Upheaval: Winds of Change

Part II

by An Oxford Punter/Her Much Learning Hath Made Her Mad

"Why, if it isn't Mr. and Mrs. Holmes!" The station master at Eastbourne greeted us amiably. "Mrs. Hudson will be glad to see you, no doubt. Was it another exciting case?"

"Not this time, I'm afraid." There was no such thing as a secret here, away from London, particularly not where Holmes' comings and goings were concerned. He might have been retired from the Baker Street days for nearly twenty years, but his celebrity seemed only to have increased since then, and the local people who knew of him were conscious always of their reflected glory at having him in their midst. "Only some errands demanding our attention while the weather is fine."

"As to that, ma'am, will you and Mr. Holmes be staying in Eastbourne?" The station master turned away from me to help Holmes lift our things down to the platform.

"Why on earth should we do that?" Holmes demanded.

"There's a terrible storm heading this way, sir." Straightening, the station master nodded toward the west. "It's going to be a regular dust-up, sir, or I miss my guess. Wouldn't want to see you and your wife halfway home when it hits."

"Good Lord." I stared at the wall of boiling black clouds hanging on the horizon, darker and more threatening than anything I had ever seen before.

"Right you are, ma'am." The station master turned from the sight, more than a little glee in his expression. "There'll be payment for this warm warm weather before we're done, coming so soon as it has."

"Perhaps we ought to stay the night here, Holmes," I remarked uneasily, for the sky looked as ominous and unpredictable as his current mood. He turned a glance on me that made me wish I'd held my tongue.

"We are hardly likely to be hampered by a little rain, Russell." He gave the horizon a brief, dismissive glance. "If you feel you cannot manage it, pray allow me to drive--"

"Never mind. I'll drive." I stalked to the business side of the Morris parked nearby and got in without another word, leaving him to make whatever explanations to the station master he cared to. A few minutes later he climbed in beside me.

"Well, Holmes?" I would not look at him. "Is there any reason for me to accompany you to the cottage, or shall I leave you to drive the Morris home while I return to Oxford?"

"Best come to the cottage, Russell." His tone was as cool as my own. "You have already missed the last train to Oxford."

And for that, it seemed, there was no retort. Leaving the Eastbourne station behind us, I sped the Morris on its way toward that dark horizon, my thoughts a chaotic tangle. He meant it, that much was certain; he meant to founder us upon this issue of a child. And beyond that was the secret he now carried, the thing which ate at his equanimity and left behind only rage and pain. Though I thought his angry words on the train had not been meant to lure me away from whatever was truly bothering him, it had served that purpose well enough, and now I had to begin all over again to get at it. He had gone from Dr. Watson's house to Scotland Yard a contented man, and had come away from Scotland Yard late to meet me a man determined to hurt me and put me from him. I could only believe something had happened to him there--he had met someone, seen or heard something--which was of such significance that it struck him to the very core, and that it somehow involved me. Though he might not readily acknowledge it often or readily, my presence in his life was important to him, as important for different reasons as Watson's presence had been before me. He would hardly sacrifice me over a triviality the like of which he ordinarily encountered at the Yard. It must, therefore, be something extraordinary indeed.

"Holmes," I spoke aloud into the heavy silence between us, "what happened at Scotland Yard today?"

"Nothing." His forbidding frown was in itself enough to make a lie of the word. "Why do you ask?"

"Because it was the only place you went today where something could have happened to land you in such a foul temper. I want to know what it was; if I'm to put our marriage in jeopardy over it, I think I have a right to know."

"Russ--"

"It's no good, Holmes. I'll only continue to peck away at you until you tell me. I much prefer that to the other alternative, which is to leave you and remain at Oxford indefinitely--"

"Russ," his altered tone caught my attention fully at last. "The horizon. Look."

"My God." We had been drawing ever closer to the leading edge of the storm. Gradually the sunlight had dimmed, then disappeared altogether. At the base of that ominous cloud mass lightning flickered and sparked in great brilliant tongues of dazzling deadliness. The breeze buffeting the Morris quickly became a wind howling around us and that gray curtain of driving rain ahead approached slowly but inexorably. "We'll never make it."

"We will be close. We're almost there now." I glanced at him; his grim expression had nothing to do with the topic of conversation that had occupied us this whole long afternoon. "A little faster, if you please."

"With pleasure." I suited action to words. "I certainly hope your reasons for wanting to dare this monster rather than remain at Eastbourne will sufficiently justify what we are about to endure."

"I could not have stayed there." He said it so lowly I nearly didn't hear it above the wind.

"Why not? Damn!" I could feel the wheel fight beneath my hands as the Morris was pushed and pulled.

"I could not have stayed within unfamilair walls tonight. Do you wish me to drive?" He sent me a sharp, assessing glance.

"It's too late--here comes the deluge." It washed over us, past us, in a great blinding wind-driven wave. The car swerved and slid, but held the road. Cursing inwardly, I slowed our progress. "Where are we? I can't see a thing."

"The straight course that runs along Tom Warner's farm," he replied. Thunder cracked again, loudly, off to our left. "Patrick's cottage is next, then the farmhouse. Once we pass that, we will be minutes away from home."

"If we get that far." At each flash of lightning I tried to note landmarks. "Why didn't you want to stay at Eastbourne?"

"Now is not the time, Russell."

"Now might very well be the only time we will have, Holmes." We crept past what I took to be Patrick's driveway. "If you will not tell me what lies at the heart of what has troubled you all afternoon and thus enable us to resolve it somehow, our marriage will never be the same. And while it occasionally proves itself to be a union of anything but convenience, I should hate to lose it without understanding why. Holmes," I squinted at the road up ahead, "what is that?"

"What?"

"There's something across the road. I can't--" Lightning flashed again. "It's a tree! Look out!" I braked to no avail. We slid, then spun, blind and and helpless, into it with a jolt that brought my teeth together sharply and left me shaken otherwise undamaged.

"Holmes?" I put out my hand in the murky light and found his sleeve.

He nodded, massaging his shoulder. "I am unhurt. Turn the car around, if you can, and let us go back the way we came."

"I can't." Wheels spun angrily but the Morris wouldn't move, either forward or backward.

"We must be caught on part of the tree." He turned to the door.

"Wait!" I caught at his sleeve again. "Where are you going?"

"To see if I can free us. Do not despair, Russ; I will be back as soon as I am able." Opening the door, he stepped out into the torrent. Rain and wind blew in at me, cold and stinging. I watched him, a shade darker than the gray of the windows, as he moved around the car. Lightning flashed; I could feel the power of each crack of thunder through the frame of the Morris.

And then he was back as he'd promised, with water streaming from him, and his quick return meant only one thing.

"We must remain here," I said.

"On the contrary, the Morris must remain here. We need not. If we are where I believe we are, we have a walk of perhaps a mile to your farmhouse, maybe less."

"You propose to walk a mile in that?" I waved a hand at the storm shrieking around us.

"I certainly do not propose to sit here until we are found." Reaching into the seat behind him, he retrieved his coat. "At the farmhouse we shall have a fire, a bed and blankets, you shall have dry clothes and perhaps something to eat. We will be much more comfortable there for the duration of the storm. It certainly shows no signs of abating anytime soon. The earliest we could expect to either be discovered here or venture forth ourselves unhindered by the weather would be tomorrow morning, a long time indeed to do without whatever small comforts your farmhouse can offer us."

I reached for my own coat. "Besides, if you have to spend the night with me in the confines of this car in your present mood, one of us will end up murdering the other. Would you care to lay money on which of us will be the corpse and which the culprit? It would be a case I fancy even Scotland Yard would be able to solve."

His only reply was a dark, inscrutable glance and then he was gone back into the storm. I entertained a moment's doubt as to the advisability of leaving the now quiet confines of the Morris's interior for an evening at the farmhouse with Holmes in his present humor, then reluctantly slipped on my coat and followed. Staying here would solve nothing between us. Quite the contrary; if we did nothing to resolve it, either way, it would soon harden into the wedge that must inevitably drive us apart. No, I had my own small mystery to solve now, and on its outcome depended not only our future happiness but the potential future existence of those yet to be born. What was a little rain when measured against that?

Still, it was a long, unpleasant trek, that mile through the height of the storm to my farmhouse, one I should not care to make again. For years afterwards the downs residents used that storm as their watermark against which they measured subsequent ones and when they spoke of it, it was always with the respect its force and fury merited. Minutes after leaving the Morris, Holmes and I were both soaked to the skin in spite of our coats and, if driving in that unrelenting downpour had been next to impossible, walking in it was marginally easier only because we were not traveling quickly. We could not; the wind sought to push us back with each step forward we took and sent the rain, sharp as needles, into our faces to blind us. By the time we reached the gates of the farmhouse I was reduced to a dull, head-down, mindless plodding, my only thought to keep Holmes' back before my eyes lest I lose sight of him and wander off course. When he stopped at last, I nearly ran into him.

"We are here," he said above the scream of the storm. "Have you your key?"

