Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (647 page)
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Authors: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Smeaton tells me that this has now taken the form of imagining that some one is conspiring to poison him with copper, against which he takes the most extravagant precautions. It is the strangest sight, he says, to see Cullingworth at his meals; for he sits with an elaborate chemical apparatus and numerous retorts and bottles at his elbow, with which he tests samples of every course. I could not help laughing at Smeaton’s description, and yet it was a laugh with a groan underlying it. Of all ruins, that of a fine man is the saddest.
I never thought I should have seen Cullingworth again, but fate has brought us together. I have always had a kindly feeling for him, though I feel that he used me atrociously. Often I have wondered whether, if I were placed before him, I should take him by the throat or by the hand. You will be interested to hear what actually occurred.
One day, just a week or so back, I was starting on my round, when a boy arrived with a note. It fairly took my breath away when I saw the familiar writing, and realised that Cullingworth was in Birchespool. I called Winnie, and we read it together.
“Dear Munro,” it said, “James is in lodgings here for a few days. We are on the point of leaving England. He would be glad, for the sake of old times, to have a chat with you before he goes.
“Yours faithfully,
“HETTY CULLINGWORTH.”
The writing was his and the style of address, so that it was evidently one of those queer little bits of transparent cunning which were characteristic of him, to make it come from his wife, that he might not lay himself open to a direct rebuff. The address, curiously enough, was that very Cadogan Terrace at which I had lodged, but two doors higher up.
Well, I was averse from going myself, but Winnie was all for peace and forgiveness. Women who claim nothing invariably get everything, and so my gentle little wife always carries her point. Half an hour later I was in Cadogan Terrace with very mixed feelings, but the kindlier ones at the top. I tried to think that Cullingworth’s treatment of me had been pathological — the result of a diseased brain. If a delirious man had struck me, I should not have been angry with him. That must be my way of looking at it.
If Cullingworth still bore any resentment, he concealed it most admirably. But then I knew by experience that that genial loud-voiced John-Bull manner of his COULD conceal many things. His wife was more open; and I could read in her tightened lips and cold grey eyes, that she at least stood fast to the old quarrel. Cullingworth was little changed, and seemed to be as sanguine and as full of spirits as ever.
“Sound as a trout, my boy!” he cried, drumming on his chest with his hands. “Played for the London Scottish in their opening match last week, and was on the ball from whistle to whistle. Not so quick on a sprint — you find that yourself, Munro, eh what? — but a good hard-working bullocky forward. Last match I shall have for many a day, for I am off to South America next week.”
“You have given up Bradfield altogether then?”
“Too provincial, my boy! What’s the good of a village practice with a miserable three thousand or so a year for a man that wants room to spread? My head was sticking out at one end of Bradfield and my feet at the other. Why, there wasn’t room for Hetty in the place, let alone me! I’ve taken to the eye, my boy. There’s a fortune in the eye. A man grudges a half-crown to cure his chest or his throat, but he’d spend his last dollar over his eye. There’s money in ears, but the eye is a gold mine.”
“What!” said I, “in South America?”
“Just exactly in South America,” he cried, pacing with his quick little steps up and down the dingy room. “Look here, laddie! There’s a great continent from the equator to the icebergs, and not a man in it who could correct an astigmatism. What do they know of modern eye-surgery and refraction? Why, dammy, they don’t know much about it in the provinces of England yet, let alone Brazil. Man, if you could only see it, there’s a fringe of squinting millionaires sitting ten deep round the whole continent with their money in their hands waiting for an oculist. Eh, Munro, what? By Crums, I’ll come back and I’ll buy Bradfield, and I’ll give it away as a tip to a waiter.”
“You propose to settle in some large city, then?”
