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.
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