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It was I who came to him, a few months before the end.
He had written me several times from his lodgings in the Sussex Downs, and so I had his address at hand for a visit I took in late June of that year. It was, I admit, a bit of a whim on my part, otherwise I would have sent a letter ahead, but then again I did not expect to be turned away and had only intended to stay for a few days, perhaps a week at the most. The fact of the matter was that year the summertime ennui had struck me with more strength than I could ever before recall, and with my practice closed for the season and my bachelor’s apartments lonelier than ever, I felt I had no choice but to pay a visit to my old friend and colleague.
He had retired to a rather modest cottage in the countryside, with a sizable bee farm, as he had so often spoken of in our younger days. I knew of this from his letters, of course—apparently the demand for honey was quite high—but it was another thing entirely to wander up the long drive and hear the incessant buzzing and humming crescendo as one approached the lines of wooden hives that dotted the back yard of the house.
I knocked at the front door with the head of my cane, which by then I was using nearly full-time, but when no staff nor retired detectives arrived to greet me, I wandered round to the side of the house and through the back gate, which was latched but not locked. It was then that I caught sight of him, sitting smartly upon a metal bench at the apex of a small flower garden, a thin silhouette with a proud posture overlooking the lines of the beehives. His back was to me, but the bench sat a little off to the right from the gate so that I could see the outline of his profile. That proud, hooked nose, the pointed brow, the thin lips; in silhouette against the late afternoon sky he looked just as he might have back in our rooms at 221b, staring down at Baker Street from that upper window which at one time or another saw the entire world passing by underneath.
It was not my intention to surprise the man any further than my unexpected visit would undoubtedly do already, but taking a few steps across the grass I realized that my footfalls were entirely silent, hidden beneath the buzzing of the bees. Quite a mischievous thought occurred to me then, and I continued my approach, silent as an Indian tiger in the underbrush.
At least, I had thought so. I was not a meter behind him when a sharp, clear voice cut through the breezy afternoon air.
“My dear Dr. Watson, you might have phoned ahead. I believe that is what the younger set call courtesy these days.”
I could not help the bark of incredulous laughter that emerged from my throat as Holmes turned on the bench to face me, his eyes shining with mirth. Up close, with the full light upon him, I could see that he had changed considerably since our last farewell; his face, lined as mine now was, was even more angular than it had been, and indeed it was only those keen, grey eyes that had remained untouched in our decade apart. His hair was entirely silver, a quite distinguished look for his brunette, in my opinion, than the pale grey I had been left with.
He held a cane now, too, which rested between his knees as he sat. His fashion, I observed, had not changed an iota; not in style, nor in color, nor in cut.
An almost unbearable fondness rose in my throat then, looking upon him in that moment, so familiar and yet so strikingly new. Perhaps if I had more of my wits about me I could have put all that he had taught me to some use and gleaned some clue as to his recent dealings, where he had been that day, what he had eaten . . . but I confess all my faculties faded away in the face of that wry smile, identical to that I had seen countless times across the breakfast table, in the armchair by the fireplace, facing me in a train car, next to me in a cab or in a concert hall. I had not realized, until that very moment, what a drought I had been in.
“Holmes,” I said before any hellos, for they could hardly be of any use between us now, “you must tell me how you knew.”
There was no hesitation; he might have been reciting lines from a play he’d long since memorized. “Your leather heels have given you some advantage, but you made the critical mistake, my dear Watson, of approaching me from the west. At this time of year, the waters of the great Atlantic are much colder than the warm air above, and so in the heat of the late afternoon the wind will most often blow to the east. If you had crept around the house from the opposite side, you would have been upwind, and then I would have been virtually unable to smell the particular brand of aftershave you wear.”
As he spoke I had come round the bench and sat down beside him, so that when he was finished he was able to look over at me with the most insufferable, smug little smirk upon his lips.
I stomped my cane into the earth, with good humor. “I cannot believe that after a decade you still recall that scent. Or deduced that I could not have possibly changed it after all these years.”
“You were never one eager to change your habits,” Holmes said, I admit quite rightly. “As for my time away . . .” He stared pensively at the horizon for a moment, and his hands drummed restlessly on the head of his cane. “Memory has a way of solidifying with time, as I’m sure you’ve seen, my friend. Ten years of mornings I caught scent of that aftershave. Ten more, it seems, are not enough to dull the memory.”
Before I was able to reply, he turned his head to fix those grey eyes upon me again, switching to a brighter tone. “And nothing for me, Watson?” He had the utter nerve to tsk at me, and if he were not clearly as thrilled as I to be together again, I would have made an argument of it. “Don’t tell me you’ve let your hard-won abilities stagnate.”
“Indeed not,” I said, drawing myself up, which had the desired effect of bringing a chuckle out of him. I faced him, and he met me with his implacable stare, which I was as accustomed to as my own stare into a shaving mirror.
I rattled off some manner of rather superficial observations: a fray in his jacket sleeve that indicated he did not staff anyone who sewed, and indeed the look of his clothes indicated he still dressed himself and did not staff a manservant of any kind; an attempt to analyze the mud marks on his shoes which indicated he had been into town in a cab not that day, but likely a day or two before; and an observation that he had been tending the honeybees recently that day for he had a faint but distinct smell of smoke about him—unscented, so not tobacco smoke—which along with the color of his teeth also meant he was no longer indulging in his pipe.
My attempts I thought were altogether unimpressive, but I suppose a decade had much gentled Holmes’ patience, for my analyses seemed to bring him genuine pleasure and he indulged me with some kind words of praise, and an indication of my full marks.
“Now Holmes, you must do me,” I said at length, straightening my jacket and setting my cane against the bench by my bad leg.
Holmes transformed, then, into that particular snakelike manner he held himself in when he put his entire attention to a single object. I have seen suspects with the strongest of stomachs for violence nearly buckle under that stare. I myself had grown to welcome it, and the fond attention which I knew lay behind it.
“Plainly, I can see that you are still a bachelor, and you have not been out of the city since April—no, March.” He clicked his tongue. “Poor Watson, cooped up in that muddy metropolis—I suspect that was the catalyst for this serendipitous visit. Your practice is closed for the season. You took the twelve o’clock train into town, but were delayed in arriving at the house because you thought it prudent to step into the clothier’s and buy yourself a new jacket and, yes, a new shaving kit as well, which you utilized on the coach ride here, to the detriment of your mustache, I’m afraid. You haven’t purchased new traveling shoes in at least a year and you haven’t eaten since you had breakfast at your flat at about eleven o’clock this morning, which was tomatoes and eggs on toast—” He paused, a finger against his lips—“with coffee.”
I could not help but applaud, to Holmes’ obvious pleasure. “Bravo, my dear fellow! I admit I have missed that dearly.” It was the truth; merely the sound of his voice, deep in thought, was enough to make me feel like a younger man again. “Though you’ve gotten one thing wrong, I’m afraid.”
Holmes’ grin vanished, and he leaned in as though to examine me even more closely. “Have I?”
It was with no small measure of satisfaction that I informed him, “For breakfast I had tomatoes and eggs on toast, with tea. The coffee I drank at the train station.”
He clucked rather indignantly, and we quibbled back and forth a bit on the matter, but behind his performance, as always, I could sense a terrible fondness. I knew it well, for I felt it mirrored in my own heart.
“Well, Watson,” he said at length, smartly plucking up his cane and rising from the bench, “regardless of the state of your breakfast, you’ve had nothing for supper, and that simply will not do.”
I have perhaps some polite, obligatory waffle of oh, I couldn’t possibly, well if you insist, but in truth I had been planning to stay the night and Holmes and I had shared enough meals over the years that it hardly felt an intrusion.
The cottage was a squat, humble thing of white stone, with a wooden thatched roof, and a matching stone chimney poking up on the western side. The grounds were charmingly overgrown, with vines creeping up between the cracks in the stone. From the outside it appeared modest, aside from two unexpectedly elaborate stained glass windows which heralded either side of the front door. Inside it was far more austere; Holmes had always enjoyed his creature comforts and this had only grown more apparent with time. Richly colored curtains and rugs adorned the rooms; lace doilies sat on tables; overstuffed pillows and blankets covered the furniture. Though lovingly decorated, the place was appropriately cluttered, in that familiar fashion I had grown to expect from Holmes. Newspapers and opened letters piled up on desks and occasionally the floor, bookshelves bulged with volumes stuck in every which way, and discarded dressing-gowns, jackets and hats lay across the backs of chairs and over door frames. Altogether the house had a wonderfully cozy, lived-in air, and though I had not yet set down my luggage I already felt quite at home.
Making my way through the entryway to the living room I immediately recognized some of his effects from the rooms on Baker Street, mostly small items of furniture. In a corner his chemistry set sat on a table covered in old newspapers. The sitting room contained the fireplace and on the mantel sat several baubles and keepsakes from old cases as well as, I was quite touched to see, some small framed photographs: his brother Mycroft, now about five years passed on; a few old friends, including his very first cohort Victor Trevor; and finally one of Holmes and myself that must have been taken at least fifteen years hence. We were posing together before the windows in 221b, Holmes sitting on the settee, one knee hooked over the other, while I stood at the arm beside him. I recalled it was a photograph done for the London Times, and quite obligatory for the both of us, but I fancied that behind our dour expressions hid the secret thrill of a hard-won chase. I spent perhaps a minute or two staring at it before Holmes called me into the dining room to commence our supper.
