she of the way
in which we were to live and work. We were to pay back in public service
whatever excess of wealth beyond his merits old Seddon's economic
advantage had won for him from the toiling people in the potteries. The
end of the Boer War was so recent that that blessed word "efficiency"
echoed still in people's minds and thoughts. Lord Roseberry in a
memorable oration had put it into the heads of the big outer public, but
the Baileys with a certain show of justice claimed to have set it going
in the channels that took it to him--if as a matter of fact it was taken
to him. But then it was their habit to make claims of that sort. They
certainly did their share to keep "efficient" going. Altiora's
highest praise was "thoroughly efficient." We were to be a "thoroughly
efficient" political couple of the "new type." She explained us to
herself and Oscar, she explained us to ourselves, she explained us to
the people who came to her dinners and afternoons until the world was
highly charged with explanation and expectation, and the proposal that I
should be the Liberal candidate for the Kinghamstead Division seemed the
most natural development in the world.

I was full of the ideal of hard restrained living and relentless
activity, and throughout a beautiful November at Venice, where chiefly
we spent our honeymoon, we turned over and over again and discussed in
every aspect our conception of a life tremendously focussed upon the
ideal of social service.

Most clearly there stands out a picture of ourselves talking in a
gondola on our way to Torcella. Far away behind us the smoke of Murano
forms a black stain upon an immense shining prospect of smooth water,
water as unruffled and luminous as the sky above, a mirror on which rows
of posts and distant black high-stemmed, swan-necked boats with their
minutely clear swinging gondoliers, float aerially. Remote and low
before us rises the little tower of our destination. Our men swing
together and their oars swirl leisurely through the water, hump back in
the rowlocks, splash sharply and go swishing back again. Margaret lies
back on cushions, with her face shaded by a holland parasol, and I sit
up beside her.

"You see," I say, and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect
acquiescence I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable antagonism,
"it is so easy to fall into a slack way with life. There may seem to be
something priggish in a meticulous discipline, but otherwise i