Chapter Text
The fourth week after they were married, after their return to London from their honeymoon, back to the routines of work and of their rudimentary little household in Marylebone, Mary awoke one morning to hear the faint sound of singing from downstairs. It was a sunny September morning, the last gasp of that charmed, dreamlike summer. A chill was just starting to creep into the air, and the coolness reassured Mary; it made everything seem, somehow, like it might last longer, like it was real.
They both rose early, but Tom generally earlier than Mary, heading into the still-cool air of a London morning, towards his office in Temple. Today was no exception, but for the manner of Mary’s waking. She lay there and listened to the sound of a beautifully light, sweet tenor voice floating up the stairs:
“Summer is a’coming in
Lhude sing cuckoo
Groweth sed
and bloweth med
and spring the wood anew
Sing cuckoo…”
Still listening intently, Mary put on her wrapper and came down the stairs. It was just them in the house, they had a maid who came during the day but Tom would be gone by the time that she came. It was just Mary and her husband, and he was singing.
“Ewe bleteth after lamb
cow after calve cu
Bullock sterteth --”
And then he heard her feet on the stair and stopped, clearing his throat and rattling something in the kitchen. As she came into the room, he smiled and immediately bounded over to kiss her on the cheek, but his smile was a little sheepish. Mary, still so new to this marriage business, was anxious of saying the wrong thing, but even so, she put her hand on his arm and said brightly: “What’s that lovely song, Tom?”
He smoothed her hair and said, “I’m not sure, my teacher called it the “Summer Canon” but it may have other names. It’s a very old song. My choir at school used to sing it to warm up our voices. It’s a round—that is, every line fits in harmony with the next, and you repeat it as many times as you please.”
“I should like to learn it,” Mary said, truthfully. She was still trying to stay light, not to make everything sound like the groundbreaking revelation it was to her, something she wanted to scribble down in a notebook or pin under glass. Her husband had sung in a choir at school. Fascinating.
She needn’t have worried, though. Tom seemed cautiously delighted at her suggestion, and soon enough he’d taught it to her, their voices passing the lines back and forth with increasing confidence. Later when they were finishing organising the books, they passed the time by singing, sometimes with Tom whistling his part instead, and Mary only felt a little wistful at how lovely her husband’s voice was in comparison to her own. A little scratchy and dim from lack of use, perhaps, but in a way, that only made it more beautiful, like a bronze statue turned cloudy turquoise by air and time.
It was only at the end of the day, in the safe warm dark of their bed, where normally heavy words felt light as goose-down, that Mary asked about it. “I never knew that you had such a fine singing voice. The Gardiners never mentioned it either.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she worried even here this question was too much. When he replied, it was haltingly, as if he was feeling his way along a path in the dark. “Well…. I was in the choir at school, as I said. But it was a condition of my scholarship. I loved to sing with my family before that, and at church, even, but something about singing for my supper put me right off. I have often noted that an activity which is considered great pleasure as a leisure activity loses all enjoyment once one is compelled to labour at it.” He gave a short, sighing laugh. “It didn’t help that my voice took a long time to break, and even then it stayed high. The music master didn’t think it a problem but the other boys teased me terribly.” His sentence snagged on a barb of real pain and tapered off.
Mary thought she understood, a little, if not the genuine talent, then the thing that had curtailed it. After all, a similar desperation had infected her piano playing and her musicality, once she had naively begun to think that it might make up for her many shortcomings, as a girl, as a prospective wife. She recalled that once, as Mary sat at the pianoforte, she had heard Lizzy remark to Kitty sotto voce, “vanity has given Mary application, but no more.” And Mary had wanted to push the stool back and the music to the floor in a flurry and scream, of course you can play or not as you please, Lizzy! You have other charms to commend you!
But that wasn’t proper or what Mary Bennet, the placid, plain third sister, would do, so Mary had just played her arpeggios even louder and longer out of spite.
All that was long gone, and yet, the memory of it was making her eyes prick in the dark, even as she lay in bed next to the best of husbands. So how must Tom feel?
“I think,” Mary said carefully, “that your singing is perhaps the loveliest thing I have ever heard.”
