Two Tales of Married Life. Hard to bear. By Georgiana M. Craik. A True Man. By M. C. Stirling

Front matter

I I ■ VOL. I. HAED TO BEAR. EY GEORGIANA M. CRAIK. A TRUE MAN. EY M. C. STIRLING. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1877. A U rights reserved. LONDON : PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE, BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET. HARD TO REAR. BY GEORGIANA M. CRAIK. " She loves with love that will not tire : And if, alas ! she loves alone, Through passionate duty Love flames higher, As grass grows taller round a stone." Coventry Patmore. VOL. I.

Chapter I

" "T^vO you not know how old I am?" -"-^ Norah Etheridge was saying, rather in a tone of surprise, to Mr. Langton, in answer to some remark that he had made. " You are three or four and twenty, I suppose," he replied. " I was twenty-two in April." " Not more ?" " No — but I know I look more." " Well, perhaps it is hardly so much that you look more as that you are rather more staid than most girls are at two and twenty." b I know I am. I am often sorry for it." I don't know why you should be sorry." " I think it is a pity not to be girlish when one is young." " You are quite girlish enough ; at least, I mean you are quite girlish enough for my taste." And then there was a moment's silence, and after that — " I am glad if you think so," she said quietly. These two people were not lovers ; they were only friends.

At least that was what they themselves believed ; but when Mr. Langton went almost daily — as he did — to the house in which Norah Etheridge lived, and almost daily spent hours there with her, their friends who talked of them of course thought differently. It was said by his acquaintances that Mr. Langton had been a disappointed man. There had been some story about him — nobody knew clearly what, for he had lived abroad for the last few years, and only some vague rumours of his history during that time had reached the ears of his friends in London ; but some sort of disappointment he had met with, every one agreed, that had aged and changed him. He was two or three and thirty now, and he looked almost ten years older. He had been very full of life and energy, those said who had known him in his early manhood, but of all this vitality he had managed to get rid.

AVhatever he had been ten years ago he had sunk at this time into a grave, cold, indifferent man, whose only real pleasure seemed to be in books, and who went into society only on compulsion, and dropped his old friends, and made no new ones. At least he made no new ones with the single exception of Norah Etheridge. A year ago he had met Norah at a house where he had gone unwillingly to dine, and had talked to her for half the evening. After an hour or two he had said to her suddenly, " I think I must have known some one once who was related to you. Have you a brother called Allan ?" " Not now," she answered. " I had a brother Allan, but he died when he was a boy at Rugby." " It was at Rugby that I knew him," Mr. Langton said ; and then all at once her eyes brightened, and — " Are you the Roger Langton that he used to talk about?" she exclaimed.

" Oh, I was so familiar with your name once. You were one of the big boys when Allan was little, and you used to be so kind to him." HAED TO EEAR. " I liked him. He was a fine, spirited little fellow," the other said. "And he died, poor lad ?" " Yes< — he died of heart disease. He was never strong. It was a great grief to us. My aunt that I live with was so fond of him. Will you let me introduce you to my aunt ?" she said. And then Mr. Langton was introduced to the elder Miss Etheridge, and in this way the acquaintance began that soon ripened into intimacy. Even at that first meeting Mr. Langton was attracted to Norah. He was at this time in the weary exhausted temper that can take no pleasure in the ordinary interests and objects of life : the world had lost its zest for him : he wanted some thing new to give some flavour of freshness to it, and this new thing he found in her.

He had believed himself to be in the frame of mind in which he could say with all his heart that "Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither ;" but he had found when he met Norah that still, in some degree at least, he was capable of taking delight in woman. It was not that he fell in love with her, but he became interested in her. Her grave, calm face grew iu its way to be very beautiful to him. Miss Etheridge had invited him to visit them, and his visits soon became frequent ; and more often than not when he came Miss Etheridge, who was a little afraid of him (though she always spoke of him in the warmest terms, and really believed herself to be greatly attached to him on account of his kindness to her dead nephew), would leave the main part of entertaining him to be done by Norah. "For you see, my dear, I am not bookish," she would say with plaintive frankness to her niece, " and it's so much easier for you to talk to him than me."

