To talk about the crystal purity of a woman who has a moral cancer, which must kill her if it is not killed! To describe her folly as mere sentiment, when I know, more than most men, that such sentiment as that is simple conscience-poisoning! If I did not save her, if I were not by with my protecting hand, she would assuredly be lost. Well, I shall cure her, as I said, or kill her in the attempt. Once, when a boy, in a Parisian hospital, I saw an ouvreuse operated upon, for a tumorous deposit, which necessitated the excision of the whole of the right breast. It was before the days of chloroform, and the patient’s agony was terrible to witness. But she was saved. For the moral cancer also, the knife may be the only remedy; and it will be, as in the other case, kill or cure.
Meantime, our domestic life goes on with characteristic monotony. We have no quarrels, and no confidences. We eat, drink, and sleep like comfortable wedded people. The greater part of my day is spent among my books; the greater part of hers in simple domestic duties, in music, in wanderings about the gardens. She seldom visits in the parish now; but the poor come to her on stated days, and she is, as ever, charitable. At least once every Sunday she goes to church.
A sombre, sultry state of the atmosphere, with gathering thunder!
December 20.—I have been reading, to-day, Naquet’s curious pamphlet on “Divorce,” a subject which is just now greatly exercising our neighbours across the Channel. This study, combined with that of two new attempts in Zolaesque (which a French friend has been good enough to send me), has left me with a certain sense of nausea. Gradually, but surely, I am afraid, I am losing that fine British faith in the feminine ideal, which was among the legacies left me by a perfect mother. It is dawning upon me, at middle age, as it dawns upon a Parisian at twenty-one, that women are, at best, only the highest, or among the highest, of animals, and that sanitary precautions of the State must be taken—to keep them cleanly. It is this discovery which, perpetuated in Art, makes the whole literature of the Second Empire so repulsive to an English Philistine. “And smell so——faugh!” Are the days of chivalry, then, over? Is the ideal of pure maidenhood, of perfect womanhood, utterly overthrown? Is the modern woman—not Imogen, not Portia, not the lily maid of Ascolat, not Romola, not even Helen Pendennis?—but Messalina, Lucretia—nay, even Berthe Rougon, or the shamble-haunting wife of Claude, or the utterable Madame Bovary? Surely, surely, there cannot be all this literary smoke without some little social fire. Thank God, therefore, that the wise Republic has taken to the drastic remedy of crushing those vipers, the Christian priests, and of abolishing the solemn farce of the marriage ceremony. Marriage is a simple contract, not an arrangement made in heaven; it is social and sanitary, not religious and ideal;—and when any of the conditions are broken by either of the contracting parties, the contract is at an end.
Yes, I suppose it is so; I suppose that women are not angels, and that married life is an arrangement. And yet how much sweeter was that old-fashioned belief which pictured the wedded life as a divine communion of souls, a golden ladder beginning at the altar, and reaching—through many dark shadows, perhaps, but surely reaching—up to heaven! Ah, my hymeneal Jacob’s Ladder, with angels for ever descending and ascending, you have vanished from the world, with Noah’s Dove of Peace, and Christ’s Rainbow of Promise! All faiths have gone, and the faith in Love is the last to go.
I find that I am philosophizing—prosing, in other words—instead of setting down events as they occur. But indeed, there are no events to set down. I am in the position of the needy knife-grinder of the Anti-Jacobin:
“Story? God bless you, I have none to tell, sir!”
So, to ease my mind, I pour out my bile on paper.
December 21.—I have made a discovery. During the last few days my wife and Santley have been in correspondence. At any rate, he has written to her; and I suspect she has replied.
Baptisto has been my informant. Despite my command that he should cease to play the spy, he has persisted in keeping his eyes and ears open, and has managed to convey to me, in one way or another, exactly what he has seen or heard. This morning, when hanging about the lodge (still fascinated, I suspect, by the little widow), he discovered that there was a letter there addressed to his mistress, and he asked me, quite innocently, if he should fetch and take it to her. I showed no sign of anger or surprise, but bade him mind his own business. In the forenoon, I saw Ellen emerge from the house, and stroll carelessly in the direction of the lodge gates. I followed her at a distance, and saw, her enter the lodge, and emerge directly afterwards with a letter, which she read hastily and thrust into her bosom.