← catalogue

The Stark Munro Letters

by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #290 · 433,472 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Stark Munro Letters
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Stark Munro Letters

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle


        
Release date: July 1, 1995 [eBook #290]
                Most recently updated: November 16, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/290

Credits: Produced by Mike Lynch, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS ***




Produced by Mike Lynch





THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS

By J. Stark Munro


     BEING A SERIES OF TWELVE LETTERS
     WRITTEN BY J. STARK MUNRO, M.B.,
     TO HIS FRIEND AND FORMER FELLOW-STUDENT,
     HERBERT SWANBOROUGH,
     OF LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS,
     DURING THE YEARS 1881-1884

Edited And Arranged By A. Conan Doyle


The letters of my friend Mr. Stark Munro appear to me to form so
connected a whole, and to give so plain an account of some of the
troubles which a young man may be called upon to face right away at the
outset of his career, that I have handed them over to the gentleman who
is about to edit them. There are two of them, the fifth and the ninth,
from which some excisions are necessary; but in the main I hope that
they may be reproduced as they stand. I am sure that there is no
privilege which my friend would value more highly than the thought that
some other young man, harassed by the needs of this world and doubts
of the next, should have gotten strength by reading how a brother had
passed down the valley of shadow before him.

HERBERT SWANBOROUGH.

LOWELL, MASS.





THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS.




I. HOME. 30th March, 1881.

I have missed you very much since your return to America, my dear
Bertie, for you are the one man upon this earth to whom I have ever been
able to unreservedly open my whole mind. I don’t know why it is; for,
now that I come to think of it, I have never enjoyed very much of your
confidence in return. But that may be my fault. Perhaps you don’t find
me sympathetic, even though I have every wish to be. I can only say that
I find you intensely so, and perhaps I presume too much upon the fact.
But no, every instinct in my nature tells me that I don’t bore you by my
confidences.

Can you remember Cullingworth at the University? You never were in the
athletic set, and so it is possible that you don’t. Anyway, I’ll take it
for granted that you don’t, and explain it all from the beginning. I’m
sure that you would know his photograph, however, for the reason that he
was the ugliest and queerest-looking man of our year.

Physically he was a fine athlete--one of the fastest and most determined
Rugby forwards that I have ever known, though he played so savage a game
that he was never given his international cap. He was well-grown, five
foot nine perhaps, with square shoulders, an arching chest, and a quick
jerky way of walking. He had a round strong head, bristling with short
wiry black hair. His face was wonderfully ugly, but it was the ugliness
of character, which is as attractive as beauty. His jaw and eyebrows
were scraggy and rough-hewn, his nose aggressive and red-shot, his eyes
small and near set, light blue in colour, and capable of assuming a
very genial and also an exceedingly vindictive expression. A slight wiry
moustache covered his upper lip, and his teeth were yellow, strong, and
overlapping. Add to this that he seldom wore collar or necktie, that his
throat was the colour and texture of the bark of a Scotch fir, and that
he had a voice and especially a laugh like a bull’s bellow. Then you
have some idea (if you can piece all these items in your mind) of the
outward James Cullingworth.

But the inner man, after all, was what was most worth noting. I don’t
pretend to know what genius is. Carlyle’s definition always seemed to me
to be a very crisp and clear statement of what it is NOT. Far from its
being an infinite capacity for taking pains, its leading characteristic,
as far as I have ever been able to observe it, has been that it allows
the possessor of it to attain results by a sort of instinct which other
men could only reach by hard work. In this sense Cullingworth was the
greatest genius that I have ever known. He never seemed to work, and yet
he took the anatomy prize over the heads of all the ten-hour-a-day
men. That might not count for much, for he was quite capable of idling
ostentatiously all day and then reading desperately all night; but
start a subject of your own for him, and then see his originality and
strength. Talk about torpedoes, and he would catch up a pencil, and on
the back of an old envelope from his pocket he would sketch out some
novel contrivance for piercing a ship’s netting and getting at her side,
which might no doubt involve some technical impossibility, but which
would at least be quite plausible and new. Then as he drew, his
bristling eyebrows would contract, his small eyes would gleam with
excitement, his lips would be pressed together, and he would end by
banging on the paper with his open hand, and shouting in his exultation.
You would think that his one mission in life was to invent torpedoes.
But next instant, if you were to express surprise as to how it was that
the Egyptian workmen elevated the stones to the top of the pyramids, out
would come the pencil and envelope, and he would propound a scheme for
doing that with equal energy and conviction. This ingenuity was joined
to an extremely sanguine nature. As he paced up and down in his jerky
quick-stepping fashion after one of these flights of invention, he would
take out patents for it, receive you as his partner in the enterprise,
have it adopted in every civilised country, see all conceivable
applications of it, count up his probable royalties, sketch out the
novel methods in which he would invest his gains, and finally retire
with the most gigantic fortune that has ever been amassed. And you would
be swept along by his words, and would be carried every foot of the
way with him, so that it would come as quite a shock to you when you
suddenly fell back to earth again, and found yourself trudging the city
street a poor student, with Kirk’s Physiology under your arm, and hardly
the price of your luncheon in your pocket.

I read over what I have written, but I can see that I give you no real
insight into the demoniac cleverness of Cullingworth. His views upon
medicine were most revolutionary, but I daresay that if things fulfil
their promise I may have a good deal to say about them in the sequel.
With his brilliant and unusual gifts, his fine athletic record, his
strange way of dressing (his hat on the back of his head and his throat
bare), his thundering voice, and his ugly, powerful face, he had quite
the most marked individuality of any man that I have ever known.

Now, you will think me rather prolix about this man; but, as it looks
as if his life might become entwined with mine, it is a subject of
immediate interest to me, and I am writing all this for the purpose
of reviving my own half-faded impressions, as well as in the hope of
amusing and interesting you. So I must just give you one or two other
points which may make his character more clear to you.

He had a dash of the heroic in him. On one occasion he was placed in
such a position that he must choose between compromising a lady, or
springing out of a third-floor window. Without a moment’s hesitation he
hurled himself out of the window. As luck would have it, he fell through
a large laurel bush on to a garden plot, which was soft with rain, and
so escaped with a shaking and a bruising. If I have to say anything that
gives a bad impression of the man, put that upon the other side.

He was fond of rough horse-play; but it was better to avoid it with him,
for you could never tell what it might lead to. His temper was nothing
less than infernal. I have seen him in the dissecting-rooms begin to
skylark with a fellow, and then in an instant the fun would go out of
his face, his little eyes would gleam with fury, and the two would be
rolling, worrying each other like dogs, below the table. He would
be dragged off, panting and speechless with fury, with his wiry hair
bristling straight up like a fighting terrier’s.

This pugnacious side of his character would be worthily used sometimes.
I remember that an address which was being given to us by an eminent
London specialist was much interrupted by a man in the front row, who
amused himself by interjecting remarks. The lecturer appealed to his
audience at last. “These interruptions are insufferable, gentlemen,”
 said he; “will no one free me from this annoyance?” “Hold your
tongue--you, sir, on the front bench,” cried Cullingworth, in his
bull’s bellow. “Perhaps you’ll make me,” said the fellow, turning a
contemptuous face over his shoulder. Cullingworth closed his note-book,
and began to walk down on the tops of the desks to the delight of the
three hundred spectators. It was fine to see the deliberate way in which
he picked his way among the ink bottles. As he sprang down from the last
bench on to the floor, his opponent struck him a smashing blow full in
the face. Cullingworth got his bulldog grip on him, however, and rushed
him backwards out of the class-room. What he did with him I don’t know,
but there was a noise like the delivery of a ton of coals; and the
champion of law and order returned, with the sedate air of a man who had
done his work. One of his eyes looked like an over-ripe damson, but we
gave him three cheers as he made his way back to his seat. Then we went
on with the dangers of Placenta Praevia.

He was not a man who drank hard, but a little drink would have a very
great effect upon him. Then it was that the ideas would surge from his
brain, each more fantastic and ingenious than the last. And if ever
he did get beyond the borderland he would do the most amazing things.
Sometimes it was the fighting instinct that would possess him,
sometimes the preaching, and sometimes the comic, or they might come
in succession, replacing each other so rapidly as to bewilder his
companions. Intoxication brought all kinds of queer little peculiarities
with it. One of them was that he could walk or run perfectly straight,
but that there always came a time when he unconsciously returned upon
his tracks and retraced his steps again. This had a strange effect
sometimes, as in the instance which I am about to tell you.

Very sober to outward seeming, but in a frenzy within, he went down to
the station one night, and, stooping to the pigeon-hole, he asked the
ticket-clerk, in the suavest voice, whether he could tell him how far
it was to London. The official put forward his face to reply when
Cullingworth drove his fist through the little hole with the force of a
piston. The clerk flew backwards off his stool, and his yell of pain and
indignation brought some police and railway men to his assistance.
They pursued Cullingworth; but he, as active and as fit as a greyhound,
outraced them all, and vanished into the darkness, down the long,
straight street. The pursuers had stopped, and were gathered in a knot
talking the matter over, when, looking up, they saw, to their amazement,
the man whom they were after, running at the top of his speed in their
direction. His little peculiarity had asserted itself, you see, and
he had unconsciously turned in his flight. They tripped him up, flung
themselves upon him, and after a long and desperate struggle dragged
him to the police station. He was charged before the magistrate next
morning, but made such a brilliant speech from the dock in his own
defence that he carried the Court with him, and escaped with a nominal
fine. At his invitation, the witnesses and the police trooped after
him to the nearest hotel, and the affair ended in universal
whisky-and-sodas.

Well, now, if, after all these illustrations, I have failed to give
you some notion of the man, able, magnetic, unscrupulous, interesting,
many-sided, I must despair of ever doing so. I’ll suppose, however, that
I have not failed; and I will proceed to tell you, my most patient of
confidants, something of my personal relations with Cullingworth.

When I first made a casual acquaintance with him he was a bachelor. At
the end of a long vacation, however, he met me in the street, and told
me, in his loud-voiced volcanic shoulder-slapping way, that he had just
been married. At his invitation, I went up with him then and there to
see his wife; and as we walked he told me the history of his wedding,
which was as extraordinary as everything else he did. I won’t tell it
to you here, my dear Bertie, for I feel that I have dived down too many
side streets already; but it was a most bustling business, in which the
locking of a governess into her room and the dyeing of Cullingworth’s
hair played prominent parts. Apropos of the latter he was never quite
able to get rid of its traces; and from this time forward there was
added to his other peculiarities the fact that when the sunlight
struck upon his hair at certain angles, it turned it all iridescent and
shimmering.

Well, I went up to his lodgings with him, and was introduced to Mrs.
Cullingworth. She was a timid, little, sweet-faced, grey-eyed woman,
quiet-voiced and gentle-mannered. You had only to see the way in which
she looked at him to understand that she was absolutely under his
control, and that do what he might, or say what he might, it would
always be the best thing to her. She could be obstinate, too, in a
gentle, dove-like sort of way; but her obstinacy lay always in the
direction of backing up his sayings and doings. This, however, I was
only to find out afterwards; and at that, my first visit, she impressed
me as being one of the sweetest little women that I had ever known.

They were living in the most singular style, in a suite of four
small rooms, over a grocer’s shop. There was a kitchen, a bedroom,
a sitting-room, and a fourth room, which Cullingworth insisted upon
regarding as a most unhealthy apartment and a focus of disease, though
I am convinced that it was nothing more than the smell of cheeses from
below which had given him the idea. At any rate, with his usual energy
he had not only locked the room up, but had gummed varnished paper over
all the cracks of the door, to prevent the imaginary contagion from
spreading. The furniture was the sparest possible. There were, I
remember, only two chairs in the sitting-room; so that when a guest came
(and I think I was the only one) Cullingworth used to squat upon a pile
of yearly volumes of the British Medical Journal in the corner. I can
see him now levering himself up from his lowly seat, and striding about
the room roaring and striking with his hands, while his little wife
sat mum in the corner, listening to him with love and admiration in her
eyes. What did we care, any one of the three of us, where we sat or how
we lived, when youth throbbed hot in our veins, and our souls were all
aflame with the possibilities of life? I still look upon those Bohemian
evenings, in the bare room amid the smell of the cheese, as being among
the happiest that I have known.

I was a frequent visitor to the Cullingworths, for the pleasure that I
got was made the sweeter by the pleasure which I hoped that I gave. They
knew no one, and desired to know no one; so that socially I seemed to be
the only link that bound them to the world. I even ventured to interfere
in the details of their little menage. Cullingworth had a fad at the
time, that all the diseases of civilisation were due to the abandonment
of the open-air life of our ancestors, and as a corollary he kept his
windows open day and night. As his wife was obviously fragile, and yet
would have died before she would have uttered a word of complaint, I
took it upon myself to point out to him that the cough from which she
suffered was hardly to be cured so long as she spent her life in a
draught. He scowled savagely at me for my interference; and I thought
we were on the verge of a quarrel, but it blew over, and he became more
considerate in the matter of ventilation.

Our evening occupations just about that time were of a most
extraordinary character. You are aware that there is a substance, called
waxy matter, which is deposited in the tissues of the body during the
course of certain diseases. What this may be and how it is formed has
been a cause for much bickering among pathologists. Cullingworth had
strong views upon the subject, holding that the waxy matter was really
the same thing as the glycogen which is normally secreted by the liver.
But it is one thing to have an idea, and another to be able to prove
it. Above all, we wanted some waxy matter with which to experiment. But
fortune favoured us in the most magical way. The Professor of Pathology
had come into possession of a magnificent specimen of the condition.
With pride he exhibited the organ to us in the class-room before
ordering his assistant to remove it to the ice-chest, preparatory to its
being used for microscopical work in the practical class. Cullingworth
saw his chance, and acted on the instant. Slipping out of the classroom,
he threw open the ice-chest, rolled his ulster round the dreadful
glistening mass, closed the chest again, and walked quietly away. I have
no doubt that to this day the disappearance of that waxy liver is one of
the most inexplicable mysteries in the career of our Professor.

That evening, and for many evenings to come, we worked upon our liver.
For our experiments it was necessary to subject it all to great heat
in an endeavour to separate the nitrogenous cellular substance from the
non-nitrogenous waxy matter. With our limited appliances the only way
we could think of was to cut it into fine pieces and cook it in a frying
pan. So night after night the curious spectacle might have been seen of
a beautiful young woman and two very earnest young men busily engaged in
making these grim fricassees. Nothing came of all our work; for though
Cullingworth considered that he had absolutely established his case, and
wrote long screeds to the medical papers upon the subject, he was never
apt at stating his views with his pen, and he left, I am sure, a very
confused idea on the minds of his readers as to what it was that he was
driving at. Again, as he was a mere student without any letters after
his name, he got scant attention, and I never heard that he gained over
a single supporter.

At the end of the year we both passed our examinations and became duly
qualified medical men. The Cullingworths vanished away, and I never
heard any more of them, for he was a man who prided himself upon never
writing a letter. His father had formerly a very large and lucrative
practice in the West of Scotland, but he died some years ago. I had a
vague idea, founded upon some chance remark of his, that Cullingworth
had gone to see whether the family name might still stand him in good
stead there. As for me I began, as you will remember that I explained
in my last, by acting as assistant in my father’s practice. You know,
however, that at its best it is not worth more than L700 a year, with no
room for expansion. This is not large enough to keep two of us at work.
Then, again, there are times when I can see that my religious opinions
annoy the dear old man. On the whole, and for every reason, I think
that it would be better if I were out of this. I applied for several
steamship lines, and for at least a dozen house surgeonships; but there
is as much competition for a miserable post with a hundred a year as
if it were the Viceroyship of India. As a rule, I simply get my
testimonials returned without any comment, which is the sort of thing
that teaches a man humility. Of course, it is very pleasant to live with
the mater, and my little brother Paul is a regular trump. I am teaching
him boxing; and you should see him put his tiny fists up, and counter
with his right. He got me under the jaw this evening, and I had to ask
for poached eggs for supper.

And all this brings me up to the present time and the latest news. It is
that I had a telegram from Cullingworth this morning--after nine months’
silence. It was dated from Avonmouth, the town where I had suspected
that he had settled, and it said simply, “Come at once. I have urgent
need of you. CULLINGWORTH.” Of course, I shall go by the first train
to-morrow. It may mean anything or nothing. In my heart of hearts I hope
and believe that old Cullingworth sees an opening for me either as his
partner or in some other way. I always believed that he would turn up
trumps, and make my fortune as well as his own. He knows that if I am
not very quick or brilliant I am fairly steady and reliable. So that’s
what I’ve been working up to all along, Bertie, that to-morrow I go to
join Cullingworth, and that it looks as if there was to be an opening
for me at last. I gave you a sketch of him and his ways, so that you may
take an interest in the development of my fortune, which you could not
do if you did not know something of the man who is holding out his hand
to me.

Yesterday was my birthday, and I was two and twenty years of age.
For two and twenty years have I swung around the sun. And in all
seriousness, without a touch of levity, and from the bottom of my soul,
I assure you that I have at the present moment the very vaguest idea as
to whence I have come from, whither I am going, or what I am here for.
It is not for want of inquiry, or from indifference. I have mastered
the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the
violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of
any one of them. Their ethics are usually excellent. So are the ethics
of the common law of England. But the scheme of creation upon which
those ethics are built! Well, it really is to me the most astonishing
thing that I have seen in my short earthly pilgrimage, that so many
able men, deep philosophers, astute lawyers, and clear-headed men of
the world should accept such an explanation of the facts of life. In the
face of their apparent concurrence my own poor little opinion would not
dare to do more than lurk at the back of my soul, were it not that
I take courage when I reflect that the equally eminent lawyers and
philosophers of Rome and Greece were all agreed that Jupiter had
numerous wives and was fond of a glass of good wine.

