Lanyon and Henry Ch. 01

As you might have guessed from the title, this is just the first chapter of this story. There are currently four, which I will be posting weekly for the next month or so. Please let me know your thoughts!

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The Strange Case of Lanyon and Henry

Chapter 1: A Wife's Secrets and a Voice from the Past

Copyright 2023 by B. Watson

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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 conversation 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 salon, 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 asked me to tutor his daughter Hastie 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 ended 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 maladept of the three Lanyon daughters. Based on my discourse 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.

Still, 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 commenced 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 writings I perused 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 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 unblinking 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 soften. 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 discourse. 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 grinned 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 reticence—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, too, 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 discourse 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.

Even Poole and Mrs. Willoughby, our housekeeper, seem to have noticed the change in our interactions, and have taken pains to avoid the room when the two of us are together.

Our once merry household has become dour and silent.

Of late, Lanyon has begun walking gingerly, with a stiffness, as if she is quietly suffering some mortification in her back and limbs. She has also begun dressing differently: Until a month ago, she tended toward bodices and skirts in the home—delicate and delightful garments that brought us both great pleasure. In the laboratory, she preferred shirtwaists, noting that their long sleeves and high collars protected her pale skin from the ravages of caustic chemicals and reagents. Now, she has taken to wearing shirtwaists constantly, concealing her tantalizing form.

In the bedchamber, her raiment has followed similar suit. She has replaced the gossamer bedgowns of a few months ago with a collection of flannel bedshirts befitting an aged and modest rural churchwife, not a woman of nine-and-twenty years. Like the shirtwaists, these obscure her body from neck to ankle, wrist to wrist.

Despite her drab and unappealing attire, she continues to attend to her wifely duties, doling out her physical bounty with a grim determination that has replaced the impassioned joy that she once brought to our boudoir. She refuses to disrobe, choosing instead to hike up her gown to waist level to permit me access solely to her most delicate region. In bed, she has become as still as a corpse, closing her eyes as if she is—in the words of the infamous admonition—pondering the future glory of England. She allows me to exhaust my passions upon her body, but her own once-wanton nature seems to have fled from our bedchamber, and she brings none of the joy of engagement that once attended our nocturnal activities.

It is—as one might imagine—highly unsatisfactory. I have begun to consider expelling my excitement outside the home, a state of affairs that would once have been anathema to me. However, needs must, and I will not force my biological urges upon an unwilling spouse. Where once our communion illuminated my days and seasoned my dreams, the grim couplings that have recently occupied our nightly hours have filled me with sadness and loathing.

Sadly, that is but one of the developments that has, of late, transformed our bed into a torture chamber.

My dreams have also grown darker and more terrifying. As always, they are a crowded place, attended at times by specters that date back to my sojourn in Afghanistan. But they have recently been joined by something new. Something equal parts terrorizing and tantalizing. Dreams of ecstasy and violence, of blood and liquor and revelry. Flashes of snowy flesh and pink-capped breasts. Legs spread wide, wrapped around me. Lanyon's grey eyes, widened in terror. Excitement.

Dreams both disturbingly new and yet horrifyingly familiar.

Despite the nightmares that plague my still hours, I find myself falling asleep earlier and waking later. I am sleeping more than ever before, yet I rise from my bed each morning aching and exhausted, done in by the grayness and repetition of what has become a gray and repetitive life.

I quail at the thought of what my life is becoming.

5 July 1893

As the passion has fled my marriage, my home, and my life, I begin to wonder what nefarious forces underlie this transformation. Is it merely the nature of middle age? Must the furious enthusiasm of youth always give way to the staid monotony of maturity and routine? Is my life to be little more than three mornings a week in Bedford College's lecture halls, sharing the mysteries of nature with rooms full of students who have more to offer the world as subjects of vivisection than as nascent surgeons? Afternoons at the club engaged in insipid conversation with gentlemen who flaunt their wealth and position to conceal their utter lack of wit and originality? Meals with my wife, who has set aside the florid discourse of years past in favor of light gossip about the neighbors and offhand comments about home décor?

I wonder fleetingly if the Lanyon sisters are, indeed, all cut from the same cloth.

