A Decided Genius, part three
Mar. 24th, 2008 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabidsamfanLink to part one
He fell silent. I waited for a time, to see if he could continue without prompting, but he seemed to me to be trapped within his thoughts, and at last I rose to refill his cup from the cooling pot. "How long were you there?"
"Near a fortnight," he said softly, and then dragged his eyes up to meet mine. "If you would be a doctor's wife," he said harshly, "you must be prepared for the depths to which pain and despair can drive even a proud man." But then his gaze fell again, and his voice was carefully back under control when he added. "I was not."
"You were hurt yourself," I offered, although I knew that his own injury was not what still troubled him now.
"Had I not been, Watson would have been able to keep his slender supply of the drug for his own needs," Holmes said bitterly. "He always carried a few doses with him, and his hypodermic, lest we be delayed, back then. But of course he had used some of it in the days before the storm, and he used quite a bit to blunt the pain as he set my broken arm straight. The last dose he saved to ease my way into sleep that night, although he did not tell me that it was the last." He stood and went again to the mantelpiece, staring down at the fire for a moment before bending to mend it with a fresh shovel of coals from the scuttle. "Watson knew what would happen, of course," he said, as he kept himself too busy to look back at me. "He had me promise that I would not give into any demands he might make for morphine, not even if it seemed to mean his life -- and he promised me that it would not; that Providence had granted him an occasion to free himself, and would see him through. I have studied the literature since and learned that it is rare for a man who is otherwise in good health to die of morphine withdrawal, but..." he paused, closing his right hand into a trembling fist for a long moment before laying it open again and wrapping it around his left wrist, as if to ease the old injury. "The broken arm prevented me from being of any real assistance. It was Ben -- the shepherd -- who tended Watson's needs."
Having made that admission he sprang again to his feet and bestowed a too-bright smile upon me. "In any case it was all for the best. Watson recovered, we caught our murderer, and returned to Baker Street."
God only knows what he left out of his narrative, leaping past the pain like that. Had it been me I should have been secretly glad and yet ashamed to be spared the task of nursing a friend in such straits. What it had cost Holmes I could not tell. Clearly the wound was not yet lanced. "And you?" I asked. "What of your needs?" He looked a question to me, so I clarified. "You said that you too used morphine. Did you not miss it also?"
"My use was only occasional, so the deprivation did me no harm." He dismissed the matter with a small gesture. "Even Watson agreed that I showed little sign of addiction. But I did not use it again for many months. Not until after he'd gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes. Back to the Army. He passed his review in August. Without the drug his appetite had been restored, and he put on a stone thanks to Mrs. Hudson's careful cooking. Stamford helped him devise a means of operating with a partner, to compensate for his arm - although it had regained some strength by then it still troubled him when he had to make extended use of it - and Sir Julian at last approved of him again for time at the Fleet, which allowed him to regain confidence in his medical skills. He got to Calcutta just in time for the cholera epidemic." Holmes' sour tone told me volumes.
"Not cholera too!" I exclaimed. Had any ill-luck spared poor John?
"Yes, cholera too," Holmes growled. "Exhaustion and overwork laid him prey to it and for a second time the Army despaired of his life. It was then, I believe, that one of his fellow physicians rifled his dispatch box and found his "Reminiscences". He read it in search of some trace of Watson's next of kin, and though he did not find what he was looking for, thought it good enough to publish as it stood. Watson, remembering his promise to me to tell the world of the Lauriston Gardens case, and thinking he would never live to polish the tale finer, agreed, and a small edition of one hundred copies was struck, one copy of which was sent me. Watson has his own copy of course, but the rest were purchased for the edification of the sons of Sahibs by the benefactor of a school in Lucknow. From there some copies came into the hands of the boys' fathers and their fathers' friends and within a year I began to receive callers who knew nothing of me except what they had read in Watson's book."
"Only a hundred copies?" I said.
