_THE SUSPICIOUS._
"Foul suspicion! thou turnest love divine
To joyless dread, and mak'st the loving heart
With hateful thoughts to languish and repine,
And feed itself with self-consuming smart;
Of all the passions of the mind thou vilest art."
SPENCER.
The words of his mouth live with a spirit of doubt, incredulity, and
jealousy. Actions, thoughts, motives, are questioned as to their reality
and disinterestedness. Good counsel given in time of perplexity is
attributed to some ulterior purpose which is kept out of view. Gifts of
beneficence are said to be deeds of selfishness--patronage is expected
in an affair you have on hand, or you anticipate as much or more in
return in some other ways. A family visited with a severe affliction is
suspected to have the cause in some secret moral delinquency in the
father, or mother, or elder son or daughter. A merchant meets with
reverses in his business, and he is suspected of something wrong, for
which these reverses are sent as punishment. A traveller meets with an
accident, by which a member of his body is fractured or life taken
away: he is suspected of having been a great sinner before God, for
which His vengeance now visits him.
The suspicious talker may be found in one or other phase of his
character in almost every class and grade of society. How often the
husband suspects the wife, and the wife the husband; the master the
servant, and the servant the master; brothers suspect brothers; sisters
sisters; neighbours neighbours; the rich the poor; the poor the rich.
The talk of the suspicious is bitter, stinging, exasperating. How often
it ends in jealousy, strife, quarrels, separations, and other evils of a
similar kind!
This talk seldom or ever effects any good. It more frequently excites to
the very thing on which the suspicion has fixed its demon eye, but of
which the subject of the suspicion was never guilty.
Suspicious talk, like many other kinds, has frequently no foundation to
rest upon, excepting the fancy of an enfeebled mind or the ill-nature of
an unregenerate heart.
* * * * *
"That was a very nice present which Mr. Muckleton sent you on
Christmas-Day," said Mr. Birch to his neighbour.
"O, yes," he replied in a sort of careless way; "I _know_ what he sent
it for--that he may get my vote at the next election of town
councillors. I can see through it."
"Did not Mr. Shakleton call at your house the other day? and were you
not pleased to see him?"
"So far as that goes, I was pleased; but I _know_ what he called for;
not to see me or mine. It is not worth saying, but I _know_."
"Has not Mrs. Mount recently joined your church? She is an excellent
lady, of very good means and intelligence. I should think you will value
her acquisition to your number."
"Well, as for that, I cannot say. I like persons to act from pure
motives in all things, especially in religious. Don't you know Mrs.
Mount is a widow, and there is in our church that Squire Nance, a
bachelor? I needn't say any more."
"The Rev. Mr. Wem has left our church and gone to a church in London."
"Indeed! I was not aware of that, but I guess it is to obtain more
salary."
"How do you know that?"
"How do I know it? You may depend he wouldn't have gone unless he could
better himself."
"My dear," said Mrs. Park to her husband one evening as they were
sitting alone, "Tom has gone with young Munster to the city, and will be
back about ten o'clock."
"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."
* * * * *
Suspicion in talking is a disposition which renders its subject
unacceptable to others and unhappy in himself. Persons will have as
little as possible to say to him or do with him, lest they fall under
his ruling power; and this is what no one with self-respect cares to do.
Who likes to have himself, in his motives and deeds, put through the
crucible of his narrow, prickly, stingy soul? He cannot see an inch from
himself to judge you by. He "measures your cloth by his yard," and
weighs your goods in his scales, and judges your colours through his
spectacles; and of the justice and trueness of these nothing need be
said.
"Suspicion overturns what confidence builds;
And he that dares but doubt when there's no ground,
Is neither to himself nor others sound."
The true remedy for suspicion in talking is more knowledge in the head
and more love in the heart. As bats fly before the light, so suspicions
before knowledge and love. Throw open the windows of the soul, and admit
the truth. Be generous and noble in thoughts of others. Give credit for
purity of intention and disinterestedness of motives. Build no fabric of
fancies and surmises in the imagination without a solid basis. Be pure
in yourself in all things. "The more virtuous any man is in himself,"
says Cicero, "the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious."