It is only from force of habit that I so address you today. Even the knowledge that this happens to our sharpest Tempters does not excuse such a brand of failure. For the moment, you may thank Our Father Below that all you have lost was your sight, and even then, not permanently.
Your woman has confessed Faith in the Enemy. Faith that He will look past the filth she is and turn her from our paths as He restores her spirit to a clean standing before Him. Mind as well that she can do nothing but ask. This changing of her heart and ways lies solely with Him, and with that perversion, that aberration, called Mercy -- but He does it! And that is the moment in which your sight failed you -- when she came up from confessing Him, then from being head-to-foot in that water, that was the Enemy's light on her face. If Our Father Below must run from that light, lest it catch him straight on, how much more are we so compelled lest -- well, I obviously need not remind you.
I must ask, though, that you save your blubbing until such time, Hell forfend, as you would lose her forever. Not only have you not so lost her, but even in such a blow as we are dealt, the Enemy gives us nothing that He also does not reserve for Himself.
The first such thing is Time. If all goes well, your woman may live another forty years, or fifty, or even past that. You are well aware of the power of a moment's suggestion; think of what you may accomplish if there are decades available to you. I am not, of course, recommending that you wait that long. We may have such time, or we may lose your woman within the coming week. Either way, you must begin to reassert yourself before her. Now is a wondrous chance for that -- since she is so freshly started in knowing Him, you may remind her often of the hold you possessed even so recently over her. Send some of her current friends -- especially her male ones -- round to call, perhaps with a bottle of a vintage she has treasured but vainly sought. If we wait until the point when she is close to, as one of her world's poets said, "shuffling off her mortal coil," or even halfway to when we think she may, I dare say it will be too late.
It is true in the World of Men, and equally so for us: if there is a set task to be completed in a fixed amount of Time, the task will so expand as to fill all that time. Working to recover a soul from the Enemy will require most, if not all, of a Tempter's time and laborious effort. Forgive me if I fail exactly to congratulate you for the hand you have dealt yourself.
After dealing with Time, we must address familial relationships. The success, or lack thereof, in extricating one who has so recently professed the Enemy has much to do with the patient's choice of company in general, and family in particular. As you are too sadly aware, the Solicitor's family have their feet solidly set on the Enemy and will look to Him to encourage and entice your woman in His path. More also, if you prove to be as careless in future as you were today, your woman will look to their example of trusting His goodness that way, and do so for herself. There are few sights as hateful to us as whole families entrenched in such trust -- He has them so far under His protection that we may only attempt to strike without assurance of landing the kind of good hard hit on which we thrive.
Finally, if I may extend on the family idea, there is an avenue which remains open to us -- even if only through an oversight on the part of Our Father Below. For all the libertine behaviour in which your woman engaged, the Enemy saw fit to protect her body. You know what that means. Even if it is some other young man she marries, although the Solicitor's son is a strong favorite in that, the Enemy will look to fine-tune her heart and conduct to draw exclusively unto her husband. And success shall often enough be His, that the human creatures shall not leave off after having one child. For all the joking men do in their world about the more unruly children coming from Below, and Our Father who is there, it is his influence and stamp on them -- there is nothing more he can offer. It is the Enemy Whose hand fashions their development, Who brings the same sickening Tenderness to their parents' hearts as also radiates from His. To strike a child, is to strike those hearts -- His as well as those of the human creatures. And while we have recovered many a soul to Our Houses over the illnesses of children, and sometimes their deaths, the souls have almost exclusively been those of the parents. The children, we almost always lose to the Enemy in their youth and purity before Him.
Your woman, when she shall become a mother, will no doubt look to the Enemy for their safety. Should she marry the Solicitor's son -- and I think we had better plan on that exact event -- he will lift up all his children and wife to Him also, as will his parents and sister. And as he does, so may she. Among their parents, grandparents, and aunt, I must almost forfeit any hope of bringing your woman's children to Our Father Below -- except that He himself showed me the years to come. When those children get to be the age their mother is now, Our Father shall have played the fool, and set into motion what the Enemy's Book calls "Perilous Times." Oh, do not worry -- we shall reap many souls with the legitimising and exaltation of many such behaviours of the sort wherein you had your woman engaging before your blunder. Our battle cries are set already -- "If It Feels Good, Do It" and "Everyone Else Is, So Why Can I Not?" But I call him a fool, because these Perilous Times shall come to a crashing end in precipitating the Enemy's return, as He will do to make an end of us and our work. As that day is not yet here, we may still endeavour to turn one small angle of a step into a fully formed path to us -- so take heart, my daughter.
While you are not excused from what you still must do in reclaiming your woman's life, you may -- not "will," only "may" -- redeem yourself somewhat in ruining, if not claiming outright, the lives and souls of her children. Remember always, though: One failure is enough in the sight of Hell to negate thousands of successes. And do not think that the failure of seeing a patient side with the Enemy is a battle from whose loss there is an easy recovery. From the loss of that battle, many of us have lost the wars for our patients' souls.
At present, it is only your sight you have lost. You have not lost your woman -- nor, I trust, the sense of That Which Is Good For You. To that end, when your sight returns, call out to me at once; next morning, I shall set out for your house. If you possess that Sense, wait for me on your front porch. Front doors are for walking through when opened -- not for needing to be knocked upon.
Never mind what souls you have failed to bring into your larder. Food is not the current issue. We shall sit down at your table and begin immediately to hope for, and to plan, the successes by which I may remain
Your affectionate mother,
Slumtrimpet