"There's one hidden behind the shutter to the left of the door." He found it and moments later we stood, drenched and shivering, in the scullery.

"I will see what I can do about a fire." He slipped quickly out of his dripping coat. "See if you can find blankets or towels, anything we can use to dry ourselves with or we shall surely catch our death of cold. Once those are accomplished we can see about food."

It took longer than I expected--far longer than I wanted--to locate what we needed. But at last, teeth chattering and wet hair straggling down into my eyes, I located two spare moth-eaten blankets tucked into the bottom of a wardrobe. From my old room I took a nightgown and robe, remnants of my days here before I had gone to live at the cottage. There was nothing, unfortunately, for Holmes to change into, but if he managed to get a fire going in the fireplace he had at least a way to dry the clothes he wore. Peeling myself out of my wet things quickly, I donned the gown and robe, wrapped my wet hair in another gown, and hurried back downstairs.

The fire was going, but there was no sign of Holmes. I crouched before it gratefully, warming numbed hands, and wondered where he was. He couldn't have gone across the downs to the cottage, not without at least telling me, although I was certain the thought had crossed his mind already. No, he would still be here at the farm. The firewood in the box, though not plentiful, showed me how he had spent at least a portion of the time. Undoubtedly his next step would be to search the outbuildings for anything he could find that would be useful. Retrieving my coat, I hung it near the fire to dry and then ran back upstairs for the coal scuttle I had seen. With a little scrubbing it might hold water for our wants or cook any food we might find.

At last I heard the door open and, hurrying into the scullery, took the bags from Holmes as he turned to put his shoulder to the door and close it against the wind and rain. "Your hands are like ice. Come on, out of your wet things and get in front of that fire as quickly as you can." I opened one of the dripping bags. "What's in here?"

"Apples and carrots put aside in the barn for the horses." From beneath his sodden coat he pulled two more blankets, mostly dry. "The best of the horse blankets. We may need them all yet; it is turning noticeably colder. And here--" gingerly he began to fish eggs from his pockets "--is what the chickens yielded. Lastly, a coffee pot and some rather old coffee from the tack room. Altogether, enough for one passable meal, no more."

"One is quite sufficient." I smiled. "Well done, husband. For my part I have two more blankets and fresh water in the coal scuttle. I would offer you a change of clothes but I don't think any will fit you."

"My own will dry soon enough."

"Not if you don't get yourself before that fire." I held out my hand. "Give me your knife and I will prepare our feast whilst you steam."

It was not much of a feast. I boiled the eggs and the carrots and cut the bad spots from the apples and, since there was only one cup to be had, we passed the coffee back and forth between us. But he was right--it was more than we would have had if we'd remained in the Morris. Afterwards we sat on either side of the fire, wrapped in blankets, listening to the storm.

"Holmes," I said quietly, "about this afternoon--"

By the firelight I saw his expression harden. "My dear Russell, it has been a very long day. Might I suggest you go upstairs and try to get some sleep? I shall remain here and tend the fire."

"I see." My anger began to simmer again. "So I'm to be dismissed, am I? Well I'm sorry, Holmes, but I am not a little girl to be sent to bed whenever it pleases you. You may be finished with this matter, but I am not. I want to know what happened at Scotland Yard today; I think it has everything to do with your refusal to consider a child now, and I won't let this rest until I learn what it is."

His fury was back, as quickly as if it had never gone. "Then you will waste your time, Russell, for I have told you already that as far as I am concerned this matter is closed. In this I am resolute. If it does not please you, then perhaps you should have considered this as well as my age before marrying me." He smiled coldly. "But cheer up, wife; perhaps our little stroll in the rain today will help hasten my demise. A quick bout of pneumonia and you find yourself a wealthy young widow, free at last to find someone less advanced in years and more anxious to see his own immortality assured through you. Should that turn out to be the case, you may come to count yourself grateful I did not give in to this scheme to father your children, for he will no doubt want his own--"

I stood up. "You're quite right, Holmes. I have been wasting my time. But that is at an end; I find I have tired of this as well. Keep your secret, if you wish, whatever it is. I hope it comforts you tomorrow after I have returned to Oxford. Do not look for me to return any time soon."

That said, I left him by the fireplace and mounted the stairs to my small garret room, to sleep alone in the narrow bed which had been mine in the days when I shared the farmhouse with my aunt. For a long time I lay looking out the window at the wild night, wondering how I was possibly going to make myself leave come morning. Eventually, however, I did manage to fall into an uneasy sleep and began to dream.