And so she would often slip away and leave Mr. Langton to Norah's care, — and to the transcendental conversation in which it was at any rate her simple belief that her visitor and her niece passed the greater part of the time they spent together. Perhaps, however, she was wrong in thinking that their talk was always trans cendental. In the early days of their friendship, indeed, it is true that Mr. Langton had talked a good deal to Norah about books and art, but as time went on, and they grew more intimate, they did not by any means talk of books and art exclu sively. They talked of many other subjects besides these — of some that were much more personal than these. He often talk ed to her of himself and his own life, with, in a large measure, a curious unreserve, and yet — as she always instinctively felt — at the same time, too, a curious reticence.

For, however much he might, on any point that touched himself, seem to tell her all, somehow she knew intuitively that he did not tell her all — that there was somewhere a closed door in his heart and in his mind that he never opened to her. Very soon after their acquaintance be gan he had set himself to give lessons in Italian to Norah, making this one of the reasons for his frequent visits to Miss Etheridge's. He had lived for several years in Italy, and Norah chanced to say one day that she should like to be able to read Dante ; so he proposed to help her to do this, and came thenceforward two or three times a week to aid her in her studies. The lessons he gave her were genuine lessons. He was not like a man iu love, seeking for any pretext to bring him into the presence of the woman who was dear to him ; he taught her in all seriousness and single-mindedness, and she learnt and studied hard to please him.

I do not say that she did not do her part because she loved him, but he at least did not know, and she scarcely knew, that. She was contented only to feel that the lessons were the sweetest lessons of her life. He said to her one day, " You must not let me make you work too hard," but she laughed when he said that. " It suits me to work. Do you not think it does ?" she asked him. " Well, it certainly does not seem to do much harm to you," he answered. " And you get on so fast that it would be a pity to do less." So they went on with their lessons two or three times a week, and then when the lessons were ended he used to stay and talk to her. He was a grave, quiet man. You would scarcely have noticed him, perhaps, in a room full of people, for it was rare with him to take part in any general talk, but to one person alone, if that person were a companion that pleased him, he could talk well and interestingly.

The mind was a deli cate mind, cultivated and acute. To Norah, who had lived little hitherto with cultivated people, it seemed more than this ; his talent to her seemed to be genius; his refinement, his quickness of perception, his knowledge, all appealed to her as things greater than they were. The girl's own nature was, perhaps, a larger one than his, but educa tion had done for him what it had not done for her, and the result was to give a charm to him in her eyes that set him apart from other men. For a long time they were friends together without his having learnt howr much he had become to her. They had grown intimate with each other within two or three months of their first meeting, and then for a year their intimacy went on un disturbed, bringing nothing but pleasure and soothing to him, and deep but silent happiness to her.

During all that time he never on any day or at any hour intended to ask her to marry him. To a certain extent he was conscious that the friendship between them was a friendship that ab sorbed her, and that he was, in fact, claim ing and accepting a devotion from her that as long as it lasted made her life his ; but yet he never cared to put this con sciousness into words. And as for her — the only fear she had was the fear that anything should come to change the re lations in which they stood to one another. She was content to be only his friend ; she believed she should be content to spend TWO TALES OF MARRIED LTFE. her whole life as this last year had been spent — to be, as long as she lived, the woman to whom he would care to come for sympathy, or soothing, or companionship. He had loved some one else before he knew her, she thought.

Well, that was all over now ; he would not marry now ; he would be satisfied, perhaps, only to have some woman near him whom he liked ; and it was her highest ambition — simply and exclusively at this time the one thing that she cared for, the one thing she prayed God for — that she might continue through out her life to be that woman. She pray ed for this, never thinking that there was any self-sacrifice in the matter, thinking only that she was praying to hold the thing she cared for most on earth. "You give me more of your time than I deserve," he said to her one day. " But, do you know, if I had not you to come to the world would be as blank to me as the Great Desert." He said this to her, looking gravely and tenderly into her face ; and she kept his speech in her heart with an unutterable gratitude and gladness.

