“I wonder!” said a grave-looking lady.
“Mr. and Miss Lane are going to be married next week by Mr. Sparks.”
“I really wonder!” was the general exclamation of the company, although they had heard it before at different times.
This wonderer in America is, if possible, more ludicrous than in England. In both he is ludicrous; and the sooner he changes into some other form of talker, more sensible, the better.
XX. The Termagant.—This is a talker chiefly of the female sex; and it is in this gender we shall give our sketch.
Jemima, the wife of Job Sykes, was a woman of turbulent and fiery temper; but he was a man calm and self-possessed. Her tongue was as the pen of a ready-writer, in the rapidity with which it talked, and as the point of a needle and the edge of a razor in the keenness of its words. Sometimes she was loud and boisterous, violent and raging, attacking her prey as a tigress, rather than as a human being. Sometimes she was snappish, snarling, waspish. Her husband, her children, her servants, her neighbours, all came in for their share, in their turn, of her bites, stings, and poisons.
It was, however, poor Job who fell in for the lion’s share. Alas for him! He often found the words of Solomon to be true: “It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman” (Prov. xxi. 19). As there was no wilderness into which he could fly to escape the tongue of his dear Jemima, he would fly away into a solitary room, or into the adjoining garden, or into a neighbour’s house, or take a walk in the lonely road,—anywhere to shelter himself from the fiery droppings of his termagant spouse.
The least imaginable thing that crossed her will or temper would set Jemima’s tongue-machine a-going; and when once started, it rattled away like a medley of tin, glass, and stones turned in a churn. It threw out words like razors, darts, fire-brands, scorpions, wasps, mosquitos, flying helter-skelter in all directions about the head of poor Job, and he seldom escaped without wounds which lasted for days together. He has been known to receive cuts and bruises that have prevented his speaking to his “darling” for weeks in succession.
Mrs. Caudle’s lectures to her husband were mild, entertaining, and instructive to what Job Sykes received from Mrs. Sykes. Mrs. Caudle, I think, always addressed her beloved in the evening within curtains, when he was in such a condition of mind and body as rendered him impervious to the entrance of her loving words; so that he would even go to sleep under them, as a babe under the soothing lullaby of its mother. But Job’s dear wife fired away at him anywhere, at any time: night or day, at home or from home, in company or out of company. Given the least cause, the attack would begin and be carried on until the ammunition was exhausted.
As we have said, Job was of a quiet disposition, although firm and never yielding his place to his “weaker vessel;” and he generally found that silence or “soft answers” were his best weapons.