“What has he gone there for?” asked Mr. Park, rather sternly. “No good, I venture to say. You know the temptations that are in the city, and he is not so steady as we would like him to be.”
When Tom came home at ten o’clock, he had to endure a good deal of suspicious tongue-flagellation, which rather excited him to speak rashly in return.
“I do really think,” said Mrs. Lance, snappishly, to her servant one day, “you are guilty of picking and biting the things of the larder, besides other little tricks. Now, I do not allow such conduct. It is paltry and mean.”
Mrs. Lance had no ground for this utterance but her own suspicions. The servant, conscious of her integrity, became righteously angry, and gave notice to leave at once. So Mary left her suspicious mistress. She was not the first nor the sixth servant she had driven away by her suspicious talk in regard to the “larder,” the “cupboards,” the “drawers,” and the “wardrobe.”
Squire Nutt one day went a drive of twelve miles in the country to attend “a hunt dinner,” promising his wife that he would be home by eleven o’clock at night. This hour came, but no Squire. Twelve struck, and he had not returned. One struck, yea, even two, and no husband. Mrs. Nutt all this time was alone, watching for the Squire, and suspecting with a vivid imagination where he had gone, and what he was doing. At half-past two a sound of wheels was heard coming to the door, and in a few minutes the suspected husband entered the hall, and greeted his little wife with signs of affection. Instead of receiving him kindly in return, and waiting till the effects of the dinner had escaped before she called him to account, she began in a most furiously suspicious way to question him. “Where have you been all this time? Have you been round by Netley Hall? I know all about what you have been up to. This is a fine thing, this is, keeping me watching and waiting these hours, while you have been galavanting—ah! I know where.”
Thus, not within curtains, but within the hall, Mrs. Nutt gave her husband a “caudle” lecture, but with little effect upon him. She had nothing but groundless suspicion; he had the inward satisfaction of a good conscience on the points respecting which she suspected him.
As an illustration of another aspect of this talker we may take the friends who came to talk with Job in his troubles. His wife was bad enough in her utterances, but his “friends” were worse. Coleridge, in speaking of Satan taking away everything he had, but left his wife, says,—
“He took his honours, took his wealth,
He took his children, took his health,
His camels, horses, asses, cows,
And the sly devil did not take his spouse.”
But his wife was kind and considerate to what his friends were. She spake as one of the “foolish women;” but his friends came as philosophers, the wise ones, to converse with him; and yet, when they spoke to him, they had nothing but suspicions and doubts to utter as to his sincerity, motives, and purity; told him not to plead innocence in his circumstances, but confess all with candour, and show that he had been a profound hypocrite, and that God had visited him with His sore judgments as a punishment for his sins; for they knew that all these things could not have come upon him if there had not been some “secret thing” with him.
Although Job sometimes spoke “unadvisedly with his lips” in reply to the unjustifiable suspicions of his “friends,” God stands on his side, and defends him in his rectitude and integrity. He rebukes with severity Bildad the Shuhite and his two companions, because of their uncharitable suspicions uttered against His servant. He was “angry” that they had not spoken truthfully “as His servant Job;” “and they were to go,” as one says, “to this servant Job to be prayed for, and eat humble pie, and a good large slice of it too (I should like to have seen their faces while they were munching it), else their leisurely and inhuman philosophy would have got them into a scrape.”