At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

“I came to show you this,” he said, putting it into her hand. “I prigged it from mother's drawer this morning. You'll give it me back, won't you?”

“I have a good mind not to,” said Clytie severely. “If your mother knew, she would be very angry, and you would catch it. Still, as you have been a good boy, I'll look at it and give it you back. Run away, now.”

Jack did as he was bid, and Clytie, after a few turns about the room, putting things more or less straight, unfolded the dirty wrapper of Jack's packet, with an amused curiosity as to the features of Jack's father.

But in another second all her curiosity, amusement, idle interest, were fled, and her whole emotive force concentrated into a short, irrepressible gasp of astonishment. It was a photograph of Thornton, her husband. There was no mistaking it. She had the fellow to it in her album. One day long ago she had seen it among his odds and ends, and had begged for it, loving it for all that it was so many years old, taken when he was still in the army. He looked so stalwart, soldierly, magnificent in his uniform. It was perhaps the likeness of him that she had cherished most—only too familiar. For a moment she could hardly understand—the shock was so sudden and unexpected. Then with the quick reaction she realised what it meant. Thornton was Jack's father, Mrs. Burmester was his mother. With a shudder of disgust she threw the photograph on the table.

The riddle of Jack's parentage was solved in a way she had not looked for; the mystery that had lain hidden in strange, unknown depths of passion was now clear to her in all its unlovely nakedness. Her soul sickened at the truth. She had not come to her husband with the helpless ignorance of a young girl. The knowledge of good and evil, to employ the somewhat meaningless euphemism, had come to her through her intelligence by means of books, through her contact with real life. She had grasped the fact of the existence of the Loulou Mendès type with whom love is a trade. That a man should have had a liaison with such a woman she could have understood. In fact she never at any one moment had fancied that Thornton had brought to her the pure ardour of a virgin soul. To have been revolted at the discovery of a mere antenuptial infidelity on the part of her husband would have been to her impossible. It was not noble, it is true; but it was intelligible. There was certainly for a lower nature a charm, witchery, fascination, in the fleshly beauty of the courtesan. She had heard of many men falling victims to it, and sinking very little into degradation. If Jack's mother had been such a woman, she would have felt little more than the shock of coincidence, a sense of strangeness in her relations with the boy. But Jack's mother was not of this type. She never had charm, witchery, or fascination. She had never even passable good looks. A poor, stolid, dull, animal drudge.

The truth had come upon Clytie; the truth that had touched her now and then with its bat wings, making her shiver; the horrible, soul-nauseating truth of the eternal beast in man. She knew Thornton now as he was, and her indifference passed into loathing. In Thornton's feelings what difference had there been between this boy's mother and herself?

She walked swiftly up and down the studio, with clenched white hands, her shoulders rising now and then in an involuntary heave of disgust. The glory had gone out of the day. A foul shadow overspread it.

Suddenly Thornton himself appeared with eager face, a telegram in his hand. He had just come in from riding in the Park, and according to the modern fashion out of the season, was dressed in tweed suit and gaiters. He carried a silver-headed riding whip jauntily under his arm. He waved the telegram exultingly.

“They have asked me to put up for Witherby!” he said. “I'll have some lunch on the strength of it. I suppose there's some going.”

“I believe lunch is at the usual hour,” said Clytie, not looking at him.