Work Text
July 3, 1891
As each of the past seven entries in this journal has begun with complaints about the monotony of convalescence, the inconvenience of being unable to engage another servant, and the unbearable mixture of suspense and tedium that my life has become, I begin this entry with a new pen, a fresh bottle of ink, and the best penmanship that a doctor can summon:NEWS AT LAST.This was the message slipped into my hand this morning by a shop-girl at the victualler's where I placed my order for the week. I did not, of course, look up at her when she handed it to me--as little as I have profited by my association with Holmes, I do at least now know how not to give the game away--so I don't know whether she was in fact a former client or one of the new Society members sponsored by the founders. At any rate, the message directs me to repair to the Club after midnight to hear this news. In the meantime, I must burn the message, and go about my day as if, as far as any and all outside observers may be concerned, nothing out of the ordinary has happened. That last instruction to myself seems more impossible every time I read it. I feel as if I am living through it all, at every moment--the ecstasy, the terror, the anguish, the long days of black depression, the agony of hope, the weeks of delirium, the confusion and the anger. That dull ache of sorrow and loneliness, which had in time almost become a narcotic of its own, has vanished. In its place I have this trembling anticipation. He must be alive. If the news were of his death, there would be no further need for secrecy. But alive where? And in what state? In my mind's eye I see again all the fates I imagined for him in the moments before my attack of brain fever. All the diseases and indignities of poverty; all the predations awaiting the vulnerable and isolated traveler; all the prisons that gape wide for those whose papers are not in order and who can give no plausible account of themselves; all the loathsome dens and warrens sending forth their siren songs to the opiomane; the labyrniths of the lower depths into which those who live by their wits and their knives are drawn, and from which so few ever emerge sane or whole. My own incompetence had sent him penniless into the world without his heart, like the fisherman's soul in that tale of Wilde's. He was alone on the Continent, with nothing of mine but an overcoat and a handful of broken promises. He could not reproach me any more bitterly than I had reproached myself at the moment that Mary confirmed my belated deductions about the true meaning of his note to me.Has he been found, or are they merely upon the scent? If he has been found, will he come home? If he comes home, will he see me? If he is as angry as he has a right to be, can I stand it?Useless to ask. I am, as he would surely tell me, attempting to theorize without data. I will put the pen away, and spend the day at home, where I will be unobserved, reading. Yes. Something absorbing which will blot out all of this agony. Lady Audley? No; I know it too well. The Woman In White, ditto. In Memoriam will make everything many times worse. The morning papers already lie in tatters at my feet.Ah, I have it. Middlemarch.JHW
July 4, 1891
It was actually necessary, in the end, to resort to Bleak House. But at length, just as the clock struck midnight, I let myself in through the servants' entrance of the Club. As the Club building is actually owned by a group of suffragettes who have banished men from the premises, this subterfuge has always been necessary on the occasions when Holmes and I were invited as guests. Holmes never attended, of course; I had to make his excuses. He never spoke of the Society to me without exasperation. He would have had me think that he held them in contempt; but I have always believed that he feared them as competitors. We could not, of course, have an honest conversation about it, because of Mary. Holmes evidently had not deduced our separation. I will be very interested to see whether the reason for it comes as a surprise to him. It certainly surprised me. And yet, in the time I have had to think about it, I have found that much is clarified in light of Mary's declaration. I was ruminating upon this when I reached the meeting room. I have never seen it deserted by night. There is something eerie about those empty chairs, all arranged around the unlit hearth, above which now hangs the crape-bordered testimonial in memory of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the unwitting and certainly unwilling founder of their Society. A single candle burned in the center of the chintz-covered table by the bay windows. The blinds had been drawn, so that even this candle-light should not penetrate through the windows to the street and arouse suspicion.If the ladies of the Society have a fault, in my opinion, it is that they tend to take things a little too far. But I should not censure them. If their solemnity and thoroughness still strikes me as naive, it has also done good service to me and mine.Clustered around the table were three women. Their faces, lit from below by the flickering candle, seemed to float in the darkness. One belonged to Tadpole's wife Annie, nee Harrison, currently the Society president. I was very much surprised to see, flickering nearby, the golden hair and porcelain skin of my own Mary. And, next to hers, the freckled face and chestnut hair of Miss Violet Hunter."Doctor Watson," said Mrs. Phelps, rising. "Pray take a seat.""You're surprised to see me, John," said Mary, with gentle sadness.I drew out a chair, bowed slightly in Mary's direction, and sat down in it. "I am delighted, of course," I said. "But I believed