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It is my understanding that in even the happiest of marriages, most couples lucky enough to be together long will at some point grow tired of each other’s company for a time. Whether this phase is more or less trying for couples who are not and never can be married, I do not know. But it suffices to say that immediately before the events I later described in The Sign of Four, Holmes and I were on quite poor terms.
The cause was no more than overexposure to the habits we each found most aggravating in the other. Holmes had not received a truly interesting client in months and we were stagnant. I whiled away the time by working through the list of old cases I meant to publish, but Holmes kept his mind stimulated with thrice-daily injections of cocaine. I found it difficult to hide my displeasure at the sight of him plunging a syringe into his vein, and he made no effort to mask his disgust with the romantic flourishes I added to my stories. The result of all this was that we snapped at each other constantly and took little pleasure from time spent together.
I hoped that a case would come along, a puzzle complex and absorbing enough to distract us from our petty quarrels and get us back into our old pattern of cooperation. As luck would have it, Mary Morstan brought us one of the most perplexing cases we had ever seen, but the investigation that followed failed to heal the tension between us.
For that, the blame lies mostly on me. From the first, I was struck by Miss Morstan’s beauty. As the case developed and I came to know her better, I found that she was also considerate, brave, gentle, and above all kind. Moreover, she seemed particularly fond of me. I was unusually invested in achieving a favorable resolution for her, and more than once, the thought occurred to me that if I had met her when I was a younger man, I would have asked her to marry me.
Would my head have been turned if Holmes and I hadn’t been so at odds? I’ll never know. I certainly never considered leaving him. But when I looked at Miss Morstan, I felt an undeniable pang of longing for what I would never have: a love that could be lived openly without the constant need for secrecy and fear of discovery, and also, I am ashamed to admit, a partner who would love me without reservation, whose habits would be predictable, who would not cover the sitting room in papers or scrape on a violin at all hours or abuse the cocaine bottle.
I had thought, or perhaps it is more truthful to say I had hoped, that Holmes remained ignorant of my feelings in this area. After all, he had been most vocal of late about his distaste for romance. I ought to have known better than to think I could hide anything from him.
When the case was at last resolved, and Jones and Small and, finally, Miss Morstan all departed, I turned to Holmes, who had already retired to his room. He had demonstrated none of the satisfaction he usually showed at the conclusion of a case, and I feared for him.
“It seems so unfair,” I said. “You’ve done all the work in this business, and Athelnay Jones gets all the credit. What remains for you?”
“For me, the pleasure of having solved an interesting case almost singlehandedly. And for you, no doubt,” he added derisively, “the pleasure of writing it up in your usual florid and romantic style.”
I turned away, unwilling either to restart our old argument or let him see my frustration. I sat at the window and watched as Miss Morstan stepped into her carriage. My affection for her flamed into life one last time before burning out forever, and in that instant, I regretted most bitterly that our paths had not crossed earlier in life.
“What a very attractive woman,” I said under my breath.
“Was she?” Holmes murmured from his room. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He habitually maintained the fiction that he was incapable of noticing when a woman was pretty. It was nonsense, of course; his profession required him to notice things, and I didn’t believe for an instant that his lack of interest in the fairer sex rendered him incapable of objective assessment.
But usually his remarks of this nature were flippant, and this time he sounded almost morose. My concern heightened, I took a few steps toward his open door. “Holmes, are you quite all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, waving a limp hand from where he had collapsed on his bed. “Don’t you have notes to write up? I imagine this case will be ripe for your particular mode of embellishment.”
Despite myself, I bristled, marching to the door. “Why does it bother you so much if I bolster my writing with romance? It is not as if I omit the details of your deductions. Indeed, they are the very core of my stories. But they alone would not make for interesting fiction. You have your art, and I have mine.”
“And yet you insist on corrupting mine when you indulge in yours.”
“I have always written that way, and your annoyance has rarely risen to this level. What’s really the matter?”
For a moment he remained silent, lying on his bed with his eyes half-closed as if almost asleep. I wondered if this little skirmish would end as so many did, with me retreating to my upstairs room seething with frustration, denied the satisfaction of a proper fight by his stony reticence.
But instead, he opened his eyes, sat up abruptly, and said, in a tone that might have passed for chipper if it weren’t so icy, “Miss Morstan seemed to be waiting for you to make her a proposal. Why didn’t you?”
“Good God, man!” I exclaimed. For one thing, it was unsettling to learn that Holmes had observed something that had escaped my notice when he hadn’t even been in the room by the time she departed. But what was most alarming was his question. “How could you think I would do such a thing?”