Holmes had even less staff than I had expected, because I saw no one else on the grounds or in the house save the cook, a pleasant if bored-looking woman of middle age, whose name I learned was Abigail. I determined, from the walking boots she wore and the sizable pocketbook that hung off the back of a kitchen chair, that she did not live in the house and came only to prepare lunch and supper and do a bit of the cleaning. A touch of concern graced my chest at the thought of Holmes residing all alone in such a place. Idyllic as it was, the cottage was isolated, surrounded by farmland and so far from the lively city he had once adored so much.
I inquired about it over our meal, which was a generous beef stew with a side of baked artichoke hearts from the garden, accompanied by a very fine, aged port; all quite welcome after my long day of travel.
“I had never thought you one for the countryside,” I said to him across the small dining table. “Has it been terribly dull out here, away from the smog?”
“Away from the humanity, Watson,” he said mournfully, with a gesture of his knife. “I miss it more than I can express. But neither of us is as young as we were and there comes a time when the city begins to take more than it gives.”
Coming from a different man, I would have thought the comment rather rudely pointed, but I knew Holmes had meant no offense. I said lowly, “What an odd twist of fate, that you have ended up here, and I have remained in London.”
“Indeed,” Holmes said, swallowing the remainder of his port as though it were some medicine he didn’t wish to taste going down.
I sensed that there was more he was not saying, but I didn’t want to sour our first evening together by pressing him on the matter. Changing the subject, I said genially, “I was thinking of staying here for a few days, in fact, if you’ll accept my company.”
To my satisfaction, the proposal seemed to bring him a great deal of joy. Holmes could be a terribly expressive man, if one knew what to look for; his eyes flashed at me over our wine glasses and his lips sharpened into a grin. Though I did not need to hear his reply, I nodded gratefully as he said, “My dear Watson, you are always welcome in any home of mine.”
After dessert and a bit of coffee, Holmes bade goodnight to the cook, handing her two gold sovereigns, which from her reaction I sensed was rather more than her usual pay. We both retired to the sitting room, and it was then that I spotted, sitting in its case rather innocently off in the corner, his old violin. Nodding in its direction, I asked him, “Do you still play?”
This seemed to rouse him, and he shot me a wicked glance. “Come now, Watson, observe the lack of dust, the calluses on my fingers. Of course I still play,” he said, and with energy befitting a younger man he swept the instrument up to his chin, brandishing the bow.
The moment he touched the strings there was a palpable change in the air. His body was angled towards the window but somehow I could feel his attention on me, as though eager for my reaction. It was a waltz he played, something by Strauss, whom he knew I enjoyed. Despite our frequent patronage of St James’s Hall I had never had his ear for music, however it seemed to me quite a solemn, longing piece.
After a while I closed my eyes, and at once I was back there, in the armchair by the fireplace on a cold, melancholy winter evening, the sky already dark and the falling slow glowing yellow in the lamplight outside. Holmes was in his spot by the window, always looking out at the hats and umbrellas hurrying along below, his bow moving contemplatively across the strings. A finer concert could not be found on all the stages in London.
Finally the last note was played, which I fancied that Holmes lingered on a moment longer than was called for, and I opened my eyes and sat up, applauding. Holmes made some show of a bow or two, then reclaimed the chair across from me. It was plain that without the support of his cane the exercise had tired him, and he sat down heavily, attempting to conceal his exhaustion with the pantomime of a satisfied sigh.
We had happened to sit adjacent to the fireplace in much the same arrangement as our old common room, and Holmes did not hesitate to remark on the fact. “How I’ve missed seeing you in the chair across from me, Watson,” he said. “You are looking well, I must say, if I neglected to mention before.”
“I’m glad to know it,” I said, smiling; indeed, looking into the washroom mirror had been a rather trying experience as of late, and I was glad for the objective point of view. “I must return the sentiment. You’ve kept yourself up nicely here. I only hope it hasn’t been too lonesome.”
“I might ask the same of you,” Holmes said, not at all unkindly.
“Oh, don’t worry for me, my friend. I have enough people calling on me.”
“Oh?” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and I could not help but laugh.
“Nothing untoward,” I said, “and no one half so interesting as the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
We talked for about two or three hours more, reminiscing in the way old men tend to do, and when we both deemed the hour late enough Holmes showed me down the hall to my room, a smallish but entirely agreeable guest room across the hall from his own. We bade one another goodnight in the corridor, sharing a brief embrace before parting.
The day’s journey and subsequent reunion with my old friend must have exhausted me more than I’d thought, for although I was prone to sleepless nights in unfamiliar bedrooms, that night I dropped off almost at once and did not so much as stir until morning.
The country air, I think, should never be said to be anything less than a miracle medicine for us withered old city-folk, for the following morning found me awake at the very spark of dawn, for the first time in as long as I could remember. I rose, bathed, and dressed in the beautiful pale morning light, and I had completed a pleasant walk around the beehives and drank half of my morning tea before Holmes finally wandered blearily into the dining room.
I had forgotten how dear and boyish he looked in the mornings, still in his nightshirt and with his hair uncombed, and it brought some measure of relief to see this had not changed at all, save the addition of his cane. The cantankerousness with which he greeted me was only enhanced by my cheerful reply, and it gave me a rather immature pleasure to see him so annoyed by my good mood.
“Well, what’s on for today, then?” I said jovially, buttering the bread.
Holmes hung the cane on the chair back and sat down with a grunt. He accepted the plate of toast I offered him, and wrapped himself tighter in his dressing-gown as he chewed on it. “If you are at all game, I thought perhaps I could show you the beehives, and then a walk around the property.”
“Ah, that sounds splendid.”
“I wish to show you as much as I can, in your short visit. It is nowhere near as thrilling as the city, but it is remarkably beautiful, and holds its own hidden charms.”
“You needn’t convince me,” I told him.
He barked a laugh, and the clouds of his countenance cleared a little. “No, perhaps not. I’d forgotten your penchant for the countryside; I’m sure it is a tad infuriating to you that only after all this time I finally understand it.”
“Not at all!” I said, and I reached across the table to grip his unoccupied hand. “I am glad you’ve come to appreciate it.”
He gave my fingers a squeeze before releasing them. “Your patience with me has not waned in all these years, Doctor.”
He gave me a terribly fond look then, and I found myself at a slight loss for words. After a moment I gave some sort of appropriate reply, and glanced away.
As promised, the day began with the work of the beehives. I gracefully declined the net hat and heavy gloves and stood a little further apart from Holmes as he wandered through the monolithic wooden boxes. It was with infinite delicacy that he removed each tray in turn, only occasionally employing the smoker. His careful examination of the honeycombs and the bees brought to mind his long, thin fingers holding pieces of evidence up to the light. As always, however much time had passed and whatever his vocation, it was a privilege to watch him work.
Lunch was something of a picnic out on the lawn beyond the beehives, during which Holmes pointed out to me all the varied types of mushrooms growing in the grass and how to tell the poisonous from the edible. I was quite fascinated. At one point, without any provocation that I could see, he burst out:
“Ah, Watson, how refreshing it is to have you back, after all this time.”
I might have laughed if his jubilance had not been so genuine, in the manner of steam escaping a kettle. “I ought to have come sooner,” said I, unable to temper the regret in my voice.
“I ought to have asked you,” Holmes countered, and with that the matter seemed even and settled, and we went on talking pleasantly as we had before.
After lunch we took a turn around the property, arms linked together so that neither of us had to lean too heavily on his cane. From the lawn Holmes guided us back towards the line of trees which bordered the property and separated it from the neighboring farm. The day was quite picturesque, with a smattering of white clouds in the bright blue sky above, and the freshly green grass of the early summer underfoot. There was a cool wind across the land carrying the fine scent of honey and growing lavender, and along with my companion’s welcome voice in my ear I found it to be an altogether perfect vision of an afternoon.
The early evening found us, old men that we were, rather warm and sleepy after our short excursion, and we both turned in for naps: Holmes upon the sitting room settee (I worried for his back) and myself in the guest bed.
It happened that I must have slept far later than I meant to, because when I awoke to a knocking at my door the open curtains beside my bed revealed a darkened, blue-black sky.
I mumbled some confused greeting, and Holmes pushed open the door, balancing a silver dinner tray in his arms. “I trust you slept well,” he said, as he placed it on an end table and dragged it over to the bed, “and terribly sorry to wake you, Watson, but Abigail has just left for the night and I didn’t want you waking up to a cold supper.”
I had only just managed to sit up on the pillows and was still rubbing my eyes when Holmes clapped his hands together and added, “Oh, the brandy,” and then he was off again.
Peeking under the tray, I saw a steaming leg of lamb, buttery potatoes, and beets which were practically bleeding juice, and I sent up a silent thanks into the night for Abigail, who deserved every sovereign she got. Holmes returned presently with the brandy and glasses, and pulled up a chair so that we may have a toast.
“To a fine day with an old friend,” I offered, for it had been at that, and we drank.
“To sleeping through the afternoon,” Holmes said, and we drank to that as well.
He sat with me by the bed as I ate, and though I gathered from the slight red stain on his lips that he had eaten already, he stole several bites from my fork which I was only too happy to offer him. It never failed to warm my heart to see Holmes taken care of, by himself ideally, but I took no small pride in doing the job myself.
Our conversation soon turned to our present work, which in my case was not of much interest. I said a few words about my private practice and although Holmes plainly made an effort to appear interested, I spared him the pretense and asked him instead about his own vocations in the Downs.
He told me he was intensely studying the habits of the bees, which had truthfully been his reason for keeping them in the first place but the honey, he said with a wry smile, was a very pleasant side effect. His research had taken him far afield of what most entomologists considered useful, but he had written up several scientific articles that had been accepted into journals purely on the basis of their singularity—and, he noted with pride, their thoroughness.
