The Heart Of The Matter

by Maer, aka 'merely a whim'

3.

I watched the verdant American countryside speed by my compartment window and marveled anew to find myself traveling on the soil of England's long-ago divested cousin and more recent ally, listening to the familiar clack of the rails beneath me. Was it only a week and an ocean ago since I had seen and spoken to Holmes at his Sussex cottage? Sitting here now, I can recall it as if it were yesterday, so bright does the visit shine in my memory. I have no need to consult the pages of my journal (purchased for this Transatlantic errand and already a third filled) for an accurate recounting.

"Watson! Come in, my friend." (So said he, as Holmes opened the door of the cottage to me that waning afternoon on the Downs.) "How good of you to come."

"But, of course, I've come." I said, smiling broadly as I clasped his arm in greeting. I was pleased to note that Holmes' musculature was as hale and hearty as it ever was, not having been adversely affected by the long period of false estrangement and decline that he (and Mary Russell) had enacted in the months immediately following their return from Palestine. We passed through the front hall into the large sitting room, and thence to the chairs before the south windows overlooking the Downs.

"Your telegram was most precise." I resumed the conversation once we'd settled at the table with a tray of tea and biscuits brought in by Mrs. Hudson. " 'Watson come at once need consult Holmes'. My dear fellow, when have I ever not shown up as per your summons?"

"Forgive me, Watson. I meant no criticism. But this problem has me all turned about..."

At which point Holmes sighed mightily and spread his long-fingered capable hands on the table. "It's Russell, Watson. She's not herself. She's... how did Mrs. Hudson so eloquently put it - 'she walks, talks, and looks like our Mary, but inside she's gone' I believe were the words she used. That damned Donleavy woman has crushed her spirit, Watson, crushed it like an eggshell underfoot. Oh, don't be fooled by her sharp tongue and her volatile temper, she can hold her own in an argument as I have every reason to know, having earned the scars to prove it. But inside, past the brave front she's putting up for the rest of us, she's lost."

Holmes fiddled with the handle of his teacup, gazing out the windows towards the sea. His features pinched with worry, his attitude one of extreme frustration and with what I was coming to realize to be a sort of black desperation over the situation, Holmes quit the chair abruptly enough to topple it over backwards and launched himself in a furious circuit about the room.

"I've tried to reach her, Watson. Divine Providence knows I've tried, but nothing seems to draw her out. Not discussions on her upcoming studies in Oxford, not her plans for the holiday season, not even chess!"

Holmes laughed bitterly, a short harsh bark it hurt my heart to hear coming from this man, this most excellent son England had ever produced, who had given of himself so unstintingly over the years. Who now stood with hands on hips, staring unseeing out the windows of his retirement cottage, brought to a standoff, not by a mastermind of the criminal world (at least, not directly), but by a young woman who was a year over two-thirds his junior in age. A woman, I saw immediately, he cared for deeply and yet had not the slightest clue as to how to help recover from this latest setback in an already eventful life. Holmes snorted. "May God preserve you, Watson, should you ever bring up the subject of chess. It is quite the anathema of the moment."

The last rays of the sun died down from the rosy glow of setting to the purple murk of its extinguishment. Holmes was but a darker shadow in the dimming room.

There was a snap of a switch being thrown on one of the nearby table lamps and Holmes' face, underlit from the lamp he bent over, was a wasted devil's mask. Then he stood up and the apparition was gone, replaced by the countenance I knew so well.

"Her mind is not... damaged, then?"

"No." Holmes wearily righted the chair he so precipitously vacated and resumed his place at the table. "I would stake my life on it. Russell's not insane, Watson. She's just thoroughly demoralized. 'Heartbroken', as Mrs. Hudson would say." Holmes shook his head. "You didn't see the look on her face, old friend, when she saw that woman holding the gun on us that night in the lab. She hid it well, Watson, she hid it very well. But I know Russell. Inside, she was devastated that she had misjudged the woman so badly. However, when the time came, she didn't flinch. She hurled that inkwell and disarmed the woman with a flying tackle as sweet as you would ever want to see on the scrimmage field. She simply did it, without scruple or thought to personal cost. Only now, you see, she has had ample leisure to go over the events in her mind, to second-guess, to critique her performance, to savage herself to ribbons for being so incredibly naive to believe that this Donleavy creature had any regard for her at all. To castigate herself endlessly over what a stupid little fool she'd been, thinking that this woman, her tutor of mathematics, was ever someone she could trust and love!

"No, Watson." My friend reiterated. "I am all too well aware of her state of mind. She is not insane." Holmes sighed and scrubbed his face, his words leaking around his fingers as he did so. "I know where her mind is. What I haven't is the foggiest idea how to bring her back."

Holmes rubbed his temples as if they hurt and ran his hands through his graying hair as he continued.

Holmes brought his hands down and laced his fingers together, twisting them with a frustrated, nervous energy I remembered all too well from the Baker Street days, when a particular case was not going smoothly; the sight of which still evoked in me that familiar apprehension - for it was at those times the cocaine and the morphine called to his restless spirit most strongly. Yet I could see his forearms, exposed by his rolled-up cuffs, in the glow of the electric lamp. They were clean of fresh punctures, were merely peppered with the long-healed scars of old ones. I could see also that Holmes was not finished but had more to say, on a subject that was painful or unsettling for him to relate. I took the tack that had served so well in our bachelor days: I simply waited until he was ready.

