The Golden Gates

I love this short story; it counfounds expectations. We think at first the rich man is the unsympathetic character, puffed up with pride and exulting in his riches, while enjoying the fact that he has a poor man just as in the hymn he is so fond of. The poor man collects gossip for his wife to brighten her day. But both have wives, and how they react to their wives illness is very different, with very different concerns. I'll say no more, because it will spoil the ending...

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The Golden Gates

By TF Powys

 

GEORGE MACDONALD once said that 'it is easy to see what God Almighty thinks of riches if we take the trouble to notice those people that He gives wealth to'.

 

Amongst those who could accept this remark as a very fine compliment was Squire Duffy, who lived in his castle at Tinclebury, a castle with gates of gold.

 

Tinclebury is a village, and a small one, and Squire Duffy was the rich man there.

 

Outside his castle Mr Duffy was aware that there were human beings who employed all their spare time in longing to be, and praying to be, as rich as their betters.

 

Mr Duffy was always glad of an opportunity to contrast the low state of their being with his own exalted one, and he was glad to discover any idea that would help him to do this.

 

In London he happened to see a play in which a wood moved. Mr Duffy went home and moved his wood. But even that accomplishment did not content Mr Duffy, and so he did as every honest man does when he needs inspiration—he watched his wife.

 

Mrs Duffy liked music. Mr Duffy watched her one Sunday and followed her into the drawing-room and saw her sit down before the grand piano.

 

'A new hymn, my dear,' said Squire Duffy, 'you have learned to play a new hymn?'

 

'Yes, dear,' replied Mrs Duffy, 'I wished to find a hymn that would please you, and I am trying to learn a new one.'

 

'I hope you have succeeded,' said Mr Duffy.

 

'Alas!' murmured Mrs Duffy, 'I find the tune more difficult than I expected.'

 

'Then read the words, dear,' said Mr Duffy, stooping down and kissing her hair that was as white as any other grandmother's.

 

1 will, if you wish, read a verse—

 

"The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high or lowly,

And order' d their estate."

 

Oh, I do wish I could play it,' said Mrs Duffy.

Mr Duffy kissed her again. He puffed out his chest with pride.

'I know that Mr Bottom lives at my gate,' he said.

 

Hymns are always true,' whispered Mrs Duffy, 'though they have such hard tunes.'

 

The next morning Squire Duffy walked to his gates. He admired them tremendously. He had drawn the plan himself, meaning that they should exceed in grandeur all the other grand gates in the neighbourhood.

 

The gates were certainly magnificent. Mr Duffy had got the idea from Heaven, and had had the gates gilded. At the top of the gates there were spikes like spearheads, that were as golden as gold paint could make them, and they shone finely in the sun.

 

Mr Duffy went out into the road to look at the golden gates from that direction. A few yards away upon the other side of the road there was Mr Bottom's cottage.

 

Mr Bottom had once been an honest workman, but since the golden gates had arrived he did nothing but look at them. He was now the happiest man in Tinclebury, though his wife lay a-bed ill, with dropsy—for he always had the gates to look at and village gossip to listen to from passers-by.

 

Squire Duffy stood in the road for a moment, but seeing that Mr Bottom was there, he walked stiffly into the park again and shut the golden gates with a bang.

 

Squire Duffy walked back to the castle: his looks were careworn. The poor man, Mr Bottom, still stood in the road.

 

Mr Bottom's wife was growing worse, but he always remained in the road, smiling at the gates. Someone would come by who would tell him all the latest village news, and then he would go and repeat it to his wife, and he knew she wouldn't die any the quicker for being amused by scandal.

 

After visiting the golden gates Mr Duffy entered his home, for he, like Mr Bottom, never went far from his doors.

 

He knew, alas! that Mrs Duffy was not as well as she ought to be. He had taken her to the best doctors in the land, and each great man had shaken Mr Duffy very kindly by the hand, but had shaken his own head too.

 

'Ah, Mr Duffy!' one of them had said, 'we never know how these things begin. The pestilence that flyeth in the night.'

 

Mr Duffy's spectacles were a little clouded when he stepped into the castle drawing-room.