She felt rather than saw his smile against her hair in the dark. “I’ll sing for you whenever you like.”
The next morning, Mary was the one to wake a little before Tom. She lay there, considering him from her place in the crook of his arm—the hands that had once not even been hers to look at now securing her even as he slept. There was so very much left to learn about him, she thought, even after marrying him, even though she had already long before that considered him a dear friend. And the fractal way those depths receded, into the distance of a person, made Mary feel as small and disoriented as she might at the top of Scafell or gazing out over the sea at Whitby.
She wanted to wade into the breakers, as far as she could go.
Luckily, her employers were weary enough of the process of searching for a suitable governess that they allowed Mary to stay on, despite her inconvenient and frankly capricious decision to enter a state of matrimony. Her charge, the young Miss Sedgewick, was the daughter of a prominent geologist and a friend of Ann Powell née Baxter’s husband. Mr Sedgewick was of a mind that while his daughter’s intellect might be equal to a syllabus laid out by several specialist tutors across a range of subjects, the girl’s mother felt that at this tender age the constancy of a governess might do her good, and he was inclined to agree.
“Besides, I would not want brash young scholars spending too much time with my daughter,” he had said, at their first interview in his wood-panelled study. He’d then added with a frown, “or old ones, for that matter.”
“I understand, Mr Sedgewick,” Mary had said, but privately thought it was a shame that Miss Sedgewick’s parents’ scruples might do her out of a better education than Mary herself could provide. How ironic that Mary had been done out of a good education by an over-indulgent mother, and this girl was done out of it by an over-protective one. Paranoid old fool, she thought, irritably, somewhat unkindly.
But then all at once she remembered her younger self, scared silly and vicious by Fordyce’s sermons, and the way she had once pronounced to Lizzy, that it would have been better for Lydia to have died than to have run off as she did with Wickham. Mary might not feel that way anymore—had not for a long time—but nonetheless, she had once, and a great many people still did. She felt a wave of shame at her previous narrow-mindedness, followed by a stab of rare compassion for Lydia.
“I will do my very best for your daughter, Mr Sedgewick,” Mary promised, truly meaning it. “I would like to meet her.”
The young Miss Sedgewick was called into the study. A girl of sixteen, she was pretty, with lovely clear skin and dark curls, but with a certain angular figure and sharp intensity of manner which Mary knew would be widely considered to be off-putting to young men, though whether it really was Mary felt her own experiences of courtship ultimately disproved.
“And what are your interests, Miss Sedgewick?” Mary asked.
“Well, geology, like papa…”
“...She is interested in entomology.” Mr Sedgewick interjected. “The study of insects.”
“My mother thinks it is unladylike,” Miss Sedgewick muttered. Mary suddenly had visions of worms and snails sneaked in from the garden, unsavory things in jars, and smiled in understanding, realising the nature of Mr Sedgewick’s interruption: an attempt at a vote in confidence, in front of the new governess.
“The late father of my husband’s dear friends, one Mr Ryder, was very fond of that topic. He put together several terrariums which survive him and remain at his town house; they are quite breathtaking.”
“Oh yes! The late Mr Ryder of Kent. One of the most exacting experts on Britain’s native beetles. A shame his son showed no such interest.”
“I cannot comment on that, but I have long felt entomology an excellent subject for study.” The old Mary Bennet might have affected prissiness at such things, but she would also have been the one trap a spider in a jar and release it outside before Kitty and Lydia, shrieking, could bring themselves to get close enough to squash it.
Miss Sedgewick beamed, and Mary blinked. Surely it could not be this easy. “I think so too!”
“I think it would make an excellent addition to our curriculum, alongside music geology, history, and some botany.” Botany would be stretching Mary’s knowledge, but she’d do her best. “The ancient and modern languages, unfortunately, are beyond my sphere.”
“That’s all right, Miss Bennet. The entomology’s the important thing,” Miss Sedgewick assured her before her father could say a word.
“Your mother will be pleased,” Mr Sedgewick said wearily, but he was eyeing Miss Sedgewick’s smile with approval too.
