THE SIMPLE FAITH
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 feeling, she didn’t
reject me.”
“Scoundrel enough? Why scoundrel?”
“Why? But I hadn’t a penny in the world. I lived at the school, and
received a salary of thirty pounds, half of which had to go towards the
support of my mother. What could possibly have been more villainous?
What earthly prospect was there of my being able to marry?”
“Well, grant the monstrosity of it.”
“This lady—a very little lower than the angels—declared that she was
content to wait an indefinite time. She believed in me, and hoped for
my future. Her father—the mother was dead—sanctioned our engagement.
She had three sisters, one of them a governess, another keeping house,
and the third a blind girl. Excellent people, all of them. I was at
their house as often as possible, and they made much of me. It was a
pity, you know, for in those few leisure hours I ought to have been
working like a nigger.”
“Plainly you ought.”
“Fortunately, I left Hereford, and went to a school at Gloucester,
where I had thirty-five pounds. How we gloried over that extra five
pounds! But it’s no use going on with the story in this way; it would
take me till to-morrow morning. Seven years went by; we were thirty
years old, and no prospect whatever of our engagement coming to
anything. I had worked pretty hard; I had taken my London degree; but
not a penny had I saved, and all I could spare was still needful to my
mother. It struck me all at once that I had no right to continue the
engagement. On my thirtieth birthday I wrote a letter to Fanny—that is
her name—and begged her to be free. Now, would you have done the same,
or not?”
“Really, I am not imaginative enough to put myself in such a position.
It would need a stupendous effort, at all events.”
“But was there anything gross in the proceeding?”
“The lady took it ill?”
“Not in the sense of being offended. But she said it had caused her
much suffering. She begged me to consider _myself_ free. She would
remain faithful, and if, in time to come, I cared to write to her
again—After all these years, I can’t speak of it without huskiness. It
seemed to me that I had behaved more like a scoundrel than ever. I
thought I had better kill myself, and even planned ways of doing it—I
did indeed. But after all we decided that our engagement should
continue.”
“Of course.”
“You think it natural? Well, the engagement has continued till this
day. A month ago I was forty, so that we have waited for seventeen
years.”
Micklethwaite paused on a note of awe.
“Two of Fanny’s sisters are dead; they never married. The blind one
Fanny has long supported, and she will come to live with us. Long, long
ago we had both of us given up thought of marriage. I have never spoken
to any one of the engagement; it was something too absurd, and also too
sacred.”
The smile died from Everard’s face, and he sat in thought.
“Now, when are _you_ going to marry?” cried Micklethwaite, with a
revival of his cheerfulness.
“Probably never.”
“Then I think you will neglect a grave duty. Yes. It is the duty of
every man, who has sufficient means, to maintain a wife. The life of
unmarried women is a wretched one; every man who is able ought to save
one of them from that fate.”
“I should like my cousin Mary and her female friends to hear you talk
in that way. They would overwhelm you with scorn.”
“Not sincere scorn, is my belief. Of course I have heard of that kind
of woman. Tell me something about them.”
Barfoot was led on to a broad expression of his views.
“I admire your old-fashioned sentiment, Micklethwaite. It sits well on
you, and you’re a fine fellow. But I have much more sympathy with the
new idea that women should think of marriage only as men do—I mean,
not to grow up in the thought that they must marry or be blighted
creatures. My own views are rather extreme, perhaps; strictly, I don’t
believe in marriage at all. And I haven’t anything like the respect for
women, as women, that you have. You belong to the Ruskin school; and
I—well, perhaps my experience has been unusual, though I don’t think
so. You know, by-the-bye, that my relatives consider me a blackguard?”
“That affair you told me about some years ago?”
“Chiefly that. I have a good mind to tell you the true story; I didn’t
care to at the time. I accepted the charge of black-guardism; it didn’t
matter much. My cousin will never forgive me, though she has an air of
friendliness once more. And I suspect she had told her friend Miss Nunn
all about me. Perhaps to put Miss Nunn on her guard—Heaven knows!”
He laughed merrily.
“Miss Nunn, I dare say, needs no protection against you.”
“I had an odd thought whilst I was there.” Everard leaned his head
back, and half closed his eyes. “Miss Nunn, I warrant, considers
herself proof against any kind of wooing. She is one of the grandly
severe women; a terror, I imagine, to any young girl at their place who
betrays weak thoughts of matrimony. Now, it’s rather a temptation to a
man of my kind. There would be something piquant in making vigorous
love to Miss Nunn, just to prove her sincerity.”
Micklethwaite shook his head.
