Notes　Scene 45: Holmes the Musician

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.

わが友は熱心な音楽家で、自身たいへん腕の立つ演奏家であるばかりか、並々ならぬ才をもつ作曲家でもあった。午後のあいだずっと、彼は一階席で至福に包まれて座り、長く細い指を音楽に合わせて静かに揺らしていたが、そのおだやかにほほえむ顔も、物憂げで夢見るような目も、猟犬のようなホームズ、容赦なく、頭が切れ、手際のよい犯罪捜査人としてのホームズのそれとは、およそ想像できないほどかけ離れていた。彼の風変わりな性格の中では、二つの性質がかわるがわる顔を出すのであって、その極端なまでの正確さと鋭さは、私がよく思うように、ときおり彼を支配する詩的で瞑想的な気分への反動なのだった。彼の性分は、極度のけだるさから、すべてを呑み込むような精力へと大きく振れるのだったが、私がよく知るとおり、何日も続けて肘掛け椅子に寝そべり、即興の演奏やひげ文字の古書に浸っていたあとほど、彼が真に手ごわくなることはなかった。そんなときこそ、追跡への渇望がにわかに彼をとらえ、そのみごとな推理の力は直観の域にまで高まるので、彼のやり方を知らない者たちは、まるで並の人間とは違う知識をもつ者を見るように、うさんくさげに彼を見るのだった。その午後、セント・ジェイムズ・ホールで音楽にすっかり浸りきっている彼を見て、私は、彼が追い詰めると心に決めた者たちに、悪い時が迫っているのかもしれないと感じた。