Chương 21: Dear Mary (2)

I think perhaps you chastised me in my dreams last night. It began with Holmes. I was searching for him throughout the shabby field hospital, amongst the wounded – and finally, amongst the dead. I looked at that long row with their feet all exposed because their meager blankets had been pulled up to cover their faces. I felt a deep, anxious, certainty that Holmes was dead. A wealth of fear and premature grief as deep as when I ran up that steep path at Reichenbach, having found my errand a hoax. But when I pulled down that first rough woolen shroud, it was your wide mute eyes that accused me. My unthought-of wife lying on the damp ground looking as you did in your coffin. Wasted and worn by illness as those boys were from war. Those whip-thin and haunted youths that I had all but forgotten. Why was I looking for Holmes and finding you? Perhaps I am finding the depth of my love for you at last. Like Hamlet, finding it too late.