The Odd Women Part 22

'If society were really decent, he would have been. It's strange how completely his Radicalism has disappeared. I believe he never had a genuine sympathy with the labouring cla.s.ses. And what's more, I fancy he had a great deal of his father's desire for command and social distinction. If he had seen his way to become a great engineer, a director of vast enterprises, he wouldn't have abandoned his work. An incredible stubbornness has possibly spoilt his whole life. In a congenial pursuit he might by this time have attained to something noteworthy. It's too late now, I fear.'

Rhoda meditated.

'Does he aim at nothing whatever?'

'He won't admit any ambition. He has no society. His friends are nearly all obscure people, like those you heard him speak of this evening.'

'After all, what ambition should he have?' said Rhoda, with a laugh.

'There's one advantage in being a woman. A woman with brains and will may hope to distinguish herself in the greatest movement of our time--that of emanc.i.p.ating her s.e.x. But what can a man do, unless he has genius?'

'There's the emanc.i.p.ation of the working cla.s.ses. That is the great sphere for men; and Everard cares no more for the working cla.s.ses than I do.'

'Isn't it enough to be free oneself?'

'You mean that he has task enough in striving to be an honourable man?'

'Perhaps. I hardly know what I meant.'

Miss Barfoot mused, and her face lighted up with a glad thought.

'You are right. It's better to be a woman, in our day. With us is all the joy of advance, the glory of conquering. Men have only material progress to think about. But we--we are winning souls, propagating a new religion, purifying the earth!'

Rhoda nodded thrice.

'My cousin is a fine specimen of a man, after all, in body and mind.

But what a poor, ineffectual creature compared with _you_, Rhoda! I don't flatter you, dear. I tell you bluntly of your faults and extravagances. But I am proud of your magnificent independence, proud of your pride, dear, and of your stainless heart. Thank Heaven we are women!'

It was rare indeed for Miss Barfoot to be moved to rhapsody. Again Rhoda nodded, and then they laughed together, with joyous confidence in themselves and in their cause.

CHAPTER IX

THE SIMPLE FAITH

Seated in the reading-room of a club to which he had newly procured admission, Everard Barfoot was glancing over the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of a literary paper. His eye fell on an announcement that had a personal interest to him, and at once he went to the writing-table to pen a letter.

'DEAR MICKLETHWAITE,--I am back in England, and ought before this to have written to you. I see you have just published a book with an alarming t.i.tle, "A Treatise on Trilinear Co-ordinates." My hearty congratulations on the completion of such a labour; were you not the most disinterested of mortals, I would add a hope that it may somehow benefit you financially. I presume there _are_ people who purchase such works. But of course the main point with you is to have delivered your soul on Trilinear Co-ordinates. Shall I run down to Sheffield to see you, or is there any chance of the holidays bringing you this way? I have found a cheap flat, poorly furnished, in Bayswater; the man who let it to me happens to be an engineer, and is absent on Italian railway work for a year or so. My stay in London won't, I think, be for longer than six months, but we must see each other and talk over old times,' etc.

This he addressed to a school at Sheffield. The answer, directed to the club, reached him in three days.

'My DEAR BARFOOT,--I also am in London; your letter has been forwarded from the school, which I quitted last Easter. Disinterested or not, I am happy to tell you that I have got a vastly better appointment. Let me know when and where to meet you; or if you like, come to these lodgings of mine. I don't enter upon duties till end of October, and am at present revelling in mathematical freedom. There's a great deal to tell.--Sincerely yours,

THOMAS MICKLETHWAITE.'

Having no occupation for his morning, Barfoot went at once to the obscure little street by Primrose Hill where his friend was lodging. He reached the house about noon, and, as he had antic.i.p.ated, found the mathematician deep in study. Micklethwaite was a man of forty, bent in the shoulders, sallow, but not otherwise of unhealthy appearance; he had a merry countenance, a great deal of lank, disorderly hair, and a beard that reached to the middle of his waistcoat. Everard's acquaintance with him dated from ten years ago, when Micklethwaite had acted as his private tutor in mathematics.

The room was a musty little back-parlour on the ground floor.

'Quiet, perfectly quiet,' declared its occupant, 'and that's all I care for. Two other lodgers in the house; but they go to business every morning at half-past eight, and are in bed by ten at night. Besides, it's only temporary. I have great things in view--portentous changes!

I'll tell you all about it presently.'

He insisted, first of all, on hearing a full account of Barfoot's history since they both met. They had corresponded about twice a year, but Everard was not fond of letter-writing, and on each occasion gave only the briefest account of himself. In listening, Micklethwaite a.s.sumed extraordinary positions, the result, presumably, of a need of physical exercise after hours spent over his work. Now he stretched himself at full length on the edge of his chair, his arms extended above him; now he drew up his legs, fixed his feet on the chair, and locked his hands round his knees; thus perched, he swayed his body backwards and forwards, till it seemed likely that he would pitch head foremost on to the floor. Barfoot knew these eccentricities of old, and paid no attention to them.

'And what is the appointment you have got?' he asked at length, dismissing his own affairs with impatience.

It was that of mathematical lecturer at a London college.

'I shall have a hundred and fifty a year, and be able to take private pupils. On two hundred, at least, I can count, and there are possibilities I won't venture to speak of, because it doesn't do to be too hopeful. Two hundred a year is a great advance for me.'

'Quite enough, I suppose,' said Everard kindly.

'Not--not enough. I must make a little more somehow.'

'Hollo! Why this spirit of avarice all at once?'

The mathematician gave a shrill, cackling laugh, and rolled upon his chair.

'I must have more than two hundred. I should be satisfied with _three_ hundred, but I'll take as much more as I can get.'

'My revered tutor, this is shameless. I came to pay my respects to a philosopher, and I find a sordid worldling. Look at me! I am a man of the largest needs, spiritual and physical, yet I make my pittance of four hundred and fifty suffice, and never grumble. Perhaps you aim at an income equal to my own?'

'I do! What's four hundred and fifty? If you were a man of enterprise you would double or treble it. I put a high value on money. I wish to be _rich_!'

'You are either mad or are going to get married.'

Micklethwaite cackled louder than ever.

'I am planning a new algebra for school use. If I'm not much mistaken, I can turn out something that will supplant all the present books.

Think! If Micklethwaite's Algebra got accepted in all the schools, what would that mean to Mick? Hundreds a year, my boy--hundreds.'

'I never knew you so indecent.'

'I am renewing my youth. Nay, for the first time I am youthful. I never had time for it before. At the age of sixteen I began to teach in a school, and ever since I have pegged away at it, school and private.

Now luck has come to me, and I feel five-and-twenty. When I was really five-and-twenty, I felt forty.'

'Well, what has that to do with money-making?'

'After Mick's Algebra would follow naturally Mick's Arithmetic, Mick's Euclid, Mick's Trigonometry. Twenty years hence I should have an income of thousands--thousands! I would then cease to teach (resign my professors.h.i.+p--that is to say, for of course I should be professor), and devote myself to a great work on Probability. Many a man has begun the best of his life at sixty--the most enjoyable part of it, I mean.'

Barfoot was perplexed. He knew his friend's turn for humorous exaggeration, but had never once heard him scheme for material advancement, and evidently this present talk meant something more than a jest.

'Am I right or not? You are going to get married?'

Micklethwaite glanced at the door, then said in a tone of caution,--