Chapter Text
It lay down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted; for there was no thorough-fare, and unless you were going to the Court you had no business there at all. At the end of this avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, and through this arch you walked straight into the gardens of Stamford Court.
The house faced the arch, and occupied three sides of a quadrangle. It was very old, and very irregular and rambling. The windows were uneven; some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others so modern that they might have been added only yesterday. Great piles of chimneys rose up here and there behind the pointed gables, and seemed as if they were so broken down by age and long service that they must have fallen but for the straggling ivy which, crawling up the walls and trailing even over the roof, wound itself about them and supported them.
The broad outer moat was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the orchard hung over it with gnarled, straggling branches that drew fantastical shadows upon the green slope. Within this moat there was the fish-pond—a sheet of water that extended the whole length of the garden and bordering which there was an avenue called the lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, so screened from observation by the thick shelter of the over-arching trees that it seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews; a place in which a conspiracy might have been planned, or a lover's vow registered with equal safety; and yet it was scarcely twenty paces from the house.
At the end of this dark arcade there was the shrubbery, where, half buried among the tangled branches and the neglected weeds, stood the rusty wheel of an old well. It had been of good service in its time, no doubt; but it had fallen into disuse now, and scarcely any one at Stamford Court knew whether the spring had dried up or not. But sheltered as was the solitude of this lime-tree walk, I doubt very much if it was ever put to any romantic uses. Often in the cool of the evening, the present master of the house Sir Michael Stamford would stroll up and down smoking his cigar, with his dogs at his heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by his side; but in about ten minutes the baronet and his companion would grow tired of the rustling limes and the still water, hidden under the spreading leaves of the water-lilies, and the long green vista with the broken well at the end, and would stroll back to the drawing-room, where my lady played dreamy melodies by Beethoven and Mendelssohn till her husband fell asleep in his easy-chair.
Sir Michael was fifty-six years of age, and he had married a second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday. He was a big man, tall and stout, with a deep, sonorous voice and handsome black eyes. For seventeen years he had been a widower with an only child, a daughter, Molly Stamford, now eighteen, and by no means too well pleased at having a step-mother brought home to the Court; for Miss Molly had run father's house since her earliest childhood, and had carried the keys, and jingled them in the pockets of her silk aprons, and lost them in the shrubbery, and dropped them into the pond, and given all manner of trouble about them from the hour in which she entered her teens.
But Miss Molly's day was over; and now, when she asked anything of the housekeeper, the housekeeper would tell her that she would speak to my lady, or she would consult my lady, and if my lady pleased it should be done. So the baronet's daughter, who was an excellent horsewoman and a very clever naturalist, spent most of her time out of doors, riding about the green lanes, and sketching the plants, and flowers, and all manner of animal life that came in her way. She set her face with a firm determination against any intimacy between herself and the baronet's young wife; and amiable as that lady was, she found it quite impossible to overcome Miss Molly's prejudices and dislike; or to convince the spoilt girl that she had not done her a cruel injury by marrying Sir Michael Stamford.
The truth was that Lady Stamford had, in becoming the wife of Sir Michael, made one of those apparently advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the envy and hatred of her sex. She had come into the neighborhood as a governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near Stamford Court. No one knew anything of her, except that she came in answer to an advertisement which Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, had inserted in The Times. She came from London; and the only reference she gave was to a lady at a school at Brompton, where she had once been a teacher. But this reference was so satisfactory that none other was needed, and Miss Mary Morstan was received by the surgeon as the instructress of his daughters. Her accomplishments were so brilliant and numerous, that it seemed strange that she should have answered an advertisement offering such very moderate terms of remuneration as those named by Mr. Dawson; but Miss Morstan seemed perfectly well satisfied with her situation.
People who observed this, accounted for it by saying that it was a part of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy and contented under any circumstances. For you see, Miss Mary Morstan was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Everyone loved, admired, and praised her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate that stood in her pathway, ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little service. The verger at the church, who ushered her into the surgeon's pew; the vicar, who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway station, who brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants; everybody, high and low, united in declaring that Mary Morstan was the sweetest girl that ever lived.