Mind, my dear Bertie, I do not wish to run down your view or that of any
other man. We who claim toleration should be the first to extend it
to others. I am only indicating my own position, as I have often done
before. And I know your reply so well. Can’t I hear your grave voice
saying “Have faith!” Your conscience allows you to. Well, mine won’t
allow me. I see so clearly that faith is not a virtue, but a vice. It is
a goat which has been herded with the sheep. If a man deliberately shut
his physical eyes and refused to use them, you would be as quick as any
one in seeing that it was immoral and a treason to Nature. And yet you
would counsel a man to shut that far more precious gift, the reason, and
to refuse to use it in the most intimate question of life.

“The reason cannot help in such a matter,” you reply. I answer that to
say so is to give up a battle before it is fought. My reason SHALL help
me, and when it can help no longer I shall do without help.

It’s late, Bertie, and the fire’s out, and I’m shivering; and you, I’m
very sure, are heartily weary of my gossip and my heresies, so adieu
until my next.




II. HOME, 10th April, 1881.

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.”

I nodded and smoked.

“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.




III. HOME, 15th October, 1881.


Without any figure of speech I feel quite ashamed when I think of you,
Bertie. I send you one or two enormously long letters, burdened, as far
as I can remember them, with all sorts of useless detail. Then, in spite
of your kindly answers and your sympathy, which I have done so little to
deserve, I drop you completely for more than six months. By this J pen
I swear that it shall not happen again; and this letter may serve to
bridge the gap and to bring you up to date in my poor affairs, in which,
of all outer mankind, you alone take an interest.

To commence with what is of most moment, you may rest assured that what
you said in your last letter about religion has had my most earnest
attention. I am sorry that I have not got it by me to refer to (I
lent it to Charlie), but I think I have the contents in my head. It is
notorious, as you say, that an unbeliever may be as bigoted as any of
the orthodox, and that a man may be very dogmatic in his opposition to
dogma. Such men are the real enemies of free thought. If anything could
persuade me to turn traitor to my reason, it would, for example, be
the blasphemous and foolish pictures displayed in some of the agnostic
journals.

But every movement has its crowd of camp followers, who straggle and
scatter. We are like a comet, bright at the head but tailing away into
mere gas behind. However, every man may speak for himself, and I do
not feel that your charge comes home to me. I am only bigoted against
bigotry, and that I hold to be as legitimate as violence to the violent.
When one considers what effect the perversion of the religious instinct
has had during the history of the world; the bitter wars, Christian and
Mahomedan, Catholic and Protestant; the persecutions, the torturings,
the domestic hatreds, the petty spites, with ALL creeds equally
blood-guilty, one cannot but be amazed that the concurrent voice of
mankind has not placed bigotry at the very head of the deadly sins.
It is surely a truism to say that neither smallpox nor the plague have
brought the same misery upon mankind.

I cannot be bigoted, my dear boy, when I say from the bottom of my heart
that I respect every good Catholic and every good Protestant, and that
I recognise that each of these forms of faith has been a powerful
instrument in the hands of that inscrutable Providence which rules
all things. Just as in the course of history one finds that the most
far-reaching and admirable effects may proceed from a crime; so in
religion, although a creed be founded upon an entirely inadequate
conception of the Creator and His ways, it may none the less be the very
best practical thing for the people and age which have adopted it. But
if it is right for those to whom it is intellectually satisfying to
adopt it, it is equally so for those to whom it is not, to protest
against it, until by this process the whole mass of mankind gets
gradually leavened, and pushed a little further upon their slow upward
journey.

Catholicism is the more thorough. Protestantism is the more reasonable.
Protestantism adapts itself to modern civilisation. Catholicism expects
civilisation to adapt itself to it. Folk climb from the one big branch
to the other big branch, and think they have made a prodigious change,
when the main trunk is rotten beneath them, and both must in their
present forms be involved sooner or later in a common ruin. The movement
of human thought, though slow, is still in the direction of truth, and
the various religions which man sheds as he advances (each admirable in
its day) will serve, like buoys dropped down from a sailing vessel, to
give the rate and direction of his progress.

But how do I know what is truth, you ask? I don’t. But I know
particularly well what isn’t. And surely that is something to have
gained. It isn’t true that the great central Mind that planned all
things is capable of jealousy or of revenge, or of cruelty or of
injustice. These are human attributes; and the book which ascribes
them to the Infinite must be human also. It isn’t true that the laws of
Nature have been capriciously disturbed, that snakes have talked, that
women have been turned to salt, that rods have brought water out of
rocks. You must in honesty confess that if these things were presented
to us when we were, adults for the first time, we should smile at them.
It isn’t true that the Fountain of all common sense should punish a race
for a venial offence committed by a person long since dead, and then
should add to the crass injustice by heaping the whole retribution upon
a single innocent scapegoat. Can you not see all the want of justice
and logic, to say nothing of the want of mercy, involved in such a
conception? Can you not see it, Bertie? How can you blind yourself to
it! Take your eyes away from the details for a moment, and look at this
root idea of the predominant Faith. Is the general conception of it
consistent with infinite wisdom and mercy? If not, what becomes of the
dogmas, the sacraments, the whole scheme which is founded upon this
sand-bank? Courage, my friend! At the right moment all will be laid
aside, as the man whose strength increases lays down the crutch which
has been a good friend to him in his weakness. But his changes won’t be
over then. His hobble will become a walk, and his walk a run. There is
no finality--CAN be none since the question concerns the infinite. All
this, which appears too advanced to you to-day, will seem reactionary
and conservative a thousand years hence.

Since I am upon this topic, may I say just a little more without boring
you? You say that criticism such as mine is merely destructive, and that
I have nothing to offer in place of what I pull down. This is not quite
correct. I think that there are certain elemental truths within our
grasp which ask for no faith for their acceptance, and which are
sufficient to furnish us with a practical religion, having so much of
reason in it that it would draw thinking men into its fold, not drive
them forth from it.

When we all get back to these elemental and provable facts there will
be some hopes of ending the petty bickerings of creeds, and of including
the whole human family in one comprehensive system of thought.

When first I came out of the faith in which I had been reared, I
certainly did feel for a time as if my life-belt had burst. I won’t
exaggerate and say that I was miserable and plunged in utter spiritual
darkness. Youth is too full of action for that. But I was conscious of a
vague unrest, of a constant want of repose, of an emptiness and hardness
which I had not noticed in life before. I had so identified religion
with the Bible that I could not conceive them apart. When the foundation
proved false, the whole structure came rattling about my ears. And then
good old Carlyle came to the rescue; and partly from him, and partly
from my own broodings, I made a little hut of my own, which has kept me
snug ever since, and has even served to shelter a friend or two besides.

The first and main thing was to get it thoroughly soaked into one that
the existence of a Creator and an indication of His attributes does in
no way depend upon Jewish poets, nor upon human paper or printing ink.
On the contrary, all such efforts to realise Him must only belittle Him,
bringing the Infinite down to the narrow terms of human thought, at
a time when that thought was in the main less spiritual than it is
at present. Even the most material of modern minds would flinch at
depicting the Deity as ordering wholesale executions, and hacking kings
to pieces upon the horns of altars.

Then having prepared your mind for a higher (if perhaps a vaguer)
idea of the Deity, proceed to study Him in His works, which cannot be
counterfeited or manipulated. Nature is the true revelation of the Deity
to man. The nearest green field is the inspired page from which you may
read all that it is needful for you to know.

I confess that I have never been able to understand the position of the
atheist. In fact, I have come to disbelieve in his existence, and
to look upon the word as a mere term of theological reproach. It may
represent a temporary condition, a passing mental phase, a defiant
reaction against an anthropomorphic ideal; but I cannot conceive that
any man can continue to survey Nature and to deny that there are laws at
work which display intelligence and power. The very existence of a world
carries with it the proof of a world-maker, as the table guarantees
the pre-existence of the carpenter. Granting this, one may form what
conception one will of that Maker, but one cannot be an atheist.

Wisdom and power and means directed to an end run all through the scheme
of Nature. What proof do we want, then, from a book? If the man who
observes the myriad stars, and considers that they and their innumerable
satellites move in their serene dignity through the heavens, each
swinging clear of the other’s orbit--if, I say, the man who sees this
cannot realise the Creator’s attributes without the help of the book of
Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding. Nor is it only
in the large things that we see the ever present solicitude of some
intelligent force. Nothing is too tiny for that fostering care. We see
the minute proboscis of the insect carefully adjusted to fit into the
calyx of the flower, the most microscopic hair and gland each with its
definite purposeful function to perform. What matter whether these came
by special creation or by evolution? We know as a matter of fact that
they came by evolution, but that only defines the law. It does not
explain it.

But if this power has cared for the bee so as to furnish it with its
honey bag and its collecting forceps, and for the lowly seed so as to
have a thousand devices by which it reaches a congenial soil, then is it
conceivable that we, the highest product of all, are overlooked? It is
NOT conceivable. The idea is inconsistent with the scheme of creation as
we see it. I say again that no faith is needed to attain the certainty
of a most watchful Providence.

And with this certainty surely we have all that is necessary for an
elemental religion. Come what may after death, our duties lie clearly
defined before us in this life; and the ethical standard of all creeds
agrees so far that there is not likely to be any difference of opinion
as to that. The last reformation simplified Catholicism. The coming one
will simplify Protestantism. And when the world is ripe for it another
will come and simplify that. The ever improving brain will give us an
ever broadening creed. Is it not glorious to think that evolution
is still living and acting--that if we have an anthropoid ape as an
ancestor, we may have archangels for our posterity?

Well, I really never intended to inflict all this upon you, Bertie. I
thought I could have made my position clear in a page or so. But you can
see how one point has brought up another. Even now I am leaving so much
unsaid. I can see with such certainty exactly what you will say. “If
you deduce a good Providence from the good things in nature, what do
you make of the evil?” That’s what you will say. Suffice it that I am
inclined to deny the existence of evil. Not another word will I say upon
the subject; but if you come back to it yourself, then be it on your own
head.

You remember that when I wrote last I had just returned from visiting
the Cullingworths at Avonmouth, and that he had promised to let me know
what steps he took in appeasing his creditors. As I expected, I have not
had one word from him since. But in a roundabout way I did get some news
as to what happened. From this account, which was second-hand, and may
have been exaggerated, Cullingworth did exactly what I had recommended,
and calling all his creditors together he made them a long statement as
to his position. The good people were so touched by the picture that
he drew of a worthy man fighting against adversity that several of them
wept, and there was not only complete unanimity as to letting their
bills stand over, but even some talk of a collection then and there to
help Cullingworth on his way. He has, I understand, left Avonmouth, but
no one has any idea what has become of him. It is generally supposed
that he has gone to England. He is a strange fellow, but I wish him luck
wherever he goes.

When I came back I settled down once more to the routine of my father’s
practice, holding on there until something may turn up. And for six
months I have had to wait; a weary six months they have been. You see I
cannot ask my father for money--or, at least, I cannot bring myself to
take an unnecessary penny of his money--for I know how hard a fight
it is with him to keep the roof over our heads and pay for the modest
little horse and trap which are as necessary to his trade as a goose
is to a tailor. Foul fare the grasping taxman who wrings a couple of
guineas from us on the plea that it is a luxury! We can just hold
on, and I would not have him a pound the poorer for me. But you can
understand, Bertie, that it is humiliating for a man of my age to have
to go about without any money in my pocket. It affects me in so many
petty ways. A poor man may do me a kindness, and I have to seem mean in
his eyes. I may want a flower for a girl, and must be content to appear
ungallant. I don’t know why I should be ashamed of this, since it is no
fault of mine, and I hope that I don’t show it to any one else that I AM
ashamed of it; but to you, my dear Bertie, I don’t mind confessing that
it hurts my self-respect terribly.

I have often wondered why some of those writing fellows don’t try their
hands at drawing the inner life of a young man from about the age of
puberty until he begins to find his feet a little. Men are very fond
of analysing the feelings of their heroines, which they cannot possibly
know anything about, while they have little to say of the inner
development of their heroes, which is an experience which they have
themselves undergone. I should like to try it myself, but it would need
blending with fiction, and I never had a spark of imagination. But I
have a vivid recollection of what I went through myself. At the time I
thought (as everybody thinks) that it was a unique experience; but since
I have heard the confidences of my father’s patients I am convinced that
it is the common lot. The shrinking, horrible shyness, alternating with
occasional absurd fits of audacity which represent the reaction against
it, the longing for close friendship, the agonies over imaginary
slights, the extraordinary sexual doubts, the deadly fears caused by
non-existent diseases, the vague emotion produced by all women, and the
half-frightened thrill by particular ones, the aggressiveness caused
by fear of being afraid, the sudden blacknesses, the profound
self-distrust--I dare bet that you have felt every one of them, Bertie,
just as I have, and that the first lad of eighteen whom you see out of
your window is suffering from them now.

This is all a digression, however, from the fact that I have been six
months at home and am weary of it, and pleased at the new development
of which I shall have to tell you. The practice here, although
unremunerative, is very busy with its three-and-sixpenny visits and
guinea confinements, so that both the governor and I have had plenty
to do. You know how I admire him, and yet I fear there is little
intellectual sympathy between us. He appears to think that those
opinions of mine upon religion and politics which come hot from my
inmost soul have been assumed either out of indifference or bravado. So
I have ceased to talk on vital subjects with him, and, though we affect
to ignore it, we both know that there is a barrier there. Now, with my
mother--ah, but my mother must have a paragraph to herself.

You met her, Bertie! You must remember her sweet face, her sensitive
mouth, her peering, short-sighted eyes, her general suggestion of a
plump little hen, who is still on the alert about her chickens. But you
cannot realise all that she is to me in our domestic life. Those helpful
fingers! That sympathetic brain! Ever since I can remember her she has
been the quaintest mixture of the housewife and the woman of letters,
with the highbred spirited lady as a basis for either character. Always
a lady, whether she was bargaining with the butcher, or breaking in a
skittish charwoman, or stirring the porridge, which I can see her doing
with the porridge-stick in one hand, and the other holding her Revue
des deux Mondes within two inches of her dear nose. That was always her
favourite reading, and I can never think of her without the association
of its browny-yellow cover.

She is a very well-read woman is the mother; she keeps up to date in
French literature as well as in English, and can talk by the hour about
the Goncourts, and Flaubert, and Gautier. Yet she is always hard at
work; and how she imbibes all her knowledge is a mystery. She reads when
she knits, she reads when she scrubs, she even reads when she feeds
her babies. We have a little joke against her, that at an interesting
passage she deposited a spoonful of rusk and milk into my little
sister’s car-hole, the child having turned her head at the critical
instant. Her hands are worn with work, and yet where is the idle woman
who has read as much?

Then, there is her family pride. That is a very vital portion of the
mother. You know how little I think of such things. If the Esquire were
to be snipped once and for ever from the tail of my name I should be
the lighter for it. But, ma foi!--to use her own favourite expletive--it
would not do to say this to her. On the Packenham side (she is a
Packenham) the family can boast of some fairly good men--I mean on the
direct line--but when we get on the side branches there is not a monarch
upon earth who does not roost on that huge family tree. Not once, nor
twice, but thrice did the Plantagenets intermarry with us, the Dukes
of Brittany courted our alliance, and the Percies of Northumberland
intertwined themselves with our whole illustrious record. So in my
boyhood she would expound the matter, with hearthbrush in one hand and
a glove full of cinders in the other, while I would sit swinging my
knickerbockered legs, swelling with pride until my waistcoat was as
tight as a sausage skin, as I contemplated the gulf which separated me
from all other little boys who swang their legs upon tables. To this
day if I chance to do anything of which she strongly approves, the dear
heart can say no more than that I am a thorough Packenham; while if I
fall away from the straight path, she says with a sigh that there are
points in which I take after the Munros.

She is broad-minded and intensely practical in her ordinary moods,
though open to attacks of romance. I can recollect her coming to see me
at a junction through which my train passed, with a six months’ absence
on either side of the incident. We had five minutes’ conversation, my
head out of the carriage window. “Wear flannel next your skin, my dear
boy, and never believe in eternal punishment,” was her last item of
advice as we rolled out of the station. Then to finish her portrait
I need not tell you, who have seen her, that she is young-looking and
comely to be the mother of about thirty-five feet of humanity. She
was in the railway carriage and I on the platform the other day. “Your
husband had better get in or we’ll go without him,” said the guard. As
we went off, the mother was fumbling furiously in her pocket, and I know
that she was looking for a shilling.

Ah! what a gossip I have been! And all to lead up to the one sentence
that I could not have stayed at home this six months if it had not been
for the company and the sympathy of my mother.

Well, now I want to tell you about the scrape that I got myself into. I
suppose that I ought to pull a long face over it, but for the life of me
I can’t help laughing. I have you almost up to date in my history now,
for what I am going to tell you happened only last week. I must mention
no names here even to you; for the curse of Ernulphus, which includes
eight and forty minor imprecations, be upon the head of the man who
kisses and tells.

You must know, then, that within the boundaries of this city there are
two ladies, a mother and a daughter, whom I shall call Mrs. and Miss
Laura Andrews. They are patients of the governor’s, and have become
to some extent friends of the family. Madame is Welsh, charming
in appearance, dignified in her manners, and High Church in her
convictions. The daughter is rather taller than the mother, but
otherwise they are strikingly alike. The mother is thirty-six and
the daughter eighteen. Both are exceedingly charming. Had I to choose
between them, I think, entre nous, that the mother would have attracted
me most, for I am thoroughly of Balzac’s opinion as to the woman of
thirty. However, fate was to will it otherwise.