He stood from the bed, and I saw for a moment the pain his hard exterior was attempting to cover up. “She’s a very attractive woman, as you yourself just said. Not to mention kind, level-headed, mild of temperament, and, of course, female—all traits that are desirable in a spouse, I’m told.”
For a moment I gaped at him, feeling angry and hurt and also terribly guilty. “Do you really think I would leave you for her?”
“What am I supposed to think when you hang on her every word and cast fond glances in her direction whenever she’s in your sight?” he snapped. “She certainly drew the same conclusion.”
“If Miss Morstan was disappointed, it was her expectations that were in error and not my conduct. She could have no more expected a proposal from me than from a married man,” I said, as calmly as I could manage.
“But you’re not married, are you?” His dark eyes flashed. “You haven't signed or sworn anything, you’re a free man, and I have to say I’m baffled as to why you didn’t take advantage of that when you clearly enjoy her company much more than mine.” In one sudden sweep, he pushed past me into the sitting room and strode to the mantle to light his pipe.
I was too staggered to speak. For over a decade, I had considered us as good as married. I realized now that I had only assumed that Holmes thought the same.
“I don’t blame you, you know,” he continued in that eerily crisp tone of his. He had turned away from me, bracing himself against the mantle with one arm. “You’d be better off with someone like her. Miss Morstan wouldn’t trouble you with a drug habit, or hector you for your love of romance. You could take her hand in the street.”
“Would you be better off?” I asked tightly, pulsing with hurt and rage. Unshed tears threatened to choke out my voice. “If I had gone off and left you, or never troubled your door in the first place? You seem quite desperate to be rid of me now.”
Holmes spun round. “My dear Watson, if not for you, I would be dead several times over by now, at the hands of various criminals or by my own, with the help of the morphine bottle.”
I sighed, and my anger rapidly dissipated. “And if not for you, I would be penniless and miserable or else modestly married and bored out of my mind, never knowing what I’d missed of adventure, or friendship, or love.”
I collapsed wearily into my chair. Holmes stood frozen by the mantle, his eyes glittering. “Love, really?” he said softly. “Even though your lover cannot bring himself to call it such nine days out of ten, and you can never speak of it to anyone but him?”
“Have I not spent the last fifteen years making my choice quite clear?” I asked, my voice breaking. “I may not have made my commitment publicly before God and country, and you may not feel the same as I do. But for my part, I consider you my spouse, and it would be most wicked and unfaithful of me to leave you just because a pretty girl took a fancy to me.”
At last, a tear broke free and rolled down my cheek. In an instant, Holmes was kneeling before me with my face in his hands, brushing it away. “My dear boy, of course I feel the same. But do you not agree that we have tried each other’s patience rather keenly of late? If you wanted to reconsider, I would understand completely.”
A moment ago, I had feared that Holmes was trying to get rid of me, and in my younger days, I would have taken this as confirmation. Now, I saw that throughout our conversation, all his anger and coldness and reticence had come from being terrified that I would leave. But the stubborn fool honestly thought I would be better off without him, so he would rather push me away than ask me to stay.
I removed his hands from my face but kept them clasped in mine. “The vows say something about sickness and health, do they not?” I said. “I imagine that covers annoyance and frustration, as well. We would each have to be saints to never once bother each other."
For the first time all day, Holmes gave a genuine, if tentative, smile. “And we are certainly far from saints.”
I returned his smile, and for a moment, my love for him swelled so strongly that it seemed impossible that he could ever again annoy me. I knew that was an absurd thought, and he would likely annoy me again later that very day. But I also knew that it didn’t matter. The love would persist nonetheless.
I suddenly realized that Holmes had been kneeling before me for several minutes now, which could not be comfortable. “Get up off the floor, you dramatic man.”
I took him by the arms and hauled him up and into my lap. He let out a startled exclamation and fell against me, which was of course exactly what I wanted.
“I say, Watson, don’t you think we’re getting a little old for this sort of thing?” he muttered, shifting and twisting like a cat to find a more comfortable position.
“No, I don’t. We could both live to be a hundred and I wouldn’t consider us too old, though our joints might disagree.”
“A hundred, good lord. Are you sure you really want to be stuck with me that long?” He draped his arms around my shoulders, bringing our faces in line.
“Longer, if you’ll have me,” I replied.
Holmes is not one to put his feelings into words. Much of the time, I have to take it on faith that he loves me as much as I love him. But when he is so inclined, he says what he cannot speak aloud through his actions. When he tipped my head back and kissed me as I had not been kissed in weeks, I knew exactly what he meant by it.