Struthers starts to display that kind of nagging, "how do you feel about it" behaviour that makes her seem like a psychologist curing Holmes of his emotional issues. Holmes spends much of the time drawing.
Struthers entered his room, finding Holmes sitting on the floor with a sketchpad, while innumerable drawings of Helen Stoner littered the entire space, such that the floor and even the top of the bed was scarcely visible. He was certainly taking her advice to an extreme! Holmes was sketching the memories out of him, but the flow still seemed far from ending as he continued furiously with the pencils and charcoals.
Holmes had said that he had art in his blood, and it showed in the deftness and intensity of each drawing. Carefully stepping through the flood of drawings, Struthers glanced among them, glimpsing varied frozen moments of the face and figure that haunted both his memory and his imaginings. There stood Helen--tall, cloaked, and funereal before the 221B window. There she sat uncovering her black veil to reveal her shimmering eyes and rich hair; her intense eyes bore a look of surprise and a little bit of fear. There Helen uncomfortably frowned at what appeared to be someone's hand touching her discoloured wrist. Now she stood in a summery dress with the sun behind her, looking quizzically down at something on the grass; then she turned white to the lips and fell forward in a near faint to someone whose tense back showed a startled discomfort at having to catch her.
Darkness and light. Struthers observed the way that murky shadows filled and crowded the scenes, overwhelmingly predominating in many places. He wove around Helen Stoner a theme of mystery and enigma, some riddle that he had never fully unravelled about her.
Helen stood or sat in diverse poses, sometimes with anonymous persons in the periphery, at locations in Stoke Moran, London, and New York. Holmes captured her emotions in the faintest lift of her eyebrows, twist of her mouth, disarrangement of her hair, or lines in her face and hands. Could there be any doubt that he still loved her? Struthers sighed heavily, still trying to judge what was healthiest and best for her to do about this frustrating man.
As she looked over his shoulder, he sketched a small, empty bed and bell-rope in a dark room, while a mysterious hand lingered as though fascinated by the faint impression of shape upon the mattress. Holmes incorporated a distinct motif of snake-like, slithering forms in the dim outlines.
Struthers brushed aside some sketches and sat on his bed, leaning forward. "Holmes."
He turned only slightly at her voice.
She sighed, murmuring, "Why won't you let her go? When will you forget? I did not suggest this indulgence as a chance to wallow, Holmes, but to heal. Why such clutching onto the past? To things that cannot be changed, however much regretted? I read those letters too. You told her to forget and release her futile, obsessive guilt over her sister Julia, but you won't do the same over her."
He did not answer but began a new sketch, which would soon reveal itself to be Helen's head upon, undoubtedly, his shoulder.
Struthers lay on the bed and looked down at her hands, asking at last, "What was in her diaries? The ones that you wouldn't show me? Holmes, I know this is more than loneliness and grief, or even the fact that she was unfaithful to you. She'd been lonely for over ten years--what could you expect? You forgave her, were going to marry her..." She sat up, repeating the query, "What was in those diaries?"
He stopped drawing, closing his eyes and speaking softly, "They began with, 'Why isn't he here? Why did he free me of Stoke Moran, only to trap me in himself?' I caused her to reject her fiancé and the ordinary life she might have had. I tainted and took away her every chance at happiness and fulfilment." He swallowed. "I destroyed her."
"And she forgave you," she reminded him.
He smiled bitterly. "And Watson?" He looked up. "Watson loved her, do you know? I could see him falling in love with her right before me--and who could blame him? He'd previously thought that such stimulating conversation was only to be found with me or his saintly, wise mother.
"Helen and he were matched; they would have suited each other wonderfully. He'd always wanted someone who could keep house, but also possessed spirit. Who was adventurous, vibrant, and as empathetic as he. And Watson was expressive, giving, honest; Helen would have had his utter devotion. I could not stand to see the interest and warmth in her eyes when she looked at him, nor bear how often he thought of her in the weeks after the case.
"I did not take him with me to visit her at Harrow, nor share her letters to me with him. I was being unreasonable and possessive, taking every opportunity to cut him out. There was something frightening about how very much Helen affected me. I sent her away to New York as much to keep her from me as to keep her from Watson."
"If you couldn't have her, no one else would?"
