Re: Sitting room, at the bar with brandy
With feet that trod on clay clods, cobble and packed dirt, the doctor was a man of a practical nature. His stature was tall, but too bulky to be willowy, and thus, he was spared the make of a man swayed. He was firm, steadfast, trenchant. He was a true, devout student of Science, eschewing the esoteric for that which might be grasped. He did not deny that there was much beyond his understanding. He was not fool enough to imagine he might grasp it all. But, he held true to the tenet that the facts, the truth of it, was there, awaiting the acute eye through which it would be discovered. An eye that he did not possess, but that others, he was certain, did and would.—But, of course, he should trust in powers and concepts bigger than himself. He did. He had experienced too much to misunderstand his insignificance. It was thus that the strangeness of the evening—of it all—did not send him out the door of the black-cloaked manor, hat in hand and a curse on his lips.
Yes, the house that groaned around him, tittering with conversation and the hushed, yet belligerent tones of the hedonists of the Upper Classes—there was some pall cast over it, he was certain. While the good doctor did not put stock in curses or charms, cast of knucklebones on brickwork, he had always been the more feeling of the pair, Holmes and Watson. If Sherlock Holmes was the mind, he was the heart, and his own now quivered not with fear, but with an anticipation of some ill event, the black palm of a Gypsy over her cards, futures and taromancy sold on the pence by a woman missing all but two of her front teeth.
Or—and this he had figured for Holmes' likely thought on the matter—he was off on drink, with his head getting away from him amid bubbles of brandywine.
It was upon a single folio of foolscap that Dr. Watson wrote with his fine Parker pen. Three quartz snifters into his cognac, his mood philosophical—and waning with wedge of sap moon toward overindulgence, he conferred with the enigmatic and charming Keats' devotee, Miss M, and a small number of others; notably, a sharp-edged Norwegian with an emotionality (or lack thereof) that reminded the doctor of his dear friend, all that cleavage to Delusions and Facts, and a pair who spoke together of planes unvisited, worlds, universes, as if it was a matter left to idle discussion after dinner. It was they, the latter, who urged the fourth snifter, oak-warm against sun-starved palm, to the man's lips as he wondered what Holmes might make of all of this.
Such queries kept his loss close to his heart, beneath his own mourner's black. He was a widower, black hatband, cravat, and gloves, dovetailed together near the brim of his hat, and most steered around him, their evening full of gaiety and merriment where his was a mirror covered with bombazine. His buttons, mother of pearl at the swan'd neck of his dress shirt, were jet-formed lilies of the valley on his coat, and it was, perhaps, his recent suffocation, the loss of his dear Mary and the resurrection of the restless memory of Holmes, that left him dulled to the presence of the woman, crape and embroidery, who sat herself upon the neighboring stool.
It was the movement of her raven-dark head, curls unfolding in a cascade of coal black, that drew his eye, but laggardly. She was pale, with fine, bloodless features, even, seeming to have been sculpted of living marble, and wide, expressive eyes. She was lively, he thought, but there was an air about her of black-feathered shrieks from the bell tower, teeth rows of tombstones in lime.—Watson nearly forgot himself and his manners.
With some sheepishness, he dipped his head at the woman, warm, but gentlemanly.
"Good evening." He smiled, comely, and folded foolscap on itself with steady hands. His tone was conversational. "I did not think to find many here, with all of the rather engaging ...activities abound."