It was the coming home from a dance which first brought Laura and
me together. You know how easily and suddenly these things happen,
beginning in playful teasing and ending in something a little warmer
than friendship. You squeeze the slender arm which is passed through
yours, you venture to take the little gloved hand, you say good night
at absurd length in the shadow of the door. It is innocent and very
interesting, love trying his wings in a first little flutter. He will
keep his sustained flight later on, the better for the practice. There
was never any question of engagements between us, nor any suggestion of
harm. She knew that I was a poor devil with neither means nor prospects,
and I knew that her mother’s will was her law, and that her course
was already marked out for her. However, we exchanged our little
confidences, and met occasionally by appointment, and tried to make our
lives brighter without darkening those of any one else. I can see you
shake your head here and growl, like the comfortable married man that
you are, that such relations are very dangerous. So they are, my boy:
but neither of us cared, she out of innocence and I out of recklessness,
for from the beginning all the fault in the matter was mine.

Well, matters were in this state when one day last week a note came up
to the Dad saying that Mrs. Andrews’ servant was ill, and would he come
at once. The old man had a touch of gout, so I donned my professional
coat and sallied forth, thinking that perhaps I might combine pleasure
with business, and have a few words with Laura. Sure enough, as I passed
up the gravel drive which curves round to the door, I glanced through
the drawing-room window, and saw her sitting painting, with her back
to the light. It was clear that she had not heard me. The hall door was
ajar, and when I pushed it open, no one was in the hall. A sudden fit
of roguishness came over me. I pushed the drawing-room door very slowly
wider, crept in on tiptoe, stole quietly across, and bending down, I
kissed the artist upon the nape of her neck. She turned round with a
squeal, and it was the mother!

I don’t know whether you have ever been in a tighter corner than that,
Bertie. It was quite tight enough for me. I remember that I smiled as
I stole across the carpet on that insane venture. I did not smile again
that evening. It makes me hot now when I think of it.

Well, I made the most dreadful fool of myself. At first, the good lady
who (as I think I told you) is very dignified and rather reserved, could
not believe her senses. Then, as the full force of my enormity came upon
her she reared herself up until she seemed the tallest and the coldest
woman I had ever seen. It was an interview with a refrigerator. She
asked me what I had ever observed in her conduct which had encouraged
me to subject her to such an outrage. I saw, of course, that any excuses
upon my part would put her on the right track and give poor Laura away;
so I stood with my hair bristling and my top hat in my hand, presenting,
I am sure, a most extraordinary figure. Indeed, she looked rather funny
herself, with her palette in one hand, her brush in the other, and the
blank astonishment on her face. I stammered out something about hoping
that she did not mind, which made her more angry than ever. “The
only possible excuse for your conduct, sir, is that you are under the
influence of drink,” said she. “I need not say that we do not require
the services of a medical man in that condition.” I did not try to
disabuse her of the idea, for really I could see no better explanation;
so I beat a retreat in a very demoralised condition. She wrote a letter
to my father about it in the evening, and the old man was very angry
indeed. As to the mother, she is as staunch as steel, and quite prepared
to prove that poor Mrs. A. was a very deep designing person, who had
laid a trap for innocent Johnnie. So there has been a grand row; and not
a soul upon earth has the least idea of what it all means, except only
yourself as you read this letter.

You can imagine that this has not contributed to make life here more
pleasant, for my father cannot bring himself to forgive me. Of course,
I don’t wonder at his anger. I should be just the same myself. It does
look like a shocking breach of professional honour, and a sad disregard
of his interests. If he knew the truth he would see that it was nothing
worse than a silly ill-timed boyish joke. However, he never shall know
the truth.

And now there is some chance of my getting something to do. We had
a letter to-night from Christie & Howden, the writers to the Signet,
saying that they desire an interview with me, in view of a possible
appointment. We can’t imagine what it means, but I am full of hopes. I
go to-morrow morning to see them, and I shall let you know the result.

Good-bye, my dear Bertie! Your life flows in a steady stream, and mine
in a broken torrent. Yet I would have every detail of what happens to
you.





IV. HOME, 1st December, 1881.

I may be doing you an injustice, Bertie, but it seemed to me in
your last that there were indications that the free expression of my
religious views had been distasteful to you. That you should disagree
with me I am prepared for; but that you should object to free and honest
discussion of those subjects which above all others men should be honest
over, would, I confess, be a disappointment. The Freethinker is placed
at this disadvantage in ordinary society, that whereas it would be
considered very bad taste upon his part to obtrude his unorthodox
opinion, no such consideration hampers those with whom he disagrees.
There was a time when it took a brave man to be a Christian. Now it
takes a brave man not to be. But if we are to wear a gag, and hide our
thoughts when writing in confidence to our most intimate----no, but I
won’t believe it. You and I have put up too many thoughts together and
chased them where-ever{sic} they would double, Bertie; so just write to
me like a good fellow, and tell me that I am an ass. Until I have that
comforting assurance, I shall place a quarantine upon everything which
could conceivably be offensive to you.

Does not lunacy strike you, Bertie, as being a very eerie thing? It is
a disease of the soul. To think that you may have a man of noble mind,
full of every lofty aspiration, and that a gross physical cause, such
as the fall of a spicule of bone from the inner table of his skull on
to the surface of the membrane which covers his brain, may have the
ultimate effect of turning him into an obscene creature with every
bestial attribute! That a man’s individuality should swing round
from pole to pole, and yet that one life should contain these two
contradictory personalities--is it not a wondrous thing?

I ask myself, where is the man, the very, very inmost essence of the
man? See how much you may subtract from him without touching it. It does
not lie in the limbs which serve him as tools, nor in the apparatus by
which he is to digest, nor in that by which he is to inhale oxygen. All
these are mere accessories, the slaves of the lord within. Where,
then, is he? He does not lie in the features which are to express his
emotions, nor in the eyes and ears which can be dispensed with by the
blind and deaf. Nor is he in the bony framework which is the rack over
which nature hangs her veil of flesh. In none of these things lies the
essence of the man. And now what is left? An arched whitish putty-like
mass, some fifty odd ounces in weight, with a number of white filaments
hanging down from it, looking not unlike the medusae which float in our
summer seas. But these filaments only serve to conduct nerve force
to muscles and to organs which serve secondary purposes. They may
themselves therefore be disregarded. Nor can we stop here in our
elimination. This central mass of nervous matter may be pared down on
all sides before we seem to get at the very seat of the soul. Suicides
have shot away the front lobes of the brain, and have lived to repent
it. Surgeons have cut down upon it and have removed sections. Much of it
is merely for the purpose of furnishing the springs of motion, and much
for the reception of impressions. All this may be put aside as we search
for the physical seat of what we call the soul--the spiritual part of
the man. And what is left then? A little blob of matter, a handful of
nervous dough, a few ounces of tissue, but there--somewhere there--lurks
that impalpable seed, to which the rest of our frame is but the pod. The
old philosophers who put the soul in the pineal gland were not right,
but after all they were uncommonly near the mark.

You’ll find my physiology even worse than my theology, Bertie. I have
a way of telling stories backwards to you, which is natural enough when
you consider that I always sit down to write under the influence of the
last impressions which have come upon me. All this talk about the soul
and the brain arises simply from the fact that I have been spending the
last few weeks with a lunatic. And how it came about I will tell you as
clearly as I can.

You remember that in my last I explained to you how restive I had been
getting at home, and how my idiotic mistake had annoyed my father and
had made my position here very uncomfortable. Then I mentioned, I think,
that I had received a letter from Christie & Howden, the lawyers. Well,
I brushed up my Sunday hat, and my mother stood on a chair and landed me
twice on the ear with a clothes brush, under the impression that she
was making the collar of my overcoat look more presentable. With which
accolade out I sallied into the world, the dear soul standing on the
steps, peering after me and waving me success.

Well, I was in considerable trepidation when I reached the office, for I
am a much more nervous person than any of my friends will ever credit
me with being. However, I was shown in at once to Mr. James Christie,
a wiry, sharp, thin-lipped kind of man, with an abrupt manner, and
that sort of Scotch precision of speech which gives the impression of
clearness of thought behind it.

“I understand from Professor Maxwell that you have been looking about
for an opening, Mr. Munro,” said he.

Maxwell had said that he would give me a hand if he could; but you
remember that he had a reputation for giving such promises rather
easily. I speak of a man as I find him, and to me he has been an
excellent friend.

“I should be very happy to hear of any opening,” said I.

“Of your medical qualifications there is no need to speak,” he went
on, running his eyes all over me in the most questioning way. “Your
Bachelorship of Medicine will answer for that. But Professor Maxwell
thought you peculiarly fitted for this vacancy for physical reasons. May
I ask you what your weight is?”

“Fourteen stone.”

“And you stand, I should judge, about six feet high?”

“Precisely.”


“Accustomed too, as I gather, to muscular exercise of every kind. Well,
there can be no question that you are the very man for the post, and I
shall be very happy to recommend you to Lord Saltire.”

“You forget,” said I, “that I have not yet heard what the position is,
or the terms which you offer.”

He began to laugh at that. “It was a little precipitate on my part,”
 said he; “but I do not think that we are likely to quarrel as to
position or terms. You may have heard perhaps of the sad misfortune of
our client, Lord Saltire? Not? To put it briefly then, his son, the Hon.
James Derwent, the heir to the estates and the only child, was struck
down by the sun while fishing without his hat last July. His mind has
never recovered from the shock, and he has been ever since in a chronic
state of moody sullenness which breaks out every now and then into
violent mania. His father will not allow him to be removed from
Lochtully Castle, and it is his desire that a medical man should stay
there in constant attendance upon his son. Your physical strength would
of course be very useful in restraining those violent attacks of which
I have spoken. The remuneration will be twelve pounds a month, and you
would be required to take over your duties to-morrow.”

I walked home, my dear Bertie, with a bounding heart, and the pavement
like cotton wool under my feet. I found just eightpence in my pocket,
and I spent the whole of it on a really good cigar with which to
celebrate the occasion. Old Cullingworth has always had a very high
opinion of lunatics for beginners. “Get a lunatic, my boy! Get a
lunatic!” he used to say. Then it was not only the situation, but the
fine connection that it opened up. I seemed to see exactly what would
happen. There would be illness in the family,--Lord Saltire himself
perhaps, or his wife. There would be no time to send for advice. I would
be consulted. I would gain their confidence and become their family
attendant. They would recommend me to their wealthy friends. It was all
as clear as possible. I was debating before I reached home whether it
would be worth my while to give up a lucrative country practice in order
to take the Professorship which might be offered me.

My father took the news philosophically enough, with some rather
sardonic remark about my patient and me being well qualified to keep
each other company. But to my mother it was a flash of joy, followed by
a thunderclap of consternation. I had only three under-shirts, the
best of my linen had gone to Belfast to be refronted and recuffed, the
night-gowns were not marked yet--there were a dozen of those domestic
difficulties of which the mere male never thinks. A dreadful vision of
Lady Saltire looking over my things and finding the heel out of one of
my socks obsessed my mother. Out we trudged together, and before evening
her soul was at rest, and I had mortgaged in advance my first month’s
salary. She was great, as we walked home, upon the grand people into
whose service I was to enter. “As a matter of fact, my dear,” said she,
“they are in a sense relations of yours. You are very closely allied to
the Percies, and the Saltires have Percy blood in them also. They are
only a cadet branch, and you are close upon the main line; but still it
is not for us to deny the connection.” She brought a cold sweat out upon
me by suggesting that she should make things easy by writing to Lord
Saltire and explaining our respective positions. Several times during
the evening I heard her murmur complacently that they were only the
cadet branch.

Am I not the slowest of story-tellers? But you encourage me to it by
your sympathetic interest in details. However, I shall move along a
little faster now. Next morning I was off to Lochtully, which, as you
know, is in the north of Perthshire. It stands three miles from the
station, a great gray pinnacled house, with two towers cocking out above
the fir woods, like a hare’s ears from a tussock of grass. As we drove
up to the door I felt pretty solemn--not at all as the main line should
do when it condescends to visit the cadet branch. Into the hall as I
entered came a grave learned-looking man, with whom in my nervousness
I was about to shake hands cordially. Fortunately he forestalled the
impending embrace by explaining that he was the butler. He showed
me into a small study, where everything stank of varnish and morocco
leather, there to await the great man. He proved when he came to be a
much less formidable figure than his retainer--indeed, I felt thoroughly
at my ease with him from the moment he opened his mouth. He is grizzled,
red-faced, sharp-featured, with a prying and yet benevolent expression,
very human and just a trifle vulgar. His wife, however, to whom I
was afterwards introduced, is a most depressing person,--pale, cold,
hatchet-faced, with drooping eyelids and very prominent blue veins at
her temples. She froze me up again just as I was budding out under the
influence of her husband. However, the thing that interested me most
of all was to see my patient, to whose room I was taken by Lord Saltire
after we had had a cup of tea.

The room was a large bare one, at the end of a long corridor. Near the
door was seated a footman, placed there to fill up the gap between two
doctors, and looking considerably relieved at my advent. Over by the
window (which was furnished with a wooden guard, like that of a nursery)
sat a tall, yellow-haired, yellow-bearded, young man, who raised a pair
of startled blue eyes as we entered. He was turning over the pages of a
bound copy of the Illustrated London News.

“James,” said Lord Saltire, “this is Dr. Stark Munro, who has come to
look after you.”

My patient mumbled something in his beard, which seemed to me
suspiciously like “Damn Dr. Stark Munro!” The peer evidently thought the
same, for he led me aside by the elbow.

“I don’t know whether you have been told that James is a little rough in
his ways at present,” said he; “his whole nature has deteriorated very
much since this calamity came upon him. You must not be offended by
anything he may say or do.”

“Not in the least,” said I.

“There is a taint of this sort upon my wife’s side,” I whispered the
little lord; “her uncle’s symptoms were identical. Dr. Peterson says
that the sunstroke was only the determining cause. The predisposition
was already there. I may tell you that the footman will always be in the
next room, so that you can call him if you need his assistance.”

Well, it ended by lord and lacquey moving off, and leaving me with my
patient. I thought that I should lose no time in establishing a kindly
relation with him, so I drew a chair over to his sofa and began to ask
him a few questions about his health and habits. Not a word could I get
out of him in reply. He sat as sullen as a mule, with a kind of sneer
about his handsome face, which showed me very well that he had heard
everything. I tried this and tried that, but not a syllable could I
get from him; so at last I turned from him and began to look over some
illustrated papers on the table. He doesn’t read, it seems, and will do
nothing but look at pictures. Well, I was sitting like this with my back
half turned, when you can imagine my surprise to feel something plucking
gently at me, and to see a great brown hand trying to slip its way into
my coat pocket. I caught at the wrist and turned swiftly round, but too
late to prevent my handkerchief being whisked out and concealed behind
the Hon. James Derwent, who sat grinning at me like a mischievous
monkey.

“Come, I may want that,” said I, trying to treat the matter as a joke.

He used some language which was more scriptural than religious. I saw
that he did not mean giving it up, but I was determined not to let him
get the upper hand over me. I grabbed for the handkerchief; and he, with
a snarl, caught my hand in both of his. He had a powerful grip, but I
managed to get his wrist and to give it a wrench round, until, with a
howl, he dropped my property.

“What fun,” said I, pretending to laugh. “Let us try again. Now, you
take it up, and see if I can get it again.”

But he had had enough of that game. Yet he appeared to be better
humoured than before the incident, and I got a few short answers to the
questions which I put to him.

And here comes in the text which started me preaching about lunacy at
the beginning of this letter. WHAT a marvellous thing it is! This man,
from all I can learn of him, has suddenly swung clean over from one
extreme of character to the other. Every plus has in an instant become a
minus. He’s another man, but in the same case. I am told that he used
to be (only a few months ago, mind you) most fastidious in dress
and speech. Now he is a foul-tongued rough! He had a nice taste in
literature. Now he stares at you if you speak of Shakespeare. Queerest
of all, he used to be a very high-and-dry Tory in his opinions. He
is fond now of airing the most democratic views, and in a needlessly
offensive way. When I did get on terms with him at last, I found that
there was nothing on which he could be drawn on to talk so soon as on
politics. In substance, I am bound to say that I think his new views are
probably saner than his old ones, but the insanity lies in his sudden
reasonless change and in his violent blurts of speech.

It was some weeks, however, before I gained his confidence, so far as
to be able to hold a real conversation with him. For a long time he was
very sullen and suspicious, resenting the constant watch which I kept
upon him. This could not be relaxed, for he was full of the most apish
tricks. One day he got hold of my tobacco pouch, and stuffed two ounces
of my tobacco into the long barrel of an Eastern gun which hangs on the
wall. He jammed it all down with the ramrod, and I was never able to get
it up again. Another time he threw an earthenware spittoon through the
window, and would have sent the clock after it had I not prevented
him. Every day I took him for a two hours’ constitutional, save when it
rained, and then we walked religiously for the same space up and down
the room. Heh! but it was a deadly, dreary, kind of life.

I was supposed to have my eye upon him all day, with a two-hour interval
every afternoon and an evening to myself upon Fridays. But then what was
the use of an evening to myself when there was no town near, and I had
no friends whom I could visit? I did a fair amount of reading, for Lord
Saltire let me have the run of his library. Gibbon gave me a couple of
enchanting weeks. You know the effect that he produces. You seem to
be serenely floating upon a cloud, and looking down on all these pigmy
armies and navies, with a wise Mentor ever at your side to whisper to
you the inner meaning of all that majestic panorama.

