“Oh! my love,” said he, recovering his good-humour, “this never-failing opiate soothes my vanity, and lulls my anger; then you may govern me as you please. Torment me to death, — I cannot oppose you.”
“I suppose,” said she, “you think me like the vampire-bat, who fans his victim to sleep with its wings, whilst she sucks its life-blood.”
“Yes, exactly,” said he, smiling: “thank you for the apt allusion.”
“Very apt, indeed,” said she; and a thick gloom overspread her countenance. She persisted in taking his assent in sober earnest. “Yes,” said she, “I find you think all my kindness is treacherous. I will show you no more, and then you cannot accuse me of treachery.”
It was in vain that he protested he had been only in jest; she was convinced that he was in earnest; she was suddenly afflicted with an absolute incapacity of distinguishing jest from earnest. She recurred to the idea of the vampire-bat, whenever it was convenient to her to suppose that her husband thought strange things of her, which never entered his brain. This bat proved to him a bird of ill omen, which preceded a train of misfortunes, that no mortal foresight could reach, and no human prudence avert. His goddess was not to be appeased by any propitiatory or expiatory sacrifice.
CHAPTER XI.
”Short is the period of insulting power,
Offended Cupid finds his vengeful hour.”
Finding it impossible to regain his fair one’s favour, Mr. Bolingbroke absented himself from her presence. He amused himself for some days with his friend Mr. Granby, in attending to a plantation which he was laying out in his grounds. Griselda was vexed to perceive that her husband could find any amusement independent of her; and she never failed, upon his return, to mark her displeasure.
One morning the gentlemen had been so much occupied with their plantation, that they did not attend the breakfast-table precisely in due time: the contrast in the looks of the two ladies when their husbands entered the room was striking. Griselda was provoked with Mrs. Granby for being so good-humoured.
“Lord bless me! Mrs. Granby, how you spoil these men,” cried she.
All the time the gentlemen were at breakfast, Mrs. Bolingbroke played with her tea-spoon, and did not deign to utter a syllable; and when the gentlemen left the breakfast-table, and returned to their business, Griselda, who was, as our readers may have observed, one of the fashionable lollers by profession, established herself upon a couch, and began an attack upon Emma, for spoiling her husband in such a sad manner. Emma defended herself in a playful way, by answering that she could not venture to give unnecessary pain, because she was not so sure as some of her friends might be of their power of giving pleasure. Mrs. Bolingbroke proceeded to descant upon the difference between friendship and love: with some vanity, and some malice, she touched upon the difference between the sorts of sentiments which different women excited. Passion, she argued, could be kept alive only by a certain happy mixture of caprice and grace, coldness and ill-humour. She confessed that, for her part, she never could be content with the friendship of a husband. Emma, without claiming or disclaiming her pretensions to love, quoted the saying of a French gentleman:
“L’Amitié est l’Amour sans ailes.”
“Friendship is Love deprived of his wings.”
Griselda had no apprehension that love could ever fly from her, and she declared she could not endure him without his wings.
Our heroine did not imagine that any of the little vexations which she habitually inflicted upon her husband could really diminish his regard. She, never had calculated the prodigious effects which can be produced by petty causes constantly acting. Indeed this is a consideration, to which the pride or short-sightedness of human nature is not prone.
Who in contemplating one of Raphael’s finest pictures, fresh from the master’s hand, ever bestowed a thought upon the wretched little worm which works its destruction? Who that beholds the gilded vessel gliding in gallant trim—”youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm;” ever at that instant thought of — barnacles? The imagination is disgusted by the anti-climax; and of all species of the bathos, the sinking from visionary happiness to sober reality is that from which human nature is most averse. The wings of the imagination, accustomed to ascend, resist the downward flight.
Confident of her charms, heedless of danger, accustomed to think her empire absolute and eternal; our heroine, to amuse herself, and to display her power to Emma, persisted in her practice of tormenting. The ingenuity with which she varied her tortures was certainly admirable. After exhausting old ones, she invented new; and when the new lost their efficacy, she recurred to the old. She had often observed, that the blunt method of contradicting, which some bosom friends practise in conversation, is of sovereign power to provoke; and this consequently, though unpolite, she disdained not to imitate. It had the greater effect, as it was in diametrical opposition to the style of Mrs. Granby’s conversation; who, in discussions with her husband, or her intimate friends, was peculiarly and habitually attentive to politeness.
CHAPTER XII.
”Ella biasmandol sempre, e dispregiando
Se gli venia piu sempre inimicando.”
By her judicious and kind interposition, Emma often prevented the disagreeable consequences that threatened to ensue from Griselda’s disputatious habits; but one night it was past her utmost skill to avert a violent storm, which arose about the pronunciation of a word. It began about eleven o’clock. Just as the family were sitting down to supper, seemingly in perfect harmony of spirits, Mr. Bolingbroke chanced to say, “I think the wind is rising.” (He pronounced the word wi*nd, short.)
[Transcriber’s note: What is printed in the original text as an “i” with a breve is rendered here as “i*”.]