 

His wife was still sitting before the piano, but she was not playing.

'I am not well,' she said.

 

Mr Duffy led her to the sofa.

'I couldn't learn that hymn, and now I fear I shall never play it; and I did so wish to please you, dear.'

 

Mr Duffy wished to say something to make her happier.

 

'I have been to see the golden gates and they shine beautifully,' he said. Mrs Duffy smiled.

'The castle and its fine gates will always please you, I hope dear, when I am gone.' . . .

 

If Mr Duffy had ever found joy in his grandeur, he certainly couldn't find it now that his wife dying. He held her hand and shook his head slowly, as the great doctor had done.

 

'You haven't hated my proud nonsense,' he said, 'you haven't laughed at me, and you shall not leave me.'

 

'Oh, one of us must stay to admire those golden gates,' said Mrs Duffy, and held his hand to her lips. . . .

 

Mr Bottom, the poor man, was standing beside the castle gates in an attitude of profound meditation. He hadn't seen anyone to talk to that day, and his wife, when he went to her, had remarked:

 

"Tis best thee stay out there till thee do hear something.'

 

Presently Mrs Pring came along the road, and stopped beside the castle gates and spoke to Mr Bottom. The gates evidently interested Mrs Pring, for she peeped through them.

 

In the park drive there was Squire Duffy walking up and down, looking as if he had entirely forgotten the fact that he was a very rich man and lived in a castle.

 

Mr Bottom and Mrs Pring watched the rich man attentively.

 

"E do walk crabbed-like,' remarked Mrs Pring.

 

"They say 'is lady be dying,' said Mr Bottom, carelessly,

 

"Tis strange,' said Mr Bottom, 'that now she be gone to bed, that 'e don't come out into street to talk to no woon. They rich folks do take things funny.'

 

'How gates do shine!' said Mrs Pring. 'But how be Emma?'

 

'Oh! wold 'oman, thee do mean. Doctor did tell she today that this week would bury her, and now she don't do nothing, only ask for coffin handles as bright as they gates.'

 

'She were always a wanting woman,' said Mrs Pring.

 

'So she be still,' observed Mr Bottom, ruefully. 'But she do say that if I'd tell woon more bit of news, of someone murdered or hanged, that she'd die happy, and she always fancied she'd look well in a coffin.'

 

Mrs Pring stepped a little nearer to the gates and a little nearer to Mr Bottom.

 

'They do say that Alice Newton be in trouble again—'tis they boys.'

 

The poor man shook his head.

 

'Thik common news hain't enough for she. A rape wi' murder mid do, or a wicked suicide perhaps?'

 

'She do expect too much of a little village,' replied Mrs Pring. 'They kind of merry ways be for towns.'

 

If I don't have nothing to tell,' remarked Mr Bottom, gloomily, 'she'll make I promise for they brass handles, and then where shall beer come from for the poor mourners, I do ask 'ee?'

 

'Her may 'ave gone now,' said Mrs Pring.

 

"Tis best I go in and see,' remarked the poor man, cheerfully. ...

 

The rich man knelt beside his wife's bed. Her last sigh was faithful companion, who knew all his weakness and all his foolish pride, was gone from him for ever.

 

'God must forgive me for what I am going to do, but something has broken within me, and I can't be left behind alone,' said Mr Duffy. He leaned over her and kissed the white forehead.

 

'We will be buried in one grave,' he said.

 

The hour was midnight. Outside a full moon shone.

 

The rich man went to the castle stables and took a stout rope from the harness-room. He walked down the drive and reached the castle gates.

 

He saw only her; he only wished to join her, wherever she was.

 

He fastened the rope to one of the golden spikes and knotted a noose.

 

'God must forgive me,' said Squire Duffy. And climbing the gates he placed the noose around his neck and let himself fall....

 

The poor man slept soundly all that night, and in the morning he stepped out into the road to see the fine gates. He saw the rich man hanging from them. Another helper came, and Squire Duffy was laid upon the grass.

 

Mr Bottom hurried indoors. . . .

 

'Emma did die happy,' he said an hour later to Mrs Pring, 'an' forgot they brass handles.'