“I’m sure they were also well-written,” I offered, though I cannot say it was with my full confidence.
Holmes caught my bluff and waved a dismissive hand. “You are the wordsmith, Watson. However pedestrian I have found your chronicles in the past, you do have the ear of the public, and that is something I will never quite manage.” He did not seem overly heartbroken at the idea.
“So you are well and truly retired, then,” said I.
“I’m afraid so, Watson.”
“Ah, but I’m sure the occasional local wanders by with some mystery for you, now and again.”
“I have had no such callers, no, nor can I truthfully say I want them. In fact I’ve kept my presence here in the Downs entirely private—I’m sure you’ll heed that request upon your return to London.”
“Certainly, my boy, certainly.” I paused, but found I could not let the matter rest. “And this is to your satisfaction? No puzzles to solve, no web of clues to untangle?”
“It is, Watson, and I’m sure no one is more surprised than I. I am quite stimulated enough by my research, and in truth I’ve found retirement to be quite relaxing.” Yet even as he spoke I caught his fingers twitching in his lap, perhaps wanting for the familiar handle of a pipe, or for something less conventional.
I thought over my next words carefully, for the subject was one I had been thinking on since I arrived, and I had been unable to find any hints one way or the other. “And there has been no need for . . . chemical diversions?”
He looked up at me sharply, and with some finality said, “There has not been, Watson.”
“Dear boy, I didn’t mean to offend.”
“And I am not offended.” Indeed his voice had softened somewhat. “I merely wished you to know how sincerely I have taken your advice. Not a drop of the concoction has entered my veins since I buried my syringe, all those years ago.”
He said it with such sincerity I could not doubt his words. A long time had passed since he had reason to deceive me about the more destructive of his habits, and I could not imagine him doing so now. “I am mightily glad to hear it, Holmes,” said I.
We went on to speak about less shadowy things, and Holmes was regaling me with the finer details of bee socialization when, I am a bit embarrassed to say, I must have fallen asleep. For next I knew I was waking to total darkness, save the nearly-full moon casting a square of light through the window. The tray and chair were gone, along with Holmes himself, and the faint chime of the hall clock announced it was a quarter past two in the morning.
I must remember to apologize to the old boy at breakfast. I’d hate for him to think I was uninterested in the bees, I thought, before I turned over in bed and drifted off again.
The following morning of what was intended to be the final day of my visit offered up a dreary, rainy sky and a monstrous ache in my knee, such that I considered fishing around in the washroom cupboards for laudanum. In the end I decided against it, pulling myself from bed with a groan and leaning heavily on my cane all the way to the dining room.
Due to the pain I had lain in bed longer than usual and Holmes had beaten me to breakfast. It was his turn to pass across to me a plate of toast with honey and a steaming teacup—the only welcome bright spots of the morning.
I raised my cup to him in thanks, but looking upon his face it was clear Holmes was faring about as well as I. He wore a taciturn glare which did not waver from the tea kettle sitting between us, his brow low and his eyes nearly shut—not with sleepiness, I wagered, quite correctly.
I ate and drank in silence, knowing he would speak if he wished to, and in the end my patience was rewarded.
In a very clear voice which contrasted his unmoving, sour expression, Holmes said, “Watson, I must inform you that I am in a bit of a slump this morning.”
“I see,” I said. “It is to be a quiet day, then?”
“Quiet, and moody, I’m afraid.”
“It’s just as well,” I said, “for the rain is causing my leg great consternation.”
Holmes nodded solemnly, eyes still fixated upon the remains of our breakfast. “Then it is to be a black, miserable day for the both of us.”
“I’ve heard it said that misery loves company.”
Holmes waved a dismissive hand, but did at last glance up at me before his gaze flitted away again. “Does the old method still work on your knee?”
“I expect so. But It’s been years since I had anyone around to assist me with it.”
“Then we shall put that hypothesis to the test without delay. Come, into the sitting room, the settee is wide enough I think.” With that he swept up his dressing-gown and cane and bent down towards me, offering an arm.
With Holmes’ assistance I hobbled to the settee and laid down carefully as Holmes lit the fireplace and drew the curtains halfway, chasing away some of the incessant pattering of the rain against the windows. He joined me a moment later, deftly placing my legs in his lap. I was still in my stocking feet and pajama pants, so it was easy for him to roll up the leg and expose my inflamed knee to his touch.
Indeed, it had been such a long time since I’d had an expert’s hands on the old wound that I gasped aloud with relief when he began to massage it, cautiously at first, and then more forcefully. Holmes’ skills as a masseuse had evidently only increased over the years, for the entire time he did his good work the pain nearly disappeared. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, Holmes apologized briefly and stood up again, promising to return with haste. I admit, the two minutes felt like an age, and I almost wanted to be cross with him when he returned with no explanation—until I spied the bottle he held in his hands.
It was full of what looked like pale honey, as though diluted in something. “A salve,” I guessed, and from his grin I knew I’d hit upon it.
“Of my own design,” he said, uncorking it, and held it up to my nose so that I may have a sniff. Indeed, it smelled most strongly of honey, and something herbal that I couldn’t quite place. “I’ve tested it on bug bites, burns, and boils, and so far it has only worked wonders. With your permission, Doctor, I would like to see if it brings your knee any relief.”
Being a medical man I was naturally curious about the contents, which, with the promise of my discretion, Holmes disclosed to me, and I agreed that we should test it.
The results were quite satisfactory for both of us. “Holmes, you must concoct a crateful of that wonderful stuff so that I may take it back to London with me,” I said, my eyes falling blissfully shut.
But no answer came, and I opened my eyes to see Holmes once again wearing a somber expression, even as he continued to work on my knee. I had thought him cheered by the momentary distraction, but it seemed his mind was still railing against him as was its whim. Not for the first time, I wished there was something within my power I could do to help him come out of it—if only a salve existed for that fantastic brain of his.
Instead we let the silence settle over us for a while, and I could tell it gave him a kind of peace, to be let alone in such a way. Being so used to one another, my presence hardly affected him in the way a stranger’s might, and he knew I would not force him to engage in pleasantries if he had no wish to. By and by his eyes would glaze over and he would seem to drift away upon a kind of mental raft, and so I would give him a small nudge with my foot, to remind him of where he was. Such was the only interaction necessary between us.
Around about mid-morning I rose stiffly from the settee, my leg in much better form, for which I thanked Holmes profusely. He waved my words away with a kind hand, and helped me with my cane. For the next few hours, as I went about my business of packing up my things and making my travel arrangements for the following day, Holmes remained mostly immobile in an armchair, staring out at the hammering rain. I could tell he was longing to be outside, perhaps with the bees or simply free from the confines of the house. At one point I brought him tea and a sandwich, for with the weather Abigail could not be there that day to serve us, and to my surprise he acquiesced to eat it.
We said not a word to one another for all the rest of that day until suppertime, when he said to me quite suddenly, “So you are leaving tomorrow morning, I take it.”
I could not read anything from his tone; coming from someone else the words might have been reproachful, but from him it seemed a mere statement of fact. “I am,” said I.
“It has been very pleasant, with you here. I wish I had been more myself today, to see you off with some excitement, but then again perhaps what you said about misery and company contains some truth.” Before I could reply, he swept something out of his dressing-gown pocket and placed it upon the table between us. It was a fresh bottleful of the salve he had used on my knee. “A small souvenir, to take back with you,” he said, with the barest suggestion of a smile upon his lips.
He played the violin for me again that night, a piece I didn’t recognize, and though it was beautiful his playing seemed to color every note with melancholy.
Without any words on the matter we both decided to go to bed early. My knee was still shaky, and I leaned upon him as he led me down the hallway to my room, lingering with me outside the door. It felt quite like a goodbye, in a final sort of way.
“I will wake you to see me off,” I promised him, and he nodded, but his eyes were dark.
That night I found I could not sleep, for once not from the ache in my knee but from some unknown discontentment in my chest that had not gone away since we had bidden each other goodnight. At perhaps one or two in the morning, I finally took up my cane and shuffled out of bed—there was a full moon that night, and so I had no need of a candle—and went to Holmes’ bedroom door.
Almost certainly he had been awake as well, because my knock was met with an immediate “Come in, Watson,” and when I did so I saw that Holmes was lying on his side in bed to face the door, looking older than I remembered him.
He wordlessly shuffled over to offer me the nearest spot on the mattress, pulling the blanket back for me as I crawled in. For several minutes, we lay there in silence, staring up at the wooden thatched ceiling. The bright moonlight cast a harsh outline of the quartered windows upon the floor and the end of the bed, over the lumps of our feet.
It was hardly the first time we had shared a bed; being boarders together for such a long time will lend itself to all sorts of crowded scenarios. Often Holmes’ room would meet with some sort of chemical accident and for a night or two he would have to share mine. Less commonly, when my room needed cleaning or repairs I would share his bed—which was far less preferable, as it was a minuscule twin and we were stuffed in like sardines. There were several times I recall, in the smallest morning hours, that Holmes wandered into my bed entirely by mistake and simply refused to wake up again to correct his error.
Never before had one of us come to the other, entirely of his own volition, to make such a silent request; and never before had the other responded so agreeably. Such, I suppose, was the wont of two lonely, aged companions.