He nodded. "I was ruthless. I didn't have the right to her, but I--I hung on her every word." He sighed and shook his head. "I should have let her go. When she lost interest in Percy I should have let go. Or I should have invited her back to visit us, to see Watson again. I couldn't love her--why keep her from someone else? She would have been happy with Watson, but I took away that chance, unable to give her up though I could offer her nothing. She spent years waiting on vague hopes for me and being frustrated. Watson spent years never finding anyone to satisfy him quite like she did. She was the only woman he truly wanted, until Mary. If I had just let them be, Speckled Band would have become a novel and right now you'd see him writing of 'my dear wife Helen.'"
"And Mary?" she raised her eyebrows.
He shrugged. "Watson would have enjoyed her company just the same, on meeting her. She is bright, imaginative, and purposeful. After her case, she still would not mind much about her lost treasure, more concerned with our perils for her sake. She might have become dear friends with Helen and Watson. Mary might still have taken this meddling interest in me and my investigations. I can picture her constantly coming round and doting on my Baker Street Irregulars. She was always anxious and sympathetic for others."
"And yourself, too."
He had to smile. "Yes, I can see her becoming argumentative and troublesome about my habits, as she is now. Having no softening effect of Watson to accompany her, I doubt she would have allowed my habit to survive her stern warnings of health or her sheer refusal to give me a spare second of idleness in which to succumb."
"And you would have had less reason to die at Reichenbach."
"Helen would have been safe; I would not have deprived her of anything, nor sunk into the abyss of cocaine. The four of us would all be like some informal family of old friends--all of us orphans--but especially Mary, who had lived in another family's home for years. I think that's why she would mother me so, having no true household of her own and being fascinated by my outré world. I can see Mary being the one fluttering about me and worrying that I get a head-cold from fleeing to Europe from Moriarty."
"She's not as bad as that," Struthers smiled.
"No, not bad," he agreed. "Practical really. Thinking to go straight to those attentive matters that she knew she could have an immediate effect on, to make up for deficiencies in other skills. In fact, tremendously like Watson..."
She looked up with a little surprise. "What, jaunting around London with you after creosote trails and strange men in coaches?" She laughed in spite of herself at the image.
Holmes raised an eyebrow with a serious contemplation. "Accompanying me as daringly as Watson? Replacing Watson, due to his marital absence? Why, yes. Yes, I could see that. I could see her being the one quietly but determinedly arguing her way along with me to Reichenbach. Picking up from London and saying that there's no time to wait for Watson and that she would stay close by to the end to watch over me."
"And at Reichenbach?"
"She would return from being lured away by Moriarty's ruse, at first frantic to find me injured by the struggle, then--"
"What?"
"Then angry. Furious. Just like you were when you rescued me. Only you wouldn't be there on the ledge because, having Mary in replacement for Watson, I would never have enlisted your assistance in that case long ago. You would have had no distress to haunt you all the way to Meiringen."
She blinked, nodding with slight puzzlement. She realised the odd parallels in this domino-effect timeline. "And furious?" she prompted, wanting to hear more.
"Furious and shaking me. Making a scene and shouting accusingly--How could I deceive her, how could I send her away and risk my life so matter-of-factly? You know, generally making a nuisance of herself."
She smiled, "And so you'd make apologies to shush her up and shuttle her back to London with you."
"And marry her."
The smile suddenly left Struthers's lips. She stared, not believing her ears, and spoke very faintly. "What?"
"And marry her," he said again, his tone quite serious and certain. "A proposal would be the only apology she'd truly accept, and one guaranteed to leave her speechless and unresisting as I'd take hold of her and drag her down to Meiringen with me. Arrangements for the ceremony within the next twenty-four hours, and then I'd shuttle her home with me, to carry my astonished bride over the threshold of 221B within a week." He spoke all this very thoughtfully, staring into the bowl of his cherrywood as he began the ritual of lighting the pipe.
She could barely control her voice. "W-why?"
He puffed lightly, glancing over one of his other sketches--Watson with Helen Stoner kissing his cheek. "Logic," he murmured. "If she had, as you speculate, become so enduring and active in my life, I should most likely have developed for her a great respect and, veiled as it may be under a show of irritation, an affection for her. Such fondness being probably the closest that I could ever come to love, I should in all honesty have realised that such a felicitous relationship should not be let go of. Of all the things that Mary might forgive me for, the betrayal of her trust at Reichenbach would be the one thing that she could not, under normal circumstances, forgive. So," he puffed, "I must change the circumstances, and make her alliance with me more permanent."