"Yes, and poorly made at that. I doubt a single one will last into the next century," Holmes shook his head. "Watson will never countenance another edition, I'm sure. He finds the prose painfully amateurish now. But he had included three examples of my work, and there's no denying that they made an impression. My brother Mycroft was very amused to find me famous in so roundabout a fashion."
"And Dr. Watson?" I asked, nettled to think that the author might be less famous than his subject.
"Sent to the highlands, to recover, once he was strong enough. To Simla, as physician to the dependents of the garrison. He spent some months there -- it was then that he went on that tiger hunt -- and would have been content to stay at that posting. But it was considered a ripe plum, and he was shouldered aside to make way for a man with better connections. It was back to Calcutta again, and this time his superior officer did not wait for him to become ill, but whisked him into a berth as a ship's physician on a troopship, thus guaranteeing that Watson would be exposed to every disease in every port on every misbegotten island and backwater colony the Empire commands."
I felt need the need of more tea. "Surely not!"
Holmes only nodded grimly. "The first time his ship was in Portsmouth he seemed well enough -- he came up to London with a box of cigars and cigarettes, carefully labelled, from every corner of the world he had visited knowing of my experiments with cigar ash, and we went to a concert and dinner together. The second time he sent the box by post, and when I would have taken the train down to meet him for a quiet supper, he refused me, pleading too much work. The third time - just this past November - I did not warn him, but waited on the dock for the ship to arrive."
"He must have been surprised to see you," I said.
"No more surprised than I to see him carried down the gangway on a stretcher."
"A stretcher. He was so ill that he had to be carried on a stretcher?"
To my surprise, Holmes smiled. "Not exactly. The ship had hit a storm just off the Pillars of Hercules and Watson had been knocked down a companionway by a seasick soldier who was trying to reach the rail. His foot caught in the ladder and his ankle was wrenched, putting a tear in the Achilles tendon." The smile faded away. "But he was thinner than I had ever known him -- a veritable scarecrow -- and his orderly, Nesbitt, came round our hotel that night for the express purpose of begging me to find some way to persuade Watson to resign his commission."
"It seems an odd request."
"The ship was due to sail again within a fortnight -- long before Watson's ankle would be fit for duty -- and Nesbitt would have to sail with the new ship's surgeon, leaving Watson to the untender mercies of some new subordinate who would not yet know how best to care for a sickly surgeon. He grew quite vociferous in listing his reasons why that would not do, and Watson overheard and dragged himself on his crutches out to argue his case for staying in the Army. An error as it turned out, for Nesbitt caught him out in three mistakes and said that if he would just take some of his own nostrums for pain he would not be so tired as to fall prey to confusion. At that point I thought it best to intervene. Watson would have to face a medical review over the ankle in six weeks and that would be time enough for him to make a decision. In the meantime he could take up residence in his old room in Baker Street." He cut his eyes at me for a moment, with an expression of satisfaction that was soon explained. "It was ... arranged... that Sir Julian would be on the medical board in London, and that irascible gentleman somehow convinced the other members of the panel that Watson's nearly healed ankle was deserving of a permanent pension. Watson he convinced by telling him that in all justice he should have had one for his shoulder, and in any case if Watson were in London, he might be free again to spend some hours at the Fleet."
"That was kind of you," I said, for I had no doubt that it was Holmes who had made the arrangements.
Holmes swept away the compliment with his long hand. "It gave Mrs. Hudson someone else to fuss over," he said. "Once Watson's ankle was sufficiently recovered he did once speak of striking out on his own, but she dissuaded him, saying that if she could put up with my Bohemian ways she could certainly put up with his convalescence. At Baker Street Watson could play the valetudinarian whenever the need came upon him, eat as much as he liked or as little, and sleep at all hours, for I was often called away on cases and he had the place to himself for weeks at a time. It seemed to suit him, for he soon began to look his old self, and by April he was content to find himself playing physician to my invalid in return."
