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The New Machiavelli Chapter 7 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter seven of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
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  Speaker 1: Antoniogus Margaret in Venice one. There comes into my mind
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  Speaker 1: a confused memory of conversations with Margaret. We must have
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  Speaker 1: had dozens altogether, and they mix in now for the
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  Speaker 1: most part inextricably, not only with one another, but with
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  Speaker 1: later talks and with things we discussed at Pangbourn. We
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  Speaker 1: had the immensest anticipations of the years and opportunities that
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  Speaker 1: lay before us. I was now very deeply in love
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  Speaker 1: with her. Indeed, I felt not that I had cleaned
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  Speaker 1: up my life, but that she had. We called each
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  Speaker 1: other confederate, I remember, and made during our brief engagement
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  Speaker 1: a series of visits to the various legislative bodies in London,
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  Speaker 1: the County Council, the House of Commons, where we dined
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  Speaker 1: with villiers, and the Saint Pancreas Vestry, where we heard
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  Speaker 1: Shore speaking. I was full of plans, and so was she,
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  Speaker 1: of the way in which we were to live and work.
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  Speaker 1: We were to pay back in public service whatever excess
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  Speaker 1: of wealth beyond his merits. Old Sessans economic advantage had
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  Speaker 1: won for him from the toiling people in the potteries.
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  Speaker 1: The end of the Boer War was so recent that
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  Speaker 1: that blessed word efficiency echoed still in people's minds and thoughts.
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  Speaker 1: Lord Rosebury, in a memorable oration, had put it into
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  Speaker 1: the heads of the big outer public. But the bailies,
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  Speaker 1: with a certain show of justice, claimed to have set
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  Speaker 1: it going in the channels that took it to him, if,
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  Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, it was taken to him,
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  Speaker 1: But then it was their habit to make claims of
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  Speaker 1: that sort. They certainly did their share to keep efficient going.
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  Speaker 1: Altiorra's highest praise was thoroughly efficient. We were to be
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  Speaker 1: a thoroughly efficient political couple of the new type. She
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  Speaker 1: explaed us to herself, an oscar. She explained us to ourselves.
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  Speaker 1: She explained us to the people who came to her
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  Speaker 1: dinners and afternoons, until the world was highly charged with
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  Speaker 1: explanation and expectation, and the proposal that I should be
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  Speaker 1: the Liberal candidate for the kingdomstead division seemed the most
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  Speaker 1: natural development in the world. I was full of the
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  Speaker 1: ideal of hard, restrained living and relentless activity, and throughout
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  Speaker 1: a beautiful November at Venice, where chiefly we spent our honeymoon.
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  Speaker 1: We turned over and over again and discussed in every
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  Speaker 1: aspect our conception of a life tremendously focused upon the
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  Speaker 1: ideal of social service. Most clearly, there stands out a
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  Speaker 1: picture of ourselves talking in a gondola on our way
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  Speaker 1: to Torchella. Far away behind us, the spoke of Murano
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  Speaker 1: forms a black stain upon an immense, shining prospect of
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  Speaker 1: smooth water, water as unruffled and luminous as a sky,
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  Speaker 1: above a mirror on which rows of posts and distant, black,
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  Speaker 1: high stemmed, swan necked boats with their minutely clear, swinging
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  Speaker 1: gondoliers float aerially, remote and low. Before us, rises the
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  Speaker 1: little tower of our destination. Our men swing together and
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  Speaker 1: their awe swirl leisurely through the water, hump back in
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  Speaker 1: the rowlocks, splash sharply, and go swishing back again. Margaret
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  Speaker 1: lies back on cushions with her face shaded by a
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  Speaker 1: Holland parasol, and I sit up beside her. You see,
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  Speaker 1: I say, And in spite of Margaret's note of perfect acquiescence,
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  Speaker 1: I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable antagonism. It is
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  Speaker 1: so easy to fall into a slack way with life.
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  Speaker 1: There may seem to be something priggish in a meticulous discipline,
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  Speaker 1: but otherwise it is so easy to slip into indolent
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  Speaker 1: habits and to be distracted from one's purpose. The country.
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  Speaker 1: The world wants men to serve its constructive needs, to
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  Speaker 1: work out and carry out plans. For a man who
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  Speaker 1: has to make a living, the enemy is immediate necessity
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  Speaker 1: for people like ourselves. It's the constant, small opportunity of
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  Speaker 1: agreeable things frittering away. She says, time and strength. That
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  Speaker 1: is what I feel. It's so pleasant to pretend one
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  Speaker 1: is simply modest. It looks so foolish at times to
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  Speaker 1: take one's self too seriously. We've got to take ourselves seriously.
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  Speaker 1: She endorses my words with her eyes. I feel I
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  Speaker 1: can do great things with life. I know you can.
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  Speaker 1: But that's only to be done by concentrating one's life
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  Speaker 1: upon one main end. We have to plan our days
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  Speaker 1: to make everything subserve our scheme, I feel. She answers softly.
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  Speaker 1: We ought to give every hour. Her face becomes dreamy.
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  Speaker 1: I want to give every hour. She adds two. That
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  Speaker 1: holiday in Venice is set in my memory like a
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  Speaker 1: little artificial lake in uneven confused country, as something very
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  Speaker 1: bright and skylike and discontinuous with all about it. The
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  Speaker 1: faded quality of the very sunshine of that season, the mellow,
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  Speaker 1: discolored palaces and places, the huge time ripened paintings of
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  Speaker 1: departed splendors, the whispering, nearly noiseless passage of hearst black gondolas,
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  Speaker 1: for the horrible steam launch had not yet ruined Venice,
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  Speaker 1: the still magnificences of the depopulated lagoons. The universal autumn
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  Speaker 1: made me feel altogether in recess from the teeming uproars
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  Speaker 1: of reality. There was not a dozen people, all told,
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  Speaker 1: no Americans, and scarcely any English to dine in the
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  Speaker 1: big cavern of a dining room, with its vistas of
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  Speaker 1: separate tables, its distempered walls, and its swathed chandeliers. We
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  Speaker 1: went about seeing beautiful things, accepting beauty on every hand,
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  Speaker 1: and taking it for granted that all was well with
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  Speaker 1: ourselves in the world. It was ten days or a
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  Speaker 1: fortnight before I became fretful and anxious for action. A
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  Speaker 1: long tranquility, for such a temperament as mine. Our pleasures
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  Speaker 1: were curiously impersonal, a succession of shared esthetic appreciation threads.
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  Speaker 1: All that time, our honeymoon was no exultant coming together,
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  Speaker 1: no mutual shout of you. We were almost shy with
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  Speaker 1: one another and felt the relief of even a picture
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  Speaker 1: to help us out. It was entirely in my conception
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  Speaker 1: of things that I should be very watchful not to
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  Speaker 1: shock or distress Margaret or press the sensuous note. Our
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  Speaker 1: love making had much of the tepid smoothness of the lagoons.
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  Speaker 1: We talked in delicate innuendo of what should be glorious freedoms.
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  Speaker 1: Margaret had missed Verona and Venice in her previous Italian journey.
