At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

After that she could not sleep. She got up, lit her candle, and took a book at random from her shelves. It was her well-worn, girlish Globe Shakespeare, one of the books she had surreptitiously procured when the family Bowdler was included in the category of formulas against which she revolted. She took it back to bed with her and commenced reading where it had chanced to open. The first words that met her eye seemed like a voice from the other world:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But while this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly clothe it in, we cannot hear it.

They followed so closely on the track of her own shuddering thought that she could read no more. She blew out her candle, and remained awake, staring into the darkness, until the gray dawn filtered through the blinds, and she fell asleep.

Nor was Kent more restful. He had battled with his love, and with a strong man's will had brought it under subjection, making it minister to his happiness in spite of torturing longings instead of allowing it to darken his life. It had awakened him to a sense of a world of beautiful things, given him a deeper understanding and a wider sympathy than he had before. For him truly might it be said that to love her was a liberal education. It gave him the key to the knowledge and appreciation of women, drew him from his seclusion into the general society he had formerly avoided. A feminine conclusion which he would once have pooh-poohed as weak and illogical struck him now with its intuitive subtlety and delicacy of point. He learned that what the essentially feminine mind lacks in breadth it gains in fineness, and he was amazed to discover what a sensitive touch upon life is possessed by a cultivated woman. And mingled with this new charm was another of an esoteric kind. No woman he met had all the fascinations of Clytie, but every woman seemed to possess one of them. He confided this once in a roundabout way to Wither, who laughed, and told him he was growing too susceptible and would find himself married one of these days. But Kent shook his head. “I could only find a Clytie among them by marrying the whole sex and making an extract of it,” he said with conviction. For not only did the higher qualities of woman's nature manifest themselves to him, but the minor graces of manner and appearance appealed to that side of his aesthetic temperament that had hitherto been under a cloud. It occurred to him then that he had been living with half his faculties. Accordingly he felt a peculiar satisfaction in his new powers of perception.

It had cost him a pang to forego the pleasure of the bright society that Mrs. Farquharson gathered round her. At first he had given up going to Harley Street through fear of meeting Clytie, for he shrank from meeting her under the new conditions. Then as time passed on, and he accustomed himself to the idea of Clytie as a married woman of fashion, he wished to go, but shyness held him back. It would look strange to resume visiting suddenly after his apparent rudeness and neglect. Probably the Farquharsons would never have seen him again had not George met him at a learned society's meeting, and given him a hearty and pressing invitation.

But there was a large though somewhat scattered society in which, although the rarest of visitors, he had always been welcome. And now he not only mixed assiduously in this, thereby causing many laughing conjectures as to the reason of his social reformation, but he volunteered occasionally to go out with Wither, whose circle of acquaintance, like Sam Weller's knowledge of London, was extensive and peculiar. A revolution was thus effected in Kent's habits, and to a certain extent in his mode of thought. A new zest was given to life in this enlargement of his horizon. And all through his love of Clytie. The awakening of the dormant sex principle had strengthened his nature, extended his humanity in depth and breadth. In spite of a hopeless, passionate love Kent was still a happy man.

And now this spell of her influence was broken, or at least modified. He had seen her, felt the softness of her voice, the kindliness of her eyes. And he had unwittingly betrayed his secret. She knew that he loved her. She pitied him, promised that he should see her frequently on the basis of the old friendship. It was kind and generous, he thought, to step down from the height of her wedded felicity to comfort him with her friendship and sympathy. An unexpected happiness was in store for him. Perhaps, after all, his loyalty and devotion might be of some use to her.

But strong, loyal man as he was, this sudden meeting troubled him. If only he had spoken at once, before the other had come upon the scene, she might have been won to love him. The old torturing regrets came upon him, and he tossed sleeplessly on his bed. The love which, through its very hopelessness, had all these months given him peace and a measure of happiness now burst forth again tumultuously. It became a miserable farce to lie awake in the darkness. He rose, went into his sitting-room and lit the gas. Then he sat down at his writing space, and, burying his face in his hands, remained for some time in great pain of thought. At last his eye fell upon some notepaper lying invitingly on his blotting-pad. An idea struck him. He would write to her. He covered four sides with a passionate outburst of his love, writing wildly, unthinkingly, as men must write in moments of overpowering emotion. Then he tore up the sheet and began afresh. The summer morning light was streaming into the room through the curtainless window, mingling oddly with the yellow gas, when Kent enclosed and addressed the first letter to Clytie in which he told her of his love. He got up, stiff from his long sitting and somewhat exhausted, and going to bed, slept the sleep of the just until it was his usual hour for rising.