The Stark Munro Letters: Being 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 1881-1884Doyle, Arthur Conan
General
The Stark Munro Letters: Being 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
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Epistolary fiction
“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?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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