you to be in Walsall."She glanced unhappily at Miss Hunter. Miss Hunter's frank gaze rested upon me. Finally, and a bit stiffly, she spoke."Dr. Watson," Miss Hunter said, briskly. "This is extremely awkward, and I do apologize. After the generosity and the energy with which you and Mr. Holmes assisted me, it grieves me to think that I have caused you pain. But for that very reason, when Harrison requested my help, I thought it would be unpardonable to refuse. Mary agreed, and so we have come down together from Walsall. I cannot ask you to forgive me; but I hope that I can at least prevail upon you to accept my help."She tried to say these words carelessly; but the whole speech bore signs of having been rehearsed, and I observed that, as she clasped her hands together on the table, the knuckles went white. To be feared by a girl who has braved a hungry mastiff, a drunken manservant, and Mr. Jephro Rucastle is not a pleasant feeling, and I decided on the spot that I would do nothing to cultivate it. "My dear Miss Hunter," I said. "I hope I shall never have any cause to reproach you. Please accept my gratitude--and Holmes's, too, which I dare offer in his absence. He recognized you at once as an exceptional young lady. I have always trusted his judgment."If I had trusted his judgment about marrying Mary, many things might have been different. As I could no longer entirely trust my voice, at any rate, I rather awkwardly extended my right hand to her. She grasped it and shook it. I glanced at Mary, whose eyes were bright with tears. If Mrs. Phelps were astonished by any of this, she did not show it."I won't prolong your anxiety, Dr. Watson," said Mrs. Phelps. (It is my diary after all, and I do not have to call her Harrison, and I find I don't want to, so Mrs. Phelps she shall be.) "Carfax found Mr. Holmes in Lausanne, disguised as a Norwegian named Sigerson. Unfortunately, they were followed in their flight by a couple calling themselves the Schlessingers, who have captured him. Dr. Schlessinger is posing as a missionary working in South America, but from Carfax's description of him, more specifically of his left ear--""Holy Peters," I exclaimed.Mrs. Phelps leaned in, much excited. "Exactly, Dr. Watson. That was exactly my conjecture. We have been contacted by four of his victims; but those cases are all years old. We've never been able to move against him.""Neither could we," I said. "After the Darlington affair Peters and his 'wife' simply disappeared."I saw, in Mrs. Phelps's eyes, a light which was like a faint reflection of the fires always kindled in Holmes's eyes when he finally had the scent in his nostrils. It pleases me somehow to know this about poor old Tadpole's better half. Energy and vigor--that was always what he had wanted at school, and what at last he has found in Miss Harrison."Carfax informs us that Holmes believed, at any rate, that Peters intends to sell him to the highest bidder. We thought you might know who the bidders are.""Colonel Moran, for one," I answered. I hoped that it was too dark for any of the ladies in the room to note the symptoms of my increasing distress. Peters is not a man of formidable intelligence, but to his low cunning he joins an absolute ruthlessness that makes him a particularly brutal antagonist. It was true that he had never resorted to outright murder, but there was no form of human misery that he would shrink from inflicting in pursuit of profit. "Also Professor Moriarty's brother. Holmes mentioned two other ringleaders of Moriarty's gang who had escaped the net, but he didn't say who they were. Mr. Mycroft Holmes would know; but he's not sympathetic to our efforts. I've heard nothing from him since my last conversation with Mary.""Colonel Moran's in London now," Mrs. Phelps said. "Percy's a member at the Bagatelle; Moran is to be seen there every night, playing whist, and winning more often than he ought to. What about this brother?""His name is Andrew, and he is master of a railway station in Plymouth. Holmes believed--believes--" I made the correction awkwardly; the ladies mercifully allowed it to pass unnoticed--"that Mr. Andrew Moriarty was a silent partner. In other words, that he was not actively involved in the firm, but that he may have put up some of the money, and certainly reaped some of the profits. As for Colonel Moran, he drew a salary of six thousand a year from Moriarty.""Six thousand?" exclaimed Miss Hunter. "I will be lucky if I scrape out a bare hundred or two with this boarding school. Education is a fool's game, Mary. We must go into crime immediately."Mary laughed, looking up at Miss Hunter's freckled face. It pains me to say that she had never looked lovelier than she did then--her candle-lit face flushed with merriment, and one hand surreptitiously reaching, under the table, for Miss Hunter's knee. Then, something occurred to her, and she was suddenly all business."But that salary must have stopped now," Mary said. "The firm's broken up. Moran can't draw on that bank any longer; that's why he's playing cards for money every night.""Surely he would have savings," Miss Hunter said.Mary laughed. "Oh Vi, what a marvelous goose you are. As if a man like this Colonel Moran ever thinks of the future! Men really are the most improvident creatures. Even John would immediately spend every penny he took in if I weren't there to..."Mary looked down. She withdrew her hand from Miss Hunter's knee and folded both of hers on the table. There was a stricken silence."It's quite true," I finally said. "About me; and, I believe, about Colonel Moran. Thrift is not a virtue amongst the criminal classes. When they have it, they spend; when it's gone, they steal. That's what made