His fingers lingered upon the portrait of Helen and Watson. "Indeed," he murmured, "I would have long ago learnt the lesson that the most valuable partner is one that you can tie to you on more than the tenuous threads of curiosity and emotional whims. I lost Watson; why make the same mistake with Mary?"
She closed her eyes due to her increasingly clouded vision. "So you'd marry her?" she said.
"Yes. Only logical," he murmured. "Rather than our continuing to travel together in some awkward fashion, such as a 'brother and sister' I suppose, we would have free reign of propriety and better practical opportunities for truly active casework." He puffed. "I should have to phrase it somewhat more romantically to her, and to sufficiently fulfil the role of the marriage bed, that my affection for her be more evident than my logic. It would be in the natural course of events."
"The natural course of events," she whispered, laying her head down on the bed and trying to breathe normally.
"So I'd marry her," he said, beginning to sketch a pair of wedding rings, John and Mary Watson's, then adding beneath them a ghostly pair of rings that were greatly similar, but from another world. "I'd marry her, making her position in my household more official and helping Mrs. Hudson not to look askance anymore at Mary's constant presence at my side. Mary would help restore the burned 221B flat and would move in--if she had not done so already. Surely Mary, out of her great interest in meddling in my business, might have even before Reichenbach left the Forresters to take lodgings nearby me. Then, after the inconvenience of it, had the audacity to propose a respectable cohabitation by adopting Watson's old room. If she'd had such audacity prior to our marriage, it would be no wonder that I'd develop an affection for her."
Struthers hoped desperately that Holmes would not turn and see the condition that she was in now. Such damn bloody detail in this fantasy world of his! She was shaking. "So you'd marry her," she found herself saying once again, unable to let go of it. "In the natural course of events." So what was natural for Struthers with him now? "And I'd be nowhere. I'd be safe and pleasantly at home, having never encountered you for more than a few moments during that case, and that possibly in the presence of you partner Mary. Right now, everybody would be happy and ungrieving, much better off than they are now. You've got it all worked out in detail, haven't you?"
He put down his pipe and stared at his current drawing again, too engrossed to be of any danger to Struthers. She lay still, staring at the intent craning of his neck as he breathed out and closed his eyes. His long thin fingers traced the outline of Watson's ring in his sketch.
She could recover a little more of herself in thinking of his pain. "And Watson," she inferred. "You feel guilty, you need his forgiveness too..."
He faintly gulped and nodded, saying nothing.
"Not only for the deception at Reichenbach, but for Helen. For possessive jealousy, for this imagined world, for--" she paused, having difficulty and yet trying to invest neutrality and understanding into so simple a name, "--for Mary."
He did not answer at first and when he did, she discovered that his mind had travelled onto an entirely different train of thought. He shut his eyes more tightly and seemed to shiver. "Dammit, I can imagine Helen in his arms! Can picture just the way he'd touch her, his hands lingering in her hair..."
She frowned, uncomfortable.
He bitterly smiled to himself. "The way his mustache would tickle, his kisses on each of her fingers, his low voice whispering..."
She covered her ears. "Stop it!" she shouted, violently trembling and shutting her eyes. "Dammit, and are you going to tell me how you can imagine Mary in your arms too?"
He opened his eyes and saw that his charcoal drawing was smudged while Struthers continued swearing.
He simply blinked. "I never even thought of Mary like that until you suggested it just now. I've had years to imagine Watson and Helen."
So it was, and would always be, Helen. Disregarding the fact that Holmes insisted on saying that she suggested all his speculations, Struthers was quiet now and watched his face again, surprised by how many nuances of a smile he could project.
"All the sweet idiotic charms of him," he whispered almost tenderly. "Tics of his personality. I've seen his every domestic bliss with her--sleeping and snoring late on a Sunday morning, knowing to surprise her with a certain book, staring at her too long just for the pleasure of watching her arch those eyebrows of hers, falling asleep in his armchair at the fire while she read the paper and smiled at the comfortableness of his socked feet. They were so very right for each other. Meant to be."
"Would you have loved her like that had she lived?" She hesitated. "You just spoke so easily of the logic of marrying Mary. Why was it so hard to argue that way for Helen?"