"It was kind of her, too," I said. "But I cannot think that it was a simple matter to find yourself sharing rooms again when you had been on your own for so long."
"Oh, I had once tried to find a substitute roommate, when cases were thin on the ground. Poor fellow didn't last a week. But I was glad to have Watson back. He was more somber than I remembered, but still very good company and an excellent sounding board for my deductions. My one complaint is that he was as stiff-necked as ever. We have partnered in several matters since his return and his help has been invaluable, but he will not take a share of the fees, except to cover his own expenses. Still, he wishes to raise enough money to purchase a small practice in time, and when other avenues had failed him, a fellow doctor turned writer suggested that he publish that pamphlet on your table. It was not a great success, but Beeton's have chosen it to appear in their Christmas Annual, so I suppose that I shall have to grow accustomed to it. By June I thought us both well settled into our places once again." Despite the casual dismissal of his words, his manner was becoming more agitated. I swallowed my defense of the doctor's writing and watched instead as Holmes took yet another turn around the room. He stopped at last by the window and stared out into the fog. "And then I made an error -- a series of errors -- which have undone everything."
continued
He fell silent. I waited for a time, to see if he could continue without prompting, but he seemed to me to be trapped within his thoughts, and at last I rose to refill his cup from the cooling pot. "How long were you there?"
"Near a fortnight," he said softly, and then dragged his eyes up to meet mine. "If you would be a doctor's wife," he said harshly, "you must be prepared for the depths to which pain and despair can drive even a proud man." But then his gaze fell again, and his voice was carefully back under control when he added. "I was not."
"You were hurt yourself," I offered, although I knew that his own injury was not what still troubled him now.
"Had I not been, Watson would have been able to keep his slender supply of the drug for his own needs," Holmes said bitterly. "He always carried a few doses with him, and his hypodermic, lest we be delayed, back then. But of course he had used some of it in the days before the storm, and he used quite a bit to blunt the pain as he set my broken arm straight. The last dose he saved to ease my way into sleep that night, although he did not tell me that it was the last." He stood and went again to the mantelpiece, staring down at the fire for a moment before bending to mend it with a fresh shovel of coals from the scuttle. "Watson knew what would happen, of course," he said, as he kept himself too busy to look back at me. "He had me promise that I would not give into any demands he might make for morphine, not even if it seemed to mean his life -- and he promised me that it would not; that Providence had granted him an occasion to free himself, and would see him through. I have studied the literature since and learned that it is rare for a man who is otherwise in good health to die of morphine withdrawal, but..." he paused, closing his right hand into a trembling fist for a long moment before laying it open again and wrapping it around his left wrist, as if to ease the old injury. "The broken arm prevented me from being of any real assistance. It was Ben -- the shepherd -- who tended Watson's needs."
Having made that admission he sprang again to his feet and bestowed a too-bright smile upon me. "In any case it was all for the best. Watson recovered, we caught our murderer, and returned to Baker Street."
God only knows what he left out of his narrative, leaping past the pain like that. Had it been me I should have been secretly glad and yet ashamed to be spared the task of nursing a friend in such straits. What it had cost Holmes I could not tell. Clearly the wound was not yet lanced. "And you?" I asked. "What of your needs?" He looked a question to me, so I clarified. "You said that you too used morphine. Did you not miss it also?"
"My use was only occasional, so the deprivation did me no harm." He dismissed the matter with a small gesture. "Even Watson agreed that I showed little sign of addiction. But I did not use it again for many months. Not until after he'd gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes. Back to the Army. He passed his review in August. Without the drug his appetite had been restored, and he put on a stone thanks to Mrs. Hudson's careful cooking. Stamford helped him devise a means of operating with a partner, to compensate for his arm - although it had regained some strength by then it still troubled him when he had to make extended use of it - and Sir Julian at last approved of him again for time at the Fleet, which allowed him to regain confidence in his medical skills. He got to Calcutta just in time for the cholera epidemic." Holmes' sour tone told me volumes.
"Not cholera too!" I exclaimed. Had any ill-luck spared poor John?
"Yes, cholera too," Holmes growled. "Exhaustion and overwork laid him prey to it and for a second time the Army despaired of his life. It was then, I believe, that one of his fellow physicians rifled his dispatch box and found his "Reminiscences". He read it in search of some trace of Watson's next of kin, and though he did not find what he was looking for, thought it good enough to publish as it stood. Watson, remembering his promise to me to tell the world of the Lauriston Gardens case, and thinking he would never live to polish the tale finer, agreed, and a small edition of one hundred copies was struck, one copy of which was sent me. Watson has his own copy of course, but the rest were purchased for the edification of the sons of Sahibs by the benefactor of a school in Lucknow. From there some copies came into the hands of the boys' fathers and their fathers' friends and within a year I began to receive callers who knew nothing of me except what they had read in Watson's book."
"Only a hundred copies?" I said.
"Yes, and poorly made at that. I doubt a single one will last into the next century," Holmes shook his head. "Watson will never countenance another edition, I'm sure. He finds the prose painfully amateurish now. But he had included three examples of my work, and there's no denying that they made an impression. My brother Mycroft was very amused to find me famous in so roundabout a fashion."
"And Dr. Watson?" I asked, nettled to think that the author might be less famous than his subject.
"Sent to the highlands, to recover, once he was strong enough. To Simla, as physician to the dependents of the garrison. He spent some months there -- it was then that he went on that tiger hunt -- and would have been content to stay at that posting. But it was considered a ripe plum, and he was shouldered aside to make way for a man with better connections. It was back to Calcutta again, and this time his superior officer did not wait for him to become ill, but whisked him into a berth as a ship's physician on a troopship, thus guaranteeing that Watson would be exposed to every disease in every port on every misbegotten island and backwater colony the Empire commands."
I felt need the need of more tea. "Surely not!"
Holmes only nodded grimly. "The first time his ship was in Portsmouth he seemed well enough -- he came up to London with a box of cigars and cigarettes, carefully labelled, from every corner of the world he had visited knowing of my experiments with cigar ash, and we went to a concert and dinner together. The second time he sent the box by post, and when I would have taken the train down to meet him for a quiet supper, he refused me, pleading too much work. The third time - just this past November - I did not warn him, but waited on the dock for the ship to arrive."
"He must have been surprised to see you," I said.
"No more surprised than I to see him carried down the gangway on a stretcher."
"A stretcher. He was so ill that he had to be carried on a stretcher?"
To my surprise, Holmes smiled. "Not exactly. The ship had hit a storm just off the Pillars of Hercules and Watson had been knocked down a companionway by a seasick soldier who was trying to reach the rail. His foot caught in the ladder and his ankle was wrenched, putting a tear in the Achilles tendon." The smile faded away. "But he was thinner than I had ever known him -- a veritable scarecrow -- and his orderly, Nesbitt, came round our hotel that night for the express purpose of begging me to find some way to persuade Watson to resign his commission."
"It seems an odd request."
"The ship was due to sail again within a fortnight -- long before Watson's ankle would be fit for duty -- and Nesbitt would have to sail with the new ship's surgeon, leaving Watson to the untender mercies of some new subordinate who would not yet know how best to care for a sickly surgeon. He grew quite vociferous in listing his reasons why that would not do, and Watson overheard and dragged himself on his crutches out to argue his case for staying in the Army. An error as it turned out, for Nesbitt caught him out in three mistakes and said that if he would just take some of his own nostrums for pain he would not be so tired as to fall prey to confusion. At that point I thought it best to intervene. Watson would have to face a medical review over the ankle in six weeks and that would be time enough for him to make a decision. In the meantime he could take up residence in his old room in Baker Street." He cut his eyes at me for a moment, with an expression of satisfaction that was soon explained. "It was ... arranged... that Sir Julian would be on the medical board in London, and that irascible gentleman somehow convinced the other members of the panel that Watson's nearly healed ankle was deserving of a permanent pension. Watson he convinced by telling him that in all justice he should have had one for his shoulder, and in any case if Watson were in London, he might be free again to spend some hours at the Fleet."