My only joy remains the laboratory, where the amber glow of Herr Bunsen's burners and rainbow-hued potions in tinkling glass flasks continue to sing their siren song. Yet even there, my joy seems muted, a flame that struggles to stay alight in a world that is increasingly dull, soggy, and gray.

8 July 1893

Today, I lightly stroked Lanyon's arm as she walked past me in the dining room. She recoiled and hissed with an unintentional explosion of pain. She quickly recovered, giving me a crooked smile as she told me that she was suffering from a womanly dysfunction. I wonder if she's forgotten my training as a medical doctor, and that debunked theories of hysteria and traveling uteruses will find little traction with me. No, my training informs me that there are precious few womanly complaints that would likely manifest as a tender arm.

Clearly, I need to investigate further.

13 July 1893

Part of our mystery has been solved, although—God save me!—a greater enigma now remains.

Lanyon continues to tread gingerly around our home, indicating a physical discomfort that seems, if anything, to be getting worse. After observing her pain for a week, only to have my queries answered with an increasingly exasperated response that she is suffering from womanly complaints, I remain baffled. She has refused any of the prescribed medications and the situation continues to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, my travels in the nocturnal realms have grown longer and more troubled. Most nights, I retire to our bedchamber before Lanyon, barely enduring past eight in the evening before sleep violently overtakes me. I am hard pressed to rise before ten in the morning. Last night, however, I realized that the information I sought might be provided by nighttime investigation, so I forced myself to remain awake until after Lanyon retired. To this effect, I varied my nightly imbibing, eschewing my standard brandy in favor of a few glasses of vin coca. As for Lanyon, I fortified her preferred tipple with light lashings of laudanum.

The wait seemed interminable, as she clung to consciousness with grim resolve. A few times, I looked up from my book to see her eyes on me. Vulpine. As if she was trying to outlast me, to see me abed and asleep before her.

Eventually, she trod up the stairs, casting me a final baleful glare as I assured her that I would be up shortly.

Her determination to accompany me to our bedchamber is passing strange, particularly given that our activities in that room have been so strained of late.

After Lanyon made her trek to the land of Nod, I waited a further half hour before my growing exhaustion made it clear that my own violent departure for the moonlight realms was imminent. Entering the chamber, I brought a lantern, three of its four glass windows shuttered. In its flickering light, I inspected my wife, now deeply ensconced in sleep.

With shaking hand, I pulled up her nightgown. Thankfully, the brandy and laudanum had done the trick, and she remained deep in slumber.

In the dancing light of the lantern's flame, I gazed upon the creamy flesh of my bride. Flesh that I had worshipped for the last seven years.

Flesh now marred.

Bruises darkened the soft, pale curves of her thighs. Lifting the nightgown higher, I saw that they continued up her torso, blossoming on her breasts and the sides of her ribcage.

I felt my heart plummet.

There were livid red marks on her inner thighs. Her breasts. Crescent moons delineating where a mouth—or mouths?—had fed, suckling and chewing at her flesh.

My hand quivered as I reached out to feel the marks on her body. In them, I could see the rough outline of hands.

Dear God, no...

My hand shook as it touched the blemishes. Traced them.

My fingers covered them completely.

I felt the fear overwhelming me. The exhaustion rose suddenly, violently cloaking me in its velvet embrace. I was barely able to set the lantern upon the side table before the darkness overtook me.

15 July 1893

It has been two days.

Two days of alternately watching and avoiding Lanyon.

Two days of dawdling at the University after my classes, haunting the club until late at night, hoping that the insipid conversation of my fellows would drown out the voices in my brain.

Two days of hoping—praying!—that my memories were false. That my nocturnal discovery had been yet another unsettling dream, another figment of a disordered mind.

Two nights of violent, dark nightmares, plagued by spectres from my past. Two days of painful mornings, rising worn and aching from sleep into exhaustion.

Today, there was a note in my journal. Crude, scrawling letters, mocking the straight, ordered lines of my own script:

Dearest Henry,

Lanyon is mine. I will take her when I want her.

Ever yours,

Edward Hyde