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Updated: May 24, 2025
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.
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."
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.
He kept his whip, however; and whenever the brute eased down, Cullingworth lammed him once more with the bone handle. His idea, I suppose, was to break its spirit, but he had taken a larger contract than he could carry through. The animal bunched his four feet together, ducked down his head, arched his back like a yawning cat, and gave three convulsive springs into the air.
Most of it, however, is poor stuff, and we are each agreed that the other was never meant for a novelist. So much for our domestic proceedings, and all these little details which you say you like to hear of. Now I must tell you of the great big change in my affairs, and how it came about. I have told you about the strange, sulky behaviour of Cullingworth, which has been deepening from day to day.
"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..."
At present we are prepared to run the paper single-handed; we are working seven hours a day at the practice; we are building a stable; and in our odd hours we are practising at our magnetic ship-protector, with which Cullingworth is still well pleased, though he wants to get it more perfect before submitting it to the Admiralty.
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."
I know what my father would think about it, if he knew. And now I come to the great event of this morning, from which I am still gasping. That villain Cullingworth has cut the painter, and left me to drift as best I may. My post comes at eight o'clock in the morning, and I usually get my letters and take them into bed to read them.
I asked Cullingworth point blank what it meant, but he only turned it off with a forced laugh, and some nonsense about my thin skin. I think that I am the last man in the world to take offence where none is meant; but at any rate I determined to end the matter by leaving Bradfield at once.
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