Chapter 1: A Wife’s Secrets and a Voice From the Past

Excerpts from Henry’s diary

21 June 1893:

I had lunch with Lanyon today. It was a spot of light in the darkness that has grown between us.

Our discourse reminded me of the early days of our union: Diverse and delightful, moving effortlessly from one topic to another as we explored, probed, and plundered the breadth and depth of each others’ minds. Had I enjoyed this conversation with a stranger, I would have considered myself blessed, the recipient of a rare jewel of intelligence and humor in the soggy grey morass that passes for polite intercourse in London society.

With Lanyon, I could not help but compare it to our past dialogues. I could not help but find it lacking.

To an outside observer, it would appear that there have been no changes in our marriage—no lessening of affections, no reduction in her protestations of love and devotion. Yet, when compared to our relations a mere month ago—perhaps even a fortnight ago—something is missing. Something that I cannot name, but which I nonetheless feel as palpably as the beat of my own heart, the ache of my own soul.

The heart that once we shared. The soul that once coursed through both our earthly vessels.

Were most couples asked where their deepest communion occurs, I presume that their answer might be the bedchamber—and, certainly, that was a chapel in which Lanyon and I most ardently worshipped. But the purest flame of our passion had always resided in the joining of our minds. Those locales where our souls and cerebella met—the laboratory, the classroom, the sitting room—formed the altar of our union, the cathedral of our love. Those, indeed, were the places where we were larger than the sum of our parts.

I still remember the moment when we first enjoyed that union—almost two years before our bodies followed suit.

Lanyon is my wife’s maiden name; her given name is Hastie. Years ago, when Colonel Lanyon, her father, asked me to tutor her at Bedford College, I considered it a reasonable exchange. The Colonel, through his considerable connections, had secured for me a position teaching the sciences at London’s newest college, and one of two that accepted female students. I would have access to the College’s facilities, use of the Colonel’s London home, and a privileged academic position. The latter was a particular benefit, given the unfortunate events that prematurely terminated my association with Cambridge University.

The Colonel also proffered the services of Poole—his former Sergeant, and a fellow with whom I had been honored to serve in Afghanistan. Poole had mustered out with his commanding officer and found employment in the Lanyon household, only to discover that he was better suited to the excitement of the city than the bucolic rhythms of the countryside. To put it lightly, he was quite eager to join Miss Lanyon and I in London.

In return for the Colonel’s beneficence, I would have to nursemaid the most notoriously dour and socially inept of the three Lanyon daughters. Based on my interactions with her siblings, I expected that Miss Lanyon would also be a vacuous, social-climbing creature, whose intellectual ambitions began with the fashions of the day and ended with the provincial gossip of West Hayward, the small hamlet where they lived.

However, while the elder Lanyon girls were empty-headed creatures, there is no disputing that they were skilled at the conversational arts. It was not long into our train voyage to London before I determined that the same could not be said of Hastie Lanyon.

Miss Lanyon sat on one side of the compartment, Poole and I on the other. The Sergeant, exhausted from some sort of farewell revelry that had transpired the night before, promptly fell asleep. I, meanwhile, set myself the task of getting reacquainted with the latest innovations in chemico-pharmacology, a particular interest of mine. Unfortunately, the scholarly treatise I was perusing managed the neat trick of being simultaneously long on verbiage and short on brilliance. Further, I was distracted by Miss Lanyon’s peregrine stare, a sort of unblinking, bulgy-eyed assault that never moved from my face. Based on her demeanor, I adjudged her to be either mentally deficient or boringly conventional, neither of which made me optimistic about our professional relationship.

Finally, I could endure it no longer. “Miss Lanyon, you have scarcely diverted your gaze from me since we left the station,” I proclaimed, meeting her steady gaze with a glare of my own. “Is my cravat askew? My hair disheveled? What, pray tell, could be the cause of such intense—and apparently contemptuous—attention?”

