knew for the "type" that will charge with fixed bayonets into the
face of death, and you found yourself unable to imagine little
Bailey achieving either drunkenness or the careless defiance of
annihilation. You realised that quite a lot of types were
underrepresented in Chambers Street, that feral and obscure and
altogether monstrous forces must be at work, as yet altogether
unassimilated by those neat administrative reorganisations.
5
Altiora, I remember, preluded Margaret's reappearance by announcing
her as a "new type."
I was accustomed to go early to the Baileys' dinners in those days,
for a preliminary gossip with Altiora in front of her drawing-room
fire. One got her alone, and that early arrival was a little sign
of appreciation she valued. She had every woman's need of followers
and servants.
"I'm going to send you down to-night," she said, "with a very
interesting type indeed-one of the new generation of serious gals.
Middle-class origin-and quite well off. Rich in fact. Her step-
father was a solicitor and something of an ENTREPRENEUR towards the
end, I fancy-in the Black Country. There was a little brother
died, and she's lost her mother quite recently. Quite on her own,
so to speak. She's never been out into society very much, and
doesn't seem really very anxious to go… Not exactly an
intellectual person, you know, but quiet, and great force of
character. Came up to London on her own and came to us-someone had
told her we were the sort of people to advise her-to ask what to
do. I'm sure she'll interest you."
"What CAN people of that sort do?" I asked. "Is she capable of
investigation?"
Altiora compressed her lips and shook her head. She always did
shake her head when you asked that of anyone.
"Of course what she ought to do," said Altiora, with her silk dress
pulled back from her knee before the fire, and with a lift of her
voice towards a chuckle at her daring way of putting things, "is to
marry a member of Parliament and see he does his work…
Perhaps she will. It's a very exceptional gal who can do anything
by herself-quite exceptional. The more serious they are-without
being exceptional-the more we want them to marry."
Her exposition was truncated by the entry of the type in question.
"Well!" cried Altiora turning, and with a high note of welcome,
"HERE you are!"
Margaret had gained in dignity and prettiness by the lapse of five
years, and she was now very beautifully and richly and simply
dressed. Her fair hair had been done in some way that made it seem
softer and more abundant than it was in my memory, and a gleam of
purple velvet-set diamonds showed amidst its mist of little golden
and brown lines. Her dress was of white and violet, the last trace
of mourning for her mother, and confessed the gracious droop of her
tall and slender body. She did not suggest Staffordshire at all,
and I was puzzled for a moment to think where I had met her. Her
sweetly shaped mouth with the slight obliquity of the lip and the
little kink in her brow were extraordinarily familiar to me. But
she had either been prepared by Altiora or she remembered my name.
"We met," she said, "while my step-father was alive-at Misterton.
You came to see us"; and instantly I recalled the sunshine between
the apple blossom and a slender pale blue girlish shape among the
daffodils, like something that had sprung from a bulb itself. I
recalled at once that I had found her very interesting, though I did
not clearly remember how it was she had interested me.
Other guests arrived-it was one of Altiora's boldly blended
mixtures of people with ideas and people with influence or money who
might perhaps be expected to resonate to them. Bailey came down
late with an air of hurry, and was introduced to Margaret and said
absolutely nothing to her-there being no information either to
receive or impart and nothing to do-but stood snatching his left
cheek until I rescued him and her, and left him free to congratulate
the new Lady Snape on her husband's K. C. B.
I took Margaret down. We achieved no feats of mutual expression,
except that it was abundantly clear we were both very pleased and
interested to meet again, and that we had both kept memories of each
other. We made that Misterton tea-party and the subsequent
marriages of my cousins and the world of Burslem generally, matter
for quite an agreeable conversation until at last Altiora, following
her invariable custom, called me by name imperatively out of our
duologue. "Mr. Remington," she said, "we want your opinion-" in
her entirely characteristic effort to get all the threads of
conversation into her own hands for the climax that always wound up
her dinners. How the other women used to hate those concluding
raids of hers! I forget most of the other people at that dinner,
nor can I recall what the crowning rally was about. It didn't in
any way join on to my impression of Margaret.
In the drawing-room of the matting floor I rejoined her, with
Altiora's manifest connivance, and in the interval I had been
thinking of our former meeting.
"Do you find London," I asked, "give you more opportunity for doing