After some time, nearly long enough for me to grow drowsy, I felt Holmes reach over and gently take my hand in his, letting them rest together on the blankets between us. His touch was very light, almost hesitant, and I threaded our fingers together more securely. His fingers held the calluses of violin plucking and old chemical spills, the scars of healed burns and cuts—many of which I myself had cleaned and plastered for him, long ago. I still recalled the way he would sit for me, his manner unusually subdued, his eyes following every movement of my hands, listening quietly to my admonishments.
In the end, it was I who broke the silence. “My train leaves at half past seven; I shall have to be up at six for a cab.”
There was no reply from the other pillow.
I pressed on. “I will certainly miss you when I return to London, old fellow. I’ll write as soon as I’m back.”
“I will look forward to it,” said Holmes at last, his voice very quiet in the dark.
“Now, don’t mope,” I said, “I daresay you’ll find something else to occupy yourself with once I am gone. You’ve always managed it before.”
There was a long pause, and for a moment I had thought Holmes had drifted asleep, until his voice came again, in a very queer tone. “Is that what you believe I think of you, Watson?”
The words quite surprised me. “Think of—?”
“That you are something to occupy me from boredom, to distract me.” His voice had grown very sharp. “As though you were a replacement for the cocaine bottle. Is that why you think I want you to stay?”
“You want me to stay,” I said. I admit, it was not entirely a surprise, and the words did not emerge as a question. “For how long, then? A week, a month? A year?”
Holmes made an abortive sound, as though he had begun to speak but could not continue.
“You are retired,” I said pointedly. “I cannot possibly be any help to you now, without a case to solve, or anything to record.”
“Don’t pretend to be a fool, Watson,” Holmes said, but his voice was softer than his words. “And do not wound me, by assuming the worst of my intentions. If I wanted a distraction, or a puzzle, I would stroll down to the local police station and make myself an old bother. You are not—” He stopped, as though stricken by something, and when he spoke again all the fight seemed to have left him. “I have very much enjoyed having you here, Watson. But I cannot make you stay.”
“Indeed not,” I said, weakly, uncertain how to proceed. I could not order my thoughts into the proper words, to express to him how I felt.
“I would ask only that you consider . . .” He drifted off. I sensed that unlike myself, he knew precisely what he wanted to say, and was simply unwilling, or unable, to give voice to it.
“I have things to return to, back in London. I cannot simply leave everything behind for a bee farm in Sussex.” But even as I spoke, I knew it was not the truth. What had I to go back to? A dying practice, limping along with my last handful of patients who had not yet moved on to a younger, more able physician. A beige box set of rooms which looked out upon a London I barely recognized and which served only to remind me of the past. No living relatives, no friends I cared to spare the time for, nothing to write about, and no one to talk to.
I was reminded that our hands were still entwined between us, as Holmes gave mine a squeeze and said, “Of course, Watson, I understand completely. I will say no more on the matter, and I look forward to seeing you off tomorrow.”
There was another long silence, though I could tell sleep was beyond us now. I could practically hear the twin whirring in both our heads, thinking of how we could possibly puzzle ourselves out of the stalemate we had placed ourselves in.
And then, perhaps in that same way Holmes must have experienced himself countless times at the near conclusion of some hopelessly entangled case, a spark of realization emerged, and I hit upon it.
“It is a shame I have no more biographies of yours to write,” I said presently, “for the scenery out here would serve as a wonderful muse.”
“A shame, yes,” said Holmes faintly, and then something seemed to click in his hand, and he went on with a bit more vim, “But now that you say so it occurs to me, there must be some old cases of mine I still have not recounted to you, that you may yet deem worthy of your readers’ kind attention.”
“It is possible, at that,” I said. It was not unlike leading a dance.
Holmes followed me beautifully. “Moreover, I’ll have you know there is still much to note of the quiet life of a Sussex bee farmer, particularly one as prolific as this old thing. I daresay I have surprises for you yet, Watson.”
“I would be all too eager to put them to paper, Holmes, if you are amenable.”
“Amendable indeed, Watson! And if you ever wish to stretch your legs from your writing desk and be of help . . .” In the moonlight I could just see him nod towards the window looking onto the back yard. “I can always use an extra hand around the beehives.”
“Holmes, I am no beekeeper,” I said, wanting to laugh but somehow unable to.
“No one is a beekeeper until they are trained,” Holmes said, not unreasonably. “Do you still have your surgeon’s hands?”
Of course from observing me the past few days he knew the answer already, but I could not resist lifting my free hand from the covers and holding it up to the moonlight, where it trembled not a millimeter.
I felt more than saw Holmes’ chuckle and nod. “That will do very nicely, Doctor.”
“Holmes,” I said.
“I shall be glad for the company,” he said then, and his fingers curled just perceptibly tighter around my own.
“Then ask me,” said I, with a sudden boldness. A wonderful electricity had suffused me, a quiet thrill the like of which I had not felt in precisely a decade.
“Dr. Watson,” Holmes said, “I find myself in urgent need of a housemate, and there is an empty room here which finds itself available. Would you find it at all tolerable to reside with me?”
I felt my smile must have been visible even in the dark of the room. “I shall be glad for the company, dear fellow.”
At one point or another we must have drifted off, because next I knew I was opening my eyes to the pale blue dawn, Holmes’ warm bulk curled possessively against my back, as he had so often done in the past when we had been made to share a room. Being a much later riser than I, he was entirely unappreciative of my removal of myself from the covers and the subsequent placement of my blanket over his head.
The sum of my effects arrived from the city eight days later, just after morning tea.
It was a close and hazy summer that year, the kind of summer in which the days pass slowly even as the weeks fly by, and it betrayed nothing of the darkness that was to follow. Brief though it was, that summer felt as though it belonged to only the two of us, as though the little house and the surrounding fields were the extent of the world. We insulated ourselves in the comfort of our hearth and of each other’s familiar presence, defying any intrusion from the reality which lay, waiting, just beyond the turn of the drive. It was perhaps one of the happiest times of my later life, and even to look back on it now, the memory of it only brings me joy.
Much of the fair days were spent in the service of the beehives. It was a practice unfamiliar to me but Holmes proved to be, in this as in his life’s work, a willing teacher. As promised, my surgeon’s hands proved beneficial to the delicate work of scraping the honeycombs without harming the bees themselves, as Holmes held the smoker aloft. He held an enormous respect and concern for the bees, and treated them like pets, speaking softly to them about the news of the day as though they could understand him. However fanciful, it was my private belief that the great size of our yield was due to his fond attention.
With my poor knee I was of less help with the garden, but Holmes sought my company regardless as he rooted around in the soil, and often I would simply sit on the small metal bench and listen to him tell me about each plant and herb. As always, his enthusiasm was infectious, and I found myself quite intrigued by his studies; what flower made the best tea, which vegetable went with which spirit, which herb could kill a grown man and which could revive him once again. He seemed enamored with each budding thing and many times he lifted leaves and flowers to my nose to smell. His crop of rosemary was particularly fragrant, and on breezy days you could smell it across the lawn.
In the evenings Abigail would cook up something delightfully hearty, usually with something from the garden, and leave us to eat by the light of the late sunset. We’d pour some wine and sit close by the fire, engaged only with each other’s company and often Holmes’ violin, for there was little else to distract us and little we wished to distract ourselves with. So enjoyable were these little salons we would often be loath to retire to bed, and stay up to the smallest hours of the morning, until our yawns prevented us from speaking altogether.
On rainy days (or more frequently, days when Holmes wished to do little but laze about), I would take to the writing desk Holmes had cleared off for me, in what we tentatively called his study—though the room was more of a mad museum than anything else. It was there, surrounded by old tacked-up newspaper clippings and magazine articles, and not an insignificant number of pinned insect displays, that I penned several of Holmes’ old cases that had not yet seen the light of day. As ever, he made it plain to me he did not think much of my prose, but he nevertheless read each and every draft I handed him, and in the end after some quibbling waved them off to the mail-carrier to be delivered to my old London publisher.
I admit, it brought me no small amount of joy to be writing again. The modest commission I earned interested me far less than the sheer satisfaction of reading the bundles of reviews my publisher sent me, affirming that the public was still quite interested in the exploits of the Great Detective. Holmes, of course, would have none of it, and flatly refused to even remain in the same room whenever I tried to read him something aloud; but I, at least, was pleased.
We had our occasional spats and disagreements, as every pair of lodgers have had since the beginning of time and, I expect, will have until the end of all things, but transgressions were forgiven as quickly as they came, and no matter what was said between us in the light of day, after the sun went down Holmes would always, without fail, pick up his violin and serenade me as I sat in my armchair, watching him play. Very rarely would he look at me as he played, preferring to stare out of the sitting room windows, but I sensed his attention was focused acutely upon me, such that I felt my enjoyment of his playing was paramount to him. It was just as well that every performance left me with my eyes rapturously closed until its conclusion, for I fear that if I had become something of a critic in my old age Holmes would have packed the thing away, never to take it out of its case again.
Though the little cottage was our haven, we did venture into the town once a week or so to sell the excess honey Holmes jarred himself. The local grocer’s would always buy a crateful, and everything extra we sold on the street to passersby for a pittance. The locals knew well the sight of my friend, with his smart black cane and tailored coat, and though they never guessed at who he really was, they knew that the sale of honey had not been the reason for his comfortable retirement and that he was only too glad to practically give the stuff away.
Though Holmes had carefully concealed his former life from the townsfolk, he had struck up a rapport with quite a few of them, and I was pleasantly surprised by how sociable he had become. He introduced me to many of the locals during those weekly visits, though politely avoided mentioning either of our surnames, or the nature of our cohabitation.