But meanwhile of course the little world in which they lived talked of them, and called them lovers, and sometimes a pass ing doubt would even disturb Miss Ethe ridge's mind about them ; and occasion ally for a day or two perhaps she would linger in the room while Mr. Langton gave his Italian lesson, and sit clicking her knitting needles while Norah construed Dante. But it was very dull work to listen to the construing of Dante, and it rarely happened that Miss Etheridge could make up her mind to sit out a lesson to the end. She had so many things to do ; was it not too much to expect her to act Duenna to her niece, and to so staid and good a niece too, who so little needed a Duenna ? So, half feeling as if she were shirking her duty, and yet feeling too that her duty was so very irksome and incon venient sand needless too), that she could not but desire to shirk it, she would generally, before half an hour was past, steal from the room, leaving the other two at their work, hardly heeding and hardly conscious of either her absence or her presence.

For they were working seriously, and not making or thinking of making love. There might have been times, perhaps, when her presence would have been felt as an encumbrance by them, but even then it would not have been because they either were or were becoming lovers, but only because the intercourse of two is disturbed by the addition of a third. Their tone to one another was hardly different when they were alone from what it was when Miss Etheridge was with them : they only talked of different things, and were more at ease, and therefore happier. " I think no kinder aunt than Aunt Bessie ever lived," Norah had said to Mr. Langton more than once. " If I had had a mother, she might have loved me better, but she could not have treated me more kindly." " If she has been kind to you, I think she has been well rewarded for her kindness," he answered, when she said this.

" What would her life be without you? He was looking at Norah as he spoke ; he used to look at her sometimes with a tender kindness, almost as her father might, or as a brother might. VOL. i. c One day he had said to her, as if with a sudden regi'et, " I have often envied men their sisters. I never had one." And then, after a moment, he added, " But I begin to think that you are making me know what it is to have one now." " That is a kind thing to say. Thank you for saying that," she answered quickly. The colour came into her face as she spoke ; her lips trembled with gladness. " I could not imagine many better things than to have you for a sister," he said quietly and kindly, and then for a moment he laid his hand on hers. But there was no trace in either his tone or his touch of anything beyond mere re gard — the calm, perhaps grateful, liking of a man who has put youth and the hopes of youth away from him.

Chapter II. Tt

was more than a year after he had *- begun to know her before Mr. Lang ton ever seriously questioned with himself whether he should ask Norah to marry him. Up to that time the possibility of their marrying had of course occurred to him, but it was a possibility that he had not cared to entertain ; her companionship had become pleasant to him ; his friendship for her had come to be almost the sweetest thing in his life, but it was merely friendship, and he felt no impulse witb in him to make it more. It was something from without, and not from his own heart, that c2 made him first deliberately consider the matter with himself, and induced him finally to come to a decision which, if it had not been for that external pressure, he almost certainly would not have come to. It happened, during the second autumn of his acquaintance with Norah, that a certain cousin of hers — a young officer whose regiment had been in China, and who had returned home on sick leave — came to pay a visit to Miss Etheridge.

He and Norah were old friends. As children they had played together ; as a lad of twenty, when she was eighteen, he had admired, and perhaps made boyish love to her. They had not met now for more than four years, and the girl's face bright ened on the morning when the letter came announcing his arrival. " My cousin, Harry Temple, is coming to us next week," she told Mr. Langton that day. " He used to be such a nice lad. I suppose we shall find him very much changed, but I shall like to see him again." " Is he coming to stay in this house ?" Mr. Langton asked • and when Norah an swered "Yes," Mr. Langton said no more; but perhaps, even before the two men met, the elder's feelings towards the younger were not of the most cordial kind. Who likes to be disturbed when he is taking his ease, or enjoys having his special haven of refuge invaded by a stranger ?

