And then with all this administrative fizzle, this pseudo-scientific
administrative chatter, dying away in your head, out you went into the
limitless grimy chaos of London streets and squares, roads and avenues
lined with teeming houses, each larger than the Chambers Street house
and at least equally alive, you saw the chaotic clamour of hoardings,
the jumble of traffic, the coming and going of mysterious myriads,
you heard the rumble of traffic like the noise of a torrent; a vague
incessant murmur of cries and voices, wanton crimes and accidents bawled
at you from the placards; imperative unaccountable fashions swaggered
triumphant in dazzling windows of the shops; and you found yourself
swaying back to the opposite conviction that the huge formless spirit
of the world it was that held the strings and danced the puppets on the
Bailey stage....
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.