Blind Love

Here, my old-vagabond-Vimpany, is an interesting case for you--the cry

of a patient with a sick mind.

Look over it, and prescribe for your wild Irish friend, if you can.

You will perhaps remember that I have never thoroughly trusted you, in

all the years since we have known each other. At this later date in our

lives, when I ought to see more clearly than ever what an unfathomable

man you are, am I rash enough to be capable of taking you into my

confidence?

I don't know what I am going to do; I feel like a man who has been

stunned. To be told that the murderer of Arthur Mountjoy had been seen

in London--to be prepared to trace him by his paltry assumed name of

Carrigeen--to wait vainly for the next discovery which might bring him

within reach of retribution at my hands--and then to be overwhelmed by

the news of his illness, his recovery, and his disappearance: these are

the blows which have stupefied me. Only think of it! He has escaped me

for the second time. Fever that kills thousands of harmless creatures

has spared the assassin. He may yet die in his bed, and be buried, with

the guiltless dead around him, in a quiet churchyard. I can't get over

it; I shall never get over it.

Add to this, anxieties about my wife, and maddening letters from

creditors--and don't expect me to write reasonably.

What I want to know is whether your art (or whatever you call it) can

get at my diseased mind, through my healthy body. You have more than

once told me that medicine can do this. The time has come for doing it.

I am in a bad way, and a bad end may follow. My only medical friend,

deliver me from myself.

In any case, let me beg you to keep your temper while you read what

follows.

I have to confess that the devil whose name is Jealousy has entered

into me, and is threatening the tranquillity of my married life. You

dislike Iris, I know--and she returns your hostile feeling towards her.

Try to do my wife justice, nevertheless, as I do. I don't believe my

distrust of her has any excuse--and yet, I am jealous. More

unreasonable still, I am as fond of her as I was in the first days of

the honeymoon. Is she as fond as ever of me? You were a married man

when I was a boy. Let me give you the means of forming an opinion by a

narrative of her conduct, under (what I admit to have been) very trying

circumstances.