Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“No!” Athene Selfridge glared at Darwin. “Never! You ask me to accept the status quo, rather than fight it? I will not. Without defiance there will be no progress. Better to stay here, with all its risks. Better to be exposed, than to retreat like a tame rabbit to some safe haven in the West Country. Expelled, I will at least make my point — that a woman can work at mathematics as well as any man. If I am wrong in this, Erasmus Darwin, then tell me the nature of my error.”

Darwin’s eyebrows rose and his jaw dropped. “Wh-why, my dear.” The hint of a stammer came into his voice. “Thank goodness that Jacob Pole is not here. Were he present he would gloat to see my shame. You are not wrong at all. I am. I have long preached that principles should never be subservient to acts, yet here I am playing false to my own precepts.”

He glanced around the ill-furnished room. “It is no life of luxury that you seek. You are happy with your eremitic isolation?”

“I thrive on it. The ideas of mathematics are best conceived in solitude.”

“Yet if you remain here at St. John’s, you run continued risks of exposure and expulsion. You are a young lady whose actions already prove her not averse to risk. Will you consider taking one more?”

“I am a mathematician, Dr. Darwin. I must compare risk with possible benefit.”

“The risk, immediate expulsion. The benefit, an ally here in this college — and one very different from Elias Barton, who expected a certain quid pro quo.”

“Dr. Darwin, before your intervention I was already frightened and running. I can be in no worse situation than I was an hour ago.”

“Then come with me.”

The fickle weather scattered huge and random droplets on them as Darwin led the way to Second Court. He walked straight into Wentworth’s rooms, where the Senior Fellow stood at the window and Jacob Pole sat again at the low table with a steaming jug in front of him.

Wentworth swung around, and his smile at Darwin changed when he saw the latter’s companion.

“Now then, Collie.” Darwin paused in the doorway. “Abandon any thoughts of sodomy, pour yourself a glass of wine, take a deep breath, and sit down. And permit me to introduce to you Miss Athene Selfridge — who is not, nor has she ever been, nor could she ever be, the catamite of Elias Barton or any other man.”

The explanation took five minutes. Wentworth’s questions, exclamations, and muttered protests continued into the second bottle.

“Erasmus, how can I, a Senior Fellow of this college, condone and even assist in such deception?”

“Who was it mocked the policies and judgment of a certain university not sixty miles from here, when Miss Parker’s daughter composed English verse that you judged far superior to that of Sir Roger Newdigate’s contest winner?”

“No folly is too extreme for Oxford.”

“Right. But cast out the beam in your own eye. Who at St. John’s comprehends and champions the mathematical work of Monsieur Euler, or Monsieur D’Alembert, or young Monsieur Lagrange? I will answer my own question: no one other than Athene Selfridge. Do you wish to see this college fall behind the French?”

Wentworth rolled his eyes. “God preserve us from such a thought.”

“Then your duty is clear.”

“Damn you, Erasmus. You should have let me drown twenty years ago.” Wentworth turned to Athene Selfridge. “You know, do you not, that no one of a right mind disputes with Dr. Darwin?”

“I am beginning to learn it.” Athene moved to Wentworth’s side and took his hand in hers. “I will practice the utmost discretion. I will seek to bring nothing but honor to this college. If at any time you ask me to leave, I will do so without question.”

Wentworth slowly nodded. “I can in fairness ask no more than that. Let us drink to it. Erasmus, you have no glass.”

“You know that I have for many years foresworn alcohol.”

“Erasmus.”

“Collie, must you insist on your pound of flesh? Oh, very well.” Darwin accepted the glass that Wentworth pressed into his hand. “I have no need of a clear mind tonight. The Cook exhibit is washed out, the lecture postponed. But if there is to be a toast, Miss Selfridge must propose it.”

“That will be my honor.” With all the glasses raised, Athene Selfridge paused for thought. “If it were I alone, I would drink to you fine gentlemen. But since all are included in the toast, let it be to the wondrous Isaac Newton, before whom the greatest minds alive all bend the knee.”

“To the wondrous Isaac.” All drank, but Jacob Pole continued, “And damn the man, too. To hold in his head such secrets — perhaps of the elixir of life, perhaps even of the philosopher’s stone that turns lead to gold — and then to permit such work to be lost.”