Perhaps it was the rumor of this which penetrated into the quiet chamber of Stamford Court; or, perhaps, it was the sight of her pretty face, looking over the surgeon's high pew every Sunday morning; however it was, it was certain that Sir Michael Stamford suddenly experienced a strong desire to be better acquainted with Mr. Dawson's governess. He had only to hint his wish to the worthy doctor for a little party to be got up, to which the vicar and his wife, and the baronet and his daughter, were invited.
That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael's fate. He could no more resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice; the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But this was love—this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his old body; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair, and a slim waist, such as he had twenty years before. All these signs gave token of the truth, and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir Michael Stamford had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.
I do not think that, throughout his courtship, the baronet once calculated upon his wealth or his position as reasons for his success. If he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them with a shudder. It pained him too much to believe for a moment that any one so lovely and innocent could value herself against a splendid house or a good old title. No; there was nothing whatever in Miss Morstan’s manner that betrayed the shallow artifices employed by a woman who wishes to captivate a rich man.
One misty August evening, Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Mary Morstan, at a window in the surgeon's little drawing-room, took an opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent from the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He made the governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand. There was something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to her—half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than that she should accept his offer if she would not be happy with him.
Mary Morstan flushed scarlet to the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than Sir Michael had ever seen her before. She leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. She wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket, or a cross, or a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was, she always kept it hidden under her dress.
"I think some people are born to be unlucky, Sir Michael," she said, by-and-by; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to become Lady Stamford."
She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the man looked up at her with surprise.
Mary Morstan was not looking at Sir Michael, but straight out into the misty twilight and dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. The baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he could not discover the expression of her eyes. If he could have done so, he would have seen a yearning gaze which seemed as if it would have pierced the far obscurity and looked away—away into another world.
"And this is your answer?"
She did not remove her gaze from the darkening country side, but for some moments was quite silent. Sir Michael took her tiny hands between his own, and spoke again: “Mary—Mary, tell me plainly. Do you dislike me?"
"Dislike you? No—no!"
"But is there anyone else whom you love?"
She laughed aloud at his question. "I do not love anyone in the world," she answered.
He was glad of her reply; and yet that and the strange laugh jarred upon his feelings. He was silent for some moments, and then said, with a kind of effort:
"Well, Mary, I will not ask too much of you. I dare say I am a romantic old fool; but if you do not dislike me, and if you do not love anyone else, I see no reason why we should not make a very happy couple. Is it a bargain, Mary?"
"Yes."
The baronet took her in his arms and kissed her once upon the forehead, then quietly bidding her good-night, he walked straight out of the house.
He walked straight out of the house, this foolish man, because there was some strong emotion at work in his breast—neither joy nor triumph, but something almost akin to disappointment—some stifled and unsatisfied longing which lay heavy and dull at his heart, as if he had carried a corpse in his bosom. He carried the corpse of that hope which had died at the sound of Mary's words. All the doubts and fears and timid aspirations were ended now. He must be contented, like other men of his age, to be married for his fortune and his position.
Mary Morstan went slowly up the stairs to her little room at the top of the house. She placed her dim candle on the chest of drawers, and seated herself on the edge of the white bed, still and white as the draperies hanging around her.
"No more dependence, no more tragedy, no more humiliations," she said; "every trace of the old life melted away—every clue to identity buried and forgotten—except these, except these."
She had never taken her left hand from the black ribbon at her throat. She drew it from her bosom, as she spoke, and looked at the object attached to it. It was neither a locket, a miniature, nor a cross; it was a ring wrapped in an oblong piece of paper—the paper partly written, partly printed, yellow with age, and crumpled with much folding.
* * * * *
He threw the end of his cigar into the water, and leaning his elbows upon the bulwarks, stared meditatively at the waves.
He was a young man of about thirty, with fair face bronzed by exposure to the sun; he had handsome eyes, with a grave smile in them that shone through the blond lashes even when his mouth was set, as it habitually was, in a determined line. He was compactly yet powerfully built; he wore a loose gray suit and a felt hat, placed precisely upon his sandy hair. His name was John Watson, and he was aft-cabin passenger on board the Compass Rose, en route from India to England.
