Doldrums and Deep Waters
Chapter 5: A Stygian stream
I barely recall the walk home following this nefarious incident.
I do remember stumbling into the path of a hansom, as the driver had reason to curse me, and I remember the utter lack of interest I felt in the narrowness of my escape.
I must somehow have allowed my steps to carry me back to Baker Street. I was an automaton, performing the journey without conscious thought. I must have washed my face and discarded my blood-stained best suit out of habit, but I have no memory of doing so.
My next clear recollection is of sitting in my usual chair by the fire, wrapped in a dressing gown and an impenetrable layer of misery. I felt no hunger, no further rage, was barely conscious of the aches I had acquired from the strenuous surgery. I was empty, hollow, but there was no room inside me for anything but unmitigated desolation. The only comfort I was allowing myself, and that unconsciously, was smoking. I smoked incessantly, barely waiting for one bowl to burn down before refilling it, and filling the room with the kind of dense fug I usually associated with Holmes' all night sittings.
Holmes had not returned, and did not return all day. Mrs Hudson entered the room with dinner that evening, and exclaimed in disgust at the miasma, which had begun to encroach upon the rest of the house.
"We will be having the fire brigade called soon, Dr Watson! Really, it is bad enough Mr Holmes smoking like a chimney and filling the house with Heaven knows what other poisonous fumes without you joining him."
I barely had the energy to respond, lost in deadly, numbing apathy. Mrs Hudson could hardly have failed to notice my unhappiness, and her motherly instincts were immediately awakened.
"Why, Doctor, you look dreadful. Is something wrong?"
"I am fine, Mrs Hudson." As this response was delivered in such completely flat tones as to refute it utterly, Mrs Hudson was not satisfied.
"Have you eaten today, dear?"
"I've not been hungry," I muttered. The good lady was evidently torn between concern and irritation. After a moment's hesitation, she leaned over and took the pipe from my unresisting hand. She would not normally take such a liberty, and mild surprise penetrated my introversion.
Laying the pipe upon the mantelpiece, Mrs Hudson began to shoo me from my chair, like a large and irresistible hen. I was too boneless to resist, and allowed myself to be shepherded to the table. Tutting, she threw open the window, and the cold blast of air cleared my senses a little. Unfortunately, this just served to bring my mind back to my body's ills, and some of my earlier anger and indignation stirred again.
My landlady tutted again upon seeing the state I had made around my chair, detritus from my perpetual pipe scattered over the arms and the floor. She grabbed the hearth brush, and began cleaning with the kind of soft, huffing noises designed to convey to a man that he is in disgrace. I found it irritating, and my beleaguered mind seized upon the minor distraction, to protect itself from contemplating far bigger concerns.
Mrs Hudson was now pointedly banging the dustpan against the hearth, and I decided attack was the best form of defence.
"Mrs Hudson, must you make that intolerable racket? I have the headache."
"I am not surprised," she answered, tartly. "I am surprised you can breath at all in here." She coughed, to illustrate her point, then came to hover over me as I toyed with my food. "You should look after yourself better. You do not need to be Mr Sherlock Holmes to know you have been sitting there stewing all day, and you did not call for lunch."
"I have not been sitting here all day, I have been out," I snapped, pushing away the memories of all I had done. Mrs Hudson looked at me, doubtfully, and my ire was raised. Petulantly, I decided to undermine her by attacking her weakest spot.
"Mrs Hudson, have you not learned Holmes' patterns?" I grumbled, as I poked the lamb chop disconsolately with my fork. "When he is engaged upon a case, he does not habitually eat. Lamb is his partiality, not mine. Why could I not have had something that I enjoy, but do not usually get to taste because of his fussing? Why not pork?"
Mrs Hudson stared at my ingratitude, but it seemed my terrible mood was infectious.
"I am sorry, to be sure, Doctor, but I cannot be expected to run my kitchen by observing Mr Holmes' whims. If you wish for a different dinner, you may request one in advance, to give me time to prepare it," she snapped, in obvious annoyance. She then looked around her at the dirty cloud of my own making still lingering about the ceiling. "Perhaps if you stepped out and got yourself a little fresh air and exercise, you would have more of a healthy appetite."
I started to angrily protest, something dreadfully juvenile, along the lines of not being a juvenile, but the effect was ruined by Mrs Hudson turning her back upon me to march to the far window and throw it open also.
"Eat your lamb chops or don't eat your lamb chops, but do leave this room for a while."
"Mrs Hudson, it may have escaped your attention that it is dark, and the weather is foul. The smog is smothering any trace of fresh air out there."
"Not so much so as in here. Moping around in all this cannot be good for you, and it is certainly not good for my walls and ceiling. Well?" She asked, fixing me with a quelling eye. I sulkily began to eat my chops.
After a few mouthfuls, and probably something to do with the chill draft now rattling the crockery, a little more of my apathy left me, and I decided I would leave the house after all.
Wrapped up well against the dank conditions, I dawdled down Baker Street, not certain of where to go. I then began to get cold, so I picked up my step.
Mrs Hudson had been right; the walk did clear my head. However, I found this was not an improvement, as there was much I would rather forget. The horror of what had happened in that operating theatre was taking a distinct shape, rather than the formless impression I had carried with me all day, and prompting a fresh wave of negative emotions.
I almost preferred the cloying, nebulous depression of earlier to this state of heightened awareness. The humiliation burned, but it was nothing to my sense of guilt, which magnified my own responsibility for the appalling consequences. I should have done more to halt the operation, I should have spoken to the patient, I should have saved the leg, I should not have lost my temper and therefore won the students over to my side in support of my patient. The guilt was like a maggot, gnawing its way through my soul. Professor Beaumarris' role was suppressed, my role exaggerated, in the tortures my own mind inflicted upon me. I did not stop to consider how helpless I should have been to halt proceedings, how the patient would almost certainly have bled to death had I not been assisting, how there was no way on earth I would have been allowed access to the patient following my outburst.
My guilt reached such proportions that it seemed to dominate my every perception. The night streets around me seemed to pulsate and distort in front of my eyes, and everything I looked at was tinged with ugliness. I believed it was the rot in my own soul, causing everything to be reflected back to me as I deserved to see it.
The emptiness of earlier was now superseded by a yet more awful state, where I felt my mind to be crowded beyond my capacity to bear. Every action of recent days tried to play back in my head simultaneously, with a skewed, self-condemning connotation. I recalled my rudeness to my landlady with a shudder, and felt the expected acute embarrassment, but also a sense that this was yet more proof of my own irredeemably despicable nature. A wretchedness so intense was building within me that I had to halt my steps several times, and press my balled fists to my heart.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a tiny voice insisted that this was a morbid over-reaction, but this small trickle of reason was drowned out by a dark, swirling torrent of despair. Where the two streams of consciousness collided, they left an echo. Why had I lost my way so completely? Was I going mad? When would these torments end?
Valid questions indeed. Things were just beginning.
What can have got into the inhabitants of 221B Baker Street? Even Mrs Hudson is out of sorts, and I don't like Watson's state of mind at all.
Ongoing thanks for all your reviews. Enjoying all the hatred for the horrible Beaumarris – who sadly probably wasn't all that unusual in his day, informed consent not being a priority back then. So, you all think something awful should happen to him, eh?....
Please continue to read and review, as you all make me one happy bunny!