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.