusion to our past quarrel. He would
not admit that he had left Bradfield on account of a falling-off in his
practice, or for any reason except that he found the place too small.
His spring-screen invention had, he said, been favourably reported upon
by one of the first private shipbuilding firms on the Clyde, and there
was every probability of their adopting it.
“As to the magnet,” said he, “I’m very sorry for my country, but there
is no more command of the seas for her. I’ll have to let the thing go
to the Germans. It’s not my fault. They must not blame me when the smash
comes. I put the thing before the Admiralty, and I could have made a
board school understand it in half the time. Such letters, Munro! Colney
Hatch on blue paper. When the war comes, and I show those letters,
somebody will be hanged. Questions about this--questions about that. At
last they asked me what I proposed to fasten my magnet to. I answered
to any solid impenetrable object, such as the head of an Admiralty
official. Well, that broke the whole thing up. They wrote with their
compliments, and they were returning my apparatus. I wrote with my
compliments, and they might go to the devil. And so ends a great
historical incident, Munro--eh, what?”
We parted very good friends, but with reservations, I fancy, on both
sides. His last advice to me was to clear out of Birchespool.
“You can do better--you can do better, laddie!” said he. “Look round
the whole world, and when you see a little round hole, jump in feet
foremost. There’s a lot of ‘em about if a man keeps himself ready.”
So those were the last words of Cullingworth, and the last that I may
ever see of him also, for he starts almost immediately upon his strange
venture. He must succeed. He is a man whom nothing could hold down. I
wish him luck, and have a kindly feeling towards him, and yet I distrust
him from the bottom of my heart, and shall be just as pleased to know
that the Atlantic rolls between us.
Well, my dear Bertie, a happy and tranquil, if not very ambitious
existence stretches before us. We are both in our twenty-fifth year, and
I suppose that without presumption we can reckon that thirty-five more
years lie in front of us. I can foresee the gradually increasing routine
of work, the wider circle of friends, the indentification with this or
that local movement, with perhaps a seat on the Bench, or at least
in the Municipal Council in my later years. It’s not a very startling
programme, is it? But it lies to my hand, and I see no other. I should
dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my
presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something
might be done by throwing all one’s weight on the scale of breadth,
tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast.
We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for
something.
So good-bye, my dear boy, and remember that when you come to England our
home would be the brighter for your presence. In any case, now that I
have your address, I shall write again in a very few weeks. My kindest
regards to Mrs. Swanborough.
Yours ever,