Now and again young Derwent introduced some excitement into my dull
life. On one occasion when we were walking in the grounds, he suddenly
snatched up a spade from a grass-plot, and rushed at an inoffensive
under-gardener. The man ran screaming for his life, with my patient
cursing at his very heels, and me within a few paces of him. When I at
last laid my hand on his collar, he threw down his weapon and burst into
shrieks of laughter. It was only mischief and not ferocity; but when
that under-gardener saw us coming after that he was off with a face like
a cream cheese. At night the attendant slept in a camp-bed at the foot
of the patient’s, and my room was next door, so that I could be called
if necessary. No, it was not a very exhilarating life!

We used to go down to family meals when there were no visitors; and
there we made a curious quartette: Jimmy (as he wished me to call him)
glum and silent; I with the tail of my eye always twisted round to him;
Lady Saltire with her condescending eyelids and her blue veins; and the
good-natured peer, fussy and genial, but always rather subdued in the
presence of his wife. She looked as if a glass of good wine would do
her good, and he as if he would be the better for abstinence; and so, in
accordance with the usual lopsidedness of life, he drank freely, and
she took nothing but lime-juice and water. You cannot imagine a more
ignorant, intolerant, narrow-minded woman than she. If she had only been
content to be silent and hidden that small brain of hers, it would
not have mattered; but there was no end to her bitter and exasperating
clacking. What was she after all but a thin pipe for conveying disease
from one generation to another? She was bounded by insanity upon the
north and upon the south. I resolutely set myself to avoid all argument
with her; but she knew, with her woman’s instinct, that we were as far
apart as the poles, and took a pleasure in waving the red flag before
me. One day she was waxing eloquent as to the crime of a minister of an
Episcopal church performing any service in a Presbyterian chapel. Some
neighbouring minister had done it, it seems; and if he had been marked
down in a pot house she could not have spoken with greater loathing.
I suppose that my eyes were less under control than my tongue, for she
suddenly turned upon me with:

“I see that you don’t agree with me, Dr. Munro.”

I replied quietly that I did not, and tried to change the conversation;
but she was not to be shaken off.

“Why not, may I ask?”

I explained that in my opinion the tendency of the age was to break down
those ridiculous doctrinal points which are so useless, and which have
for so long set people by the ears. I added that I hoped the time
was soon coming when good men of all creeds would throw this lumber
overboard and join hands together.

She half rose, almost speechless with indignation.

“I presume,” said she, “that you are one of those people who would
separate the Church from the State?”

“Most certainly,” I answered.

She stood erect in a kind of cold fury, and swept out of the room. Jimmy
began to chuckle, and his father looked perplexed.

“I am sorry that my opinions are offensive to Lady Saltire,” I remarked.

“Yes, yes; it’s a pity; a pity,” said he “well, well, we must say what
we think; but it’s a pity you think it--a very great pity.”

I quite expected to get my dismissal over this business, and indeed,
indirectly I may say that I did so. From that day Lady Saltire was as
rude to me as she could be, and never lost an opportunity of making
attacks upon what she imagined to be my opinions. Of these I never
took the slightest notice; but at last on an evil day she went for me
point-blank, so that there was no getting away from her. It was just
at the end of lunch, when the footman had left the room. She had been
talking about Lord Saltire’s going up to London to vote upon some
question in the House of Lords.

“Perhaps, Dr. Munro,” said she, turning acidly upon me, “that is also an
institution which has not been fortunate enough to win your approval.”

“It is a question, Lady Saltire, which I should much prefer not to
discuss,” I answered.

“Oh, you might just as well have the courage of your convictions,” said
she. “Since you desire to despoil the National Church, it is natural
enough that you should wish also to break up the Constitution. I have
heard that an atheist is always a red republican.”

Lord Saltire rose, wishing, I have no doubt, to put an end to the
conversation. Jimmy and I rose also; and suddenly I saw that instead of
moving towards the door he was going to his mother. Knowing his little
tricks, I passed my hand under his arm, and tried to steer him away. She
noticed it, however, and interfered.

“Did you wish to speak to me, James?”

“I want to whisper in your ear, mother.”

“Pray don’t excite yourself, sir,” said I, again attempting to detain
him. Lady Saltire arched her aristocratic eyebrows.

“I think, Dr. Munro, that you push your authority rather far when you
venture to interfere between a mother and her son,” said she. “What was
it, my poor dear boy?”

Jimmy bent down and whispered something in her ear. The blood rushed
into her pale face, and she sprang from him as if he had struck her.
Jimmy began to snigger.

“This is your doing, Dr. Munro,” she cried furiously. “You have
corrupted my son’s mind, and encouraged him to insult his mother.”

“My dear! My dear!” said her husband soothingly, and I quietly led the
recalcitrant Jimmy upstairs. I asked him what it was that he had said to
his mother, but got only chuckles in reply.

I had a presentiment that I should hear more of the matter; and I was
not wrong. Lord Saltire called me into his study in the evening.

“The fact is, doctor,” said he, “that Lady Saltire has been extremely
annoyed and grieved about what occurred at lunch to-day. Of course, you
can imagine that such an expression coming from her own son, shocked her
more than I can tell.”

“I assure you, Lord Saltire,” said I, “that I have no idea at all what
passed between Lady Saltire and my patient.”

“Well,” said he, “without going into details, I may say that what he
whispered was a blasphemous wish, most coarsely expressed, as to the
future of that Upper House to which I have the honor to belong.”

“I am very sorry,” said I, “and I assure you that I have never
encouraged him in his extreme political views, which seem to me to be
symptoms of his disease.”

“I am quite convinced that what you say is true,” he answered; “but Lady
Saltire is unhappily of the opinion that you have instilled these ideas
into him. You know that it is a little difficult sometimes to reason
with a lady. However, I have no doubt that all may be smoothed over if
you would see Lady Saltire and assure her that she has misunderstood
your views upon this point, and that you are personally a supporter of a
Hereditary Chamber.”

It put me in a tight corner, Bertie; but my mind was instantly made up.
From the first word I had read my dismissal in every uneasy glance of
his little eyes.

“I am afraid,” said I, “that that is rather further than I am prepared
to go. I think that since there has been for some weeks a certain
friction between Lady Saltire and myself, it would perhaps be as well
that I should resign the post which I hold in your household. I shall
be happy, however, to remain here until you have found some one to take
over my duties.”

“Well, I am sorry it has come to this, and yet it may be that you are
right,” said he, with an expression of relief; “as to James, there need
be no difficulty about that, for Dr. Patterson could come in tomorrow
morning.”

“Then to-morrow morning let it be,” I answered.

“Very good, Dr. Munro; I will see that you have your cheque before you
go.”

So there was the end of all my fine dreams about aristocratic practices
and wonderful introductions! I believe the only person in the whole
house who regretted me was Jimmy, who was quite downcast at the news.
His grief, however, did not prevent him from brushing my new top-hat
the wrong way on the morning that I left. I did not notice it until I
reached the station, and a most undignified object I must have looked
when I took my departure.

So ends the history of a failure. I am, as you know, inclined to
fatalism, and do not believe that such a thing as chance exists; so I am
bound to think that this experience was given to me for some end. It
was a preliminary canter for the big race, perhaps. My mother was
disappointed, but tried to show it as little as possible. My father
was a little sardonic over the matter. I fear that the gap between us
widens. By the way, an extraordinary card arrived from Cullingworth
during my absence. “You are my man,” said he; “mind that I am to have
you when I want you.” There was no date and no address, but the postmark
was Bradfield in the north of England. Does it mean nothing? Or may it
mean everything? We must wait and see.

Good-bye, old man. Let me hear equally fully about your own affairs. How
did the Rattray business go off?





V. MERTON ON THE MOORS, 5th March, 1882.


I was so delighted, my dear chap, to have your assurance that nothing
that I have said or could say upon the subject of religion could offend
you. It is difficult to tell you how pleased and relieved I was at your
cordial letter. I have no one to whom I can talk upon such matters. I
am all driven inwards, and thought turns sour when one lets it
stagnate like that. It is a grand thing to be able to tell it all to a
sympathetic listener--and the more so perhaps when he looks at it all
from another standpoint. It steadies and sobers one.

Those whom I love best are those who have least sympathy with my
struggles. They talk about having faith, as if it could be done by an
act of volition. They might as well tell me to have black hair instead
of red. I might simulate it perhaps by refusing to use my reason at all
in religious matters. But I will never be traitor to the highest thing
that God has given me. I WILL use it. It is more moral to use it and go
wrong, than to forego it and be right. It is only a little foot-rule,
and I have to measure Mount Everest with it; but it’s all I have, and
I’ll never give it up while there’s breath between my lips.

With all respect to you, Bertie, it is very easy to be orthodox. A man
who wanted mental peace and material advancement in this world would
certainly choose to be so. As Smiles says--“A dead fish can float with
the stream, but it takes a man to swim against it.” What could be more
noble than the start and the starter of Christianity? How beautiful
the upward struggle of an idea, like some sweet flower blossoming out
amongst rubble and cinders! But, alas! to say that this idea was a final
idea! That this scheme of thought was above the reason! That this
gentle philosopher was that supreme intelligence to which we cannot even
imagine a personality without irreverence!--all this will come to rank
with the strangest delusions of mankind. And then how clouded has become
that fine daybreak of Christianity! Its representatives have risen from
the manger to the palace, from the fishing smack to the House of Lords.
Nor is that other old potentate in the Vatican, with his art treasures,
his guards, and his cellars of wine in a more logical position. They are
all good and talented men, and in the market of brains are worth perhaps
as much as they get. But how can they bring themselves to pose as the
representatives of a creed, which, as they themselves expound it, is
based upon humility, poverty, and self-denial? Not one of them who
would not quote with approval the parable of the Wedding Guest. But
try putting one of them out of their due precedence at the next Court
reception. It happened some little time ago with a Cardinal, and England
rang with his protests. How blind not to see how they would spring at
one leap into the real first place if they would but resolutely claim
the last as the special badge of their master!

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things
peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the
instincts of beasts. But surely all will be well with us. If not, then
He who made us is evil, which is not to be thought. Surely, then, all
must go very well with us!

I feel ashamed when I read this over. My mind fills in all the trains
of thought of which you have the rude ends peeping out from this tangle.
Make what you can of it, dear Bertie, and believe that it all comes from
my innermost heart. Above all may I be kept from becoming a partisan,
and tempering with truth in order to sustain a case. Let me but get a
hand on her skirt, and she may drag me where she will, if she will but
turn her face from time to time that I may know her.

You’ll see from the address of this letter, Bertie, that I have left
Scotland and am in Yorkshire. I have been here three months, and am now
on the eve of leaving under the strangest circumstances and with the
queerest prospects. Good old Cullingworth has turned out a trump, as I
always knew he would. But, as usual, I am beginning at the wrong end, so
here goes to give you an idea of what has been happening.

I told you in my last about my lunacy adventure and my ignominious
return from Lochtully Castle. When I had settled for the flannel vests
which my mother had ordered so lavishly I had only five pounds left out
of my pay. With this, as it was the first money that I had ever earned
im{sic} my life, I bought her a gold bangle, so behold me reduced at
once to my usual empty pocketed condition. Well, it was something just
to feel that I HAD earned money. It gave me an assurance that I might
again.

I had not been at home more than a few days when my father called me
into the study after breakfast one morning and spoke very seriously as
to our financial position. He began the interview by unbuttoning his
waistcoat and asking me to listen at his fifth intercostal space, two
inches from the left sternal line. I did so, and was shocked to hear a
well-marked mitral regurgitant murmur.

“It is of old standing,” said he, “but of late I have had a puffiness
about the ankles and some renal symptoms which show me that it is
beginning to tell.”

I tried to express my grief and sympathy, but he cut me short with some
asperity.

“The point is,” said he, “that no insurance office would accept my
life, and that I have been unable, owing to competition and increased
expenses, to lay anything by. If I die soon (which, between ourselves,
is by no means improbable), I must leave to your care your mother and
the children. My practice is so entirely a personal one that I cannot
hope to be able to hand over to you enough to afford a living.”

I thought of Cullingworth’s advice about going where you are least
known. “I think,” said I, “that, my chances would be better away from
here.”

“Then you must lose no time in establishing yourself,” said he. “Your
position would be one of great responsibility if anything were to happen
to me just now. I had hoped that you had found an excellent opening with
the Saltires; but I fear that you can hardly expect to get on in the
world, my boy, if you insult your employer’s religious and political
view at his own table.”

It wasn’t a time to argue, so I said nothing. My father took a copy of
the Lancet out of his desk, and turned up an advertisement which he had
marked with a blue pencil. “Read this!” said he.

I’ve got it before me as I write. It runs thus: Qualified Assistant.
Wanted at once in a large country and colliery practice. Thorough
knowledge of obstetrics and dispensing indispensable. Ride and drive.
L70 a year. Apply Dr. Horton Merton on the Moors, Yorkshire.”

“There might be an opening there,” said he. “I know Horton, and I am
convinced that I can get you the appointment. It would at least give
you the opportunity of looking round and seeing whether there was any
vacancy there. How do you think it would suit you?”

Of course I could only answer that I was willing to turn my hand
to anything. But that interview has left a mark upon me--a heavy
ever-present gloom away at the back of my soul, which I am conscious of
even when the cause of it has for a moment gone out of my thoughts.

I had enough to make a man serious before, when I had to face the world
without money or interest. But now to think of the mother and my sisters
and little Paul all leaning upon me when I cannot stand myself--it is
a nightmare. Could there be anything more dreadful in life than to have
those whom you love looking to you for help and to be unable to give it?
But perhaps it won’t come to that. Perhaps my father may hold his
own for years. Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are
ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with
our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in
general principles to pull us through.

Well, it was all fixed up; and down I came to Yorkshire. I wasn’t in the
best of spirits when I started, Bertie, but they went down and down as
I neared my destination. How people can dwell in such places passes my
comprehension. What can life offer them to make up for these mutilations
of the face of Nature? No woods, little grass, spouting chimneys,
slate-coloured streams, sloping mounds of coke and slag, topped by
the great wheels and pumps of the mines. Cinder-strewn paths, black as
though stained by the weary miners who toil along them, lead through
the tarnished fields to the rows of smoke-stained cottages. How can any
young unmarried man accept such a lot while there’s an empty hammock in
the navy, or a berth in a merchant forecastle? How many shillings a week
is the breath of the ocean worth? It seems to me that if I were a poor
man--well, upon my word, that “if” is rather funny when I think that
many of the dwellers in those smoky cottages have twice my salary with
half my expenses.

Well, as I said, my spirits sank lower and lower until they got down
into the bulb, when on looking through the gathering gloom I saw
“Merton” printed on the lamps of a dreary dismal station. I got out, and
was standing beside my trunk and my hat-box, waiting for a porter, when
up came a cheery-looking fellow and asked me whether I was Dr. Stark
Munro. “I’m Horton,” said he; and shook hands cordially.

In that melancholy place the sight of him was like a fire on a frosty
night. He was gaily dressed in the first place, check trousers, white
waistcoat, a flower in his button hole. But the look of the man was
very much to my heart. He was ruddy checked and black eyed, with a jolly
stout figure and an honest genial smile. I felt as we clinched hands in
the foggy grimy station that I had met a man and a friend.

His carriage was waiting, and we drove out to his residence, The
Myrtles, where I was speedily introduced both to his family and his
practice. The former is small, and the latter enormous. The wife is
dead; but her mother, Mrs. White, keeps house for him; and there are two
dear little girls, about five and seven. Then there is an unqualified
assistant, a young Irish student, who, with the three maids, the
coachman, and the stable boy, make up the whole establishment. When I
tell you that we give four horses quite as much as they can do, you will
have an idea of the ground we cover.

The house, a large square brick one, standing in its own grounds, is
built on a small hill in an oasis of green fields. Beyond this, however,
on every side the veil of smoke hangs over the country, with the mine
pumps and the chimneys bristling out of it. It would be a dreadful place
for an idle man: but we are all so busy that we have hardly time to
think whether there’s a view or not.

Day and night we are at work; and yet the three months have been very
pleasant ones to look back upon.

I’ll give you an idea of what a day’s work is like. We breakfast about
nine o’clock, and immediately afterwards the morning patients begin to
drop in. Many of them are very poor people, belonging to the colliery
clubs, the principle of which is, that the members pay a little over a
halfpenny a week all the year round, well or ill, in return for which
they get medicine and attendance free. “Not much of a catch for the
doctors,” you would say, but it is astonishing what competition there
is among them to get the appointment. You see it is a certainty for
one thing, and it leads indirectly to other little extras. Besides, it
amounts up surprisingly. I have no doubt that Horton has five or six
hundred a year from his clubs alone. On the other hand, you can imagine
that club patients, since they pay the same in any case, don’t let their
ailments go very far before they are round in the consulting room.

Well, then, by half-past nine we are in full blast. Horton is seeing
the better patients in the consulting room, I am interviewing the
poorer ones in the waiting room, and McCarthy, the Irishman, making up
prescriptions as hard as he can tear. By the club rules, patients are
bound to find their own bottles and corks.

They generally remember the bottle, but always forget the cork. “Ye must
pay a pinny or ilse put your forefinger in,” says McCarthy. They have an
idea that all the strength of the medicine goes if the bottle is open,
so they trot off with their fingers stuck in the necks. They have the
most singular notions about medicines. “It’s that strong that a spoon
will stand oop in’t!” is one man’s description. Above all, they love to
have two bottles, one with a solution of citric acid, and the other with
carbonate of soda. When the mixture begins to fizz, they realise that
there is indeed a science of medicine.

This sort of work, with vaccinations, bandagings, and minor surgery,
takes us to nearly eleven o’clock, when we assemble in Horton’s room to
make out the list. All the names of patients under treatment are pinned
upon a big board. We sit round with note books open, and distribute
those who must be seen between us. By the time this is done and the
horses in, it is half-past eleven. Then away we all FLY upon our several
tasks: Horton in a carriage and pair to see the employers; I in a dog
cart to see the employed; and McCarthy on his good Irish legs to see
those chronic cases to which a qualified man can do no good, and an
unqualified no harm.