She colored and her grey eyes grew even wider. “Please accept my apology, sir,” she said softly. “I didn’t intend to cause you upset.”

I admired her gentle tone, undoubtedly intended to avoid disturbing Poole. However, having served with the man, I knew that nothing less than a fusillade of artillery could rouse him from his slumbers. “Never mind my upset, young lady,” I replied with clipped tone and raised eyebrow. “Please explain your unseemly attention.”

“I—that is—,” she sputtered. “Well, it’s just—there is so little known about you...”

Watching a blush spread across her face, I felt my mood softening. As a scientist—and thus a sufferer from the ravages of a never-ending curiosity—I felt some sympathy for a fellow traveler. As for her social awkwardness, it was a common affliction among men of science and—ironically—made me more hopeful regarding her intellectual prospects. After all, I had spent much of my academic life surrounded by fellows who could discourse for hours about the relative benefits of a surgical procedure, but were incapable of taking part in a pleasant conversation about the weather.

With a lightened spirit, I set about answering what questions she had for me—at least those I could address in polite company—and we were soon engaged in a diverting and surprisingly enjoyable chinwag. During our conversation, I also discovered that Poole’s wartime habits had changed in West Hayward, as our voices eventually roused him from his slumbers. “Ah, Hastie,” he muttered. “You got him to talk. Well played, Miss.”

Miss Lanyon glared at him. “And what is the meaning of that, Sergeant Poole,” she snapped, her arch tone hinting at her father’s martial voice of command.

“Merely that you and the good Doctor are well matched,” Poole smirked sleepily as he stretched. “Shining brilliance joined with unparalleled conversational ineptitude.”

“You tread close to insult, sir,” I growled, trying unsuccessfully to hide my smile. “I may demand satisfaction.”

“I have no interest in thrashing a doctor,” Poole smiled. “Particularly one to whom I owe so much. Although, I suppose you could sew yourself up afterward.”

“You’re giving me cause to regret the times I put my surgeon’s art at your service, Poole.”

Miss Lanyon flushed prettily as Poole laughed. “Oh, don’t try your stern professorial mien on me, Henry,” Poole said. “I’ve seen you too many times before breakfast to quail at your temper.” He chuckled. “Quite the pairing: Henry and Hastie. No, wait: Henry and Lanyon. Less unpleasantly alliterative.”

“I think I liked you better when you were ordering men to dig latrines,” I muttered, to Poole and Lanyon’s great amusement.

When we began our trip to London, I must confess that I regarded Miss Lanyon as little more than a curiosity, a young woman of wealth who was pursuing higher education as a lark. In our conversation, however, I discovered a lively and brilliant intellect, fused to a spirit that—despite her reserve—soon revealed itself to be every bit as adventurous and intrepid as my own. And, just as my own intellectual explorations had set me apart from the milling mass of humanity, so did hers. Like me, she had embarked on a lonely and difficult path.

In that railway coach, we launched a commingling of minds that has lasted almost ten years now. An intellectual passion that took Lanyon into my lab, where she began as my assistant and later took her place as my colleague. A physical passion that inflamed me, body and soul, far beyond all reason. A communion that healed the gaping wounds that Afghanistan left on my psyche and eventually led me to rejoin society.

Together, our curiosity has led us to great adventures and small tragedies, to the altar, and eventually to our marital home, where once we engaged in debates that would set the night alight ... and where now we spend our time sequestered in our respective laboratories. Where we measure out our passion to each other in teaspoons, while expending the majority of it in the solitary pursuit of our respective scientific explorations.

28 June 1893

My relations with Lanyon have further deteriorated. Outwardly, she continues to display all the love and affection befitting a devoted wife, but I increasingly find her distant and untouchable. Our conversations will often sputter and die as she stares out the window at the middle distance. Or, worse yet, as her eyes seem to glaze and turn inward, closing themselves off to me as she contemplates the mysteries inside her own inimitable brain.