Meanwhile I had settled into the house quite nicely; my things had made their way into every nook and cranny of the place, such that it was difficult to tell where Holmes’ trappings ended and mine began. Once again, it brought to mind fresh memories of our little common room in 221b. Part of me was concerned that, after so long alone, Holmes would be unacclimated to such a style of living, but he took to it quite readily, and seemed almost glad for it. It was as though my presence there was further assured to him with each misplaced slipper or pen-knife.
The one niggling doubt I had in my mind was as to the nature of my sudden and unexplained arrival—I sensed that Holmes wished to question me about it, and it was not until one dark evening in July that he took the opportunity to do so. We were sitting in our accustomed chairs by the fire, the both of us a glass or two deep. I cannot recall where the conversation began, but at one point Holmes said quite abruptly, “Why did you come, Watson?”
“Hm? What is that now?” He was much clearer of speech than I, and I struggled to collect my wits.
“Your spontaneous visit to me. A seasonal boredom sent you in my direction, but after ten years of seasons it is hard to puzzle out the particular timing you chose.”
I held my glass in both hands, and stared down pensively into it. “To tell you the truth, my boy, I don’t believe I quite know myself.”
“Ah.”
“I had a particularly lonely spring. I suppose I was longing for good company.”
“Well, if you’ve found it here, all the better.” Behind his flippant tone I could tell he was pleased.
I almost laughed. “I’m not sure where else I would find it, Holmes.”
He gave me one of his looks then, a sort of surprised tenderness in his face.
I went on. “You are singular, Holmes, as you well know by now. At least,” I cut off his attempt to protest me, “you know that is how I see you. I cannot think of a better companion to have at one’s side, in this life or any other. Perhaps it simply took me all of ten years to realize such an obvious fact; I have hardly your speed of observation, after all.”
I chuckled self-deprecatingly, but Holmes was giving me quite a serious look, his brows drawn close and his eyes upon me.
“My dear Watson, you must know I mirror your sentiments completely. I have known many able men, and there is no comparison with you.”
I looked down and away from him, unable to meet that grey stare. “And yet we have both ended up alone.”
“Not so!” Holmes said, his sudden exultation nearly making me jump. “For here we both are,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the room, the fire, his settee, my armchair.
He was quite right about that, and the finality of his words seemed to lift the air of the room almost immediately. I was quite grateful for his openness then, for his words would be a comfort to me in the long and arduous time which was to follow.
The first ripple in the placid water of our new life appeared, as all such things do, without warning and with stunning definition. It happened in the quiet of a day in late July, under the noon sunshine, with barely a whisper: one moment Holmes was standing out in the yard with his cane, waiting for me to join him on a walk across the grounds, as we so often did on pleasant afternoons, and the next moment he was lying, unmoving, in the long grass.
My hands and body moved without thought; slowly my mind crawled along, unable to follow their precise, rapid movements as I ran to his side and knelt down to examine him. Distantly I watched myself carry him back to the house and lay him on his bed, and as I slowly came to awareness I realized that I must have also fetched my doctor’s bag and a washbasin, for my hands were busying themselves with laying a wet cloth upon his forehead and holding smelling salts up to his nose, and it was then that Holmes blinked awake and I at last began to come back to myself.
“Holmes,” I heard myself saying, through a kind of ringing in my ears, “Holmes, if you can, say something. I need to know if you can hear me.”
His eyes darted sluggishly over my face, and automatically I noted, with relief, the good dilation of the pupils and the recognition in his gaze.
“Holmes, speak if you can. Are you in any pain?”
“I . . .” he choked out, and swallowed with some effort. “N-No,” he went on, more clearly. “No pain. Head . . . went fuzzy and black . . . I’m not sure . . .”
“It’s all right,” I said, “don’t strain yourself. I’ll fetch you some water.”
“Brandy,” he murmured. At some point his hands had wrapped around mine, and I gently extricated them, with a reassuring squeeze.
The water and brandy served well to rouse him, and less than an hour after the whole wretched event Holmes was almost back to his usual self. He was sitting up in bed and I believe would have tried to go right back out to the garden if I were not there with a stern look to hold him captive.
“Really, Watson, I’m in no pain and feel quite well again. It must have been the heat of the day; I was in perhaps too heavy a jacket.”
While it was certainly possible the heat was to blame, I could see no obvious reason his strength would wane so. Listening with my stethoscope, I noted a faintness in his lungs, but it had been many years since I had a comparison and in fact my own vitals were not what they once were. Seeing him hale enough to sit up and walk around the room, and finding nothing obviously wrong, I finally gave him a clean bill of health.
Indeed, for another fortnight or so, everything was as usual in the cottage and Holmes was as spry as ever. In fact he had begun to turn to his own writings again, penning what he intended to be some informative articles on home-brew poisons and their antidotes. Many nights I had to all but drag him from his candlelit desk to his bed, forcing him to keep somewhat regular hours.
If only I had watched him more closely during that time. The incident had nearly passed out of my mind when, one day in mid-August, the sanctity of our private little summer home was to be irreparably shattered.
I was in the pantry, searching for chamomile for our afternoon tea, when I heard a cry from the other room, followed by a muffled clatter.
Again there was the odd sensation of my body acting without my full account. At once I was through the kitchen and in the sitting room, where Holmes lay on his side in a heap upon the rug, the fallen tea tray beside him. He was still conscious, reaching up for me, and carefully I gathered him in my arms and lifted him up onto the settee which was nearest. Kneeling beside him (I damned my knees), I saw his eyes darting this way and that, his chest heaving, murmuring something I could not make out. There was blood upon his lips, and not from an injury that had been sustained in the fall.
Abigail, who must have been in the kitchen readying our supper, was suddenly behind me, with a wet cloth and a bandage, though only the former was necessary. With detached efficiency I dabbed the blood away and passed the cool cloth over Holmes’ face, murmuring reassurances all the while. I felt his pulse, which was fast and thready, and though in time it slowed it did not strengthen.
I instructed Abigail to telephone the town’s local physician with the order to come at once. My barking tone of voice must have roused Holmes a bit, because he came out of his murmuring stupor, and blinked up at me with clearer eyes. “Watson,” he said hoarsely, and then coughed. More blood speckled his lips, and I quickly wiped it away.
“Don’t speak,” I told him, and handed him some water, which he downed without complaint. “You will remain here until the doctor from town arrives to have a look at you,” I said, in a tone which brooked no argument and indeed I received none.
After some few minutes, Holmes was no longer coughing up blood and was able to sit up a bit, propped up on the arm of the settee, but I forbade him from exerting himself further. As we waited for the physician to arrive, I took his vitals once again. The sound of his lungs was much weaker now, and I wondered if perhaps it had been so for days and his apparent vitality had prevented me from noticing it. I gave him no indication of my worry in my expression, though I feared he could read it in the motion of my hands alone.
Holmes was uncharacteristically acquiescent to the local doctor, a Dr. Abram Williams, as I told him of what had occurred and he checked him over much as I had done. When he had finished and said a few pleasant words to Holmes, which were returned with the usual indifference, Dr. Williams took me aside into the hall and minced no words. For perhaps two or three minutes we spoke in low voices, and then I saw him off with a stinging sickness in my heart.
I went straight to the telephone and made three more calls, two to London and one to Surrey, to the homes of three of the finest doctors I had ever been privileged to know. I did very little short of beg them to come to Sussex as soon as they could manage.
I am sure that if Holmes had been a chimney sweep rather than the nation’s most skilled detective he could still have gleaned the entire story from my manner when I returned to the room.
“I have sent for three more doctors, all trusted colleagues,” I told him, sitting again by his side and busying myself with a fresh washcloth. “One will arrive as early as tonight, and the others we can expect sometime tomorrow. We will draw no conclusions until they have all said their piece.”
Holmes stared at his lap with a focused expression, as though trying to scrounge up a reply, but in the end he seemed to let the idea go and merely nodded. I supposed I must have sat deep in thought for a while, for next I knew I was roused by his hand slipping into mine. I held it tightly back, and we sat quite still in that way for what seemed like hours.
That night, once the first doctor had come and gone, I refused to tell Holmes what his diagnosis had been. I refused to think about it myself; instead I carefully helped Holmes to his bed and brought him some tea and broth, and watched him eat. He acquiesced to me quite easily, and was polite enough not to comment on the fact that I ate nothing myself.
The following morning the second doctor called, and then perhaps three hours later the third came and went. Each prognosis was identical to Dr. Williams’, and my own.
When I returned to the bedroom, from which Holmes had not moved for the better part of a day, I sat on the chair at his bedside and resisted the urge to lower my head into my hands.
“Well?” Holmes said. “I have some idea already, of course, but in all matters of medicine I defer to your trusted authority, Watson.” Yet there was a fragility beneath his bravado.
“Consumption,” I told him. “Very likely consumption, in the lungs.”
He took a moment to reply, his expression betraying nothing. When he did speak, his voice was steady, much as it was when he asked a client a question to which he already suspected the answer. “And how long have I, Watson? Months or weeks?”
My bedside manner, normally impermeable as steel, in that moment utterly failed me. I turned from the bed to wipe my eyes with my handkerchief, though of course there was no one to hide from except the man whose gaze had never left my face. Holmes was kind enough to make no comment, and when I turned back to him, surely red-eyed, he merely gave me a comprehending look, and reached for my hand.
“Weeks, then,” was all he said, and I could do nothing but nod.
