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.
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