being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.”


X.THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR

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.