I woke for the second time not long after dawn, such as it was--grey and overcast, and bitterly cold--and in quite a different mood than that in which I had last gone to sleep. Holmes had gone to his own bed, and I was alone with all the "morning-after" regrets that ever a man knew. It had not been a dream--there was the lamp on my nightstand between the bed and the window, the clothes in severe disarray, and . . . the stains on the sheets, and--oh Lord!--on me. Still I could not quite believe it . . .
I did Holmes a number of grave injustices in my heart--I imagined him fawning and indiscreet, I imagined him--oh, I imagined terrible things. I could not, however, imagine facing him across the breakfast-table.
I rose and dressed hastily without bothering to wash, though Heaven knew I needed it.
I fled from the flat and charged round London in a savage and changeable mood. I might, that day, have done almost any mad thing: sent Holmes a telegram declaring my undying love and fealty, or a letter reviling him for his perversion. I might have booked passage to the West Indies and never returned to London and the monumental question that I felt lay between my friend and me. What I did do at last was slink, exhausted and enervated, into a filthy public house--where it stood I cannot remember--to drink myself nearly senseless and have my wallet stolen by a scrawny, pendulous-breasted prostitute whose seamy blandishments distracted my mind momentarily from the fact that I was guilty of a crime for which, not many years before, men had still been hanged.
After I was ignominiously (and forcibly) ejected from that den for not being able to pay the last of my bill (luckily it was too small an amount, apparently, or too routine an act, for the proprietor--who was bound to come into a share of the wealth before long--to feel it worth beating me) I gave it up and staggered home, favouring a very sore leg. I had landed upon it awkwardly.
It was well past our usual supper-time when I finally dragged myself up our stairs. I hesitated at the threshold, then limped wearily inside and closed the door behind me.
Holmes was seated on the sofa, but he had started up, and sat bolt upright, looking toward me with a blanched face. For a moment, a mere instant, he looked furtive and guilty, and I caught a haunting glimpse of the vulnerability I had so fatefully seen in the dark of the night. But then he was on his feet, saying naturally and with apparent ease, "Watson! My dear fellow, you look absolutely done. Allow me to take your coat." He subjected me to a searching gaze as he spoke, and I thought I saw his colour return in a rush, and his shoulders slump as if in sudden relief, although I do not know what he saw in my face to ease his anxiety. "I instructed Mrs. Hudson to hold our supper," he continued. "Shall I ring? You must be hungry--" with a wry smile tugging at his lips, "--after so long and hurried a perambulation, and--such adventures." He shook his head with a slight chuckle, and brushed at the shoulder of my overcoat, but he discreetly ventured no further comment on any deductions he might have made.
I stared numbly after him as he quickly hung up my coat, and then returned to guide me with firm gentleness to a seat at the table. "Sit," he commanded. "A swallow of brandy, perhaps--though no more. You are chilled through."
I rested my forehead in my hands while Holmes clinked glass behind me, and suddenly the situation began to seem ludicrous--I knew how I must look, drunk and disreputable, and Holmes was fussing over me like some solicitous valet--Lord! like some solicitous mistress!--to what end I could not imagine. I began to laugh softly, and for several minutes was helpless prey to a prolonged nervous convulsion of hilarity. And when I had done, somehow, the cloud had lifted.
When I sat up at last and wiped my eyes Holmes was beside me, wearing a strange, diffident little smile in answer to my own, though there was the ghost of a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "You'll do, Watson," he said, in a tender tone, almost a purr, which I was to hear only very rarely, and which I learned to hear with delight. "You are an eminently sensible fellow. Brandy--here, drink this off quick. I fancy I hear an approaching tread."
I tossed the brandy back in one gulp and, as I leaned back with a sigh in the pleasant relief of warmth it brought, Holmes swooped upon me with the boldness and grace of the bird of prey which he occasionally resembled, and gave me a hard, almost savage kiss that tipped back the chair upon which I sat.