“Wi*nd! my dear,” cried his wife, echoing his pronunciation; “do, for heaven’s sake, call it wi*nd.”
The lady sounded this word long.
“Wind! my love,” repeated he after her: “I doubt whether that be the right pronunciation.”
“I am surprised you can doubt it,” said she, “for I never heard any body call it wi*nd but yourself.”
“Did not you, my love? that is very extraordinary: many people, I believe, call it wi*nd.”
“Vulgarians, perhaps!”
“Vulgarians! No, indeed, my dear; very polite, well-informed people.”
Griselda, with a look of unutterable contempt, reiterated the word polite.
“Yes, my dear, polite,” persisted Mr. Bolingbroke, who was now come to such a pass, that he would defend his opinion in opposition to hers, stoutly and warmly. “Yes, polite, my dear, I maintain it; the most polite people pronounce it as I do.”
“You may maintain what you please, my dear,” said the lady, coolly; “but I maintain the contrary.”
“Assertion is no proof on either side, I acknowledge,” said Mr.
Bolingbroke, recollecting himself.
“No, in truth,” said Mrs. Bolingbroke, “especially such an absurd assertion as yours, my dear. Now I will go no farther than Mrs. Granby: — Mrs. Granby, did you ever hear any person, who knew how to speak, pronounce wi*nd — wi*nd?”
“Mrs. Granby, have not you heard it called wi*nd in good company?”
The disputants eagerly approached her at the same instant, and looked as if their fortunes or lives depended upon the decision.
“I think I have heard the word pronounced both ways, by well-bred and well-informed people,” said Mrs. Granby.
“That is saying nothing, my dear,” said Mrs. Bolingbroke, pettishly.
“This is saying all I want,” said Mr. Bolingbroke, satisfied.
“I would lay any wager, however, that Mr. —— , if he were here, would give it in my favour; and I suppose you will not dispute his authority.”
“I will not dispute the authority of Sheridan’s Dictionary,” cried Mr. Bolingbroke, taking it down from the book-case, and turning over the leaves hastily.—”Sheridan gives it for me, my dear,” said he,
with exultation.
“You need not speak with such triumph, my dear, for I do not submit to
Sheridan.”
“No! Will you submit to Kenrick, then?”
“Let us see what he says, and I will then tell you,” said the lady. “No — Kenrick was not of her opinion, and he was no authority.” Walker was produced; and this battle of the pronouncing dictionaries seemed likely to have no end. Mrs. Granby, when she could be heard, remarked that it was difficult to settle any dispute about pronunciation, because in fact no reasons could be produced, and no standard appealed to but custom, which is perpetually changing; and, as Johnson says, “whilst our language is variable with the caprice of all who use it, words can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove in the agitation of a storm can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water.”
The combatants would scarcely allow Emma time to finish this allusion, and certainly did not give themselves time to understand it; but continued to fight about the word custom, the only word that they had heard.
“Yes, custom! custom!” cried they at once, “custom must decide, to be sure.” Then came my custom and your custom; the custom of the stage, the custom of the best company, the custom of the best poets; and all these were opposed to one another with increasing rapidity. “Good heavens, my dear! did you ever hear Kemble say, ‘Rage on, ye wi*nds!’ — Ridiculous!”
“I grant you on the stage it may be winds; but in common conversation it is allowable to pronounce it as I do, my dear.”
“I appeal to the best poets, Mr. Bolingbroke: nothing can be more absurd than your way of—”
“Listen, lively lordlings all!” interrupted Emma, pressing with playful vehemence between the disputants; “I must be heard, for I have not spoken this half hour, and thus I pronounce — You both are right, and both are wrong.
“And now, my good friends, had not we better go to rest?” said she; “for it is past midnight.”
As they took their candles, and went up stairs, the parties continued the battle: Mrs. Bolingbroke brought quotations innumerable to her aid, and in a shrill tone repeated,
”’He might not let even the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.’
— —”’pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not.’
“‘And let her down the wind to prey at fortune.’
”’Blow, thou winter’s wind,
Thou art not so unkind.’
“‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow.’”
Her voice was raised to the highest pitch: it was in vain that her husband repeated that he acknowledged the word should be called as she pronounced it in poetry; she reiterated her quotations and her assertions till at last she knew not what she said; her sense failed the more her anger increased. At length Mr. Bolingbroke yielded. Noise conquers sometimes where art fails.
“Thus,” said he, “the hawk that could not be hoodwinked, was at last tamed, by being exposed to the din of a blacksmith’s hammer.”
Griselda was incensed by this remark, and still more by the allusion, which she called the second edition of the vampire-bat. Both husband and wife went to sleep mutually displeased, and more disgusted with each other than they had ever been since their marriage: and all this for the pronunciation of a word!
Early in the morning they were wakened by a messenger, who brought an express, informing Mr. Bolingbroke that his uncle was not expected to live, and that he wished to see him immediately. Mr. Bolingbroke rose instantly; all the time that he was dressing, and preparing in the greatest hurry for his journey, Griselda tormented him by disputing about the propriety of his going, and ended with, “Promise me to write every post, my dear; positively you must.”