It was just after Miles Fitzwarren's funeral, and in the dream I was back at the residence of his parents for the gathering afterwards. I wandered among the people in the room with the vague notion of finding Ronnie, though I couldn't immediately think why. Distantly, over the murmur of voices, I could hear a child crying and wondered at first if it might be Sophia. But listening closely, I realized it was the distressed cry of a much younger child, an infant. My infant? I began to search for it, but the harder I searched, the larger the room seemed to grow and the more people seemed to fill it. Soon I was jostled from all sides; someone bumped me from behind, causing me to stumble against a woman standing with her back to me. She turned.

It was Iris Fitzwarren, Miles's sister.

"You've spilled my drink," she told me coldly. Not that she could have had much of it--her throat was still slashed from ear to ear as it had been on the night of her death three years earlier. My gasp of horrified surprise amused her companions, who laughed heartily. Looking closer at them, I realized they had all been soldiers I'd nursed at the local makeshift hospital during the war, soldiers who had died there or later in subsequent battles. Alerted, I studied the people around me closely. They were all in attendance at this macabre wake, it seemed, all the people I had known and lost to death. Dorothy Ruskin came up to greet me, the beautiful wooden box with its intricate carvings in her hands and her head still horribly misshapen from the impact of the car which had killed her. Baring-Gould looked on like a carrion crow, grimly impassive. I turned away from them only to have Claude Franklin appear, charred and grotesque but still frighteningly recognizable, and offer me a glass of something to drink; when I refused, he pursued me with his hypodermic syringe brandished. I escaped him only to come face to face--or what passed for their faces--with my parents. I knew them by their clothes, nothing more.

It went on and on. Jamie spun me away, laughing, in a mortal dance I could not join; the hole in his chest seemed not to bother him at all. Ketteridge still stank of the bog into which he had sunk. Miles Fitzwarren came up to me as I sat huddled in an alcove, his worried expression marred by the bullet wound in his forehead.

"Where is Sophia?" he asked anxiously. "Have you seen her? I must sing her a song."

I had opened my mouth to tell him that she wasn't there when suddenly I caught sight of something white, a flutter of dazzling purity in the midst of so much blackness. A moment later I saw it again, the white dress of a little girl who darted in and out amongst the others. I could not see her face, but her hair was the color of Sophia's. My brother came out of nowhere to chase her and I heard the crying again. I followed them quickly, thinking now that she was the one who cried, that his dreadful appearance was frightening her. We two were the only living people at this wake of the dead, and it became more and more important to me that I reach her. Yet she eluded me, darting away easily whenever I drew close. But at last I managed to catch hold of her dress and called her name. She turned to look at me.

It was Patricia Donleavy Moriarty.

"He's here," she hissed at me, venomous as a serpent, with her face close to mine. "I have him at last."

I knew precisely who she meant. "No! I don't believe you." I backed away from her as if her very presence would somehow condemn me to remain in this room forever. "Where is he? Tell me what you've done to him."

"You had him, but now he's gone. Find him! Find him! Find him!" She shrieked it over and over, and others took up the chant. I pushed at them, trying to get through, searching, searching...and then he was there before me, strong and straight and invincible. In his arms he held a beautiful baby, and I embraced them both with a grateful sob.

"What is it, Russ?" he asked gently into my ear. "Why are you crying?"

"Because you don't belong here." I held out my arms for the infant. "Give me my baby." He hesitated, and then placed it in my arms and stepped away from me.

"I belong here now," he said. I woke myself up reaching for him and, in waking, understood all. Throwing back the covers, I left my lonely bedroom and hurried silently downstairs.

He was still seated on the floor near the fire, wrapped in a blanket, his strong, clear profile etched in amber. I had said nothing to announce my presence, yet he knew I was there.

"Lord Hutchingsford is dead," he remarked, almost conversationally. But there was nothing off-hand or sprightly about his expression. Beneath those familiar features was the anger which had lashed me earlier, and beneath the anger was despair. With that simple statement he had told me everything in an instant. He had met Lord Hutchingsford on the occasion of Miles Fitzwarren's funeral; the slight, friendly older man had told Holmes enthusiastically of the birth of his second child to his younger wife. He had evidently told Holmes a great many other things also about the timely topic of fathering children late in one's life, and it was those things which had first made Holmes susceptible to the possibility that we might attempt the same thing.

Now Lord Hutchingsford was dead, and those young children he had so loved would grow up without him, the very occurrence Holmes most wanted to avoid. He could not help but see himself in Lord Hutchingsford's situation, with much the same outcome, and be devastated by it.