The glass burst on the floor, shaken from my startled grasp, and the knock sounded on the door at the same instant--Holmes didn't turn a hair. As he opened the door to give Mrs. Hudson admittance I stared stupidly at the shattered glass with a hand raised to my lips in astonishment; in it I saw a decided resemblance to the fragmented state of my mind.
I think--no, let me be clear: I am certain that was the only time he ever took me to his bed two nights in a row, and it was the closest we came to discussion of the extraordinary relationship we had, except in the broadest and most abstract terms--the next day Holmes spent reclining on the sofa, alternately brooding with a formidable brow and playing upon his violin the type of music that effectively and absolutely thwarted any attempt at conversation. I regret that--I regretted it then--and were Holmes standing here before me, I could no more broach the topic now than I could have then, so long ago.
Before that first evening, I had had no idea, not the remotest indication, of what his true feelings were for me, or what I meant to him. I was never to forget what I was given to understand that night, the first glimpse of a love so potent and so loyal that to this day I am humbled by the thought of it.
Unfortunately a great deal of this is hindsight. I must have hurt him terribly when I married. He never protested, though, except for that single small petulance which I recorded verbatim in the published memoir of the events. In retrospect that too might have been hurtful, but I cannot take it back now.
Ah, now we come to it--what I regret most truly and with the greatest pain. It is not my marriage, for that is all I could wish, and now Mary is all I have. But I wish I could have appreciated my intimate association with Holmes more at the time. I worried, I fretted over proprieties and pathologies, I lost sleep. It seemed important. I was relieved when Mary accepted my proposal, and felt, in a way, that I had narrowly escaped perdition.
After what must have been a brutal disappointment to him, Holmes remained as fond and loyal as ever, though never again did we share carnal relations. And I regretted that, but then--I was married. Holmes respected that completely, and did not seem to hold a grudge against me for it, although our friendship was strained for the first few months after my wedding--in part because I blamed myself for his escalating use of narcotics, and had no heart to see him again and again in a cocaine-induced stupor. It was probably when my company might have proved most useful to him that I shrank from offering it.
But he recovered himself, to my relief and renewed admiration, and we grew accustomed to the new regimen. There were times, especially when I was with him on a case, when, to see him energized and vital, full of the thrill of the chase, he was almost irresistibly attractive to me. I quashed the desire, though, and told myself that he too had conquered his unnatural tastes--though I knew better.
There was, of course, one incident. There would have to be. It was his last night on earth. I sat on the bed at the hotel, ankles crossed, scanning over a letter I had written to my wife. Holmes passed by--as I recall he was restless and pacing--hesitated, then abruptly sat down on the far side of the bed, and, reclining, rested his head on my thigh. I was startled, and felt a note of panic--what was I to do if he--?
But he did not. He frowned up at the ceiling--did not even look at me--and after a few minutes he opened his lips as if to speak, but sighed heavily instead, then rose again and resumed his nervous perambulation with even greater velocity. I am sorry I did not speak to him, for I could see by his face he was troubled--it might be he had a presentiment of his death, and wanted to speak to me, and had I touched him, as I did desire to, or said any gentle word, perhaps I would be wiser now. But I clutched my letter to Mary, and her face hovered in my mind, and I did not move or speak. I can never know what might have happened. Could I have changed the events that followed so tragically?
It was his last night on Earth. For that, among other things, my friend, I am terribly sorry. I hope that I may forgive myself, as you cannot--and yet somehow I am sure that you would. I suppose I failed you more often than I know, but wherever you are, believe I am faithful. I was never as strong as you; I am a mere man, and easily distracted.
And this, John Watson, is what you have lost: the love of a being as like a god as any you shall ever meet again. And not because of his supra-normal intelligence and perception, but because he loved you, which you never deserved, with a power that only very lucky men ever come by, and that but once.
I am not certain if writing all this down was a good idea, after all. It has become almost a compulsion, and it leaves me drained and enervated.
Wherever he is, God rest him.