CHAPTER XIII.
“He sighs for freedom, she for power.”
Mr. Bolingbroke did not comply with his wife’s request, or rather with her injunction, to write every post: and when he did write, Griselda always found some fault with his letters. They were too short, too stiff, or too cold, and “very different indeed,” she said, “from what he used to write before he was married.” This was certainly true; and absence was not at the present crisis the most advantageous thing possible to our heroine. Absence is said to extinguish a weak flame, and to increase a strong one. Mr. Bolingbroke’s passion for his Griselda had, by some means, been of late diminished. He parted from her with the disagreeable impression of a dispute upon his mind. As he went farther from her he perceived that instead of dragging a lengthened chain, his chain grew lighter. His uncle recovered: he found agreeable society in the neighbourhood; he was persuaded to prolong his stay: his mind, which had been continually harassed, now enjoyed some tranquillity. On an unlucky evening, he recollected Martial’s famous epigram and his wife, in one and the same instant:
”My mind still hovering round about you,
I thought I could not live without you;
But now we have lived three weeks asunder,
How I lived with you is the wonder.”
In the mean time, our heroine’s chief amusement, in her husband’s absence, was writing to complain of him to Mrs. Nettleby. This lady’s answers were now filled with a reciprocity of conjugal abuse; she had found, to her cost, that it is the most desperate imprudence to marry a fool, in the hopes of governing him. All her powers of tormenting were lost upon her blessed helpmate. He was not to be moved by wit or sarcasm, eloquence or noise, tears or caresses, reason, jealousy, or the opinion of the world.
What did he care what the world thought, he would do as he pleased himself; he would be master in his own house: it did not signify talking or crying, or being in the right; right or wrong, he would be obeyed; a wife should never govern him; he had no notion of letting a woman rule, for his part; women were born to obey, and promised it in church. As to jealousy, let his wife look to that; if she did not choose to behave properly, he knew his remedy, and would as soon be divorced as not: “Rule a wife and have a wife,” was the burden of his song.
It was in vain to goad his insensible nature, in hopes of obtaining any good: vain as the art said to be possessed by Linnæus, of producing pearls by pricking oysters. Mrs. Nettleby, the witty, the spirited Widow Nettleby, was now in the most hopeless and abject condition; tyrannized over by a dunce, — and who could pity her? not even her dear Griselda.
One day Mrs. Bolingbroke received an epistle of seven pages from poor Mrs. Nettleby, giving a full and true account of Mr. Nettleby’s extraordinary obstinacy about “the awning of a pleasure-boat, which he would not suffer to be made according to her directions, and which consequently caused the oversetting of the boat, and very nearly the deaths of all the party.” Tired with the long history, and with the notes upon the history of this adventure, in Mrs. Nettleby’s declamatory style, our heroine walked out to refresh herself. She followed a pleasant path in a field near the house, and came to a shady lane, where she heard Mr. and Mrs. Granby’s voices. She went towards the place. There was a turn in the lane, and a thick hedge of hawthorn prevented them from being immediately seen. As she approached, she heard Mr. Granby saying to Emma, in the fondest tone of affection, “My dear Emma, pray let it be done the way that you like best.”
They were looking at a cottage which they were building. The masons had, by mistake, followed the plan which Mr. Granby proposed, instead of that which Emma had suggested. The wall was half built; but Mr. Granby desired that it might be pulled down and altered to suit Emma’s taste.
“Bless me!” cried Griselda, with great surprise, “are you really going to have it pulled down, Mr. Granby?”
“Certainly,” replied he; “and what is more, I am going to help to pull it down.”
He ran to assist the masons, and worked with a degree of zeal, which increased Mrs. Bolingbroke’s astonishment.
“Good Heavens! — He could not do more for you if you were his mistress.”
“He never did so much for me, till I was his wif
e,” said Emma.
“That’s strange! — Very unlike other men. But, my dear,” said Mrs. Bolingbroke, taking Mrs. Granby’s arm, and drawing her aside, “how did you acquire such surprising power over your husband?”
“By not desiring it, I believe,” replied Emma, smiling; “I have never used any other art.”
CHAPTER XIV.
”Et cependant avec toute sa diablerie,
Il faut que je l’appelle et mon coeur et ma mie.”
Our heroine was still meditating upon the extraordinary method by which Emma had acquired power over her husband, when a carriage drove down the lane, and Mr. Bolingbroke’s head appeared looking out of the chaise window. His face did not express so much joy as she thought it ought to display at the sight of her, after three weeks’ absence. She was vexed, and received him coldly. He turned to Mr. and Mrs. Granby, and was not miserable. Griselda did not speak one word during their walk home; still her husband continued in good spirits: she was more and more out of humour, and took no pains to conceal her displeasure. He bore it well, but then he seemed to feel it so little, that she was exasperated beyond measure; she seized the first convenient opportunity, when she found him alone, of beginning a direct attack.
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 72