For the next several days I remained in an odd haze of semi-consciousness, in which I allowed myself no real passing thought save for that of the strictly practical. I waited upon Holmes hand and foot, with welcome assistance from Abigail, and forbade him from leaving his bed unaccompanied lest he collapse again and injure himself. Holmes, for his part, did little to protest me, though I am sure he felt it all rather unnecessary. He knew as well as I that a consumptive person is by no means a bedridden person, should they feel able to walk. Yet for those first few days I could not bring myself to let him go unaided, without the help of his cane and myself on his arm.
Most of my medical library had been sent to me when I moved into the house, and I spent many sleepless hours poring over any reference I could find to the treatment of consumption—though of course Holmes was not my first patient who had suffered the affliction and I knew, already, I would find nothing helpful. It is a truly nefarious condition, aptly named, and treatment is little more complex than the management of pain before the inevitable.
Of course being so intimately acquainted with the disease I well knew that Holmes could not have been struck with the symptoms so suddenly and so acutely without some prior warning. I have my pride, and if I had failed to observe the signs of the condition before this it indicated not that I had failed in my trade, but rather that Holmes had been exceedingly good at hiding them from me during my stay. Yet I could not prevent myself, during those fevered days, from cursing again and again my failure of observation.
In the end when I came out of my stupor and finally allowed the full reality of the world to once again wash over me, I was armed with no more useful knowledge than before. I rose from my cluttered desk, feeling rather like Holmes must have felt on the rare occasions he was beaten by a case, and went to him then. It was quite late at night, or early in the morning, I couldn’t be sure, but I found him still awake in bed, propped up on the pillows and making notes in a newspaper.
“You ought to be asleep,” I said, as I sat down at his bedside in the wooden chair which had become my accustomed seat.
He did not look up from the paper and spoke as though he had not heard me. “I suppose you will be well-practiced in it.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the matter of my death. You have contended with it before, after all.”
For a moment I was speechless. Holmes was no stranger to macabre humor, but he took the subject of death as seriously as any seeker of justice, and so this outburst surprised me completely.
When I did not reply, he lowered the paper, and the change in his demeanor indicated he realized the words had hurt me. “Apologies, Watson,” he said quickly, “I should not have said it.”
“No, you should not have,” I said coldly. Those three black years were already a sore subject between us, and now Holmes was digging the knife in.
He refolded the paper and tossed it aside. “I have never been astute in matters of the heart—that I have always left to you, dear boy. However I have always prided myself on knowing my Watson, and still I spoke without consideration of his wounded heart. Forgive me.”
“I don’t believe I can, Holmes,” I said. I felt the pressure of tears behind my eyes but forbade them passage. “Not if you are truly leaving this time.”
“Would that Death was as fallible as our late Professor, or a less patient foe. In a way you are the hero, Watson, not myself, for physicians can at least fend off the cold darkness for a time.”
“I will spend every waking minute beating it back with a flaming torch if I have to, Holmes.”
He flashed me a brief, wry smile. “Watson,” he said, quite fondly. “I have said it before: you are my fixed point. Where I would be now without your lion spirit I dare not think of.”
A cold shard of guilt passed through me then; I had left him alone for so long before this. I said as much to him, but he only scoffed, dismissing my worries with the brush of a hand.
“It is as I said to you those many weeks ago: here we both are, together. Let us not dwell on our years apart, for the past is as hostile as a desert and uninhabitable as the moon. Your presence with me now is as good as gold, my dear boy, and not only for your physician’s skill.”
I am not too proud a man to confess that I did cry then, Holmes holding onto my arm in an uncharacteristically comforting manner until I had gotten ahold of myself again.
As anyone who knew him could easily predict, Holmes was eager to be allowed out of bed again before a full week had gone by. Although I believe he did not altogether mind my fussing over him, he was a proud man and wished to take care of his own business if he was at all capable of it. I allowed him this dignity along with a list of conditions as long as my arm, which, with his hand upon his heart, he swore to me he would heed.
Chief among his concerns, of course, were the beehives, which he felt he had been neglecting; I reminded him it had only been a few days, and he helpfully reminded me that to a bee, a few days was a good part of a lifetime. I accompanied him, of course, for over the course of the summer I had become quite sufficient at the use of the smoker and no longer feared being stung. I insisted upon him letting me scrape the honey myself, for that was the most physical of tasks, and he contented himself with checking on the societal happenings in each hive, and of course the queens. I could hear him begging his apologies to them for being away for so long, and I could not help the chuckle I let out, which earned me a tsking.
We returned to the house after little more than an hour, at my insistence, for I sensed Holmes was tiring and it was a relief for him to return to his place by the fire, with me across from him, as we were both accustomed to. The day felt almost ordinary after that, in the manner of our lazy afternoons of sitting around comfortably and saying little to one another. Yet I could not ignore the ever-present ache that sat in my chest and heart.
I have never thought of myself as a very emotional man, but grief has a way of choking the breath out of you, such that a man feels as though he is drowning on dry land. For those three dark years when I had thought he was gone, I don’t believe I took a full, deep breath even once. I have always been quite easily affected by Holmes, in such a way that some might call it a weakness of mine—though I would disagree, for in all of my association with him I have found nothing but strength—but now I did truly feel physically weakened by the thought of how little time he had left. That Holmes remained as stalwart as ever was a small balm to my troubled heart, but I suspected that beneath the placid surface there must have been roiling seas.
Days went by, and Holmes gave no outward indication of pain, in the physical or the psychological. It was only a partial relief. I insisted upon taking his vitals each morning and night, during which time I was the textbook portrait of a man failing to put on his bravest face, but all the time I could sense not a chink in Holmes’ armor. At times it seemed he thought it all a grand joke.
“Will you write up these events for your readers, I wonder,” he said to me one day, almost flippantly. It was early, before breakfast, and I was at his bedside taking his temperature.
I clicked my teeth and noted the thermometer reading in my ledger. “Certainly not. This is an intimately private affair, not a mystery to be solved.”
Holmes gave a thoughtful hum but said nothing. I thought the matter dropped, but a minute later he said, “Readers love a tragedy, Watson.”
I gave him such a sharp look of reproach that if his gaze had not been turned away from me I am certain he would have been chagrined into silence for the rest of the morning. “And tragedy is not my genre,” I enunciated sternly. I shook out the thermometer and placed it back in the washbasin. “If you think my prose flowery when I describe a murderer put to justice and a potential victim saved from harm, imagine how dreary it will be in the matters of the genuinely tragic.”
Holmes laughed then, though it emerged as more of a cough, and at last he turned towards me, eyes shut but untroubled. “An excellent point, Watson. I shall have to find someone better suited to the genre.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Or perhaps . . . it’s rather novel, but perhaps I shall write the tale of my own tragic demise.”
“A splendid idea,” I intoned.
“Perhaps I shall write about you,” he said, with a new eagerness in his voice, and I must have scoffed because he went on insistently, “There is much to tell of your contributions during our golden years together on Baker Street. You have always had a horrible habit of brushing yourself aside in your writings, as though you were some passive observer and not a vital presence. You are far too modest, Watson, it’s one of your worst flaws.”
I could not help the smile that crossed my face, for what seemed like the first time in days. “I suppose you will aim to correct that. The Adventures of Dr. Watson, will it be called, then?”
Holmes clapped his hands, positively giddy. “A capital idea, Watson!”
“Excellent,” I said, rising from the bed and donning my housecoat. “The moment you are well, Holmes, I will expect twenty pages on my editor’s desk.”
The sound of his laughter, which was still quite full then, followed me out of the room and down to the kitchen at the end of the hall, where I was to fetch our breakfast.
It took my own stubborn insistence and a bit of amateur deduction for me to finally bring a bit of sobriety out of him. I came to him in his armchair one evening with a used washcloth in my hand, and when he looked up from his reading the sight of it stopped his words on his tongue.
“You used this this morning,” I said, “and thought to hide it in the bottom of the laundry basket, not knowing that I would be searching there to retrieve my blue dressing-gown before Abigail arrived to do the washing tomorrow morning. Do not argue,” I said when I saw his mouth opening again. “You have been coughing up blood at a consistent rate, and you have been very skilled at hiding it from me, until now. I gather this has been happening for some time now, else you would have simply burned the evidence. Since you saw I had not yet grown suspicious, you’ve become complacent, and have taken to merely hiding them in the laundry instead.”
His face showed me as clear as scripture that I was correct on all counts.
“Holmes,” I said, sitting down in the chair across from him and fingering the bloody cloth, “you must not hide anything from me now. I know you are loath to admit to weakness, for goodness knows I am much the same, but you have always entrusted me with the most fragile parts of you and I only ask that you do not falter in that trust now, when it is most essential.” I sighed, and before I could think better of it, I said what I had been thinking all along. “You knew when I arrived that you were ill, didn’t you, Holmes?”
Very slowly he shut his book and set it aside, his gaze upon the coals of the fireplace rather than my entreating expression. At length he said, “I admit that the subject of my own mortality has always been of a kind of odd fascination of mine, Watson. I had long expected to be killed by my occupation, if my more indulgent habits did not get me first. Through great wit and greater luck—and the greatest of companions, to be sure—I have survived, and have all at once found myself at quite a comfortable old age, in which the harbingers of oblivion are stealthier, and come from unexpected directions. So you must believe me dear boy, as I tell you now, that until I fell that first time, I was not certain. I don’t believe I wished to be certain, with my hearth so brightened by your presence after so long. I have always cried out for data, yet now when presented with the most conclusive of evidence, I have been as blind to the truth as the greenest of Yarders. For weeks I have played the innocent fool, and have equally taken you for one, and for this I beg your forgiveness, Watson, for you are certainly no fool.”