"I'm sorry, Holmes." Crossing the room, I knelt on the floor near him, but did not touch him. He was not ready for my comfort, just as he had not been ready for it in those first few sickening hours after he had lost Jamie. But I waited, for I knew he would need it soon.

He had not looked at me. His eyes, fixed on the fire, were heavy-lidded and remote. "I heard it when I went to Scotland Yard this afternoon. They were speculating on how he might have met his end, what with his pretty young wife and all." He closed his eyes as if he might never open them again, and sighed. "And all the time I kept hearing in my mind his pride--his love--for that woman and the children she had bourn him. Quite unfashionable, his devotion. He was ridiculed soundly for it, not that it mattered at all to him. Now he's gone. What will become of her, I wonder? Is she sorry for what they had? Somehow, I think not."

"No, she's not sorry." I watched this man, this impossible, infuriating man ache for the pain of another. "She misses him, she wishes he had been longer with her, but she is not sorry. For she has him still; she will have him every time she looks into the faces of her children. He will look out at her from their eyes, and their love for her will be his. What more could any woman who has loved deeply and well want than that that love should continue?"

He turned to look at me for the first time. "And you, Russ?" he asked softly. "Would you be sorry?"

I swallowed. "I will never be sorry for anything I have of you."

"Then come." Unwinding the blanket, he held it away from him in invitation and I went to his side as I had in the dream. He held me close against him and I passed my arms around his waist, feeling none of his earlier thrumming agitation but only the healing quiet as after any violent storm.

"I am sorry, Russ," he said, after a bit. "You deserved better than this at my hands, I think."

"You deserve better at your own hands." I sat back slightly, the better to see him. But not too far. "I'm sorry about Lord Hutchingsford. I know what he meant to you, both in his living and in his dying. Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I could not." The corner of his mouth tightened, a bare movement which spoke to me of burdens carried still. "To do so would have brought all it signified too close to bear. Even now I feel its weight pressing in upon me. It is as if I have been following him on a path and seen him unexpectedly drop off the edge of a cliff at the path's end. I stand on the edge myself and feel that I ought to count myself fortunate that I did not take that last step as he did. But I tell you, Russ, I do not feel fortunate. I do not feel in the least fortunate."

"Do you think Lord Hutchingsford would have chosen a different path?" I asked quietly. "Do you think he would have chosen differently about anything, even knowing that he must leave his children far too soon?"

For a moment the dark brows knotted and I had a flash of memory, of holding his face gently between my hands as I washed his son's blood away. "No," he said at last and I knew what the admission had cost him.

"Would you, truly, in his place?"

He opened his eyes and looked into mine; they were very dark indeed. "I am in his place. He is me. I am him. There is no difference."

"Would you?"

His silence willed me to let it go, to let it pass. But I would not. I waited.

"No," he whispered at last. "I would not." And he closed his eyes suddenly and bowed his head, as if immensely weary. "I could not. I could not deny them their right to be, any more than I could deny that which made their existence possible. I am not strong enough."

I smiled. "That is ridiculous. You are the strongest person I know."

"Not for this." Opening his eyes, he straightened slowly as if the ache was back in his bones. "I am not ready, Russ," he said, after a bit. "I need time." A wan smile lifted one corner of his mouth. "I have little enough of it left, I know. But I need some now, to think. Will you grant me that at least?"

"Of course." I put aside my disappointment. He had come very far in a matter of just hours, both away and back, and I did not want to jeopardize his progress with words he had already heard before on the train. "All of this can wait. Come to bed. You're tired and cold." Standing, I put my hand out to help him up. "Things will look better in the morning."

"I hardly think so." He smiled and allowed me to help him to his feet. "Your bed was not made to fit two people, which means neither of us will sleep well, and there is nothing in the house now that we can make for breakfast tomorrow."

"Well, we'll just have to beg something from Patrick." I began to unbutton first his waistcoat, then the shirt beneath. "As for the bed, we'll take up less space if we are not sleeping side by side."

"Oh?" He watched, amused, as I fanned both shirt and waistcoat away from his skin. "And what does that leave?"

"Well I rather thought you would be above, but if you're too tired I could just as easily--"

"Never mind. I am quite certain I can manage." He bent to kiss me.

"You manage very well, thank you." I gathered him to me, conscious of a new tension claiming him, a new urgency as compelling as that which had driven him before, and I was as powerless to resist it. While the thunder walked above our heads he took me to the narrow bed I had so recently left and proceeded to vent his frustration at the vagaries of life in pleasanter, more constructive ways.

And in the waning turmoil of both those storms, our child was effortlessly conceived.