The Plain Man and His Wife | Page 6

business and sending ships and men to the horizons of the earth, and keeping a home in a park, and oscillating like a rapid shuttle daily between office and home, and lying awake at nights, and losing his eyesight and his digestion, and staking his health, and risking misery for the beings whom he cherishes, and enriching insurance companies, and providing joy-rides for nice young women whom he has never seen--and all his present profit therefrom is a game of golf with a free mind once a fortnight, or half an hour's intimacy with his wife and a free mind once a week or so, or a ten minutes' duel with that daughter of his and a free mind on an occasional evening! Nay, it may occur that after forty years of incessant labour, in answer to an inquiry as to where the genuine conscious fun comes in, he has the right only to answer: "Well, when I have time, I take the dog out for a walk. I enjoy larking with the dog."
The estimable plain man, with his horror of self-examination, is apt to forget the immediate end of existence in the means. And so much so, that when the first distant end--that of a secure old age--approaches achievement, he is incapable of admitting it to be achieved, and goes on worrying and worrying about the means--from simple habit! And when he does admit the achievement of the desired end, and abandons the means, he has so badly prepared himself to relish the desired end that the mere change kills him! His epitaph ought to read: "Here lies the plain man of common sense, whose life was all means and no end."
A remedy will be worth finding.

II - THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE

I
One evening--it is bound to happen in the evening when it does happen--the plain man whose case I endeavoured to analyse in the previous chapter will suddenly explode. The smouldering volcano within that placid and wise exterior will burst forth, and the surrounding country will be covered with the hot lava of his immense hidden grievance. The business day has perhaps been marked by an unusual succession of annoyances, exasperations, disappointments--but he has met them with fine philosophic calm; fatigue has overtaken him--but it has not overcome him; throughout the long ordeal at the office he has remained master of himself, a wondrous example to the young and the foolish. And then some entirely unimportant occurrence--say, an invitation to a golf foursome which his duties forbid him to accept--a trifle, a nothing, comes along and brings about the explosion, in a fashion excessively disconcerting to the onlooker, and he exclaims, acidly, savagely, with a profound pessimism:
"What pleasure do I get out of life?" And in that single abrupt question (to which there is only one answer) he lays bare the central flaw of his existence.
The onlooker will probably be his wife, and the tone employed will probably imply that she is somehow mysteriously to blame for the fact that his earthly days are not one unbroken series of joyous diversions. He has no pose to keep up with his wife. And, moreover, if he really loves her he will find a certain curious satisfaction in hurting her now and then, in being wilfully unjust to her, as he would never hurt or be unjust to a mere friend. (Herein is one of the mysterious differences between love and affection!) She is alarmed and secretly aghast, as well she may be. He also is secretly aghast. For he has confessed a fact which is an inconvenient fact; and Anglo-Saxons have such a horror of inconvenient facts that they prefer to ignore them even to themselves. To pretend that things are not what they are is regarded by Anglo-Saxons as a proof of strength of mind and wholesomeness of disposition; while to admit that things are indeed what they are is deemed to be either weakness or cynicism. The plain man is incapable of being a cynic; he feels, therefore, that he has been guilty of weakness, and this, of course, makes him very cross.
"Can't something be done?" says his wife, meaning, "Can't something be done to ameliorate your hard lot?"
(Misguided creature! It was the wrong phrase to use. And any phrase would have been the wrong phrase. She ought to have caressed him, for to a caress there is no answer.)
"You know perfectly well that nothing can be done!" he snaps her up, like a tiger snapping at the fawn. And his eyes, challenging hers, seem to say: "Can I neglect my business? Can I shirk my responsibilities? Where would you be if I shirked them? Where would the children be? What about old age, sickness, death, quarter-day, rates, taxes, and your new hat? I have to provide for