Four gates

"Four Gates" by Amy Le Feuvre is a novel written in the early 20th century. It portrays the contrasting paths of four young women in an English village whose temperaments and trials are framed by a spiritual metaphor of entering life’s “city” through North, South, East, and West gates. The story centers on restless Audrey Hume, steadfast Pauline Erskine, overburdened Honor Broughton, and sunny Amabel Osborne as duty, ambition, and faith pull them in different directions. The opening of the story gathers the four friends at Barford Towers, where Mrs. Daventry’s “four gates” image sparks each girl to consider her life’s course: Amabel’s easy “South,” Honor’s bracing “East,” Pauline’s shadowed but warm “North,” and Audrey’s changeable “West.” We then see Audrey’s cramped home life with her irritable father, hints of a lost brother, and a cryptic debt owed by a certain Everard Vernon; Pauline’s quiet service to a difficult, ailing mother and a memory of a brief London romance; and Honor’s grinding duties under a sharp-tongued stepmother, leading to her reluctant acceptance of a paid companion post in London. Amabel returns from a glittering London visit and becomes engaged to Captain Rutland. Sudden tragedy strikes when Audrey’s father dies, leaving her almost penniless and bearing a sealed letter to Dr. Vernon; when she delivers it, Vernon explodes at its shocking request—that he marry her in repayment of an old debt—prompting Audrey’s furious departure. Alone in Sussex and then London, she resolves to find work and, with help from a travelers’ aid office, looks for safe lodging as her uncertain journey truly begins.

Four gates, by Amy Le Feuvre. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #78742.