A month later Barry relinquished his post as secretary to the man he
called "old Joliffe," and announced himself to be from henceforth at
Owen's disposal.
The review to which the latter had alluded was a long-standing ideal of
Owen Rose's. From his earliest youth he had been attracted by the
journalistic side of life, and seeing no means of editing a London daily
at an early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of
newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he was
sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile
intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to
London to demand the right of admittance into Fleet Street.
At that time, luckily for himself, he was on terms of friendship with a
well-known editor; and what his own talent might have found difficulty
in obtaining was placed unexpectedly within his reach. Before he was
twenty-five he was well-known in the newspaper world; and since, on his
twenty-fifth birthday, he came into possession of the comfortable income
left to him by his father many years before, he was able to turn his
back definitely on any soul-destroying drudgery and devote his time and
brains to better work. Beneath his journalistic ability there was a
sound and delicate literary _flair_; and it had long been his dream to
found a magazine which, while neither commonplace nor unduly "precious,"
should hit a happy mean between the cheap magazines devoted to more or
less poor fiction, and the somewhat pompous reviews which held up the
light of learning and research in a rather severe and forbidding
fashion.
He would have a little fiction--of the highest order. A comparatively
large portion of the review was to be devoted to poetry, both as
regarded original verse and the critical appreciation of modern poetry
as a whole. Articles on art, music, the drama, were all to find a home
in his pages; and there was to be a judicious sprinkling of science to
add a little ballast to the lighter freight.
But what he intended to be the striking feature of the review was the
tone which was to prevail throughout. It was to be warm, eager,
enthusiastic, optimistic. He intended himself to write a series of
articles dealing with the future in relation to the past. Each
subject--music, literature, humanitarianism, mysticism, and a dozen
others--would be treated in turn; and while in no wise belittling the
magic inventiveness of an age which has given us an Edison, a Marconi,
and a whole host of brilliant explorers, birdmen, and others equally
daring and distinguished, he intended to remember always the enormous
debt which we of this century owe to the glorious past.
Possibly in Owen's very enthusiasm, in the eager, ardent spirit of his
dreams, there was more of the spirit of the future than of the past--but
he intended to hold the balance as evenly as possible.
On one point he was firm. While hoping that his review would be in every
way a serious contribution to the more valuable literature of the day,
the literature which was worth something, he intended it to be strictly
non-political. There would be no room within its covers for writers with
axes to grind. No acrimonious discussions, thinly-veiled in pedantry,
should mar the harmony of the pages; no party cries should echo from the
editorial offices; and although he aimed, in some measure, at
instructing and uplifting his readers, it was their betterment as human
beings, rather than as citizens--so far as the two may be divorced--with
which he intended to concern himself.
He was fortunate in his collaborators. At his back he had an old friend
of his fathers', a gifted, if somewhat inarticulate, man of letters, who
had longed, in his early life, for the opportunity to do what Owen was
doing; and was generous enough to feel that, though his own working days
were over, he might well use a little of his wealth in helping another
man to realize their mutual dream.
Everything was to be on a strictly business-like footing. Owen, as
editor, was to receive a moderate salary--moderate because he felt that
in the circumstances the backing he received was worth more than any
emolument. Also he was sufficiently well-off to waive the matter if he
chose until the review was on firm financial ground. Barry, as his
personal secretary and general second-in-command, was to receive a
generous sum; and the rest of the men, all young, ardent, and fired with
a whole-hearted belief in Owen as their chief, were to be remunerated
according to their work and ability.
A certain Miss Lucy Jenkins had been selected as typewriter and
assistant at what seemed to her the princely sum of forty shillings a
week; and by the beginning of February activity at headquarters, a
pleasant, though not palatial suite of offices in Victoria Street,
Westminster, was in full swing.
The first number of the _Bridge_ was to make its appearance at Easter;
and Owen was meditating one morning over the possible inclusion of a
little set of verses which had reached him from a hitherto-unknown
contributor, when Barry appeared in the doorway leading to his inner
sanctum with a worried look in his frank blue eyes.
