| The
Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a
subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom
moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn
the gossips away from this four-year-old drama. As I have reason to believe, however,
that the full facts have never been revealed to the general public, and as my
friend Sherlock Holmes had a considerable share in clearing the matter up, I feel
that no memoir of him would be complete without some little sketch of this remarkable
episode. It
was a few weeks before my own marriage, during the days when I was still sharing
rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came home from an afternoon stroll
to find a letter on the table waiting for him. I had remained indoors all day,
for the weather had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds, and
the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my
Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence. With my body in one easy-chair
and my legs upon another, I had surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers until
at last, saturated with the news of the day, I tossed them all aside and lay listless,
watching the huge crest and monogram upon the envelope upon the table and wondering
lazily who my friend's noble correspondent could be. "Here
is a very fashionable epistle," I remarked as he entered. "Your morning
letters, if I remember right, were from a fish-monger and a tide-waiter." "Yes,
my correspondence has certainly the charm of variety," he answered, smiling,
"and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of
those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to
lie."
He broke the seal and glanced over the contents.
"Oh,
come, it may prove to be something of interest, after all."
|