Mr. Langton came to the house one afternoon, and found the cousins sitting together. Mr. Temple was leaning over Norah's work-table as the other entered the room, looking into her face and talking nonsense to her. He jumped up, indeed, at Mr. Langton's appearance, and on their introduction showed a sufficient readiness to be courteous to the new-comer ; but I am afraid even from this first moment of meeting Mr. Langton set him down in his own mind as a senseless puppy. He was a handsome man, with laughing frank blue eyes, and a complexion like a girl's. He sank down presently again into his seat by Norah's side, and dropped again into his light, gay, half-boyish talk. Perhaps it ruffled Mr Langton's temper that Norah could be tolerant of such talk, and even seem amused by it. When, after a little while, she sent the young man out of the room, telling him that she and Mr. Lang ton were going to read Italian, and, when he was gone, made some remark that showed a cordial liking for him, there was a tone of scarcely concealed contempt in Mr. Langton's answer.

" Yes, he seems lively enough, — and empty-headed enough," he said scornfully. " Oh, you should not be too hard upon him," she exclaimed quickly, when he made that reply. " He is so happy to be at home again, poor lad." And then for the moment Mr. Langton held his tongue. But yet, as time went on, whether with reason or without reason, Mr. Temple's constant presence in the house became more and more of an irritation to the elder man. The young officer was always loitering about ; he was always, or almost always, idle ; he was constantly monopo lizing, or trying to monopolize, Norah. It was soon plain enough to Mr. Langton — perhaps it would have been plain to any one — that he was falling over head aud ears in love with his cousin. He went wherever she went ; he followed her like her shadow ; he would sit in the room kicking his heels even while Mr. Langton was reading Dante — kicking his heels and knitting his fair young brow too ; for, of course, he was jealous of the elder man, and hated these lessons that Norah loved.

"What is that fellow always coming here for with his glum face ?" he burst out to Norah once ; but when he said this, — "Do you mean Mr. Langton?" she asked instantly. And then something njenacing flashed into her eyes, and — " He comes here because he is good enough to like to come ; and I think, Harry, when you next speak of him, you had better not call him again what you did just now," she said, in a tone that perhaps made the poor young man turn rather sick at heart. " I didn't mean to offend you," he an swered humbly. " I couldn't think what he was always about the place for — that's all." And then the girl held her tongue — perhaps because she knew that, if she had spoken again, she might have said some thing that afterwards she would have been sorry to have said. For, though she liked her cousin, do you not think she would rather have spent five minutes, or five moments, with Mr. Langton than five hours, or a whole day, with Harry Temple ?

She felt very kindly to Mr. Temple ; in a way she was even fond of him ; but she used to laugh at his love-making ; she treated him as a boy who was merely amusing liiniself ; she had her heart too full of other things to have room in it for him. " It is a pity that no one can find some occupation for that young fellow," Mr. Langton said one day in a tone of con tempt. " He does not seem to be without the ordinary faculties of a human being, only apparently he is without any concep tion how to employ them." He gave a half -laugh as he spoke ; you might have thought that the young man roused no other feelings in him than those of pity or derision; but yet, in reality, though it suited his humour to speak so, the poor lad's presence had come by this time to be so galling a thorn in his side that it had begun to tempt him to break through all the intentions that he had hitherto formed, and had almost deter mined him to ask Norah to be his wife.

For this young coxcomb's foolish love making — did it not entirely spoil his com fort in her society ? He could not be sure of a quiet hour spent with her; let him come when he would he found the other dancing attendance on her. He did not so far misunderstand her as to suppose she cared for her cousin's attentions — that fear gave him no trouble ; but he began to argue with himself that this silly boy might disturb his peace for months if he took no steps to prevent it ; nay — he began to say to himself — when this one was gone others might succeed to him : she was young and handsome ; it was not likely that Harry Temple would be the only man to fall in love with her. Would it not be better that he should marry her himself, and bring all danger of such things happening to an end ? A year ago he had thought that he was philosophical enough to bear the thought of her becoming the wife of another man, but now — though he was still not in love with her — he knew that he should find it very bitter to see her the wife of another man.

