“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 wife,” 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.”