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  Speaker 1: Fear of the mosquito had driven her mother across Italy
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  Speaker 1: to the westward route. And now she could fill up
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  Speaker 1: her gaps and see the Titians and paul Veroneses. She
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  Speaker 1: already knew in colorless photographs. The Carpaccios, the Saint George's
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  Speaker 1: series delighted her beyond measure, the Basaites, and that great
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  Speaker 1: statue of Bartolomeo Calioni that Ruskin praised. But since I'm
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  Speaker 1: not a man to look at pictures and architectural effects,
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  Speaker 1: day after day. I did watch Margaret very closely and
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  Speaker 1: store a thousand memories of her. I can see her now,
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  Speaker 1: her long body drooping a little forward, her sweet face
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  Speaker 1: up rays to some discovered familiar masterpiece, and shining with
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  Speaker 1: a delicate enthusiasm. I can hear again the soft cadences
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  Speaker 1: of her voice, murmuring commonplace comments, for she had no
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  Speaker 1: gift of express the shapeless satisfaction these things gave her. Margaret,
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  Speaker 1: I perceived, was a cultivated person, the first cultivated person
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  Speaker 1: with whom I had ever come into close contact. She
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  Speaker 1: was cultivated and moral, and I I now realize was
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  Speaker 1: never either of these things. She was passive, and I
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  Speaker 1: am active. She did not simply a naturally look for beauty,
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  Speaker 1: but she had been incited to look for it at school,
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  Speaker 1: and took perhaps a keener interest in books and lectures
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  Speaker 1: and all the organization of beautiful things than she did
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  Speaker 1: in beauty itself. She found much of her delight in
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  Speaker 1: being guided to it. Now, a thing ceases to be
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  Speaker 1: beautiful to me when some finger points me out its merits.
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  Speaker 1: Beauty is a sort of life. But I take my
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  Speaker 1: beauty as a wild beast gets its sort as a
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  Speaker 1: constituent of the meal. And besides, there was that between
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  Speaker 1: us that should have seemed more beautiful than any picture.
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  Speaker 1: So we went about Venice, tracking down pictures and spiral
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  Speaker 1: staircases and such like things. And my brains were busy
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  Speaker 1: all the time with such things as a comparison of
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  Speaker 1: Venice and its nearest modern equivalent, New York, with the
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  Speaker 1: elaboration of schemes of action when we returned to London,
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  Speaker 1: with the development of a theory of Margaret. Our marriage
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  Speaker 1: had done this much, at least, that they had fused
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  Speaker 1: and destroyed those two independent ways of thinking about her
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  Speaker 1: that had gone on in my mind hitherto Suddenly she
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  Speaker 1: would become very near to me, and a very big thing,
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  Speaker 1: a sort of comprehensive generalization behind a thousand questions, like
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  Speaker 1: the sky or England. The judgments and understandings that had
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  Speaker 1: worked when she was, so to speak, miles away from
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  Speaker 1: my life had now to be altogether revised. Trifling things
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  Speaker 1: began to matter enormously, that she had a weak and
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  Speaker 1: easily fatigued back, for example, or that when she knitted
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  Speaker 1: her brows and stammered a little in talking, it didn't
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  Speaker 1: really mean that an exquisite significance struggled for utterance. We
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  Speaker 1: visited pictures in the mornings, chiefly in the afternoon, unless
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  Speaker 1: we were making a day long excursion a gondola. Margaret
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  Speaker 1: would rest for an hour while I prowled about in
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  Speaker 1: search of English newspapers, and then we would go to
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  Speaker 1: tea in the Piazza San Marco and watch the drift
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  Speaker 1: of people feeding the pigeons and going into the little
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  Speaker 1: doors beneath the sunlit arches and domes of Saint Mark's.
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  Speaker 1: Then perhaps we would stroll on the piazzetta, or go
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  Speaker 1: out into the sunset in a gondola. Margaret became very
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  Speaker 1: interested in the shops that are bound under the colonnades,
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  Speaker 1: and decided at last to make an extensive purchase of
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  Speaker 1: table glass. These things, she said, are quite beautiful and
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  Speaker 1: far cheaper than anything but the most ordinary looking English ware.
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  Speaker 1: I was interested in her idea and a good deal.
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  Speaker 1: Charmed by the delightful qualities of tinted shape, slender handle,
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  Speaker 1: and twisted stem, I suggested that we should get not
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  Speaker 1: simply tumblers and wine glasses, but beared room water bottles,
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  Speaker 1: fruit and sweet dishes, water jugs, and In the end
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  Speaker 1: we made quite a business like afternoon of it. I
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  Speaker 1: was beginning now to long, quite definitely for events. Energy
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  Speaker 1: was accumulating in me and worrying me. For an outlet.