There were very few passengers in the aft-cabin of the Rose. An elderly trader returning to his native country with his wife and daughters, after having made a fortune in the Hindoostan; a governess of three-and-thirty years of age, going home to marry a man to whom she had been engaged fifteen years; the sentimental daughter of a wealthy Indian merchant, invoiced to England to finish her education, and Watson, were the only first-class passengers on board.
And Watson was, quietly, the life and soul of the vessel; nobody knew who or what he was, or where he came from, but everybody liked him. He sat at the bottom of the dinner-table, and assisted the captain in doing the honors of the friendly meal. He opened the champagne bottles, and took wine with every one present. He was a capital hand at speculation and vingt-et-un, and all the merry games, which kept the little circle round the cabin-lamp so deep in innocent amusement, that a hurricane might have howled overhead without their hearing it.
But when the Rose came to be within a week's sail of England everybody noticed a change in him. He grew restless and fidgety; sometimes moody and thoughtful.
The sun was drooping down behind the waves as Watson lighted his cigar upon this August evening. Only six days more, the sailors had told him that afternoon, and they would see the English coast.
And how well he remembered his last days in England, three years ago; the beautiful young wife, and dearer still, infant girl, who were waiting for him to return with enough capital to provide for them all. He ached with the missing of them, and yet, what choice had there been? None at all, not after his wife had fairly broke down, and burst in to a storm of sobs and lamentations, telling him that he ought not to have married her if he could give her nothing but poverty and misery; and that he had done her a cruel wrong in making her his wife. By heaven! Her constant reproaches drove him almost mad. His desertion had been the only way to secure their futures, short of throwing himself into the sea and letting her make a better match. It had not been an easy path, not with the constant toil in the mines, the disappointment and despair, rheumatism, fever, starvation.
But in the end, he had conquered! He had done it for them; the one driving ambition of his life, to be worthy of his family. One blistering morning, just two months ago, with a suffocating rain wetting him to the skin, up to his neck in clay and mire, half-starved, enfeebled by fever, stiff with rheumatism, a monster nugget turned up under his spade, and he was in one minute the richest man in India. How he had cried, with that lump of gold in the bosom of his shirt. He traveled post-haste to the city, realized his price, which was worth upward of £20,000, and a fortnight afterward was on his way back to his wife and child.
He wondered now, uneasily, if he should have written to her sooner. He could not, not when everything had looked so black. And then when fortune came, it had been swift, and he thought to beat the mail ship home to England, in any case. What would she be doing right now? Tending the child, surely. Tucking her up to bed.
He fell into a reverie, and puffed meditatively at his cigar. The last ray of summer daylight had died out, and the pale light of the crescent moon only remained.
*****
The same August sun which had gone down behind the waste of waters glimmered redly upon the broad face of the old clock over that ivy-covered archway which leads into the gardens of Stamford Court.
As the clock over the archway struck eight, a door at the back of the house was softly opened, and a girl came out into the gardens. She was not, perhaps, straightforwardly pretty; instead she displayed a profound depth of beauty which hinted at a power and self-control not common in a girl of nineteen or twenty. Her jet-black hair hung nearly to her waist, and her olive complexion held a richness not achieved by girls fairer and more fashionable in their looks. Her figure was robust, and in spite of her humble dress, she had something of the grace and carriage of a gentlewoman. This was Jeannine Marks, who had been nursemaid in Mr. Dawson's family, and whom Lady Stamford had chosen for her maid after her marriage with Sir Michael.
Of course, this was a wonderful piece of good fortune for Jeannine, who found her wages trebled and her work lightened in the well-ordered household at the Court; and who was therefore quite as much the object of envy among her particular friends as my lady herself to higher circles. This suited Jeannine quite well; she had an ambitious nature and an independent heart, and had no wish to live out her youth as a nursemaid.
A man, who was sitting on the broken wood-work of the well, started as the lady's-maid came out of the dim shade of the limes and stood before him among the weeds and brushwood.
"Why, Jeannine," said the man, shutting a clasp-knife with which he had been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, "you came upon me so still and sudden, that I thought you was an evil spirit. I've come up to see you."
"I can see the well from my bedroom window, Charlie," Jeannine answered, pointing to an open lattice in one of the gables. "I saw you sitting here, and came down to have a chat; it's better talking out here than in the house, where there's always somebody listening."
