“You are quite unstrung, as it is natural you should be. But you must exert your reason and put the stopper upon your imagination. Let deductions and corollaries take care of themselves. Confine yourself to the facts, and you’ll see that they’re not as bad as they might be, after all. For example—”
“But it is just the facts that perplex and horrify me. My father destines me to be the murderer of Nicholas Pathzuol or of his next of kin. All ignorant of this destiny, I meet and love a lady whose name is Pathzuol—a name so rare that I had never heard it before, and have not since, except in this writing to-day. My lady is murdered; and I, though innocent, am suspected and accused of the crime. Add to this my father’s threat to come back from the grave and use me as his instrument, in case I hesitate or in case I never receive his letter; and—well, it is like a problem in mathematics—given this and that, to determine so and so. No, no, there’s no use denying it, this strange combination of facts must have some awful meaning. It seems as though each minute I was just on the point of catching it, and then as I tighten my fingers around it, it escapes again and eludes me.”
“Nonsense, man. You are yielding to your fancy, like a child who, because he feels oppressed in the dark, conjures up ghosts and goblins, and can not be persuaded that there are none about, till you light the gas and show him that the room is empty. Come, light the gas of your common sense! Recognize that your problem has no solution, none because it is not a true problem, but merely a fortuitous arrangement of circumstances which chances to bear a superficial resemblance to one. Reduce your quasi problem to its simplest terms: thus, given x and y and z, to find the value of b. Don’t you see that there’s no connection?”
“Oh, of course, I acknowledge that I can’t see any connection. That’s just the trouble. I feel that there must be a connection—one that I can’t see. If I could only see it, it wouldn’t be so bad. But this perplexity, this——”
“This fiddle-stick! You are resolved to distress yourself, and I suppose it’s useless for me to labor with you. Only this much I will say, that if you should bestow a little of the energy you are expending in the effort to catch hold of a non-existent inference, upon sympathy with your father’s unhappiness, I should have more respect for you. They talk about suffering ennobling and chastening men, forsooth! So far as you are concerned, suffering has done nothing but intensify your natural egotism. For instance, after reading that letter of your father’s, the first idea that strikes you is, ‘How does it affect me, how am I concerned by it?’ whereas the spectacle of your father s immense grief ought to have absorbed you to the exclusion of every thing else, ought to have left no room in your mind for any other thought.”
But for all Merivale could say by way either of appeal or of reprimand, I was powerless to subdue that feeling which had begun to stir in my breast. I recognized that I was unreasonable and selfish, but I was also helpless. I could not get over the shock I had sustained when Pathzuol’s name first took shape before my eyes. Every time I remembered that moment—and it kept recurring to me in spite of myself—my heart sank and my breath became spasmodic, as if I had been confronted by a ghost. And then ensued that sensation of groping in the dark after something invisible, unknown, yet surely there, hovering within arm’s reach, but as elusive as a will-o’-the-wisp. I struggled with this sensation, tried my utmost to shake it off, but it sat like a monster on my heart. Its weight was deadly, its touch was icy; it would not be dislodged.
“It is true, all that you say, Merivale,” I returned at length. “But the question is not one of what I ought to do; it is one of what I can do. I know I ought to regard this matter in the same collected spirit that you display; but it concerns me so intimately, you see, that I can’t resist being somewhat perturbed. My wits, so to speak, have been scattered by an unexpected blow. I shan’t be able to emulate your sang-froid until they have got back to their proper places. I’m so heated and upset that I don’t really know what I think or what I feel. I guess perhaps I’d better go for a walk and cool off, and arrive at an understanding with myself.”
“The very worst thing you could possibly do—go away by yourself and brood and get more and more morbid every minute. What you want is to think of something else for a while, and then when you come back to this subject you’ll be in a condition to regard it in its correct light. Let’s—let’s play a game of cribbage, or read some Rossetti; or suppose you fiddle a little?”
“No, I feel the need of air and exercise. I’ll go out and take a walk. I sha’n’. brood, I’ll reflect on the sensible things you’ve said. Good-by.”
I walked briskly through the streets, striving to collect my faculties, striving to regain sufficient mental tranquillity to comprehend exactly what the long and short of the whole business was. But the feeling that there was something more in it than I could make out, intensified. It would not be dispelled. The oftener I went over the circumstances, the more significant they seemed.—Significant of what? Precisely the question that I could not answer. The longer I allowed my mind to dwell upon them, the more acute became that sensation of wrestling with a problem, of groping for a something suspended near to me in the dark. My father had destined me to be a murderer; the name of my intended victim was Pathzuol; I had been engaged to a young lady of the same name, very possibly the daughter of my father’s foe; she had indeed been murdered, though not by my hand; and yet I, despite my innocence, had been deemed guilty of the crime: this chain of facts kept passing over and over before me. I felt that it must mean something; it could not be purely fortuitous; there was a break, a missing link, which, if I could but supply it, would make the hidden meaning clear. I walked the streets all night, unable to fix my thoughts on any thing else. I said, “You are merely wearing yourself out and getting your brains into a tangle: try to divert your attention. Count up to a thousand. See how much you can remember of the Moonlight Sonata. Conjugate a Hebrew verb. Do what you will, only stop puzzling over this matter. As Merivale says, when you have thought of something else for a while, you will be in a condition to return to it with refreshed intelligence, and view it in the right light.” But the next moment I was at it again, in greater perplexity than ever. Of course, I succeeded in working myself up to a high degree of nervousness: was as exhausted and as exasperated as though I had spent an hour in futile attempts to thread a needle.