MY LORD'S MIND
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.
When the first information reached Iris of Hugh Mountjoy's dangerous
illness, we were at breakfast. It struck her dumb. She handed the
letter to me, and left the table.
I hate a man who doesn't know what it is to want money; I hate a man
who keeps his temper; I hate a man who pretends to be my wife's friend,
and who is secretly in love with her all the time. What difference did
it make to me whether Hugh Mountjoy ended in living or dying? If I had
any interest in the matter, it ought by rights (seeing that I am
jealous of him) to be an interest in his death. Well! I declare
positively that the alarming news from London spoilt my breakfast There
is something about that friend of my wife--that smug, prosperous,
well-behaved Englishman--which seems to plead for him (God knows how!)
when my mind is least inclined in his favour. While I was reading about
his illness, I found myself hoping that he would recover--and, I give
you my sacred word of honour, I hated him all the time.
My Irish friend is mad--you will say. Your Irish friend, my dear
follow, does not dispute it.
Let us get back to my wife. She showed herself again after a long
absence, having something (at last) to say to her husband.
"I am innocently to blame," she began, "for the dreadful misfortune
that has fallen on Mr. Mountjoy. If I had not given him a message to
Mrs. Vimpany, he would never have insisted on seeing her, and would
never have caught the fever. It may help me to bear my misery of
self-reproach and suspense, if I am kept informed of his illness. There
is no fear of infection by my receiving letters. I am to write to a
friend of Mrs. Vimpany, who lives in another house, and who will answer
my inquiries. Do you object, dear Harry, to my getting news of Hugh
Mountjoy every day, while he is in danger?"
I was perfectly willing that she should get that news, and she ought to
have known it.
It seemed to me to be also a bad sign that she made her request with
dry eyes. She must have cried, when she first heard that he was likely
to sink under an attack of fever. Why were her tears kept hidden in her
own room? When she came back to me, her face was pale and hard and
tearless. Don't you think she might have forgotten my jealousy, when I
was so careful myself not to show it? My own belief is that she was
longing to go to London, and help your wife to nurse the poor man, and
catch the fever, and die with him if _he_ died.
Is this bitter? Perhaps it is. Tear it off, and light your pipe with
it.
Well, the correspondence relating to the sick man continued every day;
and every day--oh, Vimpany, another concession to my jealousy!--she
handed the letters to me to read. I made excuses (we Irish are good at
that, if we are good at nothing else), and declined to read the medical
reports. One morning, when she opened the letter of that day, there
passed over her a change which is likely to remain in my memory as long
as I live. Never have I seen such an ecstasy of happiness in any
woman's face, as I saw when she read the lines which informed her that
the fever was mastered. Iris is sweet and delicate and bright--
essentially fascinating, in a word. But she was never a beautiful
woman, until she knew that Mountjoy's life was safe; and she will never
be a beautiful woman again, unless the time comes when my death leaves
her free to marry him. On her wedding-day, he will see the
transformation that I saw--and he will be dazzled as I was.
She looked at me, as if she expected me to speak.
"I am glad indeed," I said, "that he is out of danger."
She ran to me--she kissed me; I wouldn't have believed it was in her to
give such kisses. "Now I have your sympathy," she said, "my happiness
is complete!" Do you think I was indebted for these kisses to myself or
to that other man? No, no--here is an unworthy doubt. I discard it.
Vile suspicion shall not wrong Iris this time.
And yet----
Shall I go on, and write the rest of it?
Poor, dear Arthur Mountjoy once told me of a foreign author, who was in
great doubt of the right answer to some tough question that troubled
him. He went into his garden and threw a stone at a tree. If he hit the
tree, the answer would be--Yes. If he missed the tree, the answer would
be--No. I am going into the garden to imitate the foreign author. You
shall hear how it ends.
I have hit the tree. As a necessary consequence, I must go on and write
the rest of it.
There is a growing estrangement between Iris and myself--and my
jealousy doesn't altogether account for it. Sometimes, it occurs to me
that we are thinking of what our future relations with Mountjoy are
likely to be, and are ashamed to confess it to each other.
Sometimes--and perhaps this second, and easiest, guess may be the right
one--I am apt to conclude that we are only anxious about money matters.
I am waiting for her to touch on the subject, and she is waiting for
me; and there we are at a deadlock.
I wish I had some reason for going to some other place. I wish I was
lost among strangers. I should like to find myself in a state of
danger, meeting the risks that I used to run in my vagabond days. Now I
think of it, I might enjoy this last excitement by going back to
England, and giving the Invincibles a chance of shooting me as a
traitor to the cause. But my wife would object to that.
Suppose we change the subject.
You will be glad to hear that you knew something of law, as well as of
medicine. I sent instructions to my solicitor in London to raise a loan
on my life-insurance. What you said to me turns out to be right. I
can't raise a farthing, for three years to come, out of all the
thousands of pounds which I shall leave behind me when I die.
Are my prospects from the newspaper likely to cheer me after such a
disappointment as this? The new journal, I have the pleasure of
informing you, is much admired. When I inquire for my profits, I hear
that the expenses are heavy, and I am told that I must wait for a rise
in our circulation. How long? Nobody knows,
I shall keep these pages open for a few days more, on the chance of
something happening which may alter my present position for the better.
My position has altered for the worse.
I have been obliged to fill my empty purse, for a little while, by
means of a bit of stamped paper. And how shall I meet my liabilities
when the note falls due? Let time answer the question; for the present
the evil day is put off. In the meanwhile, if that literary speculation
of yours is answering no better than my newspaper, I can lend you a few
pounds to get on with. What do you say (on second thoughts) to coming
back to your old quarters at Passy, and giving me your valuable advice
by word of mouth instead of by letter?
Come, and feel my pulse, and look at my tongue--and tell me how these
various anxieties of mine are going to end, before we are any of us a
year older. Shall I, like you, be separated from my wife--at her
request; oh, not at mine! Or shall I be locked up in prison? And what
will become of You? Do you take the hint, doctor?