“City! What use would a city be to me? I’m there to squeeze the continent. I work a town at a time. I send on an agent to the next to say that I am coming. I ‘Here’s the chance of a lifetime,’ says he, ‘no need to go back to Europe. Here’s Europe come to you. Squints, cataracts, iritis, refractions, what you like; here’s the great Signor Cullingworth, right up to date and ready for anything!’ In they come of course, droves of them, and then I arrive and take the money. Here’s my luggage!” he pointed to two great hampers in the corner of the room. “Those are glasses, my boy, concave and convex, hundreds of them. I test an eye, fit him on the spot, and send him away shouting. Then I load up a steamer and come home, unless I elect to buy one of their little States and run it.”
Of course it sounded absurd as he put it; but I could soon see that he had worked out his details, and that there was a very practical side to his visions.
“I work Bahia,” said he. “My agent prepares Pernambuco. When Bahia is squeezed dry I move on to Pernambuco, and the agent ships to Monte Video. So we work our way round with a trail of spectacles behind us. It’ll go like clock-work.”
“You will need to speak Spanish,” said I.
“Tut, it does not take any Spanish to stick a knife into a man’s eye. All I shall want to know is, ‘Money down — no credit.’ That’s Spanish enough for me.”
We had a long and interesting talk about all that had happened to both of us, without, however, any allusion to our past quarrel. He would not admit that he had left Bradfield on account of a falling-off in his practice, or for any reason except that he found the place too small. His spring-screen invention had, he said, been favourably reported upon by one of the first private shipbuilding firms on the Clyde, and there was every probability of their adopting it.
“As to the magnet,” said he, “I’m very sorry for my country, but there is no more command of the seas for her. I’ll have to let the thing go to the Germans. It’s not my fault. They must not blame me when the smash comes. I put the thing before the Admiralty, and I could have made a board school understand it in half the time. Such letters, Munro! Colney Hatch on blue paper. When the war comes, and I show those letters, somebody will be hanged. Questions about this — questions about that. At last they asked me what I proposed to fasten my magnet to. I answered to any solid impenetrable object, such as the head of an Admiralty official. Well, that broke the whole thing up. They wrote with their compliments, and they were returning my apparatus. I wrote with my compliments, and they might go to the devil. And so ends a great historical incident, Munro — eh, what?”
We parted very good friends, but with reservations, I fancy, on both sides. His last advice to me was to clear out of Birchespool.
“You can do better — you can do better, laddie!” said he. “Look round the whole world, and when you see a little round hole, jump in feet foremost. There’s a lot of ‘em about if a man keeps himself ready.”
So those were the last words of Cullingworth, and the last that I may ever see of him also, for he starts almost immediately upon his strange venture. He must succeed. He is a man whom nothing could hold down. I wish him luck, and have a kindly feeling towards him, and yet I distrust him from the bottom of my heart, and shall be just as pleased to know that the Atlantic rolls between us.
Well, my dear Bertie, a happy and tranquil, if not very ambitious existence stretches before us. We are both in our twenty-fifth year, and I suppose that without presumption we can reckon that thirty-five more years lie in front of us. I can foresee the gradually increasing routine of work, the wider circle of friends, the indentification with this or that local movement, with perhaps a seat on the Bench, or at least in the Municipal Council in my later years. It’s not a very startling programme, is it? But it lies to my hand, and I see no other. I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one’s weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.
So good-bye, my dear boy, and remember that when you come to England our home would be the brighter for your presence. In any case, now that I have your address, I shall write again in a very few weeks. My kindest regards to Mrs. Swanborough.
Yours ever,
J. STARK MUNRO.
S
KO
Serialised in
The Strand Magazine
between May and December 1897, this novel features a group of European tourists are enjoying their trip to
Egypt
in the year 1895. They are sailing up the River Nile in a “a turtle-bottomed, round-bowed stern-wheeler”, the Korosko. They intend to travel to Abousir at the southern frontier of
Egypt
, after which the Dervish country starts. They are attacked and abducted by a marauding band of Dervish warriors. The novel contains a strong defence of British Imperialism and in particular the Imperial project in
North Africa
. It also reveals the very great suspicion of Islam felt by many Europeans at the time.