What else could I do but as he asked of me? I have perhaps always been too forgiving of his manners and habits, but I had never seen the larger world forgive him for such slights and so I, with all my natural affection for him, saw no reason to deny him too, when he seemed to seek my favor above all others’.
“Forgiven, my dear man,” said I, “if you will not hide anything of importance from me from now on.”
“I swear it,” he said, “upon my brother’s grave.”
It was as solemn a vow as anyone has ever taken upon a Bible. “Very well,” I said, and with that I tossed the bloody cloth into the fireplace.
It was yet another morning not long after this when I awoke before dawn to the pain of my knee, and had it not been for the salve Holmes had given me I doubt I would have been able to make it out of bed. Holmes was already awake when I came to his room with my stethoscope, and one look at my stiff steps and the weight upon my cane told him all he needed to know.
“Watson, you ought to go back to bed,” he said, quite unfairly wielding the same tone I always used when I said those same words to him.
“We cannot both be invalids, Holmes,” I said as I sat down heavily next to him.
“How fortunate it is, then, that neither of us are.”
“What on earth do you mean?” I said, the pain having sapped my patience from me.
“I am ill, and you have an old war injury. We are far from incapacitated.”
“You are dying, Holmes,” I said.
My hands paused upon his breast where I had placed the stethoscope, and his expression seemed to still, his eyes fixed upon me. It was the first the truth had ever been spoken aloud between us, and I imagined that our hearts stilled in unison in that moment, brought to ground by the words.
It was quite a few breaths before I moved again, placing my hands upon his back as I avoided his stare. “Apologies,” I murmured, but he shook his head.
“Never apologize for speaking the truth, Watson. There is nothing more noble.”
“Holmes,” I said.
He sighed, and sunk back against the pillows as I released him. I quite wished to hold him then, though I doubted it would be welcomed. At length he said, in quite a measured tone:
“Watson, I should be very grateful if, when I have gone, you would remain here to take care of the beehives and the house. I know this is no small request and I cannot fault you in the least bit if you choose to return to London, or retire to some far-off clime, but nonetheless I put this humbly before you.”
It was a complete non-sequitur, and in my surprise I spoke without thinking. “You have no one else to inherit this?”
“What nonsense. It will all go to you, Watson. It was only ever my brother, and you. As I have long expected, my brother has gone before me. So it will be you, if you accept. Those are simply the facts of it.”
I nodded to show him I had heard, but momentarily I wasn’t sure what to say.
“It is no hardship,” he went on, quietly, “to know that it is your charge into which I am placing my life’s accumulations. I know you will take care with them, as you have always done with me.”
It was at this moment that I was once again forced to make use of my handkerchief.
“Steady on, my dear boy,” he said, with his hand on mine, but as he looked up at me I could see he was quite affected by my reaction.
“You’re quite right,” I said at length. “It’s no hardship. It’s a very beautiful property, and they are fine bees.”
There was a pause which seemed to stretch out a long while, and then suddenly we both began to laugh, myself quite uproariously, wiping tears from my eyes. It was quite heart-wrenching, halfway to something manic, but then the feeling passed and the laughter died away, and when it was quiet again the air was like that of the air after a thunderstorm, when the rain has come and gone and washed everything away with it.
“A thousand thanks, Watson,” Holmes said to me when he had regained his breath.
“I suppose you will be making arrangements soon, then?” I said. “If you dictate to me, I can take up my pen and write up a few documents—”
But he was already waving my words away. “I made the arrangements years ago, not long after my brother passed. The names upon my will are now quite accurate. In addition to you, Abigail will receive a handsome sum.”
I could not help but smile. “You absolute devil. How did you know I would agree to any of it, when we had not seen each other for the better part of a decade?”
He had the gall to wink at me then, with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I know my Watson, do I not? Now then,” he went on, quite businesslike, “let us see if we cannot improve that knee somewhat. If you sit by me on the bed just so, I think I can reach it—”
With minimal protest, I allowed him to work his clever fingers upon my knee—for in truth I believe that of late he had been deprived of that feeling of usefulness which I have long suspected he craved as much as I did. Certainly when he was done and I told him the pain had much improved, pride seemed to shine out from his entire being.
The weeks and days that followed passed listlessly. Outside, the summer was still bright, but our curtains were drawn against it and our only glimpses of it were during our daily visits to the beehives. Holmes would lean heavily upon his cane and I would walk closely behind him, my arm at the ready to steady him if needed. Every day it seemed he needed it more and more, though neither of us spoke of it.
At night, he sat in his armchair and played the violin for me, his movements less grandiose but his playing just as expressive. For all of my protests against his more taxing habits, I could not bring myself to deny him this one pleasure. I admit some selfishness here, for as much as he loved to play, I loved to listen to him. The exercise was almost the only thing which could reliably bring smiles to our faces during that time, and when one evening after supper Holmes told me he was feeling rather tired and would not be able to serenade me that evening, my heart sank like a stone.
With his arm in mine, I helped him to bed, and I must have been unable to keep the sadness from my face, for Holmes reached up then and placed his hand upon my cheek. “My sincerest regrets, dear boy, to put you out tonight. But tomorrow I will play you two of those Strauss waltzes you enjoy so much, and I hope that will suffice.”
I laughed weakly. “That should do very nicely, Holmes, thank you.”
But the following night Holmes was in no fit state to do anything but lie in bed with a handkerchief pressed to his mouth, my arm around his shoulders and a washbasin at the ready. When his coughing had finally stopped, I sat up next to him in the bed and let him lean upon me, holding his head in the crook of my shoulder, as he drifted into a fitful sleep.
Finally there came a day when Holmes could not rise from bed without my help. I was at my writing desk when I heard the cry of my name from his room, his voice colored with a note of panic. At once I was at his side, and I could see plainly in his face the frustration and fear which constitutes the face of every man struggling with his own limitations. With soothing words and a careful hand I helped him upright and to the edge of the bed, and with practiced, dispassionate movements I helped him to dress and to shave.
“You must take me out to see the hives,” he insisted, when I had at last gotten him to eat a bit of egg and drink some tea.
“Let me collect the honey today, Holmes. You must rest if you wish to be stronger tomorrow.”
“It is not only the honey, Watson—I need to see them.”
As ever I could not deny him his eccentricities; I challenge any physician more iron-willed than I not to do the same. With Holmes leaning heavily against me and his cane, we walked slowly out through the garden and to the beehives, where I helped him to stop and peer into each one. As usual he said his greetings to the busy creatures and said a few genial words. Then he would simply stand in silence for minutes and observe, until after some seemingly arbitrary length of time he would nod at me to slide the box back into place and we would move on to the next.
When we returned to the house Holmes was quite exhausted, and I hurried to help him lie down on the settee and bundled him into a few blankets. He slept, then, his breaths coming worryingly shallow, and I sat next to him with his hand in mine, feeling his pulse.
I must remark on the totality of Holmes’ trust in me throughout this horrible time. Without complaint nor embarrassment he allowed me to care for him most extensively. Though I have always sensed that Holmes’ fondness for me has been colored by his appreciation of my professional skill, nonetheless I was surprised at how easily he welcomed my ministrations. I have seen lesser men shrink from any form of kindness when ill, out of some misplaced sense of shame, but in this as in all things Holmes proved the exception, and I was immeasurably grateful for it.
When he awoke a while later to find my vigil still held and his hand still in mine, he did not immediately sit up; instead he curled up onto his side to face the back of the settee and placed his head in my lap, pillowed against my thigh. Together we rested there for some quiet hours more, until Abigail rang the bell announcing teatime.
I helped him to sit up, though he still had the strength to feed himself, and with his teacup in his hands, wrapped in blankets up to his neck, he greatly resembled the young man I had once accompanied to the Musgrave Manor, who had so stubbornly refused to part with his cozy trappings in the cold damp of the countryside.
I remarked upon this to him, and the memory brought a smile to both of our faces for a moment as we recalled the singularity of that case. Holmes brought up another strange case he had been reminded of, which I had yet to document, and we spoke on that for several minutes, and then another and another. In this way we spent the evening quite comfortably situated in the past, speaking only of our younger, wilder days together. How much had changed since then, I thought, in both of us—and yet again how little.
The following day saw no return of Holmes’ strength; if anything he had worsened slightly. Once again he insisted upon visiting the bees, and with my help we wandered around to a few hives but after only half an hour we were forced to return to the house so Holmes could rest.
Though I was loath to leave him as he slept, I instructed Abigail to keep a close vigil on him as I myself returned to the hives, collecting the honey and checking on each of the queens as I had seen Holmes do. I even spoke softly to them, asking after their health and families, and though it felt rather silly and I cannot say if any good came of it for the bees, when I told Holmes of what I had done later that day his face shone with such appreciation I could not bring myself to regret the charade.
This routine continued as each day saw Holmes in worse form than the day before, and though neither of us spoke of it we both knew it was the beginning of the end. In those final weeks he would often be in such pain that even sleep eluded him. At first I was hesitant to offer him laudanum, for fear he would develop a dependency, but as the days wore on and his condition deteriorated I finally relented. Yet Holmes refused me flatly; he wanted no opiates, no drugs to muddle his mind.
During his most fitful nights I took to holding his hand, and in his half-conscious state this seemed to calm him. Touch, I found, was his panacea; there was no medicine I could administer which was superior to the gentle movement of my hand brushing through his hair. Once, when watching his pained shivering proved too much to bear I crawled into bed beside him, as much to warm him as to give him something to hold. His hands were freezing and I was quite an inadequate blanket, but it did seem to give him some kind of peace, and so it became routine for us, when he could not find a comfort elsewhere. I would speak quietly to him as I held him, meaningless platitudes to remind him that he was not alone, and though I could not be sure how much of this he understood, he would sometimes murmur my name in reply.