Professor Moriarty so powerful. He took the long view. He had the patience to invest and to build.""Then perhaps his brother does too," said Mrs. Phelps. "If Mr. Andrew viewed Moriarty's empire as a kind of...stock market speculation...then perhaps he also understands the vital importance of accumulating capital. Perhaps that would make him the highest bidder."It was Miss Hunter's turn to lean in. "It would certainly make him the most convenient. Even supposing Peters has seized all of those false passports, I can't see him landing in London and trying to get Mr. Holmes through customs there."I felt myself, despite the anxiety curdling my bowels all this while, catching a bit of their fire."They won't go through customs at all," I said. "How can they? Holmes certainly won't cooperate, and dead or alive--"I stopped. They waited. Mary's face, when I looked at it, was full of kindness. Her kindness, only twelve months ago, had become unbearable to me--because it was not passion. But now, it fills me with gratitude. Not only because she has shown it so liberally to me, alone and friendless as I have been; but because it shows that I have not, after all, permanently harmed her."Dead or alive," I finally said, "they could hardly hope to conceal human cargo from even a routine customs inspection." Mrs. Phelps nodded. "On the other hand, if they could hire the right boat and the right captain, it would be easy enough for them to come ashore quietly in some deserted spot on the southwest coast and then get word to this Andrew Moriarty in Plymouth."Miss Hunter shook her head. "All of this is very speculative.""A speculation can be confirmed," Mrs. Phelps said, firmly. "Carfax is shadowing them in France. We will try to anticipate them in England. In the past, what they've always done is let a furnished house whose owners are abroad, then bring their captive there and extort the money from her. Tomorrow, Hunter, I want you to get a list of house-agents from Sutherland. Find the ones who handle properties on the coast and go round them to see if anything's been let furnished, in the past three days, to a couple in France who've handled the transaction by wire. When you have a short list, we'll go down and investigate."Miss Hunter nodded. "I will.""And don't tell Sutherland what you need the list for. That poor woman doesn't have the sense God gave sheep."Miss Hunter smiled a very charming and slightly wicked smile. "Of course, Harrison.""Carfax is in Dijon, at present," Mrs. Phelps said. "She needs money; I've wired her some. Peters and his trull--"Mary gave out a little squeak of shock. Even Miss Hunter stared."Well really," said Mrs. Phelps. "Any woman who preys on her own kind ought to be glad to be called no worse. They are, Carfax says, staying at a boarding-house in Dijon there while Peters has a wound on his hand attended to at the local hospital."I was pleased to hear Holmes had wounded the blackguard somewhere. If I ever see him again, I will impress upon him once and for all the vital importance, in situations where one is outnumbered or outgunned, of hitting below the belt. I will never understand his delicacy in this regard. It is not as if these men ever play by any rules themselves. Even the most fiendishly ingenious of them is, in the end, no more than a bully. Why he insisted on treating some of them like gentlemen, just because they were intelligent, whenStop it. He knows now. He's learned it the hard way, God forgive me. Bring him home. Bring him home, and I will never murmur against any of his nonsense again.I see it now and I suppose I saw it then, too, whenever I looked at Mary. It hurts to lose Mary; but I am standing it. If I need a difference, there it is. I love them both; but there is only one whose loss I can withstand."Dr. Watson?" said Miss Hunter, diffidently.I came back to myself. "I beg your pardon, Miss Hunter.""Would you like to help me? With the house-agents?"I really felt, for the first time that night, how young Miss Hunter was. It is easy to forget it; she has such an air of independence and such presence of mind. But what could have prepared her for a situation like this? She has never been married; she does not know what it is to separate after such a union. What should I do with this earnest wish of hers that we might--to spare Mary pain--become friends?"I should be glad to, Miss Hunter; but the thing is impossible. My movements are being watched. I can't meet with you here, and you can't call on me. We could not even meet in a restaurant without exciting gossip. And Holmes has never thought much of my independent work, even when my emotions were not threatening at every moment to overwhelm my reason. I think it best to leave the Society in charge of the investigation. Once you reach a conclusion, of course--""Of course," broke in Mrs. Phelps. "When we are ready to move against them, Doctor Watson, your assistance will be invaluable. We will take no step without you. Communication is difficult; but I shall make every effort to keep you abreast of developments. In the meantime, as we can do no more tonight, let me say good-night, and recommend that you go home by a different route than the one you took to get here."Mrs. Phelps rose. We all followed suit. I shook Mrs. Phelps's hand, in order not to look at Mary and Miss Hunter, and murmured some silly expression of gratitude."Doctor Watson," she said, very solemnly, "my husband has never forgotten your kindness to him. When this is all over, I will be proud to tell him that I was able to be of some service to you."It seems a hundred years ago that she and I were in that sick-room in Tadpole's house, watching Holmes discourse about the loveliness of roses. She