"That was kind of you," I said, for I had no doubt that it was Holmes who had made the arrangements.
Holmes swept away the compliment with his long hand. "It gave Mrs. Hudson someone else to fuss over," he said. "Once Watson's ankle was sufficiently recovered he did once speak of striking out on his own, but she dissuaded him, saying that if she could put up with my Bohemian ways she could certainly put up with his convalescence. At Baker Street Watson could play the valetudinarian whenever the need came upon him, eat as much as he liked or as little, and sleep at all hours, for I was often called away on cases and he had the place to himself for weeks at a time. It seemed to suit him, for he soon began to look his old self, and by April he was content to find himself playing physician to my invalid in return."
"It was kind of her, too," I said. "But I cannot think that it was a simple matter to find yourself sharing rooms again when you had been on your own for so long."
"Oh, I had once tried to find a substitute roommate, when cases were thin on the ground. Poor fellow didn't last a week. But I was glad to have Watson back. He was more somber than I remembered, but still very good company and an excellent sounding board for my deductions. My one complaint is that he was as stiff-necked as ever. We have partnered in several matters since his return and his help has been invaluable, but he will not take a share of the fees, except to cover his own expenses. Still, he wishes to raise enough money to purchase a small practice in time, and when other avenues had failed him, a fellow doctor turned writer suggested that he publish that pamphlet on your table. It was not a great success, but Beeton's have chosen it to appear in their Christmas Annual, so I suppose that I shall have to grow accustomed to it. By June I thought us both well settled into our places once again." Despite the casual dismissal of his words, his manner was becoming more agitated. I swallowed my defense of the doctor's writing and watched instead as Holmes took yet another turn around the room. He stopped at last by the window and stared out into the fog. "And then I made an error -- a series of errors -- which have undone everything."
continued
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 10:03 pm (UTC)Still loving this!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 10:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-24 11:01 pm (UTC)Holmes is coming off months of a three times a day cocaine binge -- which I think is my best excuse for being able to get him to open his mouth! But yes, he's very worried, and he's got good reason...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 04:00 am (UTC)Love this! I just adore Conan-Doyle's conceit of having the characters refer to the published book as part of their lives. "... a couple of rabbits would account both for the blood and for the charred ashes. If ever you write an account, Watson, you can make rabbits serve your turn."
Great how you're carrying on this device. I'm muchly enjoying this!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-25 04:06 am (UTC)It amuses me very much that all of the various chronologies get themselves into knots over "this story has to be after the Beeton's Christmas Annual" when STUD says clearly that it's a "reprint". And then in SIGN Holmes is complaining about a pamphlet! Of course there are publications which didn't survive!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 01:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 01:20 am (UTC)(the link is in the first part of the story.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 03:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-26 03:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-27 02:55 am (UTC)(I wonder if he had some brotherly help in that task?)
And I love it even more that Holmes is confiding all this to Mary.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-27 03:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 06:26 am (UTC)*loves on Mary some more*
It was back to Calcutta again, and this time his superior officer did not wait for him to become ill, but whisked him into a berth as a ship's physician on a troopship, thus guaranteeing that Watson would be exposed to every disease in every port on every misbegotten island and backwater colony the Empire commands."
*helpless laughter* Protective much? I love this sentence. So irascible and so... I already said protective. It's late enough that it's a good thing nobody's life depends on my keeping straight strychnine and castor oil, how's that?
Again with well-chosen omissions. Leaping past the pain, and then trying to avoid directly acknowledging his own (positive) contributions. And aiee, cliffhanger! Except lucky me, the next part is already right here. ;)