He thought a moment. "Because I sent her away, out of my sight and out of my grasp. Because my betrayal of her was slow, unwilling, halting. Because as time passed I thought perhaps she'd go as numb as me about our relationship. Watson..." He didn't finish the sentence. "Because I have this perfection for sabotaging any received affection. Because youthful arrogance is defensive of any suffocation in emotion."
"And being already abandoned by Watson and Helen Stoner, in your scenario, you would be sufficiently divested of youthful arrogance to argue yourself into marriage to Mary?"
"Yes." He again touched the ghostly rings with both his hands. "Watson... Helen..." he reiterated, grimacing with a kind of weary pain.
"So, as every detail is accounted for, you can self-piteously glory in the knowledge that you alone have been responsible for ruining four, no five, lives? --I am allowed to factor myself in the equation, am I not? I would have remained merely as you found me that October, almost proud to be the spiteful spinster living in defence of the memory of dead men. I would have cultivated it as a high art, and have found happily married types like you disgusting, or at best amusing."
She leaned over and found her most grating voice. "Every detail accounted for," she repeated, "including your own believing that it might be true! Well it isn't, and you can't wish it true for all your grief and guilt. It's so terribly convenient, isn't it? Do you think the entire world hangs on your difficult choices? How do you know it would have worked out that way? You assume that people are interchangeable, that circumstances can alter anybody's heart. What if Watson didn't marry Helen? What if, despite your conveniently cutting Percy out of the picture, Watson was still too gentlemanly to be comfortable with courting another man's former fiancée? What if Helen did marry him, but still pined for you? What if they loved each other but in 1888, upon meeting, Mary and Watson also fell in love? They'd all be miserable, trapped. What if Helen died in childbirth along the way, still snatched away too young? What if you became even more passionately jealous after Watson and Helen married, so much that you poisoned your relationship for years and caused him to despise and never speak to you? What if you still ended up at Reichenbach, miserable and lonely?"
She began to choke up and fail at hiding her tears. "You don't know a thing about what's inseparable from the heart, what's inevitable for a person to feel, to say, to do."
He had put aside his sketches and turned to see her shuddering on the bed.
"What if Mary loved you ... loved you desperately," she continued, "but you only did to her what you did to Helen? What if you never survived Reichenbach, leaving everybody in paroxysms of grief and guilt and misery behind you?" She was babbling without control, unravelling.
He rose and came to her on the bed, raising her prostrate figure and trying to hold her up and shake her back to her senses. "Struthers? Struthers, I--I apologise." He presented a handkerchief for her tears and then wore a strange and seemingly oblivious smile on his face. "You're right. Yes, of course, you are. I'm an idiot, I see. You're perfectly correct. I've been wallowing in illogical imaginings."
He raised her face, that he could meet her red eyes. "I see, Struthers. You don't have to pound it into me anymore with your protests or your tears. Being in the midst of the tide doesn't make me an expert on the chaos of love or a prophet on the past," he admitted, then shook his head at his behaviour. "What a fool I must sound like to you. How much like the tiresome and irrational people that I used to mock and deride. I am sorry to plague you with this, Struthers, to drive you crazy with my blathering..."
She began to control her breathing again, looking at him with blinking eyes.
"I'm sorry," he kept repeating. Then he laughed a little. "Damn, I can count on you to be more reasonable than I am, can't I?"
She was quite relieved and yet puzzled by his change of mood, but did not know anymore what to say. At last he had ceased to talk of Helen.
He smiled as he still gripped her by the shoulders. "Struthers, at least be merciful enough to say you'll forgive me and overlook this embarrassing idiocy of mine. I cannot take a recurrence of your feminine tears."
She smacked his shoulder harshly. "There's nothing feminine about me!" she sniffled with pride. Then, looking down to see her messy and ridiculous appearance, she chuckled in return. "Especially in this state."
He too glanced at the charcoal stains that he'd unthinkingly put upon her with his blackened hands, no doubt ruining her clothes and soiling part of her face. He laughed again. "What a mess I've made of you, and of me! I'm stunned that I brought you to tears over just trying to argue some sense into me. I really would not have known to what morbid, sentimental levels I'd sunk if you hadn't been here to rouse me out again. Struthers, what do you say to my thanking you by taking you out of this stuffy room and buying you a new dress in town?"
She laughed and rose with him. "Gladly. Though I think I'll still go clean up first."