At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

Mrs. Farquharson was fond of the use of affectionate irritants. They are often valuable preservatives of friendship.

Clytie laughed.

“I suppose I shall marry some day. I don't want to end up by leading half a life; but I want to have two or three years more of this. I must play at being a man a little longer.”

“A pretty sort of man!” said Mrs. Farquharson, resting her chin on her hand and looking at Clytie with amused eyes. “You are the most deliciously feminine young woman I know. Look at your frock and your hair.”

Judging by outward appearances Mrs. Farquharson's criticism was correct. Clytie had the artistic sense in dress. It was like most of her other artistic impulses, with the personal note dominant—soft textures, falling easily into folds, quiet in tone, dark grays, subdued half shades of yellows, suddenly brightened by a small, daring flash of colour at throat or bosom. Lace, with its creamy, clinging softness delighted her, and she wore it defiantly, with a certain sense of triumph that she was perhaps the only girl in England who could wear it with faultless taste.

She was of medium height, but her slender, fully formed figure and its erect carriage gave her an air of tallness. Her head set well on her shoulders, and a habit of holding it back, with the chin pointing upwards, free of the throat, added to the impression of young, fearless womanhood. Her eyes were dark blue, wide apart, yet sunk in finely moulded orbits. A light of humour playing in their depths, together with a soft modelling of the nose contours beneath them, atoned for an impression of hardness and sensuousness that would have been given by the ripe, full lips with their little curl of disdain. Her face was rounded delicately—that much she inherited from the Davenants—but a faint flush of colour showed the buoyant young blood within, just as her deep red hair, with a thousand lights dancing in it, attested the rich, vigorous strain that had asserted itself in her. She was proud, womanlike, of this hair, and had a way of dressing it in bewildering confusion.

Her Slade School friend, Winifred Marchpane, continued to share the studio with her. At first she had been a little afraid of Clytie, whose bold judgments and fearless expression of opinion were not qualified always to attract a timorous, shrinking nature. But gradually the stronger personality had overpowered the weaker and bound it to itself by unbreakable bonds. A great friendship had thus arisen between the girls, based on Winifred's side on enthusiastic admiration, almost worship, and on Clytie's on a tender feeling of love and protection.

Winifred was one of a large family, her father, a retired officer in the army with limited income. Two of her sisters were governesses, earning their livelihood miles away from home. Another one took charge of the smaller members of the household. Winifred, who had a dainty talent for the painting of still life, supported herself, living at home and paying her share of the household expenses. She was a little, gentle creature, with dark hair, and with a rich colour showing beneath a brown cheek. Her deep brown eyes had a doglike trustfulness in them, and a steadfastness withal such as makes the heroine. A girl of few moods, few caprices. Her work was always beautifully, conscientiously finished. She always loved it, always found in it the same quiet charm. There was no element of passion in it to set jarring the strings of futile endeavour. A fine sense of colour and gradation and subtle curve, a supreme delicacy of touch—that was her sole artistic stock in trade, and she never sought to stray beyond the limits imposed. She had had a little picture accepted at the Academy, hung in a far, far corner—a bunch of Maréchal Niel roses, full-blown, in a Venetian glass vase of exquisitely veined transparencies—a perfect little picture, sweet and pure, like herself.

It was a cold March day. The sun shone cheerfully through the drawn white blinds of the studio skylight, but an east wind blowing outside came in through the cracks and defied the blaze of the fire in the stove.

“You are quite blue with cold,” said Winifred, laying down mahl-stick and palette. “Here, put on this wrap. Why don't you take more care of yourself?”