"Watson, you have written over the years of my inability to fathom the softer sentiments of the heart, to the point of caricature - oh, yes! I've read them, those wonderfully popular accounts of my cases in the Strand. I begrudge you not one jot of benefit or joy you've gained thereby and therein. Only now, your stories stand rather more prophetic than I ever could have dreamed them of being.

"I freely admit it, Watson. I am lost. I must bow to your superior experience in these matters and humbly beseech you for any assistance you can provide me."

I shook my head, amazed even now - a little over a week later - that Holmes would make such an admission to me. Some moments of reflection during the sea voyage convinced my mind of what my heart already knew: that the advancement of years had not diminished my friend's mental faculties one iota, but had instead given him the wisdom to finally see that no one lived in and by the mind alone. Holmes had finally come to realize the necessity of living with the heart as well.

The first time I saw Mary Russell she had just come in from a miles long walk across the sun-drenched Downs, dressed in men's clothing better suited for colder temperatures. Dripping in sweat, mud, and freshly applied water from the scullery sink, she was groping blindly about for a towel, which I spied rolled with several others in a basket near the door and quickly handed to her. She was surprised to find me there, having thought Mrs. Hudson was behind the offered towel, but she covered it well. She merely wiped her face and said, without even the benefit of having her glasses on:

"Doctor Watson, I perceive?"

Overwhelmed by the striking similarity of this first meeting with that of mine with Holmes so many long years ago, I must confess I said the first thing that came to my poor bedazzled mind.

"He was right. You are lovely."

At which she looked at me askance, then recovered instantly and got her glasses on. By then, the spell had been broken and though I could see that she was no conventional beauty - hence her quizzical look upon hearing my words - she still possessed the innate beauty of precision that all finely made sharp things have, whether a sword, a gun, or a well-planned argument or game of chess. A gleam of quick intelligence in the eyes, a firmness of chin and stance that only bespoke the quality of the character within, all carried in a whipcord body that conveyed the impression of great strength and stamina - in short it was like looking into a mirror, of sorts, and seeing my friend Sherlock Holmes standing unexpectedly before me. I knew then, without doubt or reservation, that this young woman was the one with which Holmes was destined to share the rest of his life, the only one for whom he would or could surrender that stubborn emotional aloofness with which he held the world at bay. In that fleeting second, I knew. And in that second also, I knew I would be forever in her debt, for the salvation of my most cherished friend.

It was because of that debt, and the love I came to have for her - my honorary niece - that I found myself here, half the world away on a train speeding toward the capitol of a nation that would later exceed even Britannia in its might and wealth. I found myself rehearsing what I would say upon my arrival, considering how I would deliver the news, and not daring to entertain any idea of failure.

Holmes had told me that afternoon on the Downs that Mary needed to be recalled to herself. I knew that the surest method of doing so was to present Mary with incontrovertible proof of her own success, earned by her efforts only, one that was unalloyed with any advance knowledge or permission by Holmes (or anyone else, for that matter): the daring method by which she'd taken Jessica Simpson from the house in which she'd been chained like an animal to a bed by her captors, a house Mary took it upon herself to break into, wherein she had also broken the chain free of its moorings, freeing the child she had thereby rescued - on her own initiative - a whole day earlier than had been planned. It had been a coup of an operation, a brilliant leap of faith and jump in logic, in short, a triumphant success... if Mary could only be recalled to it.

Given that Holmes was reluctant to leave Mary alone for any great length of time at this juncture of her stalled recuperation, and given the personal nature of this...errand of mercy, for want of a better term, it made the most sense that I would be the one to go to the Simpsons with the news and ask of them some token that Jessica still lived happily and was well. In a more modern age, I suppose one would merely telephone or telegraph the request and not be thought any the less for it. But Holmes and I, and more importantly, the little girl's parents, are of a generation that hold these matters in a more personal light, hold the honor of them closer to the heart. Hence, the request must be made in person.

And so here I was, on a train that was pulling even now into what all visible signs told me was Washington D.C.'s Union Station, a big marble pile with what turned out to be quite opulent facilities and excellent service. In less time than it took to tell it, I was shown to and whisked away by a cab waiting at the ready on the curb, as if it had been prearranged by one of Mycroft's many capable agents at home and abroad.

It was a sunny summer day, a touch humid - but far less than I had been led to believe to be the norm for the area. As we traveled in a southeasterly direction from the station, I glimpsed the great dome of the American counterpart to our own Houses of Parliament. A sudden flurry of birds graced its silhouette, their pale wings beating up and onward in a mute tribute toward Heaven... It was a fitting portent of my efforts, a sign of my ensured success. The second hand on my pocket watch counted out the time remaining before the moment I had waited a week and a lifetime for arrived.

As I was driven up to the front door of Senator Simpson's townhouse, I knew then that I would not fail.

Soon, Mary would come home. Would, I knew with absolute surety, come back to the man who loved her.

My debt would in small measure be repaid and I could face my Maker with a clear conscience.

I alighted from the cab and rang the bell.

The End