“Unworthy of you, Barfoot. Of course you couldn’t really do such a
thing.”
“But such women really challenge one. If she were rich, I think I could
do it without scruple.”
“You seem to be taking it for granted,” said the mathematician,
smiling, “that this lady would—would respond to your love-making.”
“I confess to you that women have spoilt me. And I am rather resentful
when any one cries out against me for lack of respect to womanhood. I
have been the victim of this groundless veneration for females. Now you
shall hear the story; and bear in mind that you are the only person to
whom I have ever told it. I never tried to defend myself when I was
vilified on all hands. Probably the attempt would have been useless;
and then it would certainly have increased the odium in which I stood.
I think I’ll tell cousin Mary the truth some day; it would be good for
her.”
The listener looked uneasy, but curious.
“Well now, I was staying in the summer with some friends of ours at a
little place called Upchurch, on a branch line from Oxford. The people
were well-to-do—Goodall their name—and went in for philanthropy. Mrs.
Goodall always had a lot of Upchurch girls about her, educated and not;
her idea was to civilize one class by means of the other, and to give a
new spirit to both. My cousin Mary was staying at the house whilst I
was there. She had more reasonable views than Mrs. Goodall, but took a
great interest in what was going on.
“Now one of the girls in process of spiritualization was called Amy
Drake. In the ordinary course of things I shouldn’t have met her, but
she served in a shop where I went two or three times to get a
newspaper; we talked a little—with absolute propriety on my part, I
assure you—and she knew that I was a friend of the Goodalls. The girl
had no parents, and she was on the point of going to London to live
with a married sister.
“It happened that by the very train which took me back to London, when
my visit was over, this girl also travelled, and alone. I saw her at
Upchurch Station, but we didn’t speak, and I got into a smoking
carriage. We had to change at Oxford, and there, as I walked about the
platform, Amy put herself in my way, so that I was obliged to begin
talking with her. This behaviour rather surprised me. I wondered what
Mrs. Goodall would think of it. But perhaps it was a sign of innocent
freedom in the intercourse of men and women. At all events, Amy managed
to get me into the same carriage with herself, and on the way to London
we were alone. You foresee the end of it. At Paddington Station the
girl and I went off together, and she didn’t get to her sister’s till
the evening.
“Of course I take it for granted that you believe my account of the
matter. Miss Drake was by no means the spiritual young person that Mrs.
Goodall thought her, or hoped to make her; plainly, she was a reprobate
of experience. This, you will say, doesn’t alter the fact that I also
behaved like a reprobate. No; from the moralist’s point of view I was
to blame. But I had no moral pretentions, and it was too much to expect
that I should rebuke the young woman and preach her a sermon. You admit
that, I dare say?”
The mathematician, frowning uncomfortably, gave a nod of assent.
“Amy was not only a reprobate, but a rascal. She betrayed me to the
people at Upchurch, and, I am quite sure, meant from the first to do
so. Imagine the outcry. I had committed a monstrous crime—had led
astray an innocent maiden, had outraged hospitality—and so on. In
Amy’s case there were awkward results. Of course I must marry the girl
forthwith. But of course I was determined to do no such thing. For the
reasons I have explained, I let the storm break upon me. I had been a
fool, to be sure, and couldn’t help myself. No one would have believed
my plea—no one would have allowed that the truth was an excuse. I was
abused on all hands. And when, shortly after, my father made his will
and died, doubtless he cut me off with my small annuity on this very
account. My cousin Mary got a good deal of the money that would
otherwise have been mine. The old man had been on rather better terms
with me just before that; in a will that he destroyed I believe he had
treated me handsomely.”
“Well, well,” said Micklethwaite, “every one knows there are detestable
women to be found. But you oughtn’t to let this affect your view of
women in general. What became of the girl?”
“I made her a small allowance for a year and a half. Then her child
died, and the allowance ceased. I know nothing more of her. Probably
she has inveigled some one into marriage.”
“Well, Barfoot,” said the other, rolling about in his chair, “my
opinion remains the same. You are in debt to some worthy woman to the
extent of half your income. Be quick and find her. It will be better
for you.”
“And do you suppose,” asked Everard, with a smile of indulgence, “that
I could marry on four hundred and fifty a year?”
“Heavens! Why not?”
“Quite impossible. A wife _might_ be acceptable to me; but marriage
with poverty—I know myself and the world too well for that.”
“Poverty!” screamed the mathematician. “Four hundred and fifty pounds!”
“Grinding poverty—for married people.”
Micklethwaite burst into indignant eloquence, and Everard sat listening
with the restrained smile on his lips.