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"I liked her demand for a hansom because a four-wheeler was too safe." "She was worked up," I said. "She's a woman of faultless character, but her instincts, as Altiora would say, are anarchistic when she gives them a chance." "So she takes it out in hansom cabs." "Hansom cabs." "She's wise," said Britten.... "I hope, Remington," he went on after a pause, "I didn't rag your other guests too much.
Motioned rather than announced by a tall Scotch servant woman, the only domestic I ever remember seeing there, we made our way up a narrow staircase past the open door of a small study packed with blue-books, to discover Altiora Bailey receiving before the fireplace in her drawing-room.
She knew she was behaving badly, and so, when it came to remonstrance, she behaved worse. She'd got names and dates and places; the efficiency of her information was irresistible. And she set to work at it marvellously. Never before, in all her pursuit of efficient ideals, had Altiora achieved such levels of efficiency.
Altiora, I remember, maintained that there existed a great army of such constructive-minded people as ourselves as yet undiscovered by one another. "It's like boring a tunnel through a mountain," said Oscar, "and presently hearing the tapping of the workers from the other end." "If you didn't know of them beforehand," I said, "it might be a rather badly joined tunnel."
There was always a slight and ineffectual struggle at the end on the part of Margaret to anticipate Altiora's overpowering tendency to a rally and the establishment of some entirely unjustifiable conclusion by a COUP-DE-MAIN. When, however, Altiora was absent, the quieter influence of the Cramptons prevailed; temperance and information for its own sake prevailed excessively over dinner and the play of thought.... Good Lord! what bores the Cramptons were!
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.
"Exactly," said Altiora with a high note, "and that's why we all want to find out each other...." They didn't talk like that on our first encounter, but they urged me to lunch with them next day, and then it was we went into things.
No, I mean something greater and not something smaller when I write of a hidden life. In the ostensible self who glowed under the approbation of Altiora Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated, in the House and in smoking-room gossip, you really have as much of a man as usually figures in a novel or an obituary notice.
We shall see the old-time farmers and rustics gathering together at fair and market, their games and sports and merry-makings, and whatever relics of old English life have been left for an artist and scribe of the twentieth century to record. Our age is an age of progress. Altiora peto is its motto. The spirit of progress is in the air, and lures its votaries on to higher flights.
I couldn't dismiss the interests and the passion of sex as Altiora did. Work, I agreed, was important; career and success; but deep unanalysable instincts told me this preoccupation was a thing quite as important; dangerous, interfering, destructive indeed, but none the less a dominating interest in life.
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