"Hallo, Barry, anything wrong?" Owen put down the paper he held and
looked at his young colleague with a smile.
"Well, it's no end of a bore!" Barry frowned distastefully. "That stupid
Jenkins woman has gone and landed herself in Holloway!"
"Holloway?" Owen repeated the word in surprise.
"Yes. I knew she was a Militant Suffragette, but I thought she would
have more sense than to go mixing herself up in brawls with the police!"
"And she hasn't?"
"No. On Saturday afternoon"--this was Monday--"she went and marched in a
procession of women out to smash windows or something of the sort, got
into a row and kicked a bobby in the ribs. The end was she got locked up
that night."
"Where is she now?"
"Brought up before the magistrate this morning and sentenced to fourteen
days without an option for violence," said Barry laconically. "I've just
had a note from her mother, who's nearly distracted, begging me to keep
her place open for her, but I don't see how we can do that."
"Certainly not," said Owen decidedly. "I'll have no militant women on my
staff, and the sooner they understand that the better. She wasn't any
great treasure, either. She was too fond of revising the stuff she had
to type; and her ideas and mine clashed considerably when it came to
punctuation."
"I suppose I must advertise for someone to take her place, then," said
Barry, with a sigh.
"Yes. Get a younger girl this time, if you can. Miss Jenkins had reached
the certain--or uncertain--age when women take to militant suffragism.
She didn't like being corrected when she made mistakes, and used to
argue with me till you'd have thought it was she who ran the office, and
not I."
"All right. I'll do my best."
"Not too young, though," said Owen, half-maliciously, "or she'll be
thinking about her best boy all day instead of working. Of course that's
a bit better than militancy, less upsetting; but women are so
incomprehensible when they're in what they are pleased to call love that
it's rather difficult to know what they're driving at."
"Oh, all right!" Owen's flippancy disturbed Barry, and he spoke shortly,
whereupon Owen smiled meaningly, and Barry went out of the room rather
hurriedly.
Once safe in his own sanctum he lamented the unkind Fate which had given
Owen's heart as a plaything into the hands of an unscrupulous woman such
as Miss Rees had proved herself to be. Although Owen rarely mentioned
the subject, Barry knew well enough that he had not relinquished the
idea of a speedy marriage. Once or twice Owen had asked him his opinion
of this or that woman with whom they were both acquainted; but so far he
had shown no signs of forming any new engagement, though Barry lived in
a state of apprehension lest his friend should suddenly announce a more
or less undesirable tie.
For Owen, perhaps naturally, shunned the women of his own set. They all
knew too much, knew the history of his disastrous engagement too
well--were, in many cases, friends of the woman who had jilted him; and
were therefore no acquaintances for a man in his mood.
But there were other women, with whom, before his departure for the
East, he had been on terms of casual acquaintance; the daughters of City
friends, girls who lived in Kensington or Hampstead, girls with brothers
who had knocked up against the young men in athletic or journalistic
circles; an actress or two; good-hearted, ordinary young women for the
most part, commonplace in spite of suburban leanings towards "culture,"
and in many cases entirely out of sympathy with the aims and ideals of
both Owen and his friend.
As a matter of fact Owen and Barry were too busy during these strenuous
days to have time for social delights; but now and then they met one or
other of these various girls, visited one of the actresses on a "first
night," dined, reluctantly, in Earl's Court or Belsize Road, and on the
following morning Owen would ask Barry, half-teasingly, whether Rose or
Sybil or Gwendoline struck him as the most suitable bride for an already
jilted bachelor.
Barry never took up the subject, showed plainly by his manner that he
did not like the jest; but the occasional queries went to show that the
idea of marriage was still in his friend's thoughts; and Barry was now
and again seriously uneasy lest some designing woman--that was the way
he put it--should make the vague possibility into an accomplished fact.
And then, just when the idea seemed to be fading, lost in the pressure
of work, the interest of bringing forth the first realization of a
lifelong dream, the woman herself--but she was not designing--came.