"What better thing could I do than marry her ?" he began hourly to ask him self. " Why should I run the risk of losing a thing that has become a necessity to me? If I knew merely of a friend whose presence would make life sweeter, would I not try to secure that friend's companionship? — and, if so, how much more should I not try to secure Norah's companionship ?" He argued with himself in this way day after day, and day after day the sight of Mr. Temple in the house, fretting him to perpetual irritation, acted as a spur to his resolve — until in the end the thing came about that he had said to himself for a long time should never come. One day — when possibly Harry Temple had tried his temper even more than usual — almost in a fit of impatience rather than of love, he at last asked Norah to be his wife.

The poor lad on this day had been hanging for half the morning about his cousin in his usual idle fashion, and Mr. Langton found him — as he constantly did find him — still at the same occupation when, early in the afternoon, he called at the house. He had come to read with Norah, but for half an hour Mr. Temple chattered his idle nonsense, and would not let them read. The young man had been teasing his cousin to sing with him — to go out with him — to do fifty things. He sat with his hands in his pockets, balancing himself on the back legs of his chair, even after Mr. Langton and Norah had opened their books : they had turned their backs on him, and he had been forced to hold his tongue for twenty minutes before it pleased him at last to leave them to them selves. Perhaps it was not much to be won dered at that Mr. Langton's patience gave way after this, He let the door close be hind his tormentor, and then he startled Norah with a sentence said so angrily that it brought the colour to his face "If that boy is to go on eternally coming between us in that way I must take means to prevent it," he suddenly ex claimed.

He pushed his book from him as he spoke ; he turned his face to Norah. " I am so sorry — " she had begun to say deprecatingly ; but he interrupted her before she could bring her sentence to an end. " I don't blame you for a moment ; how could I blame you ?" he asked quickly. "Do you suppose I think it is your fault ? But you see how he spoils all our time together, and — as things stand now — what right have I to interfere ? You know there is only one way in which I can put an end to it. You understand that, do you not ?" He laid his hand sud denly on hers as he said this. " You understand that, if we were known to belong to one another, he could not go on persecuting you?" She had turned from white to red while he made this speech. It was not a lover's speech — how could she help feeling that ? — it was only the impatient speech of an irritated mau.

It would have made many women angry ; but Norah, I suppose, thought too humbly of her own claims upon him for anger to make any part of the feeling it aroused in her. There was only shyness and anxiety in her tone as she began to answer him. " I know that Harry's being here so much has been an annoyance to you, — but it will not go on now much longer. If you will not mind bearing it just a little longer, then we shall be alone again," she began to say hurriedly, with her heart beating fast. "Yes — until a new fool comes," he sharply answered; but the next moment, in a different tone — " Forgive me for speaking so ; it is I who am the fool," he exclaimed quickly. " I am a fool ever to have thought that I could keep you in this way. I did imagine until lately that we might go on simply as we have done, but as long as I am only your friend, I have no right to keep other people away from you ; and, you see, I have become selfish enough to want to do that.

While there is no acknowledged tie between us any day that dawns may part you from me." " You need not fear that, — not as long as you want me," she said in a low voice. " Then that means that I keep you from marrying at all." " But I do not want to marry," she said. " No, perhaps not ; nor, until lately, did want to marry ; but I want you to un derstand how I cannot endure to have other people coming between us." " It shall not happen again," she said quickly. " Do not think it has not been a vexation to me too. I am afraid you think I have not cared. You are wrong — I have cared more than you have, I think. But Harry will go away in a few weeks, and — and then we shall be alone again." She spoke hurriedly and deprecatingly, as if the fault had been all hers that this idle young officer had hung about her, and as if he had a right to be angry.

And then there was a pause for a few moments, during which, perhaps, he' questioned with himself whether he should take her at her word and tacitly withdraw his pro posal ; or whether he should repeat it, and press her acceptance of it. It would be simplest to remain silent and require no vol. I. d acceptance ; but yet, though it would be simplest to do this, he could not make up his mind to become silent now. He had begun to speak, and, wholly without pas sion as his affection for her was, the natural instinctive desire to gain what he had begun to take steps for gaining, made him resolve to repeat what he had said. " I do not see why Mr. Temple's going or staying need make any difference now," he said, breaking the silence after a few moments had passed. " His being here during these weeks has shown me how little I can bear that any one else should have claims upon you.