'I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,' said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation.
-- "The Empty House"
[from the diaries of Dr. John H. Watson]
"Watson?"
It was a cold and rainy afternoon, and no word had passed Sherlock Holmes's lips for hours; he had been staring out of the window, with his sharp features creased into a thoughtful frown, since luncheon. I had worried that he would reach for the cocaine again, but his grey eyes had a dreamy quality about them, a quality that spoke of a tendency to take up the violin more readily than the syringe.
"Holmes?" I ventured.
His long fingers began to pluck at the sleeves of his dressing-gown, the quick nervous movements betraying the first signs of that relentless energy that often came after his introspective periods.
"If I tell you something..." Those keen eyes narrowed a little. "Forgive me, I'm not used to asking this sort of question."
"You know that I only publish accounts of our cases with your permission--"
Holmes cut me off with a quick gesture. "That isn't quite what I meant, Watson."
"Well?"
Silence. Then, abruptly, his steely gaze swung up to meet mine.
"I count you as my only friend," he said, quietly. "We have few secrets from each other."
I nodded.
"I think that there is something you are entitled to know, as my biographer and my friend."
This sparked worry in me. I started to rise from my seat, but once more he motioned me back, this time with a slight smile.
"Don't worry, Watson. You will hear no lurid tales of murder or romance from me. This, I am afraid, is something a little more... quiet in nature."
"Then by all means, tell me, Holmes," said I. "I don't think I can take the anxiety."
He laughed. "Good old fellow. Your taste for adventure is quite refreshing at times. Well, sit back and listen, whilst I exercise my feeble storytelling skills. Smoke?"
"Please."
In a moment the silver cigarette-case arced through the air; it took little effort to catch it. Holmes struck a match, and in no time we were both relaxing in comfortable clouds of bluish haze.
"I suppose, when we first met, you might have wondered about my Christian name. We are living in an age for ridiculous names, but 'Sherlock'..."
"Nonsense. It's not quite so bad."
"Perhaps not. But perhaps it will not surprise you to find out that Sherlock is not my real name."
I confessed that I was rather surprised.
"Oh. I'm so sorry. No, dear fellow, it's a nickname. Given to me by my brother, in our early youth."
He smiled, ever so slightly, and leaned back in his chair, exhaling a thin column of smoke.
"Like most children, we both received a little bit of pocket-money from our parents. I rarely spent mine, but Mycroft--ah, poor soul, he could never quite resist temptation. I refused to loan him any of my own money without forcing him into some extravagant promise first; naturally, he called me a little Shylock, and no doubt he was right. Over the years it was somehow corrupted to Sherlock, which stuck. Not a bad nickname to have, really; at least, it was far more agreeable to me than my Christian name."
"And what is your Christian name?"
Holmes took a long pull at his cigarette, his eyes flickering to the rain-streaked window outside. Heavy silence settled between us for a moment, and then:
"Emmeline," he said.
I choked.
Suddenly it seemed as if I had been plunged into an icy lake and must now struggle up for air; I could draw no breath for pure shock, and the breaths I did try to take filled my lungs like sand.
When I could look up, I saw that Holmes had quite calmly extinguished his cigarette and now approached me with a glass of brandy.
"I knew you wouldn't take it so well," he said. "Here, have something to drink before I tell you my middle name."
I took the glass but could not help staring; how could it be that, in all our acquaintanceship, I hadn't caught a single sign? How could I have missed something so significant?
"Watson, don't forget to breathe."
At last I managed to force out a few words:
"All this time...?"
"Yes, Watson, all this time. For almost thirty years, in fact."
"But--!"
"But nothing. It was a masquerade, plain and simple. And, quite obviously, it worked."
My head had begun to clear, and with a shock I realised the grey eyes that looked across into mine were not those of a trusted friend but those of a stranger--a woman I had never encountered before.
"You never told me!"
"Why should I have?"
"I'm your biographer!"
"And I am still Sherlock Holmes!"