This Charlie was a slender fox a man, about twenty-three years of age. His pale hair grew low upon his forehead, and his brows met over a pair of greenish gray eyes; his nose was comely and well-shaped, but the mouth was thin in form and animal in expression.
The girl seated herself lightly upon the wood-work at his side, and put one of her hands, which had grown soft in her new and easy service, about his neck.
"Are you glad to see me, Charlie?" she asked.
"Of course I'm glad, lass," he answered, opening his knife again, and scraping away at the hedge-stake.
They were distant cousins, and had been play fellows in childhood, and sweethearts in early youth. She bit her lip as her lover spoke, and looked away. He went on cutting and chopping at a rude handle he was fashioning to the stake, whistling softly to himself all the while, and not once looking at his cousin.
For some time they were silent, but by-and-by she said, with her face still turned away from her companion: "What a fine thing it is for Miss Morstan that was, to have more gowns than she can wear, and her chariot and four, and a husband that thinks there isn't one spot upon all the earth that's good enough for her to set her foot upon!"
"Ay, it is a fine thing, Jeannine, to have lots of money," answered Charlie, "and I hope you'll be warned by that, my lass, to save up your wages for when we are wed."
"Why, only three months ago she was in Dawson’s house – a servant like me!" continued the girl, as if she had not heard her cousin's speech. "She took wages and worked for them as hard, or harder, than I did. You should have seen her shabby clothes, Charlie—worn and patched, and darned and turned and twisted, yet always looking nice upon her, somehow. She gives me more as lady's-maid here than ever she got from Mr. Dawson then. Why, I've seen her come out of the parlor with a few sovereigns and a little silver in her hand, that master had just given her for her quarter's salary; and now look at her!"
"Never you mind her," said Charlie; "take care of yourself, Jeannine; that's all you've got to do. What should you say to a public-house for you and me, by-and-by, my girl? There's pots of money to be made out of a public-house. You can learn a great deal about people when they’re in their cups – a great deal that they’d prefer you not to know."
The girl still sat with her face averted from her lover, her hands hanging listlessly in her lap, and her dark, wide eyes fixed upon the last low streak of crimson dying out behind the trunks of the trees. This was less than she had wanted for herself.
"You should see the inside of the house, Charlie," she said; "it's a tumbledown looking place enough outside; but you should see my lady's rooms—all pictures and gilding, and great looking-glasses that stretch from the ceiling to the floor. Painted ceilings, too, that cost hundreds of pounds, the housekeeper told her, and all done for her."
"She's a lucky one," muttered Charlie, affecting indifference. "Is she at home to-night?"
"No; she has gone out with Sir Michael to a dinner party at the Beeches. They've seven or eight miles to drive, and they won't be back till after eleven."
"Then I'll tell you what, Jeannine, if the inside of the house is so mighty fine, I should like to have a look at it."
"You shall, then. Mrs. Turner, the housekeeper, knows you by sight, and she can't object to my showing you some of the best rooms."
It was almost dark when the cousins left the shrubbery and walked slowly to the house. The door by which they entered led into the servants' hall, on one side of which was the housekeeper's room. Jeannine stopped for a moment to ask the housekeeper if she might take her cousin through some of the rooms, and having received permission to do so, lighted a candle at the lamp in the hall, and beckoned to Charlie to follow her into the other part of the house.
The long, black oak corridors were dim in the ghostly twilight—the light carried by Jeannine looking only a poor speck in the broad passages through which the girl led her cousin. “It's a dull place, Jeannine," he said, as they emerged from a passage into the principal hall, which was not yet lighted; "yet I've heard tell of a murder that was done here in old times."
"There are murders enough in these times, as to that, Charlie," answered the girl, ascending the staircase, followed by the young man.
She led the way through a great drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu, buhl and inlaid cabinets, bronzes, cameos, statuettes, and trinkets, that glistened in the dusky light; then through a morning room, hung with proof engravings of valuable pictures; through this into an ante-chamber, where she stopped, holding the light above her head.
The young man stared about him, open-mouthed and open-eyed.
"It's a rare fine place," he muttered.
