Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/100

94 herself at a disadvantage among the literati with whom they associated.

But George liked the intellectual, inspiriting, social atmosphere, and never regretted the sumptuous life of the metropolis as his wife often did. To him the only flaw was that Ethel was in nowise "talented," and possessed no ambition to become so, for he soon came to this frame of mind. Some one has said,—"There is nothing so much annoys a man as to take his wife into society and find her eclipsed." If they had remained in New York, where Ethel had been a belle all her life, all might have been well; but here, to George's great spleen, he felt that she was entirely eclipsed, and he made them both miserable by complaints of her father's theories and notions regarding female education. "If you had been taught to sing, or sculp, or paint, or play, or something of the kind, how much happier we might be now," he would say; or, "If you only cared to improve, and add to what you do know!"

Even her domestic acquirements, that he had once thought more potent than anything else to promote wedded happiness, he now deprecated, and if such exchange had been possible, would very gladly have exchanged them for even one talent, well knowing that in P there would be small danger of its being hidden in the earth.

For her own sake Ethel did not so very much care. At the end of ten years they had three lovely children, two girls and a boy, and in their companionship she was happy, and latterly gave scarcely a thought to her early, girlish pleasures. She had some friends of her own sort, too, not aspiring, climbing females, but womanly, old-fashioned wives and mothers, like herself.

She began to feel at last, however, that her husband was certainly drifting away from her, and the knowledge brought agony. Her mother's warning words, for almost the first time, came to her memory. She wondered if she had taken a wrong course since her marriage. She could not change her nature; she could not be like the women George admired so much. He had known just what she was at first, and yet he had said she would be his inspiration. "Inspiration!" She knew very well that he considered her anything but that. "I am a hindrance, a drag, an old man of the sea that he cannot get rid of," she thought, bitterly. George had no patience with her, either; he was harsh and dictatory, and so dissatisfied with her, she thought. And was she, after all, less admirable than the ladies for whom her husband professed such esteem? she questioned. She could not believe it. She had always been flattered and followed at home, but how little any one cared for her here!

"And I never have any genuine good times as I did in New York, and only tiresome, bookish people, and all kinds of geniuses, to be with. I am beginning to sigh for the flesh-pots of Gotham all the time."

And Ethel rebelled, no longer listening patiently to criticism, remonstrance, or persuasion. Vexations and coolness multiplied, and constantly the breach widened between husband and wife.