Well, we all work back again by two o’clock, when we find dinner waiting
for us. We may or may not have finished our rounds. If not away we go
again. If we have, Horton dictates his prescriptions, and strides off
to bed with his black clay pipe in his mouth. He is the most abandoned
smoker I have ever met with, collecting the dottles of his pipes in
the evening, and smoking them the next morning before breakfast in the
stable yard. When he has departed for his nap, McCarthy and I get to
work on the medicine. There are, perhaps, fifty bottles to put up, with
pills, ointment, etc. It is quite half-past four before we have them all
laid out on the shelf addressed to the respective invalids. Then we have
an hour or so of quiet, when we smoke or read, or box with the coachman
in the harness room. After tea the evening’s work commences. From six to
nine people are coming in for their medicine, or fresh patients wishing
advice. When these are settled we have to see again any very grave cases
which may be on the list; and so, about ten o’clock, we may hope to have
another smoke, and perhaps a game of cards. Then it is a rare thing for
a night to pass without one or other of us having to trudge off to a
case which may take us two hours, or may take us ten. Hard work, as you
see; but Horton is such a good chap, and works so hard himself, that one
does not mind what one does. And then we are all like brothers in the
house; our talk is just a rattle of chaff, and the patients are as
homely as ourselves, so that the work becomes quite a pleasure to all of
us.

Yes, Horton is a real right-down good fellow. His heart is broad and
kind and generous. There is nothing petty in the man. He loves to see
those around him happy; and the sight of his sturdy figure and jolly red
face goes far to make them so. Nature meant him to be a healer; for he
brightens up a sick room as he did the Merton station when first I set
eyes upon him. Don’t imagine from my description that he is in any
way soft, however. There is no one on whom one could be less likely to
impose. He has a temper which is easily aflame and as easily appeased.
A mistake in the dispensing may wake it up and then he bursts into
the surgery like a whiff of cast wind, his checks red, his whiskers
bristling, and his eyes malignant. The daybook is banged, the bottles
rattled, the counter thumped, and then he is off again with five doors
slamming behind him. We can trace his progress when the black mood is on
him by those dwindling slams. Perhaps it is that McCarthy has labelled
the cough mixture as the eye-wash, or sent an empty pillbox with an
exhortation to take one every four hours. In any case the cyclone comes
and goes, and by the next meal all is peace once more.

I said that the patients were very homely. Any one who is over-starched
might well come here to be unstiffened. I confess that I did not quite
fall in with it at once. When on one of my first mornings a club patient
with his bottle under his arm came up to me and asked me if I were the
doctor’s man, I sent him on to see the groom in the stable. But soon one
falls into the humour of it. There is no offence meant; and why should
any be taken? They are kindly, generous folk; and if they pay no respect
to your profession in the abstract, and so rather hurt your dignity,
they will be as leal and true as possible to yourself if you can win
their respect. I like the grip of their greasy and blackened hands.

Another peculiarity of the district is that many of the manufacturers
and colliery owners have risen from the workmen, and have (in some cases
at least) retained their old manners and even their old dress. The other
day Mrs. White, Horton’s mother-in-law, had a violent sick headache,
and, as we are all very fond of the kind old lady, we were trying to
keep things as quiet as possible down-stairs. Suddenly there came
a bang! bang! bang! at the knocker; and then in an instant another
rattling series of knocks, as if a tethered donkey were trying to kick
in the panel. After all our efforts for silence it was exasperating. I
rushed to the door to find a seedy looking person just raising his hand
to commence a fresh bombardment. “What on earth’s the matter?” I asked,
only I may have been a little more emphatic. “Pain in the jaw,” said he.
“You needn’t make such a noise,” said I; “other people are ill besides
you.” “If I pay my money, young man, I’ll make such noise as I like.”
 And actually in cold blood he commenced a fresh assault upon the door.
He would have gone on with his devil’s tattoo all morning if I had not
led him down the path and seen him off the premises. An hour afterwards
Horton whirled into the surgery, with a trail of banged doors behind
him. “What’s this about Mr. Usher, Munro?” he asked. “He says that you
were violent towards him.” “There was a club patient here who kept on
banging the knocker,” said I; “I was afraid that he would disturb Mrs.
White, and so I made him stop.” Horton’s eyes began to twinkle. “My
boy,” said he, “that club patient, as you call him, is the richest man
in Merton, and worth a hundred a year to me.” I have no doubt that he
appeased him by some tale of my disgrace and degradation; but I have not
heard anything of the matter since.

It has been good for me to be here, Bertie. It has brought me in close
contact with the working classes, and made me realise what fine people
they are. Because one drunkard goes home howling on a Saturday night,
we are too apt to overlook the ninety-nine decent folk by their own
firesides. I shall not make that mistake any more. The kindliness of the
poor to the poor makes a man sick of himself. And their sweet patience!
Depend upon it, if ever there is a popular rising, the wrongs which lead
to it must be monstrous and indefensible. I think the excesses of the
French Revolution are dreadful enough in themselves, but much more so as
an index to the slow centuries of misery against which they were a mad
protest. And then the wisdom of the poor! It is amusing to read the glib
newspaper man writing about the ignorance of the masses. They don’t
know the date of Magna Charta, or whom John of Gaunt married; but put
a practical up-to-date problem before them, and see how unerringly they
take the right side. Didn’t they put the Reform Bill through in the
teeth of the opposition of the majority of the so-called educated
classes? Didn’t they back the North against the South when nearly all
our leaders went wrong? When universal arbitration and the suppression
of the liquor traffic comes, is it not sure to be from the pressure of
these humble folks? They look at life with clearer and more unselfish
eyes. It’s an axiom, I think, that to heighten a nation’s wisdom you
must lower its franchise.

I often have my doubts, Bertie, if there is such a thing as the
existence of evil? If we could honestly convince ourselves that there
was not, it would help us so much in formulating a rational religion.
But don’t let us strain truth even for such an object as that. I must
confess that there are some forms of vice, cruelty for example, for
which it is hard to find any explanation, save indeed that it is a
degenerate survival of that war-like ferocity which may once have been
of service in helping to protect the community. No; let me be frank, and
say that I can’t make cruelty fit into my scheme. But when you find that
other evils, which seem at first sight black enough, really tend in
the long run to the good of mankind, it may be hoped that those which
continue to puzzle us may at last be found to serve the same end in some
fashion which is now inexplicable.

It seems to me that the study of life by the physician vindicates the
moral principles of right and wrong. But when you look closely it is a
question whether that which is a wrong to the present community may not
prove to have been a right to the interests of posterity. That sounds
a little foggy; but I will make my meaning more clear when I say that
I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those
great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both
are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate,
and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own
distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate
convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply
into the ultimate effect.

I have my own views about Nature’s methods, though I feel that it is
rather like a beetle giving his opinions upon the milky way. However,
they have the merit of being consoling; for if we could conscientiously
see that sin served a purpose, and a good one, it would take some of the
blackness out of life. It seems to me, then, that Nature, still working
on the lines of evolution, strengthens the race in two ways. The one is
by improving those who are morally strong, which is done by increased
knowledge and broadening religious views; the other, and hardly less
important, is by the killing off and extinction of those who are morally
weak. This is accomplished by drink and immorality. These are really two
of the most important forces which work for the ultimate perfection of
the race. I picture them as two great invisible hands hovering over the
garden of life and plucking up the weeds. Looked at in one’s own day,
one can only see that they produce degradation and misery. But at the
end of a third generation from then, what has happened? The line of the
drunkard and of the debauchee, physically as well as morally weakened,
is either extinct or on the way towards it. Struma, tubercle, nervous
disease, have all lent a hand towards the pruning off of that rotten
branch, and the average of the race is thereby improved. I believe from
the little that I have seen of life, that it is a law which acts with
startling swiftness, that a majority of drunkards never perpetuate
their species at all, and that when the curse is hereditary, the second
generation generally sees the end of it.

Don’t misunderstand me, and quote me as saying that it is a good thing
for a nation that it should have many drunkards. Nothing of the kind.
What I say is, that if a nation has many morally weak people, then it
is good that there should be a means for checking those weaker strains.
Nature has her devices, and drink is among them. When there are no more
drunkards and reprobates, it means that the race is so advanced that it
no longer needs such rough treatment. Then the all-wise Engineer will
speed us along in some other fashion.

I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about this question of the uses of
evil, and of how powerful a tool it is in the hands of the Creator. Last
night the whole thing crystallised out quite suddenly into a small set
of verses. Please jump them if they bore you.


               WITH EITHER HAND.

               1.


               God’s own best will bide the test,
                   And God’s own worst will fall;
               But, best or worst or last or first,
                   He ordereth it all.


               2.


               For ALL is good, if understood,
                   (Ah, could we understand!)
               And right and ill are tools of skill
                   Held in His either hand.



               3.


               The harlot and the anchorite,
                   The martyr and the rake,
               Deftly He fashions each aright,
                   Its vital part to take.



               4.


               Wisdom He makes to guide the sap
                   Where the high blossoms be;
               And Lust to kill the weaker branch,
                   And Drink to trim the tree.


               5.


               And Holiness that so the bole
                   Be solid at the core;
               And Plague and Fever, that the whole
                   Be changing evermore.



               6.


               He strews the microbes in the lung,
                   The blood-clot in the brain;
               With test and test He picks the best,
                   Then tests them once again.



               7.


               He tests the body and the mind,
                   He rings them o’er and o’er;
               And if they crack, He throws them back,
                   And fashions them once more.



               8.


               He chokes the infant throat with slime,
                   He sets the ferment free;
               He builds the tiny tube of lime
                   That blocks the artery.



               9.


               He lets the youthful dreamer store
                   Great projects in his brain,
               Until he drops the fungus spore
                   That smears them out again.



               10.


               He stores the milk that feeds the babe,
                   He dulls the tortured nerve;
               He gives a hundred joys of sense
                   Where few or none might serve.



               11.


               And still he trains the branch of good
                   Where the high blossoms be,
               And wieldeth still the shears of ill
                   To prune and prune His tree.



               12.


               So read I this--and as I try
                   To write it clear again,
               I feel a second finger lie
                   Above mine on the pen.



               13.


               Dim are these peering eyes of mine,
                   And dark what I have seen.
               But be I wrong, the wrong is Thine,
                   Else had it never been.



I am quite ashamed of having been so didactic. But it is fine to think
that sin may have an object and work towards good. My father says that
I seem to look upon the universe as if it were my property, and can’t be
happy until I know that all is right with it. Well, it does send a
glow through me when I seem to catch a glimpse of the light behind the
clouds.

And now for my big bit of news which is going to change my whole
life. Whom do you think I had a letter from last Tuesday week? From
Cullingworth, no less. It had no beginning, no end, was addressed
all wrong, and written with a very thick quill pen upon the back of a
prescription. How it ever reached me is a wonder. This is what he had to
say:--

“Started here in Bradfield last June. Colossal success. My example must
revolutionise medical practice. Rapidly making fortune. Have invention
which is worth millions. Unless our Admiralty take it up shall make
Brazil the leading naval power. Come down by next train on receiving
this. Have plenty for you to do.”

That was the whole of this extraordinary letter; it had no name to it,
which was certainly reasonable enough, since no one else could have
written it. Knowing Cullingworth as well as I did, I took it with
reservations and deductions. How could he have made so rapid and
complete a success in a town in which he must have been a complete
stranger? It was incredible. And yet there must be some truth in it, or
he would not invite me to come down and test it. On the whole, I thought
that I had better move very cautiously in the matter; for I was happy
and snug where I was, and kept on putting a little by, which I hoped
would form a nucleus to start me in practice. It is only a few pounds
up to date, but in a year or so it might mount to something. I wrote
to Cullingworth, therefore, thanking him for having remembered me, and
explaining how matters stood.

I had had great difficulty in finding an opening, I said, and now that I
had one I was loth to give it up save for a permanency.

Ten days passed, during which Cullingworth was silent. Then came a huge
telegram.

“Your letter to hand. Why not call me a liar at once? I tell you that I
have seen thirty thousand patients in the last year. My actual takings
have been over four thousand pounds. All patients come to me. Would not
cross the street to see Queen Victoria. You can have all visiting, all
surgery, all midwifery. Make what you like of it. Will guarantee three
hundred pounds the first year.”

Well, this began to look more like business--especially that last
sentence. I took it to Horton, and asked his advice. His opinion was
that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. So it ended by my
wiring back accepting the partnership--if it is a partnership--and
to-morrow morning I am off to Bradfield with great hopes and a small
portmanteau. I know how interested you are in the personality of
Cullingworth--as every one is who comes, even at second hand, within
range of his influence; and so you may rely upon it that I shall give
you a very full and particular account of all that passes between us. I
am looking forward immensely to seeing him again, and I trust we won’t
have any rows.

Goodbye, old chap. My foot is upon the threshold of fortune.
Congratulate me.




VI. THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 7th March, 1882.


It is only two days since I wrote to you, my dear old chap, and yet I
find myself loaded to the muzzle and at full cock again. I have come to
Bradfield. I have seen old Cullingworth once more, and I have found
that all he has told me is true. Yes; incredible as it sounded, this
wonderful fellow seems to have actually built up a great practice in
little more than a year. He really is, with all his eccentricities, a
very remarkable man, Bertie. He doesn’t seem to have a chance of showing
his true powers in this matured civilisation. The law and custom hamper
him. He is the sort of fellow who would come right to the front in
a French Revolution. Or if you put him as Emperor over some of these
little South American States, I believe that in ten years he would
either be in his grave, or would have the Continent. Yes; Cullingworth
is fit to fight for a higher stake than a medical practice, and on a
bigger stage than an English provincial town. When I read of Aaron Burr
in your history I always picture him as a man like C.

I had the kindest of leave takings from Horton. If he had been my
brother he could not have been more affectionate. I could not have
thought that I should grow so fond of a man in so short a time. He
takes the keenest interest in my venture, and I am to write him a full
account. He gave me as we parted a black old meerschaum which he had
coloured himself--the last possible pledge of affection from a smoker.
It was pleasant for me to feel that if all went wrong at Bradfield, I
had a little harbour at Merton for which I could make. Still, of course,
pleasant and instructive as the life there was, I could not shut my eyes
to the fact that it would take a terribly long time before I could save
enough to buy a share in a practice--a longer time probably than my poor
father’s strength would last. That telegram of Cullingworth’s in which,
as you may remember, he guaranteed me three hundred pounds in the first
year, gave me hopes of a much more rapid career. You will agree with me,
I am sure, that I did wisely to go to him.

I had an adventure upon the way to Bradfield. The carriage in which
I was travelling contained a party of three, at whom I took the most
casual of glances before settling down to the daily paper. There was an
elderly lady, with a bright rosy face, gold spectacles, and a dash of
red velvet in her bonnet. With her were two younger people, who I took
to be her son and her daughter--the one a quiet, gentle-looking girl of
twenty or so, dressed in black, and the other a short, thick-set young
fellow, a year or two older. The two ladies sat by each other in the
far corner, and the son (as I presume him to be) sat opposite me. We may
have travelled an hour or more without my paying any attention to
this little family party, save that I could not help hearing some talk
between the two ladies. The younger, who was addressed as Winnie, had,
as I noticed, a very sweet and soothing voice. She called the elder
“mother,” which showed that I was right as to the relationship.

I was sitting, then, still reading my paper, when I was surprised to
get a kick on the shins from the young fellow opposite. I moved my legs,
thinking that it was an accident, but an instant afterwards I received
another and a harder one. I dropped my paper with a growl, but the
moment that I glanced at him I saw how the matter stood. His foot was
jerking spasmodically, his two hands clenched, and drumming against his
breast, while his eyes were rolling upwards until only the rim of his
iris was to be seen. I sprang upon him, tore open his collar, unbuttoned
his waistcoat, and pulled his head down upon the seat. Crash went one of
his heels through the carriage window, but I contrived to sit upon his
knees while I kept hold of his two wrists.

“Don’t be alarmed!” I cried, “it’s epilepsy, and will soon pass!”

Glancing up, I saw that the little girl was sitting very pale and quiet
in the corner. The mother had pulled a bottle out of her bag and was
quite cool and helpful.

“He often has them,” said she, “this is bromide.”

“He is coming out,” I answered; “you look after Winnie.”

I blurted it out because her head seemed to rock as if she were going
off; but the absurdity of the thing struck us all next moment, and the
mother burst into a laugh in which the daughter and I joined. The son
had opened his eyes and had ceased to struggle.

“I must really beg your pardon,” said I, as I helped him up again. “I
had not the advantage of knowing your other name, and I was in such a
hurry that I had no time to think what I was saying.”

They laughed again in the most good-humoured way, and, as soon as
the young fellow had recovered, we all joined in quite a confidential
conversation. It is wonderful how the intrusion of any of the realities
of life brushes away the cobwebs of etiquette. In half an hour we knew
all about each other, or at any rate I knew all about them. Mrs. La
Force was the mother’s name, a widow with these two children. They had
given up housekeeping, and found it more pleasant to live in apartments,
travelling from one watering place to another. Their one trouble was
the nervous weakness of the son Fred. They were now on their way to
Birchespool, where they hoped that he might get some good from the
bracing air. I was able to recommend vegetarianism, which I have found
to act like a charm in such cases. We had quite a spirited conversation,
and I think that we were sorry on both sides when we came to the
junction where they had to change. Mrs. La Force gave me her card, and I
promised to call if ever I should be in Birchespool.

However, all this must be stupid enough to you. You know my little ways
by this time, and you don’t expect me to keep on the main line of my
story. However, I am back on the rails now, and I shall try to remain
there.