"Look at the pictures on the walls," said Jeannine, glancing at the panels of the octagonal chamber, which were hung with Claudes and Poussins, Wouvermans and Cuyps. "I've heard that those alone are worth a fortune. This is the entrance to my lady's apartments, Miss Morstan that was." She lifted a heavy green cloth curtain which hung across a doorway, and led the astonished countryman into a fairy-like boudoir, and thence to a dressing-room, in which the open doors of a wardrobe and a heap of dresses flung about a sofa showed that it still remained exactly as its occupants had left it.
"I've got all these things to put away before my lady comes home, Charlie; you might sit down here while I do it, I shan't be long."
Her cousin looked around in perplexity at the splendor of the room, and after some deliberation selected the most substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully seated himself.
"I wish I could show you the jewels, Charlie," said the girl; "but I can't, for she always keeps the keys herself; that's the case on the dressing-table there."
"What, that?" cried Charlie, staring at the massive walnut-wood and brass inlaid casket. "Why, that's big enough to hold every stitch of clothing I've got!"
"And it's as full as it can be of diamonds, rubies, pearls and emeralds," answered Jeannine, busy as she spoke in folding the rustling silk dresses, and laying them one by one upon the shelves of the wardrobe. As she was shaking out the flounces of the last, a jingling sound caught her ear, and she put her hand into the pocket.
"I never!" she exclaimed, "my lady has left her keys in her pocket for once; I can show you the jewelry, if you like, Charlie."
"Well, I may as well have a look at it, my girl," he said, rising from his chair and holding the light while his cousin unlocked the casket. He uttered a cry when he saw the ornaments glittering on white satin cushions. He wanted to handle the delicate jewels; to pull them about, and find out their mercantile value. Perhaps a pang of longing and envy shot through his heart as he thought how he would have liked to have taken one of them.
"Why, one of those diamond things would set us up in life, Jeannine,” he said, turning a bracelet over and over in his big red hands. He laid the bracelet back in its place with a reluctant sigh, and continued his examination of the casket.
"What's this?" he asked presently, pointing to a brass knob in the frame-work of the box.
He pushed it as he spoke, and a secret drawer, lined with purple velvet, flew out of the casket.
"Look ye here!" cried Charlie, pleased at his discovery.
Jeannine threw down the dress she had been folding, and went over to the toilette table.
"Why, I never saw this before," she said; "I wonder what there is in it?"
There was not much in it; neither gold nor gems; only a baby's little worsted shoe rolled up in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock of pale and silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby's head. Jeannine's eyes widened as she examined the little packet.
"So this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer," she muttered.
Her cousin’s lip curved into a curious smile. "I shall have my public house yet,” he whispered.
“Charlie Milverton,” Jeannine exclaimed, “you positively frighten me.”
*****
Sherlock Holmes was supposed to be a barrister. As a barrister was his name inscribed in the law-list; as a barrister he had chambers in Figtree Court, Temple; if these things can make a man a barrister, Sherlock Holmes decidedly was one. But he had never either had a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the doors in Figtree Court. He was a handsome and dizzyingly intelligent fellow of about seven-and-twenty. His sharply angular features and slender frame were balanced by an unruly mop of dark curls and a sensual mouth, along with pale, piercing eyes of striking effect. Although he was now without family, his long-departed and much-missed brother had left him £400 a year, and placed his education in the hands of the venerable Stamford family, the elders of which had advised him to increase by being called to the bar; and as he found it, after due consideration, more trouble to oppose the wishes of these friends than to take a set of chambers in the Temple, he adopted the latter course, and unblushingly called himself a barrister.
Sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself with the exertion of smoking his German pipe, and reading every scientific and botanical journal from England and the Continent (for he had a keen interest in the chemistry of biological processes, and spoke many European languages fluently), he would stroll into the Temple Gardens, and lying in some shady spot, pale and cool, with his shirt collar turned down and a blue silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, would discourse at length with grave benchers, and unravel their difficult cases through deductive reasoning alone. Holmes loved nothing and no one so much as a puzzle.
