Seated in the reading-room of a club to which he had newly procured admission, Everard Barfoot was glancing over the advertisement 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 title, “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 anticipated, 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 assumed 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 professorship — 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 —
‘I don’t care to talk about it here. Let us go somewhere and eat together. I invite you to have dinner with me — or lunch, as I suppose you would call it, in your aristocratic language.’
‘No, you had better have lunch with me. Come to my club.’
‘Confound your impudence! Am I not your father in mathematics?’
‘Be so good as to put on a decent pair of trousers, and brush your hair. Ah, here is your Trilinear production. I’ll look over it whilst you make yourself presentable.’
‘There’s a bad misprint in the Preface. Let me show you —’
‘It’s all the same to me, my dear fellow.’
But Micklethwaite was not content until he had indicated the error, and had talked for five minutes about the absurdities that it involved.
‘How do you suppose I got the thing published?’ he then asked. ‘Old Bennet, the Sheffield headmaster, is security for loss if the book doesn’t pay for itself in two years’ time. Kind of him, wasn’t it? He pressed the offer upon me, and I think he’s prouder of the book than I am myself. But it’s quite remarkable how kind people are when one is fortunate. I fancy a great deal of nonsense is talked about the world’s enviousness. Now as soon as it got known that I was coming to this post in London, people behaved to me with surprising good nature all round. Old Bennet talked in quite an affectionate strain. “Of course,” he said, “I have long known that you ought to be in a better place than this; your payment is altogether inadequate; if it had depended upon me, I should long ago have increased it. I truly rejoice that you have found a more fitting sphere for your remarkable abilities.” No; I maintain that the world is always ready to congratulate you with sincerity, if you will only give it a chance.’
‘Very gracious of you to give it the chance. But, by-the-bye, how did it come about?’
‘Yes, I ought to tell you that. Why, about a year ago, I wrote an answer to a communication signed by a Big Gun in one of the scientific papers. It was a question in Probability — you wouldn’t understand it. My answer was printed, and the Big Gun wrote privately to me — a very flattering letter. That correspondence led to my appointment; the Big Gun exerted himself on my behalf. The fact is, the world is bursting with good nature.’
‘Obviously. And how long did it take you to write this little book?’
‘Oh, only about seven years — the actual composition. I never had much time to myself, you must remember.’
‘You’re a good soul, Thomas. Go and equip yourself for civilized society.’
To the club they repaired on foot. Micklethwaite would talk of anything but that which his companion most desired to hear.
‘There are solemnities in life,’ he answered to an impatient question, ‘things that can’t be spoken of in the highway. When we have eaten, let us go to your flat, and there I will tell you everything.’
They lunched joyously. The mathematician drank a bottle of excellent hock, and did corresponding justice to the dishes. His eyes gleamed with happiness; again he enlarged upon the benevolence of mankind, and the admirable ordering of the world. From the club they drove to Bayswater, and made themselves comfortable in Barfoot’s flat, which was very plainly, but sufficiently, furnished. Micklethwaite, cigar in mouth, threw his legs over the side of the easy-chair in which he was sitting.
‘Now,’ he began gravely, ‘I don’t mind telling you that your conjecture was right. I am going to be married.’
‘Well,’ said the other, ‘you have reached the age of discretion. I must suppose that you know what you are about.’
‘Yes, I think I do. The story is unexciting. I am not a romantic person, nor is my future wife. Now, you must know that when I was about twenty-three years old I fell in love. You never suspected me of that, I dare say?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I did fall in love. The lady was a clergyman’s daughter at Hereford, where I had a place in a school; she taught the infants in an elementary school connected with ours; her age was exactly the same as my own. Now, the remarkable thing was that she took a liking for me, and when I was scoundrel enough to tell her of my fe............