At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

“It hardly concerns me,” she said, with a touch of cynicism that was new to her. “Still, if you wish it very much, I will remain.”

“I do wish it, Clytie,” he said in a softened voice. “You can go your way, I will go mine. But we must live together as far as the world sees us.”

Clytie yielded with some misgivings, and set herself to work to discover interests in life.

The society life of London, in which she was free to play an important part, did not satisfy her. She saw too deep below the surface of things to be guilty of the silly cynicism that finds society hollow, its aims futile, and its morals corrupt. There is earnestness even among cultivated men and women. But society is formal, conventional, and in the external rules of life differs only in degree from Durdleham. True, it has a far wider intellectual scope. Contrary to Durdleham, it permits the possession of ideas, but it is just as punctilious as to their correct expression. The elaborate ceremonial of society weighed upon Clytie. She preferred a simpler, directer life. There were so many wrappings of convention to be pierced through before she could get to the heart of a thing or a person, and they wearied, irritated her. And now, as Thornton seemed to care very little whether she placed herself in evidence or not, beyond playing the part of hostess in his house, she consulted merely her own desires in her acceptance of invitations. But as the circle from which these mainly proceeded was that into which her husband's reputation, tastes, and political aspirations had led her, she did not find in it the interests which particularly affected her. It was beyond her power either to feel or to simulate an interest in Thornton's ambitions. Nor did she feel called upon now to profess the tenets of Thornton's political creed. She was a solitary, unconventional Radical in the midst of the most uncompromising Torydom, which is an unenviable position even for the least rabid politician. The political section, therefore, of her social circle she studiously avoided. The purely fashionable, frivolous element, that goes to Hurlingham and Ascot, and makes itself merry over material things, had attracted her the previous year with its graceful epicureanism. She had still been proud of her husband and his boyish zest in amusement, and she had caught from him the spirit of laughing Babylon. But now it was pain to be with him when he chatted and jested with pretty girls and idle young men. His light-hearted gaiety jarred upon her. She saw that men and women were affected by his charm, and she had half longings to tell them it was a lie. So she withdrew herself from their midst as much as possible. By this process of elimination Clytie's circle became conveniently limited. She was sick at heart, and she turned more and more to the friends of her girlhood.

Mrs. Farquharson's Sunday evenings became pleasant spots in her barren week. She went there alone, as in the old days. Nothing was changed there: the same faces, the same bright, eager talk, the same welcome. Clytie became her old self, was astonished to find how many enthusiasms she still retained. She almost forgot that she was married, and had said farewell to theories of life and such like vanities. Only at times, when her own art came within the range of a friendly arrow, did she wince and remember with a pang that Clytie Davenant was dead. Redgrave, whom she occasionally met, forbore, with a portrait painter's intuitive delicacy, to question her upon the progress of her art under its new conditions. He divined that his prophecies had been correct, and he was sad; because he had had great hopes of Clytie. In a tentative way he spoke of it to Mrs. Farquharson, who confided to him her own surmises as to the dubious success of the marriage. Then Redgrave brightened, and declared that there was hope yet.

“What do you mean?” cried Caroline with a touch of indignation; whereat Redgrave smiled in his serene way.

“I mean that hitherto she has tried to look at life through her art. Now she will be able to look at art through her life.”

“Then her art will be very feeble and miserable!”

“Clytie's life has never been feeble and miserable,” he replied. “I feared it was going to be so—in a special sense, you know; I feared that she would be overpowered by the physical element her husband would bring into her atmosphere, and that she would develop into the fashionable married woman, and thus, at the same time, suffer in spirituality and lose her grip upon the subjects that form her artistic range.”

“I can't see how an unhappy married life can help her,” said Caroline. “If such a deterioration is possible, it has taken place already.”