The old benchers laughed at him; but they all agreed that Holmes was a clever fellow, and always correct in his deductions; rather a curious fellow, too, with a fund of sly wit and quiet humor, under his sometimes listless, sometimes almost frantic manner. But for all that he was tolerated as an eccentric addition to the Temple, no man would ever claim Holmes as a friend. His standoffish manner indeed led many to take offence, and he never hesitated to tell the benchers exactly what he thought of their unimaginative and stagnant thinking. Indeed, Holmes always volubly asserted that he had no friends, and guarded his solitude jealously. To those occasional few whose interest in the man gained them admittance to what stood for Holmes’ confidence, he confessed that he did, in fact, have a friend: a single, noble friend, with whom he had lost touch. No more would he ever say on the matter.
Holmes always spent the hunting season at Stamford Court; not that he had any care for sport, but he was somewhat attached to his old guardian Sir Michael, and by no means despised by Sir Michael’s pretty, if somewhat impudent daughter, Miss Molly. It might have seemed to other men, that the partiality of a young lady who was sole heiress to a very fine estate, was rather well worth cultivating, but it did not so occur to Holmes. Molly was a very nice girl, he said, a clever girl, with no nonsense about her—a girl of a thousand; but this was the highest point to which enthusiasm could carry him. The idea of turning her girlish liking for him to some good account never entered his brain; women were simply not his area.
So that when, one fine spring morning, about two months before the time of which I am writing, the postman brought him the wedding cards of Sir Michael and Lady Stamford, together with a very indignant letter from Molly, setting forth how her father had just married a wax-dollish young person, no older than Molly herself, with flaxen ringlets, and a perpetual giggle; for I am sorry to say that Molly's animus caused her thus to describe that pretty musical laugh which had been so much admired in the new Lady Stamford—when, I say, these documents reached Holmes—they elicited neither vexation nor astonishment in the lymphatic nature of that gentleman. He read Molly's angry letter without so much as removing the amber mouth-piece of his German pipe from his lips. When he had finished the perusal of the epistle, which he read with his dark eyebrows elevated to the center of his forehead, he deliberately threw that and the wedding cards into the waste-paper basket, and putting down his pipe, considered the matter.
"I always said the old buffer would marry," he muttered, after about half an hour's reverie. “Molly and my lady, the stepmother, will go at it hammer and tongs. I hope nothing worse will come of it.” And with that, he put the topic from his mind.
Some weeks later, Holmes strolled out of the Temple on his way to the city. He had some inquiries to make in a legal question a colleague had presented him with that morning, and fancied he could resolve the case for the man with a brief investigation into the species of moss growing on the Thames steps by Westminster.
He had satisfactorily completed his inquiries, and was loitering at a street corner waiting for a chance hansom to convey him back to the Temple, when he was almost knocked down by a man of about his own age, who dashed headlong into the narrow alley.
"Be so good as to look where you’re going," Holmes remonstrated after him.
The stranger stopped suddenly, looked very hard at the speaker, and then gasped for breath.
"Holmes!" he cried, in a tone expressive of the most intense astonishment and joy; "I only returned to London after dark last night, and to think that I should meet you this morning!"
Holmes, struck speechless, could make no reply.
"What!" exclaimed the stranger, reproachfully. "You don’t mean to say that you’ve forgotten John Watson?"
“No I have not!" said Holmes, with an emphasis by no means usual to him; and then hooking his arm into that of his friend, he led him into a shady court. Though he would not let go of his arm, he was silent as they walked, striving to regain a measure of composure. Finally, with some of his old indifference, he managed, "and now Watson, I perceive that you have been abroad. Tell me all about it."
John Watson did tell him all about it – and there was much to tell, for although they had been close friends at school, John had been forced to abandon his dreams of a medical career when the Watson family fortune had run dry. Holmes had remained at his studies, while Watson had left to make his way in the world as best he could; life, in short, had taken them in opposite directions. Watson’s pride was such that regardless of the fond regard he ever held for his old friend, he could not see his way to contacting him again when he himself was in such reduced circumstances. John related the events of the previous years, of his marriage, his child, his desertion, and his adventures in India, pausing only to elaborate when Holmes requested further details – which was often. Finally, his narrative ended. Holmes was for starting off immediately for the Crown and Scepter, at Greenwich, or the Castle, at Richmond, where they could have a bit of dinner, and talk over those good old times when they were together at school. But Watson told his friend that before he went anywhere, before he shaved or broke his fast, or in any way refreshed himself, he must look to his family, his little daughter and wife. Holmes at once volunteered to accompany him on his errand.