On the Monday of the final week of September, we were spending the afternoon together in Holmes’ room. He was almost entirely bed-bound then, and I was of course wherever he was. I rarely left his bedside except to fetch food and supplies and tend to my most basic of needs, and rather than sleep a room away I had begun to make use of the armchair in his bedroom.
I had my notebook in my lap and was working idly on an article, about which case I cannot recall, and had thought Holmes to be napping until he spoke up.
“Watson,” he said. His voice had grown hoarse and effortful, such that it almost hurt to listen to it, and no amount of water or brandy had any effect. He lifted his hands out of the covers. “Fetch my violin, if you please. I want to play you something.”
I sat up more alertly. “Holmes, you must rest. You shouldn’t exert yourself more than necessary.”
“But it is entirely necessary, Doctor. You are lethargic and miserable on this dreary afternoon, and that calls for a bit of music.”
“Your health is my only concern,” I said, “and if you want to make me feel better, you will heed the advice of your physician.”
“Watson,” he said quietly, and there was a pleading tone in his voice I had not often heard from him. His hand stretched out towards me, entreatingly. “Please. Please.”
I sat for a moment, looking at him, and then rose and fetched the instrument from its case in the sitting room, where for weeks it had been gathering dust. Health, I determined, was more than the physical.
He took up the bow with ease but when he attempted to place the violin upon his shoulder, he could not find the strength in one hand to raise it up high enough. Quickly I intervened, placing the base of it between his shoulder and chin where he could support it on his own. He nodded his thanks to me, and tested his fingers upon the strings, and apparently satisfied, he raised the bow and began to play.
I did not close my eyes this time, as I sat and listened, for fear of missing something vital. Holmes’ eyes lay half-shut, his expression changing with the music, off in a world where not even I could follow him, except to listen and try to understand. I had expected his playing to have diminished with his health, but it was not so. He had chosen a waltz, by Strauss if I was not mistaken, though he played it legato, lingering on each note as if hesitant to leave it behind. In his hands there was a bittersweetness to it, a feeling of nostalgia, perhaps the music of someone who was glad for all that they had done and had little care for what the future may bring, and he played it with as much aplomb and delicacy as ever.
I couldn’t be sure how much time had passed or how much more of the piece there was left to play when Holmes suddenly fumbled his grip on the bow and the music came to a halt, with a screech of the strings against the horsehair. I stood up, catching the bow before it fell off the bedspread, and moved to hand it back to him, but Holmes had already let the violin fall from his shoulder, and was lying against the pillows, his eyes shut, panting slightly, his brow soaked with sweat.
I moved for the water pitcher and cool cloth, cursing myself a thousand times; I had been so entranced by the music I had not noticed his suffering. As I fussed over him, I must have uttered an apology, for he opened his eyes for a moment to give me an exhausted smile.
“Do not be sorry, Watson. That was a wonderful gift. I expect I will not lift the bow of a violin again, and you have allowed me to say goodbye. For that you should be no less than knighted.”
Despite myself I laughed through the tears that had gathered at the corners of my eyes.
That was on a Monday, and throughout the course of the following week Holmes continued to worsen. He was coughing up blood with regularity, and he had grown so weak that he could hardly lift his arms out of the bedclothes. On the following Saturday, which was the last Saturday of September that year, he asked me if we might go out to watch the sunset after supper, as we used to do before he was bed-bound.
He drank a good amount of the broth I gave him—it was Abigail's day off, which was just as well, as this was to be a private affair—and I gathered up his cane and a blanket and helped him rise shakily from the bed.
With my arm around his shoulders and his caneless hand in mine, we made our way outside and down to the metal bench by the garden, where just three months ago I had first caught sight of him. I had tucked the blanket around his shoulders, and when we settled down he shrugged into it, chilled even in the late summer heat.
Somehow, in our individual expert ways, as a doctor and as a detective, we both knew that sunset would be the last we shared together.
We spoke quietly for some minutes about the events of the day, the weather, the sorry state of the police column of the newspaper, and some interesting research that had been done in the realms of blood chemistry. There was an air of deniability in our words, as though by preserving the peaceful sanctity of this golden moment, we could somehow stave off the inevitable darkness. But it was not long enough before the subject turned towards our more pressing reality, and Holmes was of course the one to breach it.
“I hope you will not resent me too much for the charge of the house,” he said. His voice was faint, and I might have failed to catch his words if we were not sitting so close. “But then you’ve always appreciated the countryside. I imagine you’ll fare well out here.”
I looked out at the trees silhouetted against the red sky. “I will miss the company,” I said.
“I have every faith in my chronicler,” Holmes said, with the old humor in the word. “You will go on.”
“It will be a dreary business, without you.”
Holmes and I sat in silence for a moment, his hand resting upon the back of mine.
“Do you know that it often crosses my mind,” he finally said, his gaze upon the sunset, “that without you, Watson, I could not have lasted this long at all. I think on that often; I have done since you first fired a gun in my defense. As my defender, as my doctor, as my dearest friend; in all these ways and more you have rescued me. In fact it is certainly your companionship that has saved me most often of all. I have always been very deeply in need of you. It has occurred to me only recently that it is possible you did not have an inkling of this, for I have done very poorly in expressing it to you. However I swore to you recently that I would not hide anything of importance from you, and so I wish to tell you now, Watson, that I feel it keenly.”
There was a pause, during which he seemed to be gathering his breath after so long a speech. I suppose it should not have surprised me, to hear him speak so frankly at that hour, but nevertheless the words sent a pang through my heart. I did not look away from his face, even as his gaze did not leave the horizon.
At last he said, even more quietly, “I am a very lucky man indeed, to have met you, Watson.” His pale face looked almost ruddy in the setting sunlight, and his expression, normally so implacable, was somehow cracked, his pursed lips twitching this way and the other, his eyes unable to settle into their usual formidable, unblinking stare.
“Holmes,” I said, and my voice came out unexpectedly broken. Holmes’ gaze darted to me. The way he looked at me then . . . I cannot fully describe what I saw there, in his grey stare, only that it seemed to me the only time I have ever looked upon anyone and seen the entirety of their being, laid bare upon their face, with no concealment nor embarrassment, with only the plainness of the truth.
There was no thought to what I did next, though I would not take it back for the world; I placed an ungloved hand upon his cheek, and I had only to lean forward a handful of inches to press my lips to his forehead, and then to the corner of his left eye, and the side of his nose. His hand reached up to hold my wrist, not tightly, for he made no force to move it, and when I leaned back his eyes were closed and there was that painfully familiar quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
“You have done some rescuing yourself,” I said to him very softly. “And do not think for a moment that you have been crafty enough to fool me into thinking you did not feel as deep a need for me as I feel for you. I am no fool, Holmes, after all.” His eyes still closed, he nodded once, and his smile seemed to strengthen. “In fact,” I said, “I would say that I am a very lucky man, indeed.” I embraced him then, pulling him to me as gently as I could. I took much of his weight, gladly, as he laid his head on my shoulder and folded his cold hands in mine.
We watched the sunset in silence together, listening to the buzzing of the bees and the wind over the fields. His breaths, which I could feel against my own chest, were shallow but steady, and the evening air of late September was warm enough to bear for a while yet.
In time the sun descended and the blue darkness of dusk was upon us. The buzzing of the bees was quieted as they retired to rest, and we took their example as together we returned to the house, and to Holmes’ room, where I helped him to lay back upon the bed.
I hope the reader will be kind enough to forgive me if I do not divulge here the details of our final moments together. Such things are best kept within the hearts of those between which they are shared, and even blood relations cannot breach the intimacy afforded by two people exchanging farewells of this kind, whether on a battlefield or in a sickbed. Suffice to say farewells were said, and the rest I shall keep deep in my breast until the day I too am gone.
I will tell you that when he went, it was quiet, barely an exhale of breath. Holding his hands in both of my own, my lips pressed lightly to his forehead, I felt him take his leave, as though slipping quietly out through the door, out onto a darkened, lamplit street where the sounds of hoofbeats and drunken pub-goers mingled in the sooty night air, swallowing the sound of his footsteps as he set off, no doubt, in search of a cab. And in such a way, as deftly as he had appeared in the world, Sherlock Holmes made his final exit.
As I pen these words, at a writing desk in an old country cottage, by the light of an electric lamp that just twenty years ago would have been a guttering candle, I wonder what else he might have done, in time. Perhaps an old, retired detective is as useful as an old, retired army doctor, or an author whose books sing the praises of a great man who no longer walks with us. Perhaps he could have done nothing but tend to his bees—which even now I hear buzzing, announcing the coming dawn—and sit quietly in his garden, waiting for a knock at the door, a letter that would never arrive.
I wonder, when I speak of him—for after this I will write of him no more—will I be fond, or long-suffering, or distant. Will I remember him as he was, impossible and passionate and irritating and beautiful, and awfully human. I can only hope my writings, published and unpublished alike, are enough to encompass him. I do not know if it is possible for any person to be enumerated in such a way, and him least likely of all, but perhaps it will be enough for my memory, and perhaps when I reread all I have recorded of him I will have some kind of portrait, a picture, however fractured, of the man I have loved most in all the world.
The sun is rising now, I can see, through the stained glass windows at the front of the house. The day goes on, and it is time to tend to the beehives.