For the Term of His Natural Life
Page 82
October 22nd.--Have spent the day with Mrs. Frere. She is evidentlyeager to leave the place--as eager as I am. Frere rejoices in hismurderous power, and laughs at her expostulations. I suppose men gettired of their wives. In my present frame of mind I am at a loss tounderstand how a man could refuse a wife anything.
I do not think she can possibly care for him. I am not a selfishsentimentalist, as are the majority of seducers. I would take no womanaway from a husband for mere liking. Yet I think there are cases inwhich a man who loved would be justified in making a woman happy at therisk of his own--soul, I suppose.
Making her happy! Ay, that's the point. Would she be happy? There arefew men who can endure to be "cut", slighted, pointed at, and womensuffer more than men in these regards. I, a grizzled man of forty, amnot such an arrant ass as to suppose that a year of guilty deliriumcan compensate to a gently-nurtured woman for the loss of that socialdignity which constitutes her best happiness. I am not such an idiot asto forget that there may come a time when the woman I love may cease tolove me, and having no tie of self-respect, social position, or familyduty, to bind her, may inflict upon her seducer that agony which he hastaught her to inflict upon her husband. Apart from the question of thesin of breaking the seventh commandment, I doubt if the worst husbandand the most unhappy home are not better, in this social conditionof ours, than the most devoted lover. A strange subject this for aclergyman to speculate upon! If this diary should ever fall into thehands of a real God-fearing, honest booby, who never was tempted to sinby finding that at middle-age he loved the wife of another, how he wouldcondemn me! And rightly, of course.