The sin of despair, and a husband panders for his wife - in The Heart of the Matter

The central character in The Heart of the Matter - the police commissioner in the West African British colony, Scobie - resigned to his secondary status, to his tepid marriage, to the need continuously to console his nervous wife and assure her that everyone in their community loves and respects her (in effect to lie to her) - is like Graham Greene a Catholic, and he is forced to grapple with a confounding ethical question. He has vowed to do all that he can do to make his wife happy - which at the moment involves his acquiescing to her plan to leave the colony, retire, and settle in S. Africa. He in fact takes the initial steps to do so (he has just been passed over for promotion), but has almost no money in the bank and can't get the bank officer to loan him anything near the requisite amount. So he does have an avenue open to him: as police chief he has man opportunities to receive bribes (we have just seen him refuse even the appearance of impropriety with a sketchy Syrian merchant and flat-out refuse a bribe from a Portuguese caption whose ship the police are inspecting in port, searching for contraband (diamonds, usually) or any unusual communications that might be spying signals for the Germans (the novel is set in 1942). So is it the right thing for him to take this immoral course in order to be true to his sacred vow? Scobie, perhaps as a mouthpiece for GG himself, reflects at one point that despair is the greatest or gravest of sins, but tht oddly only good people can be prey to despair, as evil and corrupt people do not hope for or expect salvation in any event. Strangely, in Part 2 of the novel, we see that one way in which he is making his wife "happy," esp as the most likely will not be able to the colony any time soon, is to facilitate her having an affair with Wilson, a newly arrived official, who shares with wife (Louise) a passion for literature and poetry - Scobie is in effect pimping or pandering for his own wife; morality is loose and strange in this colony, but this behavior seems way over the top unless his true goal is to get her to leave him, and he gives no hint at that - there's no "other woman" on the scene. 


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