At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

The last three days of their stay in Paris were marked by a return on the part of Thornton to his old devotion. He declined invitations ruthlessly, spent almost the whole of his time with his wife. In all outward and visible signs they were lovers again, but the inward and spiritual grace was a bit vapoury. They went on excursions together, to Fontainebleau, Melun, Passy. One day they wandered about the forest of Vincennes and he kissed her beneath the trees as he used to do at Bordighera. They had gay, laughing meals together at little riverside restaurants. He was passionate in his expressions of endearment and in his delight at her beauty. With the negative tact of passion, he avoided all subjects that could jar upon her. For three days he was the Thornton of their honeymoon.

Clytie at first could not understand this sudden change. She asked him the reason tremulously.

“Can't you see, you silly girl,” he replied with masterful frankness, “that I love you and we have only three more days' idleness?”

And then she let the spell come over her again and surrendered herself to his mood. But now, instead of entering with spontaneous joy a world of laughter whose magic gates lay open before her, she crossed the threshold with deliberate step. She had to choose whether to laugh or cry. She was young, she wanted to love her husband; so she chose to laugh. It was an act of reason. But woe to love when reason has to find its argument!

By Whitsuntide they were in London, installed in their house in the Cromwell Road. The three days' passion had cooled down, and the atmosphere was colder than before. But Clytie for several weeks was so busy that she had not time for much consideration of troubling questions. First, the house required her attention. There was much supplementary furniture to be chosen, many minor schemes of decoration to be carried out in accordance with her own artistic tastes.

Thornton gave her a free hand in these matters, and, beyond taking it for granted that the house should be fitly arranged, never troubled himself about details. He attended two or three picture sales with Clytie, where he bought a few pictures on her recommendation, ordered some great leather armchairs for his smoking-room, and then transferred his attention to concerns of more serious interest. So Clytie, left unhampered, succeeded in arranging the house to her own satisfaction. This occupied a great portion of her time; the rest was almost entirely devoted to her social duties.

She found herself in some small position in society, as the artistic wife of a distinguished soldier of fortune with a considerable income, and it was Thornton's special ambition for the time being that this position should be maintained and secured, in furtherance of his own personal projects. Whilst contemplating marriage, or rather after he had, in his fierce impetuous way, decided upon it, he had sought around after some practical interest in his new life. He had forsworn Africa, with a virtuous sense of self-sacrifice. What remained worthy of a man's serious attention? He did not consult Clytie. It scarcely occurred to him that the subject concerned her. Of the few careers that presented themselves he selected two, the turf and politics, and wavered for some time in his choice. At last he tossed up for it, as he had often done at the fork of two paths in the forest. The coin came down with the Queen's head uppermost—and that meant politics. He was a Tory of the fiercer school. Even if family and professional tradition had not influenced him, a lengthy course of despotic authority enforced by the halter and the butt end of a musket is not favourable to the cultivation of Liberal suavities and amenities. And again, the “type” is almost always Tory. He was even out of touch with the broader Conservativism of our day, between which and modern Liberalism he failed to appreciate the distinction. In fact his political ideals, such as they were, belonged to the beginning instead of the end of the century, but he expressed them with a fervour that left no doubt as to their genuineness.

He had no difficulty in setting at work the machinery of social influence, and the result was the offer of a private-secretaryship on the part of an under-secretary of state. He accepted it. It would not only afford him an insight into the practical working of politics, but would give him an opportunity of making himself known to the chiefs of the Conservative party and securing their influence when he should seek to enter Parliament. When everything was settled he informed Clytie casually in Paris of his new ambitions. She, too, had wondered what outlet this man of restless action would find for his energies, and, shrinking from inquiry, had been filled with vague uneasiness. Now she felt that he had made a worthy choice and in spite of dubious encouragement strove to identify herself with his interests. True, she contemplated with a little dismay the abandonment of her own pet social theories, which tended towards an advanced and somewhat inchoate Radicalism, and the espousal of a cause forming part of a scheme of life against which she had so passionately rebelled. But she wilfully, almost desperately, shut her eyes against all this. She would give her heart and soul to Thornton's glory, and the sacrifice of principle on her part would only accentuate the triumph. But this sacrifice Thornton did not concern himself to realise. Very few men ever do. As we have seen, he laughed at it.

He entered upon his political duties as soon as they returned to London, led a busy life of work and pleasure, throwing into both the energy of his strong vitality. He was not a man to wait. Social position, power, must be wrested from the world by force of arms. The sooner the struggle began and the fiercer it was fought the sooner would come success. It behoved Clytie, therefore, to enter upon it with him at once. Before she could realise herself as mistress of a large house, as cut off from the old habits that had invested London with earnest charm, as sundered from Kent and Winifred, as deprived of her art and her dreams and ambition, she found herself caught up in the whirl of London society, bidden to cultivate its conventions, flatter its weaknesses, intrigue, gossip, dance, drive, rush, without a moment's pause to think.

And thus began her new life. It was not the one she had dreamed of. In fact she hardly recognised herself in her deliberate subordination to a nature dominating hers. She let herself drift, abandoning herself to the current, clutching hold of her love towards her husband as the only plank saving her from destruction.