Mr. Fletcher himself had proved to be both
generous and grateful. In assessing the value of his own life at 1,000
pounds, he had argued with good humour and good sense, he had erred on
the side of modesty, and Robert Stonehouse, having weighed the argument
gravely, had accepted its practical conclusion as just and reasonable.
He had taken rooms, thereupon, if not actually in Harley Street, at least
under the ramparts, fitted them out with the most modern surgical
appliances that his capital allowed, and had sat down to wait.
Fortunately he had learnt the art of starving before. He slept in a
garret, and the bottom drawer of the handsome mahogany desk in his
consulting-room knew the grim secret of his mid-day meals. But in six
months the tide had turned. Doctors had remembered him from his hospital
days when, if they had not liked him, they had learnt to respect his
genius and his courage, and had sent him patients. The patients
themselves, oddly enough, took a fancy to this gaunt, very serious young
man, who so obviously cared nothing at all about them, but whose interest
in their diseases was almost passionate. And within two years the tide
had brought him in sight of land.
This was what he had meant by "getting hold of things again and pulling
them his way." There was perhaps something rather simple in a theory of
life which had necessitated so much suffering on the part of Mr. Fletcher
in order that Dr. Stonehouse might take the first long stride in his
career.
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