Well, it was nearly six o’clock, and evening was just creeping in when
we drew up in Bradfield Station. The first thing I saw when I looked out
of the window was Cullingworth, exactly the same as ever, striding in
his jerky way down the platform, his coat flying open, his chin thrust
forward (he is the most under-hung man I have ever seen), and his great
teeth all gleaming, like a good-natured blood-hound. He roared with
delight when he saw me, wrung my hand, and slapped me enthusiastically
upon the shoulder.

“My dear chap!” said he. “We’ll clear this town out. I tell you, Munro,
we won’t leave a doctor in it. It’s all they can do now to get butter
to their bread; and when we get to work together they’ll have to eat it
dry. Listen to me, my boy! There are a hundred and twenty thousand folk
in this town, all shrieking for advice, and there isn’t a doctor who
knows a rhubarb pill from a calculus. Man, we only have to gather them
in. I stand and take the money until my arm aches.”

“But how is it?” I asked, as we pushed our way through the crowd, “are
there so few other doctors?”

“Few!” he roared. “By Crums, the streets are blocked with them. You
couldn’t fall out of a window in this town without killing a doctor. But
of all the ---- well, there, you’ll see them for yourself. You walked to
my house at Avonmouth, Munro. I don’t let my friends walk to my house at
Bradfield--eh, what?”

A well-appointed carriage with two fine black horses was drawn up at
the station entrance. The smart coachman touched his hat as Cullingworth
opened the door.

“Which of the houses, sir?” he asked.

Cullingworth’s eyes shot round to me to see what I thought of such a
query. Between ourselves I have not the slightest doubt that he had
instructed the man to ask it. He always had a fine eye for effect, but
he usually erred by underrating the intelligence of those around him.

“Ah!” said he, rubbing his chin like a man in doubt. “Well, I daresay
dinner will be nearly ready. Drive to the town residential.”

“Good gracious, Cullingworth!” said I as we started. “How many houses do
you inhabit? It sounds as if you had bought the town.”

“Well, well,” said he, laughing, “we are driving to the house where I
usually live. It suits us very well, though I have not been able to get
all the rooms furnished yet. Then I have a little farm of a few hundred
acres just outside the city. It is a pleasant place for the week ends,
and we send the nurse and the child----”

“My dear chap, I did not know that you had started a family!”

“Yes, it’s an infernal nuisance; but still the fact remains. We get our
butter and things from the farm. Then, of course, I have my house of
business in the heart of the city.”

“Consulting and waiting room, I suppose?”

He looked at me with a sort of half vexed, half amused expression. “You
cannot rise to a situation, Munro,” said he. “I never met a fellow with
such a stodgy imagination. I’d trust you to describe a thing when you
have seen it, but never to build up an idea of it beforehand.”

“What’s the trouble now?” I asked.

“Well, I have written to you about my practice, and I’ve wired to you
about it, and here you sit asking me if I work it in two rooms. I’ll
have to hire the market square before I’ve finished, and then I won’t
have space to wag my elbows. Can your imagination rise to a great house
with people waiting in every room, jammed in as tight as they’ll fit,
and two layers of them squatting in the cellar? Well, that’s my house of
business on an average day. The folk come in from the county fifty miles
off, and eat bread and treacle on the doorstep, so as to be first in
when the housekeeper comes down. The medical officer of health made an
official complaint of the over-crowding of my waiting-rooms. They wait
in the stables, and sit along the racks and under the horses’ bellies.
I’ll turn some of ‘em on to you, my boy, and then you’ll know a little
more about it.”

Well, all this puzzled me a good deal, as you can imagine, Bertie; for,
making every allowance for Cullingworth’s inflated way of talking, there
must be something at the back of it. I was thinking to myself that I
must keep my head cool, and have a look at everything with my own eyes,
when the carriage pulled up and we got out.

“This is my little place,” said Cullingworth.

It was the corner house of a line of fine buildings, and looked to me
much more like a good-sized hotel than a private mansion. It had a broad
sweep of steps leading to the door, and towered away up to five or six
stories, with pinnacles and a flagstaff on the top. As a matter of fact,
I learned that before Cullingworth took it, it had been one of the chief
clubs in the town, but the committee had abandoned it on account of
the heavy rent. A smart maid opened the door; and a moment later I
was shaking hands with Mrs. Cullingworth, who was all kindliness and
cordiality. She has, I think, forgotten the little Avonmouth business,
when her husband and I fell out.

The inside of the house was even huger than I had thought from the look
of the exterior. There were over thirty bedrooms, Cullingworth informed
me, as he helped me to carry my portmanteau upstairs. The hall and first
stair were most excellently furnished and carpetted, but it all run
to nothing at the landing. My own bedroom had a little iron bed, and a
small basin standing on a packing case. Cullingworth took a hammer from
the mantelpiece, and began to knock in nails behind the door.

“These will do to hang your clothes on,” said he; “you don’t mind
roughing it a little until we get things in order?”

“Not in the least.”

“You see,” he explained, “there’s no good my putting a forty pound suite
into a bed-room, and then having to chuck it all out of the window in
order to make room for a hundred-pound one. No sense in that, Munro!
Eh, what! I’m going to furnish this house as no house has ever been
furnished. By Crums! I’ll bring the folk from a hundred miles round just
to have leave to look at it. But I must do it room by room. Come down
with me and look at the dining-room. You must be hungry after your
journey.”

It really was furnished in a marvellous way--nothing flash, and
everything magnificent. The carpet was so rich that my feet seemed to
sink into it as into deep moss. The soup was on the table, and Mrs.
Cullingworth sitting down, but he kept hauling me round to look at
something else.

“Go on, Hetty,” he cried over his shoulder. “I just want to show Munro
this. Now, these plain dining-room chairs, what d’you think they cost
each? Eh, what?”

“Five pounds,” said I at a venture.

“Exactly!” he cried, in great delight; “thirty pounds for the six. You
hear, Hetty! Munro guessed the price first shot. Now, my boy, what for
the pair of curtains?”

They were a magnificent pair of stamped crimson velvet, with a two-foot
gilt cornice above them. I thought that I had better not imperil my
newly gained reputation by guessing.

“Eighty pounds!” he roared, slapping them with the back of his hand.
“Eighty pounds, Munro! What d’ye think of that? Everything that I
have in this house is going to be of the best. Why, look at this
waiting-maid! Did you ever see a neater one?”

He swung the girl, towards me by the arm.

“Don’t be silly, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Cullingworth mildly, while he
roared with laughter, with all his fangs flashing under his
bristling moustache. The girl edged closer to her mistress, looking
half-frightened and half-angry.

“All right, Mary, no harm!” he cried. “Sit down, Munro, old chap. Get a
bottle of champagne, Mary, and we’ll drink to more luck.”

Well, we had a very pleasant little dinner. It is never slow if
Cullingworth is about. He is one of those men who make a kind of
magnetic atmosphere, so that you feel exhilarated and stimulated in
their presence. His mind is so nimble and his thoughts so extravagant,
that your own break away from their usual grooves, and surprise you
by their activity. You feel pleased at your own inventiveness and
originality, when you are really like the wren when it took a lift on
the eagle’s shoulder. Old Peterson, you remember, used to have a similar
effect upon you in the Linlithgow days.

In the middle of dinner he plunged off, and came back with a round bag
about the size of a pomegranate in his hand.

“What d’ye think this is, Munro? Eh?”

“I have no idea.”

“Our day’s take. Eh, Hetty?” He undid a string, and in an instant a pile
of gold and silver rattled down upon the cloth, the coins whirling and
clinking among the dishes. One rolled off the table and was retrieved by
the maid from some distant corner.

“What is it, Mary? A half sovereign? Put it in your pocket. What did the
lot come to, Hetty?”

“Thirty-one pound eight.”

“You see, Munro! One day’s work.” He plunged his hand into his trouser
pocket and brought out a pile of sovereigns, which he balanced in his
palm. “Look at that, laddie. Rather different from my Avonmouth form,
eh? What?”

“It will be good news for them,” I suggested.


He was scowling at me in an instant with all his old ferocity. You
cannot imagine a more savage-looking creature than Cullingworth is when
his temper goes wrong. He gets a perfectly fiendish expression in his
light blue eyes, and all his hair bristles up like a striking cobra. He
isn’t a beauty at his best, but at his worst he’s really phenomenal. At
the first danger signal his wife had ordered the maid from the room.

“What rot you do talk, Munro!” he cried. “Do you suppose I am going to
cripple myself for years by letting those debts hang on to me?”

“I understood that you had promised,” said I. “Still, of course, it is
no business of mine.”

“I should hope not,” he cried. “A tradesman stands to win or to lose.
He allows a margin for bad debts. I would have paid it if I could. I
couldn’t, and so I wiped the slate clean. No one in his senses would
dream of spending all the money that I make in Bradfield upon the
tradesmen of Avonmouth.”

“Suppose they come down upon you?”

“Well, we’ll see about that when they do. Meanwhile I am paying ready
money for every mortal thing that comes up the door steps. They think so
well of me here that I could have had the whole place furnished like a
palace from the drain pipes to the flagstaff, only I determined to take
each room in turn when I was ready for it. There’s nearly four hundred
pounds under this one ceiling.”

There came a tap at the door, and in walked a boy in buttons.

“If you please, sir, Mr. Duncan wishes to see you.”

“Give my compliments to Mr. Duncan, and tell him he may go to the
devil!”

“My dear Jimmy!” cried Mrs. Cullingworth.

“Tell him I am at dinner; and if all the kings in Europe were waiting in
the hall with their crowns in their hands I wouldn’t cross that door mat
to see them.”

The boy vanished, but was back in an instant.

“Please, sir, he won’t go.”

“Won’t go! What d’you mean?” Cullingworth sat with his mouth open and
his knife and fork sticking up. “What d’you mean, you brat? What are you
boggling about?”

“It’s his bill, sir,” said the frightened boy.

Cullingworth’s face grew dusky, and the veins began to swell on his
forehead.

“His bill, eh! Look here!” He took his watch out and laid it on the
table. “It’s two minutes to eight. At eight I’m coming out, and if I
find him there I’ll strew the street with him. Tell him I’ll shred him
over the parish. He has two minutes to save his life in, and one of them
is nearly gone.”

The boy bolted from the room, and in an instant afterwards we heard
the bang of the front door, with a clatter of steps down the stairs.
Cullingworth lay back in his chair and roared until the tears shone
on his eyelashes, while his wife quivered all over with sympathetic
merriment.

“I’ll drive him mad,” Cullingworth sobbed at last. “He’s a nervous,
chicken-livered kind of man; and when I look at him he turns the colour
of putty. If I pass his shop I usually just drop in and stand and look
at him. I never speak, but just look. It paralyses him. Sometimes the
shop is full of people; but it is just the same.”

“Who is he, then?” I asked.

“He’s my corn merchant. I was saying that I paid my tradesmen as I go,
but he is the only exception. He has done me once or twice, you see;
and so I try to take it out of him. By the way, you might send him down
twenty pounds to-morrow, Hetty. It’s time for an instalment.”

What a gossip you will think me, Bertie? But when I begin, my memory
brings everything back so clearly, and I write on and on almost
unconsciously. Besides, this fellow is such a mixture of qualities, that
I could never give you any idea of him by myself; and so I just try to
repeat to you what he says, and what he does, so that you may build up
your own picture of the man. I know that he has always interested you,
and that he does so more now than ever since our fates have drawn us
together again.

After dinner, we went into the back room, which was the most
extraordinary contrast to the front one, having only a plain deal table,
and half-a-dozen kitchen chairs scattered about on a linoleum floor.
At one end was an electric battery and a big magnet. At the other, a
packing case with several pistols and a litter of cartridges upon it. A
rook rifle was leaning tip against it, and looking round I saw that the
walls were all pocked with bullet marks.

“What’s this, then?” I asked, rolling my eyes round.

“Hetty, what’s this?” he asked, with his pipe in his hand and his head
cocked sideways.

“Naval supremacy and the command of the seas,” said she, like a child
repeating a lesson.

“That’s it,” he shouted, stabbing at me with the amber. “Naval supremacy
and command of the seas. It’s all here right under your nose. I tell
you, Munro, I could go to Switzerland to-morrow, and I could say to
them--‘Look here, you haven’t got a seaboard and you haven’t got a port;
but just find me a ship, and hoist your flag on it, and I’ll give you
every ocean under heaven.’ I’d sweep the seas until there wasn’t a
match-box floating on them. Or I could make them over to a limited
company, and join the board after allotment. I hold the salt water in
the cup of this hand, every drop of it.”

His wife put her hands on his shoulder with admiration in her eyes. I
turned to knock out my pipe, and grinned over the grate.

“Oh, you may grin,” said he. (He was wonderfully quick at spotting what
you were doing.) “You’ll grin a little wider when you see the dividends
coming in. What’s the value of that magnet?”

“A pound?”

“A million pounds. Not a penny under. And dirt cheap to the nation that
buys it. I shall let it go at that, though I could make ten times as
much if I held on. I shall take it up to the Secretary of the Navy in
a week or two; and if he seems to be a civil deserving sort of person I
shall do business with him. It’s not every day, Munro, that a man comes
into his office with the Atlantic under one arm and the Pacific under
the other. Eh, what?”

I knew it would make him savage, but I lay back in my chair and laughed
until I was tired. His wife looked at me reproachfully; but he, after a
moment of blackness, burst out laughing also, stamping up and down the
room and waving his arms.

“Of course it seems absurd to you,” he cried. “Well, I daresay it would
to me if any other fellow had worked it out. But you may take my word
for it that it’s all right. Hetty here will answer for it. Won’t you,
Hetty?”

“It’s splendid, my dear.”

“Now I’ll show you, Munro; what an unbelieving Jew you are, trying to
look interested, and giggling at the back of your throat! In the first
place, I have discovered a method--which I won’t tell you--of increasing
the attractive power of a magnet a hundred-fold. Have you grasped that?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. You are also aware, I presume, that modern projectiles are
either made of or tipped with steel. It may possibly have come to your
ears that magnets attract steel. Permit me now to show you a small
experiment.” He bent over his apparatus, and I suddenly heard the
snapping of electricity. “This,” he continued going across to the
packing case, “is a saloon pistol, and will be exhibited in the museums
of the next century as being the weapon with which the new era was
inaugurated. Into the breech I place a Boxer cartridge, specialty
provided for experimental purposes with a steel bullet. I aim point
blank at the dab of red sealing wax upon the wall, which is four inches
above the magnet. I am an absolutely dead shot. I fire. You will now
advance, and satisfy yourself that the bullet is flattened upon the end
of the magnet, after which you will apologise to me for that grin.”

I looked, and it certainly was as he had said.

“I’ll tell you what I would do,” he cried. “I am prepared to put that
magnet in Hetty’s bonnet, and to let you fire six shots straight at her
face. How’s that for a test? You wouldn’t mind, Hetty? Eh, what!”

“I don’t think she would have objected, but I hastened to disclaim any
share in such an experiment.

“Of course, you see that the whole thing is to scale. My warship of the
future carries at her prow and stern a magnet which shall be as much
larger than that as the big shell will be larger than this tiny bullet.
Or I might have a separate raft, possibly, to carry my apparatus. My
ship goes into action. What happens then, Munro? Eh, what! Every shot
fired at her goes smack on to the magnet. There’s a reservoir below into
which they drop when the electric circuit is broken. After every action
they are sold by auction for old metal, and the result divided as prize
money among the crew. But think of it, man! I tell you it is an absolute
impossibility for a shot to strike any ship which is provided with my
apparatus. And then look at the cheapness. You don’t want armour. You
want nothing. Any ship that floats becomes invulnerable with one of
these. The war ship of the future will cost anything from seven pound
ten. You’re grinning again; but if you give me a magnet and a Brixton
trawler with a seven-pounder gun I’ll show sport to the finest
battle-ship afloat.”

“Well, there must be some flaw about this,” I suggested. “If your magnet
is so strong as all that, you would have your own broadside boomeranging
back upon you.”

“Not a bit of it! There’s a big difference between a shot flying away
from you with all its muzzle velocity, and another one which is coming
towards you and only needs a slight deflection to strike the magnet.
Besides, by breaking the circuit I can take off the influence when I
am firing my own broadside. Then I connect, and instantly become
invulnerable.”

“And your nails and screws?”

“The warship of the future will be bolted together by wood.”

Well, he would talk of nothing else the whole evening but of this
wonderful invention of his. Perhaps there is nothing in it--probably
there is not; and yet it illustrates the many-sided nature of the man,
that he should not say one word about his phenomenal success here--of
which I am naturally most anxious to hear--not a word either upon the
important subject of our partnership, but will think and talk of nothing
but this extraordinary naval idea. In a week he will have tossed it
aside in all probability, and be immersed in some plan for reuniting the
Jews and settling them in Madagascar. Yet from all he has said, and all
I have seen, there can be no doubt that he has in some inexplicable way
made a tremendous hit, and to-morrow I shall let you know all about
it. Come what may, I am delighted that I came, for things promise to be
interesting. Regard this not as the end of a letter, but of a paragraph.
You shall have the conclusion to-morrow, or on Thursday at the latest.
Goodbye, and my remembrance to Lawrence if you see him. How’s your
friend from Yale?




VII. THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 9th March, 1882.


Well, you see I am as good as my word, Bertie; and here is a full
account of this queer little sample gouged out of real life, never to be
seen, I should fancy, by any eye save your own. I have written to Horton
also, and of course to my mother; but I don’t go into detail with them,
as I have got into the way of doing with you. You keep on assuring me
that you like it; so on your own head be it if you find my experiences
gradually developing into a weariness.

