第64章 THE SECOND(7)

Under the lamps you were jostled by people like my Staffordshire uncle out for a spree, you saw shy youths conversing with prostitutes, you passed young lovers pairing with an entire disregard of the social suitability of the "types" they might blend or create, you saw men leaning drunken against lamp-posts whom you 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.Irecalled 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 things and learning things than Burslem?"She showed at once she appreciated my allusion to her former confidences."I was very discontented then," she said and paused.