was quite taken aback; but she can't have been more surprised than I was. Or Tadpole, poor man. I thought it was sweet of Holmes to encourage Percy in a way that would mean something to him. I never thought at the time about what he might be trying to say to me, any more than I ever thought--until I read Percy's inscription--that our talks in the rose garden were about anything more than horticulture.I turned to go. Lost in my own thoughts, I did not hear Mary and Miss Hunter whispering to each other in the hallway. I came upon them suddenly, as Mary was kissing her.If I wanted confirmation that Mary and I are truly separated, Providence has given it to me; and it serves me right for asking. There is affection; and there is hunger. Mary's affection I am familiar with. Mary's hunger, I had never seen until that moment.Let me be honest with myself, at least: it was humiliating. To be sure, I have long known that I never earned Mary's desire. But it is one thing to know something, and a quite different thing to see it. Holmes understood that. I can remember one day, years ago, I had reproached him over some dramatic trick he's played on a client, and he said, "Not everyone in the world has your wonderful patience for explanations, Watson. To put it in words of one syllable: they don't know it until you show it." I pointed out that "until" contained two syllables. He called me the most provoking man alive, and we had a bracing little tussle on the hearth-rug. No more of this. Even ordinary memories from those innocent early days burn me now as they slip through my fingers.I struggled to conceal my feelings, to little avail. Mary, after glancing at me, put her hands on Miss Hunter's shoulders, and whispered in her ear. Miss Hunter nodded, and ascended the staircase at the end of the corridor. Mary came toward me."Oh, John," she said. "This hurts you. I know it does. I can't--I can only--I can't help it, John. I know I should, but I can't."I held up my hands. I felt a choking sensation. I fought it, because she deserved an honest answer."I know you can't," I said. "It--that's the way of it. I know. I'm sorry. I can't either. I never--and you never. I should have--I should have wondered why you never objected, with all the times I left you at home. When you founded the Society I should have thought--I should have--I should have thought, I should have wondered why you never asked to come with us and why I never invited you. I--did you know? I didn't. When I married you, Mary, I had only a very partial understanding of love. Or of myself, or of you, or of him. It's the story of my life. I'm always the last to understand."I was ashamed to be weeping. She put her arms round me. I clutched her to me. We wept together. Those lines of that wretched poem of Tennyson's would come to me. So runs my dream; but what am I? An infant crying in the night; an infant crying for the light, and with no language but a cry.I will say this for Tennyson: he's very soothing. I was able, at last, to release Mary, and to look at her without that catch in my breath."I didn't know, John," she said. "I only knew that something wasn't right between us. I couldn't have guessed what it was."Whatever remains, however improbable."Why is this still so sad?" I asked her. "You have Miss Hunter and I have your friendship and my--hope. Why can't I be happy for both of us?"Mary touched my face, very gently, wiping away one of my many tears."We want our marriage to live; and we know it can't. When you want something that's dead to be alive...isn't that what grief is?"I swallowed. I nodded. "Good night, John," Mary said, gently but firmly. "Please God, Mr. Holmes will be back soon, safe and sound."I wished her goodnight and I walked home.After I closed the door of our house--I must say my house, now--I went through it from top to bottom, as I always do now before I retire. The emptiness continues to surprise. It is strange to think that, save for that awful time after my return from Afghanistan, I have really never lived alone. Since I left home, it's been dormitories, boarding houses, barracks, hospitals; then Holmes, then Mary. Even during the separation, Martha was at least about the house, though I can no longer think of her without feeling my flesh creep. Thank God Mary dismissed her when she did. I am sure my ravings would have made great copy.There is a certain freedom in this solitude. This diary is for no-one's eyes but my own. I have moved up to my bedroom the case in which I packed up some of Holmes's things, after Mrs. Hudson invited me to take whatever I wanted. Every night, I take the violin out of its case, and caress it briefly, and then replace it. I have no way of knowing what might put it out of order; and I should like it to be in good condition when he returns. The syringe in its morocco case I never touch. I don't know why I've kept it at all, as much as I always hated it. The glass is difficult. I look at the leather-covered handle and see the imprints of his fingers. I don't like to touch it; my own hands seem to handle it so clumsily, and it maddens me that his hands are not there to hold it. In the end, the only things I can ever bear to take to bed with me are the black silk mask and the black gloves. The gloves are a tight fit; my hands are broader than his. The mask fits quite comfortably. I lie in the darkness, and I think of that night in Milverton's study, and then I try to remember a dream I once thought I'd had, long ago, at Baskerville Hall. He is with me and not with me. Ghosts do not make the best lovers; but they are better than nothing.What I would not give to have him here, in solid form. The next time I touch him, I will not let go.JHW.