When I woke in the morning, and looked round at the bare walls and the
basin on the packing case, I hardly knew where I was. Cullingworth came
charging into the room in his dressing gown, however, and roused me
effectually by putting his hands on the rail at the end of the bed, and
throwing a somersault over it which brought his heels on to my pillow
with a thud. He was in great spirits, and, squatting on the bed, he held
forth about his plans while I dressed.

“I tell you one of the first things I mean to do, Munro,” said he. “I
mean to have a paper of my own. We’ll start a weekly paper here, you and
I, and we’ll make them sit up all round. We’ll have an organ of our own,
just like every French politician. If any one crosses us, we’ll make
them wish they had never been born. Eh, what, laddie? what d’you think?
So clever, Munro, that everybody’s bound to read it, and so scathing
that it will just fetch out blisters every time. Don’t you think we
could?”

“What politics?” I asked.

“Oh, curse the politics! Red pepper well rubbed in, that’s my idea of a
paper. Call it the Scorpion. Chaff the Mayor and the Council until they
call a meeting and hang themselves. I’d do the snappy paragraphs, and
you would do the fiction and poetry. I thought about it during the
night, and Hetty has written to Murdoch’s to get an estimate for the
printing. We might get our first number out this day week.”

“My dear chap!” I gasped.

“I want you to start a novel this morning. You won’t get many patients
at first, and you’ll have lots of time.”

“But I never wrote a line in my life.”

“A properly balanced man can do anything he sets his hand to. He’s
got every possible quality inside him, and all he wants is the will to
develop it.”

“Could you write a novel yourself?” I asked.

“Of course I could. Such a novel, Munro, that when they’d read the first
chapter the folk would just sit groaning until the second came out.
They’d wait in rows outside my door in the hope of hearing what was
coming next. By Crums, I’ll go and begin it now!” And, with another
somersault over the end of the bed, he rushed from the room, with the
tassels of his dressing gown flying behind him.

I daresay you’ve quite come to the conclusion by this time that
Cullingworth is simply an interesting pathological study--a man in the
first stage of lunacy or general paralysis. You might not be so sure
about it if you were in close contact with him. He justifies his wildest
flights by what he does. It sounds grotesque when put down in black and
white; but then it would have sounded equally grotesque a year ago if he
had said that he would build up a huge practice in a twelvemonth. Now we
see that he has done it. His possibilities are immense. He has such
huge energy at the back of his fertility of invention. I am afraid, on
thinking over all that I have written to you, that I may have given you
a false impression of the man by dwelling too much on those incidents
in which he has shown the strange and violent side of his character, and
omitting the stretches between where his wisdom and judgment have had a
chance. His conversation when he does not fly off at a tangent is
full of pith and idea. “The greatest monument ever erected to Napoleon
Buonaparte was the British National debt,” said he yesterday. Again,
“We must never forget that the principal export of Great Britain to the
United States IS the United States.” Again, speaking of Christianity,
“What is intellectually unsound cannot be morally sound.” He shoots off
a whole column of aphorisms in a single evening. I should like to have
a man with a note book always beside him to gather up his waste. No; you
must not let me give you a false impression of the man’s capacity.
On the other hand, it would be dishonest to deny that I think him
thoroughly unscrupulous, and full of very sinister traits. I am much
mistaken, however, if he has not fine strata in his nature. He is
capable of rising to heights as well as of sinking to depths.

Well, when we had breakfasted we got into the carriage and drove off to
the place of business.

“I suppose you are surprised at Hetty coming with us, said Cullingworth,
slapping me on the knee. Hetty, Munro is wondering what the devil you
are here for, only he is too polite to ask.”

In fact, it HAD struck me as rather strange that she should, as a matter
of course, accompany us to business.

“You’ll see when we get there,” he cried chuckling. “We run this affair
on lines of our own.”

It was not very far, and we soon found ourselves outside a square
whitewashed building, which had a huge “Dr. Cullingworth” on a great
brass plate at the side of the door. Underneath was printed “May be
consulted gratis from ten to four.” The door was open, and I caught a
glimpse of a crowd of people waiting in the hall.

“How many here?” asked Cullingworth of the page boy.

“A hundred and forty, sir.”

“All the waiting rooms full?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Courtyard full?

“Yes, sir.”

“Stable full?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Coach-house full?”

“There’s still room in the coach-house, sir.”

“Ah, I’m sorry we haven’t got a crowded day for you, Munro,” said he.
“Of course, we can’t command these things, and must take them as they
come. Now then, now then, make a gangway, can’t you?”--this to his
patients. “Come here and see the waiting-room. Pooh! what an atmosphere!
Why on earth can’t you open the windows for yourselves? I never saw
such folk! There are thirty people in this room, Munro, and not one with
sense enough to open a window to save himself from suffocation.”

“I tried, sir, but there’s a screw through the sash,” cried one fellow.

“Ah, my boy, you’ll never get on in the world if you can’t open a
window without raising a sash,” said Cullingworth, slapping him on the
shoulder. He took the man’s umbrella and stuck it through two of the
panes of glass.

“That’s the way!” he said. “Boy, see that the screw is taken out. Now
then, Munro, come along, and we’ll get to work.”

We went up a wooden stair, uncarpeted, leaving every room beneath us,
as far as I could see, crowded with patients. At the top was a bare
passage, which had two rooms opposite to each other at one end, and a
single one at the other.

“This is my consulting room,” said he, leading the way into one of
these. It was a good-sized square chamber, perfectly empty save for
two plain wooden chairs and an unpainted table with two books and a
stethoscope upon it. “It doesn’t look like four or five thousand a year,
does it? Now, there is an exactly similar one opposite which you can
have for yourself. I’ll send across any surgical cases which may turn
up. To-day, however, I think you had better stay with me, and see how I
work things.”

“I should very much like to,” said I.

“There are one or two elementary rules to be observed in the way of
handling patients,” he remarked, seating himself on the table and
swinging his legs. “The most obvious is that you must never let them see
that you want them. It should be pure condescension on your part seeing
them at all; and the more difficulties you throw in the way of it, the
more they think of it. Break your patients in early, and keep them well
to heel. Never make the fatal mistake of being polite to them. Many
foolish young men fall into this habit, and are ruined in consequence.
Now, this is my form”--he sprang to the door, and putting his two hands
to his mouth he bellowed: “Stop your confounded jabbering down there! I
might as well be living above a poultry show! There, you see,” he added
to me, “they will think ever so much more of me for that.”

“But don’t they get offended?” I asked.

“I’m afraid not. I have a name for this sort of thing now, and they have
come to expect it. But an offended patient--I mean a thoroughly insulted
one--is the finest advertisement in the world. If it is a woman,
she runs clacking about among her friends until your name becomes a
household word, and they all pretend to sympathise with her, and
agree among themselves that you must be a remarkably discerning man. I
quarrelled with one man about the state of his gall duct, and it ended
by my throwing him down the stairs. What was the result? He talked so
much about it that the whole village from which he came, sick and
well, trooped to see me. The little country practitioner who had been
buttering them up for a quarter of a century found that he might as well
put up his shutters. It’s human nature, my boy, and you can’t alter it.
Eh, what? You make yourself cheap and you become cheap. You put a high
price on yourself and they rate you at that price. Suppose I set up in
Harley Street to-morrow, and made it all nice and easy, with hours from
ten to three, do you think I should get a patient? I might starve first.
How would I work it? I should let it be known that I only saw patients
from midnight until two in the morning, and that bald-headed people
must pay double. That would set people talking, their curiosity would
be stimulated, and in four months the street would be blocked all night.
Eh, what? laddie, you’d go yourself. That’s my principle here. I often
come in of a morning and send them all about their business, tell them
I’m going off to the country for a day. I turn away forty pounds, and
it’s worth four hundred as an advertisement!”

“But I understood from the plate that the consultations were gratis.”

“So they are, but they have to pay for the medicine. And if a patient
wishes to come out of turn he has to pay half-a-guinea for the
privilege. There are generally about twenty every day who would rather
pay that than wait several hours. But, mind you, Munro, don’t you make
any mistake about this! All this would go for nothing if you had not
something, slid behind--I cure them. That’s the point. I take cases that
others have despaired of, and I cure them right off. All the rest is
only to bring them here. But once here I keep them on my merits. It
would all be a flash in the pan but for that. Now, come along and see
Hetty’s department.”

We walked down the passage to the other room. It was elaborately fitted
up as a dispensary, and there with a chic little apron Mrs. Cullingworth
was busy making up pills. With her sleeves turned up and a litter of
glasses and bottles all round her, she was laughing away like a little
child among its toys.

“The best dispenser in the world!” cried Cullingworth, patting her on
the shoulder. “You see how I do it, Munro. I write on a label what the
prescription is, and make a sign which shows how much is to be charged.
The man comes along the passage and passes the label through the pigeon
hole. Hetty makes it up, passes out the bottle, and takes the money.
Now, come on and clear some of these folk out of the house.”

It is impossible for me to give you any idea of that long line of
patients, filing hour after hour through the unfurnished room, and
departing, some amused, and some frightened, with their labels in
their hands. Cullingworth’s antics are beyond belief. I laughed until I
thought the wooden chair under me would have come to pieces. He roared,
he raved, he swore, he pushed them about, slapped them on the back,
shoved them against the wall, and occasionally rushed out to the head
of the stair to address them en masse. At the same time, behind all
this tomfoolery, I, watching his prescriptions, could see a quickness of
diagnosis, a scientific insight, and a daring and unconventional use of
drugs, which satisfied me that he was right in saying that, under all
this charlatanism, there lay solid reasons for his success. Indeed,
“charlatanism” is a misapplied word in this connection; for it would
describe the doctor who puts on an artificial and conventional manner
with his patients, rather than one who is absolutely frank and true to
his own extraordinary nature.

To some of his patients he neither said one word nor did he allow them
to say one. With a loud “hush” he would rush at them, thump them on the
chests, listen to their hearts, write their labels, and then run them
out of the room by their shoulders. One poor old lady he greeted with a
perfect scream. “You’ve been drinking too much tea!” he cried. “You are
suffering from tea poisoning!” Then, without allowing her to get a word
in, he clutched her by her crackling black mantle, dragged her up to the
table, and held out a copy of “Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence” which was
lying there. “Put your hand on the book,” he thundered, “and swear that
for fourteen days you will drink nothing but cocoa.” She swore with
upturned eyes, and was instantly whirled off with her label in her hand,
to the dispensary. I could imagine that to the last day of her life, the
old lady would talk of her interview with Cullingworth; and I could well
understand how the village from which she came would send fresh recruits
to block up his waiting rooms.

Another portly person was seized by the two armholes of his waistcoat,
just as he was opening his mouth to explain his symptoms, and was rushed
backward down the passage, down the stairs, and finally into the street,
to the immense delight of the assembled patients, “You eat too much,
drink too much, and sleep too much,” Cullingworth roared after him.
“Knock down a policeman, and come again when they let you out.” Another
patient complained of a “sinking feeling.” “My dear,” said he, “take
your medicine; and if that does no good, swallow the cork, for there is
nothing better when you are sinking.”

As far as I could judge, the bulk of the patients looked upon a morning
at Cullingworth’s as a most enthralling public entertainment, tempered
only by a thrill lest it should be their turn next to be made an
exhibition of.

Well, with half-an-hour for lunch, this extraordinary business went
on till a quarter to four in the afternoon. When the last patient had
departed, Cullingworth led the way into the dispensary, where all the
fees had been arranged upon the counter in the order of their value.
There were seventeen half-sovereigns, seventy-three shillings, and
forty-six florins; or thirty-two pounds eight and sixpence in all.
Cullingworth counted it up, and then mixing the gold and silver into
one heap, he sat running his fingers through it and playing with it.
Finally, he raked it into the canvas bag which I had seen the night
before, and lashed the neck up with a boot-lace.

We walked home, and that walk struck me as the most extraordinary part
of all that extraordinary day. Cullingworth paraded slowly through the
principal streets with his canvas bag, full of money, outstretched at
the full length of his arm. His wife and I walked on either side,
like two acolytes supporting a priest, and so we made our way solemnly
homewards the people stopping to see us pass.

“I always make a point of walking through the doctor’s quarter,” said
Cullingworth. “We are passing through it now. They all come to their
windows and gnash their teeth and dance until I am out of sight.”

“Why should you quarrel with them? What is the matter with them?” I
asked.

“Pooh! what’s the use of being mealy-mouthed about it?” said he. “We
are all trying to cut each other’s throats, and why should we be
hypocritical over it? They haven’t got a good word for me, any one of
them; so I like to take a rise out of them.”

“I must say that I can see no sense in that. They are your brothers
in the profession, with the same education and the same knowledge. Why
should you take an offensive attitude towards them?”

“That’s what I say, Dr. Munro,” cried his wife. “It is so very
unpleasant to feel that one is surrounded by enemies on every side.”

“Hetty’s riled because their wives wouldn’t call upon her,” he cried.
“Look at that, my dear,” jingling his bag. “That is better than having
a lot of brainless women drinking tea and cackling in our drawing-room.
I’ve had a big card printed, Munro, saying that we don’t desire to
increase the circle of our acquaintance. The maid has orders to show it
to every suspicious person who calls.”

“Why should you not make money at your practice, and yet remain on good
terms with your professional brethren?” said I. “You speak as if the two
things were incompatible.”

“So they are. What’s the good of beating about the bush, laddie?
My methods are all unprofessional, and I break every law of medical
etiquette as often as I can think of it. You know very well that the
British Medical Association would hold up their hands in horror if it
could see what you have seen to-day.”

“But why not conform to professional etiquette?”

“Because I know better. My boy, I’m a doctor’s son, and I’ve seen too
much of it. I was born inside the machine, and I’ve seen all the wires.
All this etiquette is a dodge for keeping the business in the hands of
the older men. It’s to hold the young men back, and to stop the holes by
which they might slip through to the front. I’ve heard my father say so
a score of times. He had the largest practice in Scotland, and yet he
was absolutely devoid of brains. He slipped into it through seniority
and decorum. No pushing, but take your turn. Very well, laddie, when
you’re at the top of the line, but how about it when you’ve just taken
your place at the tail? When I’m on the top rung I shall look down and
say, ‘Now, you youngsters, we are going to have very strict etiquette,
and I beg that you will come up very quietly and not disarrange me from
my comfortable position.’ At the same time, if they do what I tell
them, I shall look upon them as a lot of infernal blockheads. Eh, Munro,
what?”

I could only say again that I thought he took a very low view of the
profession, and that I disagreed with every word he said.

“Well, my boy, you may disagree as much as you like, but if you are
going to work with me you must throw etiquette to the devil!”

“I can’t do that.”

“Well, if you are too clean handed for the job you can clear out. We
can’t keep you here against your will.”

I said nothing; but when we got back, I went upstairs and packed up
my trunk, with every intention of going back to Yorkshire by the night
train. He came up to my room, and finding what I was at, he burst into
apologies which would have satisfied a more exacting man than I am.

“You shall do just exactly what you like, my dear chap. If you don’t
like my way, you may try some way of your own.”

“That’s fair enough,” said I. “But it’s a little trying to a man’s
self-respect if he is told to clear out every time there is a difference
of opinion.”

“Well, well, there was no harm meant, and it shan’t occur again. I can’t
possibly say more than that; so come along down and have a cup of tea.”

And so the matter blew over; but I very much fear, Bertie, that this is
the first row of a series. I have a presentiment that sooner or later my
position here will become untenable. Still, I shall give it a fair trial
as long as he will let me. Cullingworth is a fellow who likes to have
nothing but inferiors and dependants round him. Now, I like to stand on
my own legs, and think with my own mind. If he’ll let me do this we’ll
get along very well; but if I know the man he will claim submission,
which is more than I am inclined to give. He has a right to my
gratitude, which I freely admit. He has found an opening for me when I
badly needed one and had no immediate prospects. But still, one may pay
too high a price even for that, and I should feel that I was doing so if
I had to give up my individuality and my manhood.

We had an incident that evening which was so characteristic that I must
tell you of it. Cullingworth has an air gun which fires little steel
darts. With this he makes excellent practice at about twenty feet, the
length of the back room. We were shooting at a mark after dinner, when
he asked me whether I would hold a halfpenny between my finger and
thumb, and allow him to shoot it out. A halfpenny not being forthcoming,
he took a bronze medal out of his waistcoat pocket, and I held that
tip as a mark. “Kling!” went the air gun, and the medal rolled upon the
floor.

“Plumb in the centre,” said he.

“On the contrary,” I answered, “you never hit it at all!”

“Never hit it! I must have hit it!”

“I am confident you didn’t.”

“Where’s the dart, then?”

“Here,” said I, holding up a bleeding forefinger, from which the tail
end of the fluff with which the dart was winged was protruding.

I never saw a man so abjectly sorry for anything in my life. He used
language of self-reproach which would have been extravagant if he had
shot off one of my limbs. Our positions were absurdly reversed; and it
was he who sat collapsed in a chair, while it was I, with the dart
still in my finger, who leaned over him and laughed the matter off. Mrs.
Cullingworth had run for hot water, and presently with a tweezers we
got the intruder out. There was very little pain (more to-day than
yesterday), but if ever you are called upon to identify my body you may
look for a star at the end of my right forefinger.

When the surgery was completed (Cullingworth writhing and groaning all
the time) my eyes happened to catch the medal which I had dropped, lying
upon the carpet. I lifted it up and looked at it, eager to find some
topic which would be more agreeable. Printed upon it was--“Presented to
James Cullingworth for gallantry in saving life. Jan. 1879.”

“Hullo, Cullingworth,” said I. “You never told me about this!”

He was off in an instant in his most extravagant style.

“What! the medal? Haven’t you got one? I thought every one had. You
prefer to be select, I suppose. It was a little boy. You’ve no idea the
trouble I had to get him in.”