I could think of no response for that. How could he--she--this familiar alien--expect me to believe that, after informing me just how little I really knew of him?
I found myself grasping at straws. "I thought you trusted me."
"Well, now you know it. I've told you, haven't I?"
"That's not the point."
"So what would this point actually be?"
"Look--Emmeline--"
That was a mistake.
With a ferocity that startled me she struck the hand that held the brandy, dashing the glass out of my loosened grip to the carpet; it shattered in a brilliant shower of diamond and amber.
"Don't! For God's sake, Watson--I lay no claim to that name now. I am a private detective; Emmeline is a stranger to us both--I can't--oh, damn it!"
The world seemed oddly inverted. I didn't know the Fury who now stood before me. Even the faint odour of tobacco smoke that still hung in the air seemed unfamiliar. I had to get away.
Her grey eyes followed me, sparking anger, as I got up.
"Watson," she hissed. "Damn it, Watson!"
"I'm going out," I said, rather lamely.
That strange, unnameable creature regarded me for another moment before a coldness crept into the angry gaze.
"Go, then," she said.
And then I found myself alone on Baker Street, with the last of the rain dampening my bare head.
I am not entirely certain how long I wandered the streets of London, trying to gather together my confused thoughts and the sudden surges of emotion that had come with them.
It was no practical joke; I knew him too well for that. His appearance had never been feminine, and Holmes the man was possessed of strong features which would be unattractive in either sex. Some of the enigmatic remarks and habits I had puzzled over in previous years did seem clearer to me, but I could still hardly believe that he--no, Emmeline--had kept this from me for years.
I was angry that she had not told me. I was angry that she could have fooled the entire world and still assumed such a nonchalant demeanour. I was angry that I had not noticed it sooner and dropped some significant comment to prove my intelligence.
The rain stopped and the wind grew a little colder. I knew I ought to go home, but I could not bring myself to face my friend just yet.
My anger, I knew, had little justifiable base. Holmes and I had never been accustomed to see the world in the same way--and now this revelation had widened the gulf between us. Holmes the enigma I could reconcile myself to, but Holmes the woman--that was too wide a chasm to bridge. Those many adventures we had embarked upon suddenly seemed like scenes from another person's life: I even seemed to see my memories from a stranger's perspective, unable to recognise myself or my friend, wondering how anyone could be so very ignorant...
And, God, there were moments in my memory when I should have known! Moments when a certain light struck those aquiline features and softened the grey eyes, moments when the voice broke a little in laughter or when a pointed remark about womankind fell from the thin lips. Even that one time I had noticed that, when the excessive leanness of figure did not impose itself upon my view, I found his height to be perhaps no more than a few inches taller than average.
Those thousand little signals, crowding my confused brain, were too much to bear all at once. I sought a moment's distraction in buying a copy of the Times, but could not read it.
We had grown into a trust, almost a brotherhood. I had come to recognise many different shades of the keen, sharp look and the fleeting smile; there was little Holmes could not tell about me when I walked through the door at Baker Street. I kept hearing my friend Stamford's voice in my head: Oh, you don't know Sherlock Holmes yet!
Would I ever?
And would I ever find out if I did not return?
For what seemed like hours I promised myself, "Another five minutes, and I will collect my wits and apologise."
I knew Holmes deserved the apology.
But it would be difficult to deliver.
I came in quietly around sunset, still clutching my copy of the Times; Holmes did not greet me.
He was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, grey eyes bent on the broken glass, with a shaft of clear after-rain light spilling across his shoulders. It was, in a way, a pathetic sight. He still wore the same dressing-gown, thinned from years of use, but had only tied it very loosely, so that I could see the white suggestions of a corset underneath. No cigarette dangled from his mouth now, no violin was thrown across his knee; the elegant detective had vanished and left in his place a grey-eyed and inscrutable woman.
With this thought, she came into focus again, and this time I could really look at her.
