The Making of a Soul Part 3

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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sistant 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 Sat.u.r.day 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.

CHAPTER IV

Miss Antonia Gibbs came from the typewriting office with excellent testimonials. Though but eighteen years of age, she was vouched for as a steady, conscientious worker, well-educated and of exceptional intelligence. Quick, accurate, and possessed of a capital memory, she would seem to be the ideal typist for an office such as that presided over by Owen Rose; and after perusing the certificates and other doc.u.ments forming what one might call her _dossier_, Owen had really no choice but to engage the prodigy.

When she received the letter announcing the fact Miss Gibbs danced with delight.

"Two pounds a week! Think of it!" Thus she besought her cousin f.a.n.n.y, a rather full-blown young woman employed in a "drapery-house" at Brixton.

"And easy hours--with an hour off for lunch! Isn't it lovely!"

"You'll have the office 'commish' to pay," her cousin reminded her, "and I know all about those short hours! Sound well, but they generally want overtime out of you--without paying for it either!"

"Do they?" Antonia's joy was momentarily checked. Then she recovered her spirits. "Anyway, even then it's a good post, and I can easily pay the commission out of two pounds!"

"Yes, of course." f.a.n.n.y, whose natural optimism was somewhat impaired by her experience in drapers' shops, cheered up also. "It's a grand opportunity for you, Toni, and mind you make the most of it."

"Rather," returned Toni gaily. "I'm to start to-morrow, so this is my last free night. Aren't you glad some people are coming in to tea?"

"Yes." f.a.n.n.y, recalled to the immediate present, began her preparations for the tea-party. "Josh'll be pleased to hear of your luck, Toni; he's real fond of you, you know."

"Is he?" Toni, pulling off her flannel blouse, spoke a trifle absently.

"Yes. If I weren't fond of you myself I declare I'd be jealous! Don't know how it is, all the boys seem to take to you straight away, Toni, and you don't care a pin for any of 'em!"

"Perhaps that's why," said Toni cheerfully, voicing a truth without in the least realizing it. "After all, who is there to care for? Jack Brown, or young Graves, or that funny little Walter Britton out of Lea and Harper's?" She plunged her glowing face into a basin of cold water as she spoke.

"No. I s'pose they're not quite your sort." f.a.n.n.y stared thoughtfully at her cousin. "I don't know how it is, Toni--you are my cousin, your father was Dad's own brother--and yet you're as different from us as--as chalk from cheese."

She in her turn had uttered a profound truth. Between Toni and the rest of the commonplace lower-middle-cla.s.s household was a great gulf fixed, a gulf which was the more inexplicable because it was clearly visible to the parties on either side of the chasm.

Red-faced, brawny Fred Gibbs, the butcher, his equally red-faced, though slightly more refined wife, and their several sons and daughters, belonging, most of them, to the category of "fine" boys and girls, were a good-humoured, kindly people enough; yet between them and the pretty, dark-eyed Antonia there was not the slightest vestige of resemblance, either in looks, manners, or disposition.

Not that Toni gave herself airs. On the contrary, she was the most cheerful and light-hearted little soul in the world. She flung herself bodily into all the family's interests and pursuits, helped her uncle with his books and her aunt with her housework, was f.a.n.n.y's sworn confidante and ally in all matters of the heart. The younger children adored her for her good looks, her vivacity, her high spirits; and even the flashes of rage which now and then marred her usually sunny temper were fascinating in their very fire.

Yet--with it all she was not, never would be, one of them. f.a.n.n.y was inclined to put it down to her foreign blood--for Toni's mother had been Italian. The elder Gibbs fancied the girl's superior education was responsible--for Toni had been to a real "Seminary for Young Ladies," in contradistinction to the Council School attended by her cousins; while as for Toni herself, though she was as fully conscious as the rest that she was "different, somehow," she could never say, with any certainty, in what the difference lay.

Perhaps a psychologist would have found Antonia's position an interesting one. Briefly, her history was this.

The Gibbs were North-Country people, a good old yeoman family who had been in service with an older and more aristocratic people in the county of Yorkshire. The family, however, had begun, a few generations back, to die out. Instead of the usual l.u.s.ty sons, only daughters had been born to most of the Gibbs, and they in their turn married and died, in the nature of things relinquishing their own name, until there were few left.

So the race dwindled, until old Matthew Gibbs and his two sons Fred and Roger were the last representatives of the old stock; and to the father's bitter disappointment neither boy would consent to settle down on the farm and carry out the tradition of the family. Fred, always a pushing, commercially-minded lad, found farming too slow and unprofitable to satisfy him, and he took service in a butcher's shop at York, as a first step towards his goal, London, in which city he eventually made his home, married a c.o.c.kney girl, and settled down for the rest of his prosperous life.

The second son, Roger, early showed a desire to travel; and though his father would have kept him at home, he realized that after all youth will be served, and let the boy go out into the world as soon as he had pa.s.sed his eighteenth birthday.

Being possessed of unlimited confidence, exceptional strength and a light-hearted determination to make something of life, Roger was successful from the start. As is often her way with those from whom she means, later, to exact a heavy toll, Fate smiled upon the good-looking young man who faced her so gaily. He got one post after another: secretary, mechanic, groom--for he was equally clever with hands and head. In this or that capacity he travelled quite extensively for some years, and finally, having a natural bent for languages, came to Rome in the position of courier to a rich American family. It happened that the daughter of the house had an Italian maid, a beautiful, refined girl from Southern Italy; and the young people quickly fell in love. In spite of his apparent irresponsibility Roger had saved a little money, and within six months he had married his Italian girl and carried her off to live in a village on the side of a mountain not far from Naples, where for four blissful years they lived in perfect contentment.

Old Matthew Gibbs, having in his later years sustained heavy agricultural losses, was dead, and there was nothing to call Roger back to England. He much preferred, indeed, to remain in the South, and as their wants were simple he and his wife were able to live quite comfortably on Roger's own little bit of money and the few _lire_ he made through the kindly offices of the village priest, who liked the gay young Englishman and put many odd jobs--translation, the acting as interpreter and guide to tourists, and other things of the sort--in his way.

When Toni came to complete the trio, their happiness was complete; and for three years after her birth the little house on the hill-side was the home of joy and love and all the pleasant domestic virtues and graces.