in the mountains-on our way home."
I thought. "There seems to be no exercise at all in this place."
"Isn't there some walk?"
"I wonder," I answered. "We might walk to Chioggia perhaps, along
the Lido." And we tried that, but the long stretch of beach
fatigued Margaret's back, and gave her blisters, and we never got
beyond Malamocco…
A day or so after we went out to those pleasant black-robed, bearded
Armenians in their monastery at Saint Lazzaro, and returned towards
sundown. We fell into silence. "PIU LENTO," said Margaret to the
gondolier, and released my accumulated resolution.
"Let us go back to London," I said abruptly.
Margaret looked at me with surprised blue eyes.
"This is beautiful beyond measure, you know," I said, sticking to my
point, "but I have work to do."
She was silent for some seconds. "I had forgotten," she said.
"So had I," I sympathised, and took her hand. "Suddenly I have
She remained quite still. "There is so much to be done," I said,
almost apologetically.
She looked long away from me across the lagoon and at last sighed,
like one who has drunk deeply, and turned to me.
"I suppose one ought not to be so happy," she said. "Everything has
been so beautiful and so simple and splendid. And clean. It has
been just With You-the time of my life. It's a pity such things
must end. But the world is calling you, dear… I ought not to
have forgotten it. I thought you were resting-and thinking. But
if you are rested.-Would you like us to start to-morrow?"
She looked at once so fragile and so devoted that on the spur of the
moment I relented, and we stayed in Venice four more days.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
THE HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER
1
Margaret had already taken a little house in Radnor Square,
Westminster, before our marriage, a house that seemed particularly
adaptable to our needs as public-spirited efficients; it had been
very pleasantly painted and papered under Margaret's instructions,
white paint and clean open purples and green predominating, and now
we set to work at once upon the interesting business of arranging
and-with our Venetian glass as a beginning-furnishing it. We had
been fairly fortunate with our wedding presents, and for the most
part it was open to us to choose just exactly what we would have and
just precisely where we would put it.
Margaret had a sense of form and colour altogether superior to mine,
and so quite apart from the fact that it was her money equipped us,
I stood aside from all these matters and obeyed her summons to a
consultation only to endorse her judgment very readily. Until
everything was settled I went every day to my old rooms in Vincent
Square and worked at a series of papers that were originally
intended for the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, the papers that afterwards
became my fourth book, "New Aspects of Liberalism."
I still remember as delightful most of the circumstances of getting
into 79, Radnor Square. The thin flavour of indecision about
Margaret disappeared altogether in a shop; she had the precisest
ideas of what she wanted, and the devices of the salesman did not
sway her. It was very pleasant to find her taking things out of my
hands with a certain masterfulness, and showing the distinctest
determination to make a house in which I should be able to work in
that great project of "doing something for the world."
"And I do want to make things pretty about us," she said. "You
don't think it wrong to have things pretty?"
"I want them so."
"Altiora has things hard."
"Altiora," I answered, "takes a pride in standing ugly and
uncomfortable things. But I don't see that they help her. Anyhow
they won't help me."
So Margaret went to the best shops and got everything very simple
and very good. She bought some pictures very well indeed; there was
a little Sussex landscape, full of wind and sunshine, by Nicholson,
for my study, that hit my taste far better than if I had gone out to
get some such expression for myself.
"We will buy a picture just now and then," she said, "sometimes-
when we see one."
I would come back through the January mire or fog from Vincent
Square to the door of 79, and reach it at last with a quite childish
appreciation of the fact that its solid Georgian proportions and its
fine brass furnishings belonged to MY home; I would use my latchkey
and discover Margaret in the warm-lit, spacious hall with a
partially opened packing-case, fatigued but happy, or go up to have
tea with her out of the right tea things, "come at last," or be told
to notice what was fresh there. It wasn't simply that I had never
had a house before, but I had really never been, except in the most
transitory way, in any house that was nearly so delightful as mine
promised to be. Everything was fresh and bright, and softly and
harmoniously toned. Downstairs we had a green dining-room with
gleaming silver, dark oak, and English colour-prints; above was a
large drawing-room that could be made still larger by throwing open
folding doors, and it was all carefully done in greys and blues, for
the most part with real Sheraton supplemented by Sheraton so
skilfully imitated by an expert Margaret had discovered as to be
indistinguishable except to a minute scrutiny. And for me, above
this and next to my bedroom, there was a roomy study, with specially
thick stair-carpet outside and thick carpets in the bedroom overhead