“Get him out, you mean.”

“My dear chap, you don’t understand! Any one could get a child out.
It’s getting one in that’s the bother. One deserves a medal for it. Then
there are the witnesses, four shillings a day I had to pay them, and
a quart of beer in the evenings. You see you can’t pick up a child and
carry it to the edge of a pier and throw it in. You’d have all sorts of
complications with the parents. You must be patient and wait until you
get a legitimate chance. I caught a quinsy walking up and down Avonmouth
pier before I saw my opportunity. He was rather a stolid fat boy, and he
was sitting on the very edge, fishing. I got the sole of my foot on to
the small of his back, and shot him an incredible distance. I had some
little difficulty in getting him out, for his fishing line got twice
round my legs, but it all ended well, and the witnesses were as staunch
as possible. The boy came up to thank me next day, and said that he was
quite uninjured save for a bruise on the back. His parents always send
me a brace of fowls every Christmas.”

I was sitting with my finger in the hot water listening to this
rigmarole. When he had finished he ran off to get his tobacco box, and
we could hear the bellowing of his laughter dwindling up the stair. I
was still looking at the medal, which, from the dents all over it, had
evidently been often used as a target, when I felt a timid touch upon my
sleeve; it was Mrs. Cullingworth, who was looking earnestly at me with a
very distressed expression upon her face.

“You believe far too much what James says,” said she. “You don’t know
him in the least, Mr. Munro. You don’t look at a thing from his point
of view, and you will never understand him until you do. It is not, of
course, that he means to say anything that is untrue; but his fancy is
excited, and he is quite carried away by the humour of any idea, whether
it tells against himself or not. It hurts me, Mr. Munro, to see the
only man in the world towards whom he has any feeling of friendship,
misunderstanding him so completely, for very often when you say nothing
your face shows very clearly what you think.”

I could only answer lamely that I was very sorry if I had misjudged her
husband in any way, and that no one had a keener appreciation of some of
his qualities than I had.

“I saw how gravely you looked when he told you that absurd story about
pushing a little boy into the water,” she continued; and, as she spoke,
she drew from somewhere in the front of her dress a much creased slip of
paper. “Just glance at that, please, Dr. Munro.”

It was a newspaper cutting, which gave the true account of the incident.
Suffice it that it was an ice accident, and that Cullingworth had really
behaved in a heroic way and had been drawn out himself insensible, with
the child so clasped in his arms that it was not until he had recovered
his senses that they were able to separate them. I had hardly finished
reading it when we heard his step on the stairs; and she, thrusting
the paper back into her bosom, became in an instant the same silently
watchful woman as ever.

Is he not a conundrum? If he interests you at a distance (and I take
for granted that what you say in your letters is not merely conventional
compliment) you can think how piquant he is in actual life. I must
confess, however, that I can never shake off the feeling that I am
living with some capricious creature who frequently growls and may
possibly bite. Well, it won’t be very long before I write again, and
by that time I shall probably know whether I am likely to find
any permanent billet here or not. I am so sorry to hear about Mrs.
Swanborough’s indisposition. You know that I take the deepest interest
in everything that affects you. They tell me here that I am looking very
fit, though I think they ought to spell it with an “a.”





VIII. THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 6th April, 1882.


I am writing this, my dear Bertie, at a little table which has been
fitted up in the window of my bedroom. Every one in the house is asleep
except myself; and all the noise of the city is hushed. Yet my own brain
is singularly active, and I feel that I am better employed in sitting
up and writing to you, than in tossing about upon my bed. I am often
accused of being sleepy in the daytime, but every now and then Nature
gets level by making me abnormally wakeful at night.

Are you conscious of the restful influence which the stars exert? To me
they are the most soothing things in Nature. I am proud to say that I
don’t know the name of one of them. The glamour and romance would pass
away from them if they were all classified and ticketed in one’s brain.
But when a man is hot and flurried, and full of his own little ruffled
dignities and infinitesimal misfortunes, then a star bath is the finest
thing in the world. They are so big, and so serene and so lovely.
They tell me that the interplanetary spaces are full of the debris of
shattered asteroids; so, perhaps, even among them there are such things
as disease and death. Yet just to look at them must remind a man of what
a bacillus of a thing he is--the whole human race like some sprinkling
of impalpable powder upon the surface of one of the most insignificant
fly-wheels of a monstrous machine. But there’s order in it, Bertie,
there’s order! And where there is order there must be mind, and where
there is mind there must be sense of Justice. I don’t allow that there
can be any doubt as to the existence of that central Mind, or as to the
possession by it of certain attributes. The stars help me to realise
these. It is strange, when one looks upon them, to think that the
Churches are still squabbling down here over such questions as whether
the Almighty is most gratified by our emptying a tea-spoonful of water
over our babies’ heads, or by our waiting a few years and then plunging
them bodily into a tank. It would be comic if it were not so tragic.

This train of thought is the after-swell from an argument with
Cullingworth this evening. He holds that the human race is deteriorating
mentally and morally. He calls out at the grossness which confounds the
Creator with a young Jewish Philosopher. I tried to show him that this
is no proof of degeneration, since the Jewish Philosopher at least
represented a moral idea, and was therefore on an infinitely higher
plane than the sensual divinities of the ancients. His own views of the
Creator seem to me to be a more evident degeneration. He declares
that looking round at Nature he can see nothing but ruthlessness and
brutality. “Either the Creator is not all-powerful, or else He is not
all-good,” says he. “Either He can stop these atrocities and won’t, in
which case He is not all-good; or else He would stop them but can’t, in
which case He is not all-powerful.” It was a difficult dilemma for a man
who professes to stick to reason to get out of. Of course, if you plead
faith, you can always slip out of anything. I was forced to get behind
a corner of that buckler with which you have so often turned my own
thrusts. I said that the dilemma arose from our taking it for granted
that that which seemed evil really was EVIL. “It lies with you to prove
that it isn’t,” said he. “We may hope that it isn’t,” said I. “Wait
until some one tells you that you have cancer of the pyloric end of the
stomach,” said he; and he shouted it out again every time I tried to
renew the argument.

But in all soberness, I really do think, Bertie, that very much which
seems to be saddest in life might be very different if we could focus it
properly. I tried to give you my views about this in the case of drink
and immorality. But physically, I fancy that it applies more obviously
than it does morally. All the physical evils of life seem to culminate
in death; and yet death, as I have seen it, has not been a painful or
terrible process. In many cases, a man dies without having incurred
nearly as much pain, during the whole of his fatal illness, as would
have arisen from a whitlow or an abscess of the jaw. And it is often
those deaths which seem most terrible to the onlooker, which are least
so to the sufferer. When a man is overtaken by an express and shivered
into fragments, or when he drops from a fourth-floor window and
is smashed into a bag of splinters, the unfortunate spectators are
convulsed with horror, and find a text for pessimistic views about the
Providence which allows such things to be. And yet, it is very doubtful
whether the deceased, could his tongue be loosened, would remember
anything at all about the matter. We know, as students of medicine,
that though pain is usually associated with cancers and with abdominal
complaints; still, in the various fevers, in apoplexy, in blood
poisonings, in lung diseases, and, in short, in the greater proportion
of serious maladies, there is little suffering.

I remember how struck I was when first I saw the actual cautery applied
in a case of spinal disease. The white hot iron was pressed firmly into
the patient’s back, without the use of any anaesthetic, and what with
the sight and the nauseating smell of burned flesh I felt faint and ill.
Yet, to my astonishment, the patient never flinched nor moved a muscle
of his face, and on my inquiring afterwards, he assured me that the
proceeding was absolutely painless, a remark which was corroborated
by the surgeon. “The nerves are so completely and instantaneously
destroyed,” he explained, “that they have no time to convey a painful
impression.” But then if this be so, what becomes of all the martyrs
at the stake, and the victims of Red Indians, and other poor folk
over whose sufferings and constancy we have wondered? It may be that
Providence is not only not cruel itself, but will not allow man to be
cruel either. Do your worst, and it will step in with a “No, I won’t
allow this poor child of mine to be hurt”; and then comes the dulling
of the nerve and the lethargy which takes the victim out of the reach of
the tormentor. David Livingstone under the claws of the lion must have
looked like an object lesson of the evil side of things, and yet he has
left it upon record that his own sensations were pleasurable rather than
otherwise. I am well convinced that if the newly-born infant and the man
who had just died could compare their experiences, the former would have
proved to be the sufferer. It is not for nothing that the first thing
the newcomer into this planet does is to open its toothless mouth and
protest energetically against fate.

Cullingworth has written a parable which makes a paragraph for our
wonderful new weekly paper.

“The little cheese mites held debate,” he says, “as to who made the
cheese. Some thought that they had no data to go upon, and some that it
had come together by a solidification of vapour, or by the centrifugal
attraction of atoms. A few surmised that the platter might have
something to do with it; but the wisest of them could not deduce the
existence of a cow.”

We are at one, he and I, in thinking that the infinite is beyond our
perception. We differ only in that he sees evil and I see good in the
working of the universe. Ah, what a mystery it all is! Let us be honest
and humble and think kindly of each other. There’s a line of stars all
winking at me over the opposite roof--winking slyly at the silly little
person with the pen and paper who is so earnest about what he can never
understand.

Well, now, I’ll come back to something practical. It is nearly a month
since I wrote to you last. The date is impressed upon my memory because
it was the day after Cullingworth shot the air-dart into my finger. The
place festered and prevented my writing to any one for a week or two,
but it is all right again now. I have ever so much of different sorts to
tell you, but really when I come to think of it, it does not amount to
very much after all.

First of all, about the practice. I told you that I was to have a room
immediately opposite to Cullingworth’s, and that all the surgical cases
were to be turned over to me. For a few days I had nothing to do, except
to listen to him romping and scuffling with his patients, or making
speeches to them from the top of the stairs. However, a great “Dr. Stark
Munro, Surgeon,” has been affixed to the side of the door downstairs,
opposite Cullingworth’s plate; and a proud man was I when first my eyes
lit upon it. On the fourth day, however, in came a case. He little knew
that he was the first that I had ever had all to myself in my life.
Perhaps he would not have looked quite so cheerful if he had realised
it.

Poor chap, he had little enough to be cheery over either. He was an old
soldier who had lost a good many teeth, but who had continued to find
room between his nose and chin for a short black clay pipe. Lately there
appeared a small sore on his nose which had spread, and become crusted.
On feeling it I found it as hard as a streak of glue, with constant
darting pains passing through it. Of course, there could be no question
as to diagnosis. It was epitheliomatous cancer, caused by the irritation
of the hot tobacco smoke. I sent him back to his village, and two days
after I drove over in Cullingworth’s dog-cart, and removed the growth. I
only got a sovereign for it. But it may be a nucleus for cases. The
old fellow did most admirably, and he has just been in (with a most
aristocratic curl to his nostrils) to tell me that he has bought a box
full of churchwardens. It was my first operation, and I daresay I was
more nervous about it than my patient, but the result has given me
confidence. I have fully made up my mind to let nothing pass me. Come
what may, I am prepared to do it. Why should a man wait? Of course,
I know that many men do; but surely one’s nerve is more likely to be
strong and one’s knowledge fresh now than in twenty years.

Cases came dribbling in from day to day--all very poor people, and able
to pay very poor fees--but still most welcome to me. The first week I
took (including that operation fee) one pound seventeen and sixpence.
The second, I got two pounds exactly. The third, I had two pounds five,
and now I find that this last week has brought in two pounds eighteen;
so I am moving in the right direction. Of course, it compares absurdly
enough with Cullingworth’s twenty pound a day, and my little quiet
back-water seems a strange contrast to the noisy stream which pours for
ever through his room. Still, I am quite satisfied, and I have no doubt
at all that his original estimate of three hundred pounds for the first
year will be amply justified. It would be a pleasant thing to think that
if anything were really to happen at home, I should be able to be of
some use to them. If things go on as they have begun, I shall soon have
my feet firmly planted.

I was compelled, by the way, to forego an opening which a few months ago
would have been the very summit of my ambition. You must know (possibly
I told you), that immediately after I passed, I put my name down as a
candidate for a surgeonship on the books of several of the big steamship
lines. It was done as a forlorn hope, for a man has usually to wait
several years before his turn comes round. Well, just a week after I
started here, I got a telegram one night from Liverpool: “Join the Decia
to-morrow as surgeon, not later than eight in the evening.” It was from
Staunton & Merivale, the famous South American firm, and the Decia is
a fine 6000-ton passenger boat, doing the round journey by Bahia and
Buenos Ayres to Rio and Valparaiso. I had a bad quarter of an hour, I
can tell you. I don’t think I was ever so undecided about anything in my
life. Cullingworth was dead against my going, and his influence carried
the day.

“My dear chap,” said he, “you’d knock down the chief mate, and he’d
spread you out with a handspike. You’d get tied by your thumbs to the
rigging. You’d be fed on stinking water and putrid biscuits. I’ve been
reading a novel about the merchant service, and I know.”

When I laughed at his ideas of modern sea-going he tried another line.

“You’re a bigger fool than I take you for if you go,” said he. “Why,
what can it lead to? All the money you earn goes to buy a blue coat, and
daub it with lace. You think you’re bound for Valparaiso, and you
find yourself at the poor-house. You’ve got a rare opening here, and
everything ready to your hand. You’ll never get such another again.”

And so it ended by my letting them have a wire to say that I could not
come. It is strange when you come to a point where the road of your life
obviously divides, and you take one turning or the other after vainly
trying to be sure about the finger-post. I think after all I chose
rightly. A ship’s surgeon must remain a ship’s surgeon, while here there
is no horizon to my possibilities.

As to old Cullingworth, he is booming along as merrily as ever. You say
in your last, that what you cannot understand is how he got his hold of
the public in so short a time. That is just the point which I have found
it hard to get light upon. He told me that after his first coming he had
not a patient for a month, and that he was so disheartened that he very
nearly made a moonlight exodus. At last, however, a few cases came his
way--and he made such extraordinary cures of them, or else impressed
them so by his eccentricity, that they would do nothing but talk of him.
Some of his wonderful results got into the local press, though, after
my Avonmouth experience, I should not like to guarantee that he did not
himself convey them there. He showed me an almanac, which had a great
circulation in the district.

It had an entry sandwiched in this way:

Aug. 15. Reform Bill passed 1867.

Aug. 16. Birth of Julius Caesar.

Aug. 17. Extraordinary cure by Dr. Cullingworth of a case of dropsy in
Bradfield, 1881.

Aug. 18. Battle of Gravelotte, 1870.


It reads as if it were one of the landmarks of the latter half of the
century. I asked him how on earth it got there; but I could only learn
that the woman was fifty-six inches round the waist, and that he had
treated her with elaterium.

That leads me to another point. You ask me whether his cures are really
remarkable, and, if so, what his system is. I answer unhesitatingly,
that his cures are very remarkable, indeed, and that I look upon him as
a sort of Napoleon of medicine. His view is that the pharmacopaeal doses
are in nearly every instance much too low. Excessive timidity has cut
down the dose until it has ceased to produce a real effect upon the
disease.

Medical men, according to his view, have been afraid of producing a
poisonous effect with their drugs. With him, on the contrary, the
whole art of medicine lies in judicious poisoning, and when the case
is serious, his remedies are heroic. Where, in epilepsy, I should have
given thirty-grain doses of bromide or chloral every four hours, he
would give two drachms every three. No doubt it will seem to you very
kill-or-cure, and I am myself afraid that a succession of coroners’
inquests may check Cullingworth’s career; but hitherto he has had no
public scandal, while the cases which he has brought back to life have
been numerous. He is the most fearless fellow. I have seen him pour
opium into a dysenteric patient until my hair bristled. But either his
knowledge or his luck always brings him out right.

Then there are other cures which depend, I think, upon his own personal
magnetism. He is so robust and loud-voiced and hearty that a weak
nervous patient goes away from him recharged with vitality. He is so
perfectly confident that he can cure them, that he makes them perfectly
confident that they can be cured; and you know how in nervous cases the
mind reacts upon the body. If he chose to preserve crutches and sticks,
as they do in the mediaeval churches, he might, I am sure, paper
his consulting room with them. A favourite device of his with an
impressionable patient is to name the exact hour of their cure. “My
dear,” he will say, swaying some girl about by the shoulders, with his
nose about three inches from hers, “you’ll feel better to-morrow at a
quarter to ten, and at twenty past you’ll be as well as ever you were in
your life. Now, keep your eye on the clock, and see if I am not right.”
 Next day, as likely as not, her mother will be in, weeping tears of
joy; and another miracle has been added to Cullingworth’s record. It may
smell of quackery, but it is exceedingly useful to the patient.

Still I must confess that there is nothing about Cullingworth which jars
me so much as the low view which he takes of our profession. I can never
reconcile myself to his ideas, and yet I can never convert him to mine;
so there will be a chasm there which sooner or later may open to divide
us altogether. He will not acknowledge any philanthropic side to the
question. A profession, in his view, is a means of earning a livelihood,
and the doing good to our fellow mortals, is quite a secondary one.

“Why the devil should we do all the good, Munro?” he shouts. “Eh, what? A
butcher would do good to the race, would he not, if he served his chops
out gratis through the window? He’d be a real benefactor; but he goes
on selling them at a shilling the pound for all that. Take the case of
a doctor who devotes himself to sanitary science. He flushes out drains,
and keeps down infection. You call him a philanthropist! Well, I call
him a traitor. That’s it, Munro, a traitor and a renegade! Did you ever
hear of a congress of lawyers for simplifying the law and discouraging
litigation? What are the Medical Association and the General Council,
and all these bodies for? Eh, laddie? For encouraging the best interests
of the profe

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/290