“I thank you,” said Watson. “You were ever the truest friend. And I find myself filled with apprehension; I should appreciate your company.”
Just a few minutes later, and the reunited pair was dashing through the city in a fast hansom. Holmes’ astonishment and curiosity had given way to a strange sort of brooding. Watson, meanwhile, sat in silence, staring out the window.
Finally, he spoke. "I shall take a villa on the banks of the Thames, Holmes," he said, "for the wife and myself; and we'll have a yacht, Holmes, old boy, and you shall lie on the deck and smoke, and drink, and it shall be as if the last few years were but a horrid dream.” Holmes said nothing.
But when they arrived at the address of the Watson family home – really, nothing more than a tiny cottage in a dreary lane – they met with disappointment. The cottage stood empty; no door, even, upon its hinges. It had every appearance of having been abandoned many months ago. There was no indication as to the fates of its former occupants.
“Holmes,” Watson said lowly, “I don’t like this. We owed for the rent when I left, but she was taking in piece-work, and giving lessons. She should have managed. What can have happened?”
Holmes gave no answer, but his misgivings grew.
Nor were the neighbours any help. Watson’s face blanched to a deadly whiteness. "Watson," he said to the woman across the way; "perhaps you didn't hear the name distinctly—W, A, T, S, O, N. Think, please. She must have left word for me."
The woman shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her squalling babe. And although Watson canvassed every house on the street, and the next, with increasing desperation, he could not discover one person who had heard a word about Mrs. Watson and her little child.
At last, Holmes drew him aside. “Come, John. Let us sit together and reason this through before we take further action. Between us, we will make some plan.”
Watson silently allowed himself to be led to a nearby coffeehouse, where Holmes ordered him a strong draught, and cakes.
The young man drank his coffee in silence, and then, leaning his elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. There was something in his manner which told Holmes that his disappointment, temporary it may appear, was in reality a very bitter one – they had known each other well in their youth, and many of his habits and mannerisms persisted. Holmes seated himself opposite to his friend, but did not attempt to address him.
By-and-by Watson looked up, and mechanically taking a greasy Times newspaper, many months old, from a heap on the table, stared vacantly at the page.
I cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph among the list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its full meaning; but after considerable pause he pushed the newspaper over to Holmes, and with a face that had changed from its dark bronze to a sickly, chalky grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he pointed with his finger to a line which ran thus:
"On the 24th February, at Portsmouth, Maria Watson, aged 25; preceded by Helen Watson, aged 2 years."
Watson sat rigid, white and helpless, staring stupidly at the shocked face of his friend.
The suddenness of the blow had stunned him. In this strange and bewildered state of mind he began to wonder what had happened, and why it was that one line in the Times newspaper could have so horrible an effect upon him.
Then by degrees even this vague consciousness of his misfortune faded slowly out of his mind, succeeded by a painful consciousness of external things.
The hot August sunshine, the dusty window-panes and shabby-painted blinds, a file of fly-blown play-bills fastened to the wall, the black and empty fire-places, a bald-headed old man nodding over the Morning Advertizer, the slip-shod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and Sherlock Holmes’ handsome face looking at him full of compassionate alarm—he knew that all these things took gigantic proportions, and then, one by one, melted into dark blots and swam before his eyes, He knew that there was a great noise, as of half a dozen furious steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing more—except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground.
He opened his eyes upon the dusky evening in a cool and shaded room, the silence only broken by the rumbling of wheels at a distance.
He looked about him wonderingly, but half indifferently. Every surface, it seemed was strewn with papers, books, botanical specimens and scientific equipment. His old friend, Sherlock Holmes, was seated by his side smoking. Watson was lying on a low iron bedstead opposite to an open window, in which there was a stand of flowers around which buzzed two or three lazy bees.
"You don't mind the pipe, do you, John?" his friend asked, quietly.
"No."
He lay for some time looking at the flowers and the bees.