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  Speaker 1: I found the Times, in the Daily Telegraph and the
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  Speaker 1: other papers. I managed to get hold of more and
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  Speaker 1: more stimulating. I nearly wrote to the former paper one
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  Speaker 1: day in answer to a letter by Lord Grimthorpe. I
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  Speaker 1: forget now upon what point I chafed secretly against this
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  Speaker 1: life of tranquil appreciations. More and more I found my
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  Speaker 1: attitudes of restrained and delicate affection for Margaret increasingly difficult
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  Speaker 1: to sustain. I surprised myself and her by little gusts
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  Speaker 1: of irritability, gusped like the cat's paused before a gale.
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  Speaker 1: I was alarmed at these symptoms. One night, when Margaret
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  Speaker 1: had gone up to her room, I put on a
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  Speaker 1: light overcoat, went out into the night and prowled for
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  Speaker 1: a long time through the narrow streets, smoking and thinking.
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  Speaker 1: I returned and went and sat on the edge of
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  Speaker 1: her bed to talk to her. Look here, Margaret, I said,
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  Speaker 1: this is all very well, but I'm restless. Restless, she said,
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  Speaker 1: with a faint surprise in her voice. Yes, I think
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  Speaker 1: I want exercise. I've got a sort of feeling I've
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  Speaker 1: never had it before, as though I was getting fat.
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  Speaker 1: My dear, she cried, I want to do things, ride horses,
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  Speaker 1: climb mountains, take the devil out of myself. She watched
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  Speaker 1: me thoughtfully. Couldn't we do something? She said, do what?
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. Couldn't we perhaps go away from here
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  Speaker 1: soon and walk in the mountains on our way home?
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  Speaker 1: I thought, there seems to be no exercise at all
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  Speaker 1: in this place. Isn't there some walk I wonder? I answered,
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  Speaker 1: we might walk to Keiodgia, perhaps along the Liedo. And
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  Speaker 1: we tried that, but the long stretch of beach fatigued
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  Speaker 1: Margaret's back and gave her blisters, and we never got
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  Speaker 1: beyond Malamoco. A day or so after we went out
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  Speaker 1: to those pleasant, black robe bearded Armenians in their monastery
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  Speaker 1: at Sant Lazaro, and returned towards sundown. We fell into
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  Speaker 1: silence pure Lento, said Margaret to the gondolier, and released
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  Speaker 1: my accumulated resolution. Let us go back to London, I said, abruptly.
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  Speaker 1: Margaret looked at me with surprised blue eyes. This is
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  Speaker 1: beautiful beyond measure, you know, I said, sticking to my point.
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  Speaker 1: But I have work to do. She was silent for
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  Speaker 1: some seconds. I had forgotten, she said, so had I.
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  Speaker 1: I sympathized and took her hand. Suddenly I have remembered.
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  Speaker 1: She remained quite still. There's so much to be done,
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  Speaker 1: I said, almost apologetically. She looked long away from me
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  Speaker 1: across the lagoon, and at last sighed like one who
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  Speaker 1: has drunk deeply, and turned to me. I suppose one
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  Speaker 1: ought not to be so happy, she said. Everything has
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  Speaker 1: been so beautiful, and so simple, and splendid and clean.
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  Speaker 1: It has been just with you the time of my life.
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  Speaker 1: It's a pity such things must end. But the world
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  Speaker 1: is calling you, dear. I ought not to have forgotten it.
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  Speaker 1: I thought you were resting and thinking. But if you
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  Speaker 1: are rested, would you like us to start to morrow?
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  Speaker 1: She looked at once so fragile and so devoted that
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  Speaker 1: on the spur of the moment I relented, and we
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  Speaker 1: stayed in Venice four more days. End of Chapter seven