“A new man to catch the other new men,” Bertrand repeated.
“A thief to catch a thief,” I answered; “but, if it’s youth you want, these men are all under thirty-five.”
The average was reduced further when, at Barbara’s suggestion, I invited a novelist of thirty, a poet of twenty-five and a composer of nineteen to take our artistic pages under their protection. They were all, she told me, touched with genius. I was also becoming reckless.
“And now,” said Bertrand, “can you set them to work in three months’ time? You’ll want that to get in touch with new conditions. You must study life in the marketplace, George. Mass-feeling. The great movement of men. . . . We’ll have our first editorial dinner somewhere about the end of March.”
“I should have it,” I suggested, “on the first of April.”
When my uncle returned a few weeks later, we returned with him; and, while Barbara made our house ready for party-meetings and drawing-room conclaves, I carried the dubious Sheraton chairs to Fetter Lane and passed from the Eclectic Club to my uncle’s study in Princes Gardens, in leisurely pursuit of the great movement of men.
I doubt if I have at any time felt more out of my element. I could understand O’Rane’s contention that, for all they won from civilization, the vast majority of mankind would be no worse off by taking to the hills and woods as bandits. I was prepared to work quite reasonably hard for my rooted faith that, if this vast majority was to be saved, it must be saved by its own efforts. I could sympathize with the proselytes to the League of Nations, though I placed no reliance in a league that did not make disarmament its first condition of membership. What I wholly failed to grasp was my uncle’s objective in taking an expensive office, exhuming our old manager from his retirement and entering the name of our paper once more at Stationer’s Hall.
London had never, in all my experience, been so little interested in politics.
“What’s been happening?,” Sam Dainton echoed when I took Barbara to dine with his parents. “Well, I’ve awarded myself the order of the bowler-hat; and I had the hell of a time in Paris after I left you; and now I’m thinking how I can make a bit of money.”
“Same here,” added John Gaymer. “If you come across anything, George . . .”