Her hands lay across her lap, open and crossed at the wrists, in the manner of a Florentine portrait. Those long and spindly fingers no longer seemed so masculine; the lathlike figure seemed slighter and smaller; now that I saw her without that guarded facade, she looked like a fallen madonna--shorn hair, pale skin, lips grown thin from a lifetime of tightly controlled speech.
I thought, for a moment, of approaching her, of calling her by her proper Christian name. But she seemed so far distant from me that I scarcely dared to speak.
I averted my eyes from her spare, motionless figure and busied myself with the newspaper.
For almost an hour no sound intruded on our silence save the ticking of the clock. Then, quite suddenly, she began to speak, in a hollow voice now rendered hauntingly soft by the absence of its accustomed baritone note:
"I haven't felt that name on my tongue for years. Emmeline. I'd thought I was totally done with it. The last time I heard it spoken, before you, that is, it was in anger... and then I shed that skin, deceitful serpent that I am, and became someone else.
"You've no idea what it's like, Watson. Before I started... well, dressing like this, I had nothing... no hope of ever seeing any portion of the world beyond our drawing-room walls. Sherlock was, I suppose, the window God opened when all those doors had closed in around me. Emmeline was always the girl we couldn't marry off, uglier than sin and too inquisitive for her own good. When my parents died and I joined Mycroft at boarding-school I could cast all that off. Sherlock was the best of jokes, the most wonderful private triumph... almost a work of art, really. Hah. Art for art's sake....
"I haven't been Emmeline since I was fourteen years old, not since that first time I cut my hair. She is a person far removed from me. But no fresh start is easy; even after thirty years I still have some difficulties with Sherlock.
"You helped, Watson. You didn't know and you didn't care; you loved the chances for adventure and something new to write about, and you followed your enigmatic friend with an eager step. Even when I took up the cocaine, I could be certain you'd still be here, ready to dash off on one of our little expeditions together and to set it all down on paper when we came back.... You will never know how deeply my gratitude runs."
She, I realised, would never know how ashamed I was to hear her say that; it was a truth I did not deserve.
I put the paper aside, rose, and sat down next to her. She did not look up.
"I'm sorry," I said, quietly.
"Why should you be? I ought to have told you years ago."
"I acted a perfect ass."
"Well." She gave a tight smile, barely visible in the faded light, and looked at me for the first time. "You actually took it much better than I had thought you would."
"Please don't be flippant."
"I can't help it. I have a bizarre sense of humour." She paused, then said, "Although if you want to keep calling me Emmeline, well, we shall see if we can't work something out..."
"You're Holmes," I said. "I see no difference."
"Please don't lie to me, Watson."
"Still..."
"You don't care?"
"I don't. I am your friend, Holmes; I would never desert you. You know that."
She looked away.
"No, Watson. I don't know. I should, but I don't."
I reached out and placed a hand on the thin shoulder. She tensed a little at my touch.
"You will."
I felt her relax, releasing a long breath.
"We ought to start over," she said, very softly.
"Perhaps."
"In the morning..."
"Yes," I agreed, "in the morning."
We sat there for a long time, each of us lost in our own thoughts, until the chime of eleven o'clock startled me out of my reverie.
Holmes had drifted to sleep, her cheek gently resting on my hand. Her features, in repose, seemed just a shade more feminine, but I still saw in them all my old friend's strength and intensity. I felt I could understand what she had said about having abandoned Emmeline: even now that I knew that to be her true name, I could not think of her as anyone other than Sherlock Holmes.
As gently as I could, I shifted so that my arm lay across her wiry shoulders, and closed my eyes. In the morning we would start over, beginning with this broken glass on the floor. Most of the pieces were quite large, but there would still be some shards in the carpet.
I thought perhaps I would keep one of the bigger pieces, in remembrance of this day. Holmes would likely understand; perhaps I would hear a low chuckle as I pocketed the fragment. Perhaps I would feel its sharp edges when we sat down to talk again. Or perhaps I would be too preoccupied to notice, trying only to concentrate on listening to her speak and on remembering that short practical phrase she'd directed at me earlier:
Watson, don't forget to breathe.