Holmes knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid the precious meerschaum tenderly upon the mantelpiece, and going into the next room, returned presently with a cup of strong tea.
"Take this, John," he said, as he placed the cup on a little table close to John's pillow; "it will do your head good."
The young man did not answer, but looked slowly round the room, and then at his friend's grave face.
"Sherlock," he said, "where are we?"
"In my chambers, in the Temple. You have no lodgings of your own, so you may as well stay with me,” Holmes said. “While you're in town, I mean," he added.
Watson passed his hand once or twice across his forehead, and then, in a hesitating manner, said, quietly: "That newspaper this morning, Sherlock; what was it?"
"Never mind just now, old boy; drink some tea."
"Yes, yes," sighed Watson impatiently, raising himself upon the bed, and staring about him with hollow eyes. "I remember now. I remember all about it. Helen! My Helen! And… my wife, my darling, my only…"
"John," said Holmes, laying his hand gently upon the young man's arm, "you must remember that the person whose name you saw in the paper may not be your wife. There may have been some other Maria Watsons."
"No, no!" he cried; "the age corresponds with hers, and the child! And they’ve disappeared from our home."
He shook off Holmes’ restraining hand, and rising from the bed, walked straight to the door.
"Where are you going?" exclaimed his friend.
"To Portsmouth, to see her grave."
And then Holmes, who had been called the most self-contained and unsympathetic of men, found himself called upon to act for another. He rose superior to himself, and equal to the occasion. "Not tonight, John, not tonight. I will go with you myself by the first train tomorrow."
Holmes led him back to the bed, and gently forced him to lie down again. Pulling out a small wooden drawer somewhat hidden by the ephemera on the corner desk, he removed a vial, and mixed a few drops into a cup of water. “Drink this,” he bid his friend, handing him the opiate. “It will calm you, and help you rest.”
“Good lord, Holmes! Wherever did you get this?” Watson demanded, sniffing at the glass.
“Ah. I have a small, personal pharmacopeia, which I keep for experimental purposes. As you know, I’m something of an amateur chemist. This dosage is not excessive. Please, John. It will help.”
Too overcome to object, Watson did as his friend requested.
And so, he fell into a heavy slumber, and dreamed that he went to Portsmouth, to find his wife alive and happy, but wrinkled, old, and gray, and to find his daughter grown into a young woman.
Early the next morning he was seated opposite to Sherlock Holmes in the first-class carriage of an express, whirling through the pretty open country.
They arrived at Portsmouth under the burning heat of the midday sun. As the two young men stepped down from the train, the porter stared at Watson's white face and shaking gait.
The young man looked at Holmes with a pitiful, bewildered expression.
"Had we not better take a handsome to the graveyard, John? It’s very warm for such a long walk" he said.
“Oh God! The graveyard! I – Yes. But I should prefer to walk.”
And so, arm in arm, the two men made their fearful pilgrimage, and when Watson tired and stumbled, Holmes was there, ever-faithful, to hold him up. Both were warm with perspiration by the time they reached the graveyard.
“Rest here, John,” Holmes said, depositing the man on a bench near the gate. “I shall find the keeper, and get directions.” With a squeeze of his shoulder, he was gone. Watson had not moved when he returned, accompanied by a small boy, but he had buried his face in his hands.
"When you are ready, John, the keeper’s boy will show you the way to – to the graves. I will await your return."
Watson raised his head, and held out his hand to Holmes, who took it warmly between his own. “My dearest friend. You have come thus far with me; please do me the favour of seeing this through. Come with me.”
Holmes bowed his head, and squeezed Watson’s hand gently. Presently, Watson rose. “Lead on, my boy.”
And then John Watson and his faithful friend walked to the quiet spot, where, beneath a mound of earth, lay that wife and sweet child of whose welcoming smiles John had dreamed so often in the years before.
Holmes left the young man by the side of the grave, and returning in about an hour, found that he had not once stirred. His wet eyes were trained on the simple inscription:
Sacred to the Memory of MARIA,
THE BELOVED WIFE OF JOHN WATSON,
Who departed this life
February 24th, 18—
And to the Memory of HELEN WATSON,
Who preceded her mother by three weeks.