At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

Perhaps if they had remained in Bordighera the intoxication would have lasted longer. But as our lives are hemmed in by infinite possibilities, to each of which is strung its infinite ramification of consequences, it is somewhat rash to predicate ex hypothesi. At any rate so long as they were at Bordighera there seemed to be no reason that the continuity of the charm should be broken; whereas it did suffer a change during the railway journey from Bordighera to Paris. And this railway journey was a kind of neutral ground in their married life, separating the dream from the reality. On entering the train they were lovers. On leaving it they were a married couple. Wherein lies somewhat of a difference. They were not conscious of the change. Realisation of this mysterious operation is fortunately denied to human beings, seeing that they turn their eyes inwards rather too much as it is already. Nor do they recognise what has happened until some time afterwards, as the old influences still remain lingeringly; but then they can generally look back to the point of transition, and set it up as a forlorn landmark in their lives.

Why they did not remain longer in the south they themselves could scarcely explain. They had arranged to spend a month there, and then to proceed to Paris to wait indefinitely until their new house in the Cromwell Road should be ready to receive them. There is nothing so irrefragable as an arbitrary programme. Even the most emancipated enslave themselves to it sometimes, as in the present case did Thornton and Clytie They possibly lost a good deal,—the flowers of life seldom grow along the beaten track,—but they never thought of attributing it to the fixity of their programme. They were in Paris, then, living under totally fresh conditions. Thornton found there a succession of friends and acquaintances, and was pleased rather than otherwise to meet them. At Monte Carlo he fled from Carteret of the Hussars; on the Boulevard des Capucines he greeted him heartily and carried him off into the American Bar. Besides discovering acquaintances daily in the hotel list, Thornton was not unknown in general Parisian society. His name could procure him admission into most circles that he cared to enter. He was put up at a couple of clubs and received invitation cards by the dozen.

To please him Clytie went with him a little into society. He was proud of his beautiful wife, loved to watch the effect produced as she entered a drawing-room upon his arm, and the eager admiration on the faces of the men who crowded round her chair. In fact, Clytie had a small social success—and a paragraph in the Figaro. It was a new sensation for her; but in these early days of her married life she would have preferred a quieter, less conspicuous existence. But Thornton, just as he had sought in the south to keep her and her beauty to himself, now seemed to wish to exhibit it abroad.

“I seem to wear you like a decoration, darling,” he said once.

At first Clytie flushed with pleasure at the little flattery. Then she thought over it for a bit, and it did not please her so much. But she did not confide this to her husband. She had already begun to discover that for the safekeeping of many little matters her own heart was the best place.

They had a set of rooms in a hotel in the Champs Elysées with a balcony overlooking the Grande Avenue. Clytie loved to sit there with Thornton in the quiet half hour before dinner watching the stream of vehicles, fine and vague far away by the Arc de Triomphe, then gradually broadening, till fashionable Paris returning from the Bois blazed beneath her in its movement and gaiety. They seemed to her so alone up there, above the whirl and the glitter and falseness. It was a return of the hours of the month in the south, and happiness fluttered tremulously around her—like a butterfly, ever so elusively. When she leaned over the balcony by his side many people looked up admiringly at them. When she saw one woman twitch the arm of her companion in a victoria, and both shoot swift feminine glances up at the balcony, she could not help feeling a little thrill of pride in her husband. And then she would remember the morning's solitary ramble among the sculpture of the Louvre (Thornton and herself were less dependent upon each other now for entertainment), and reflect, with a sense of pleasure, that she had seen no antique ideal that could compare with him in splendid manhood. He, too, had done heroic deeds, she would think, and she would move nearer to his side and be glad that he was there. Yet the butterfly happiness was just beyond her grasp.

Some such thoughts were passing through her mind one afternoon as they stood together on the balcony. He broke a short silence by saying:

“We are getting quite an old married couple, Clytie!”

“What made you say that?” she asked, smiling.

“Oh! I hardly know. I have got so used to having you by me. It seems as if I had been married ever since I was born.”