And so, as far as her employers were concerned, even Miss Bennet’s pupation and subsequent reappearance as Mrs Hayward was only a passing quibble when compared with her willingness to tolerate Miss Sedgewick’s passion for beetles and bugs.
“Of course, there is the issue of confinement, not to say children,” Mrs Sedgwick had remarked, as they were drawing up the revised terms of employment on Mary’s return from her honeymoon, “but we shall cross that bridge when we come to it, I suppose.”
Mary could not help a blush coming to her cheeks. Confinement was a distinct possibility, but she was determined not to worry about that until she absolutely have to.
“Indeed, madam,” she managed, readjusting her spectacles. Mrs Sedgewick returned to her papers, a ghost of a smile on her face.
“I do feel an already-married woman will be a steadying influence on Emma,” she conceded. “Sometimes I feel she is on the point of renouncing the feminine world entirely. I would like her to know that there are still some men in the world who appreciate a sober, sensible wife.”
Mary thought about Tom confessing he’d fallen in love with her when he’d walked into the room to find her playing graces alone, and smiled even as she nodded. Perhaps not too sober, Mrs Sedgewick.
As is often the case, a family’s habits—even a family of two as Tom and Mary (for now) remained—become no less than second nature to those involved, no matter how singular they might seem to an outside observer. Thus it was with Tom and Mary’s singing.
After they’d tired of the Summer Canon, they continued first with more rounds, to pass the time on long walks or carriage rides or tedious chores. (Even with their two incomes, the household remained bare-bones while they rebuilt their savings from the purchase, obliging both of them to undertake many domestic tasks which a woman like Mrs Bennet would have felt were beneath a well-bred wife, not to say a gentleman. As luck would have it, this was not Mrs Bennet’s household.)
Tom would often start by striking up “three blind mice” which Mary protested was too cruel, though unfortunately great fun to sing. She retaliated with a favourite among her sisters growing up, decades before Mr Hayward had come on the scene:
“Have you seen the ghost of Tom?
Long white bones with the rest all gone?
Poor, poor, poor old Tom!
Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on!”
Which they sang together with great hilarity through October until Tom contracted a nasty bout of flu just after Guy Fawkes night and suddenly it didn’t seem funny any more, and Mary had to ban it from the house, indefinitely.
Just before Advent, Tom dug out an old pamphlet of catches and rounds for two or three voices by Purcell that Ryder had given him in their student days, and at first blushed because some of them were most unsuitable for a lady’s ears, but eventually let her leaf through them with scandalized delight.
“You forget, I am a long-time reader of crime pamphlets, Mr Hayward,” she said adroitly, peering at him over the top of a particularly bawdy verse. “There is little that can shock me any more.”
“Is that so, Mrs Hayward?” he grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that charming way of his, and he leaned over to place his hands over hers on the songbook, gently closing it. She let him do it, and then pluck the volume from her hands altogether and place it haphazardly on the side table as he kissed her.
They graduated from rounds and nursery rhymes, though, when Mary began accompanying him on the pianoforte (a wedding gift from Lizzy and Darcy that had made Mary tongue-tied with emotion when it was presented). It became Mary and Tom's habit, coming home from recitals with the Powells or the Gardiners, or from church on days when the choir had been particularly good, or even just from hearing a particularly good musician playing in Vauxhall Park of an evening, to go direct to the pianoforte and try to puzzle out melody and accompaniment together.
Mary liked it best, though, when they were revisiting a piece they both knew well, and she could play automatically and focus on her husband’s bright eyes and the way his voice rang out through their little drawing room, sweet and true and more beautiful than anybody else knew.
And Mary found that the part of her that still smarted after all this time from Lizzy’s remark about her vanity… That part was comforted, somewhat, by this. Because their had been vanity in her application, of course there had, what girl does not wish to shine and captivate occasionally? That was the worst of Lizzy’s barbs—their twist of truth was what rendered them so painful. (And perhaps that was something that Mary and Darcy had in common, that they had both been cut by Lizzy’s words, and mortified by them, not because they felt she didn’t see them as they were, but because she did.)
But now Mary could play without fear of vanity, she could shelter behind Tom, and turn her talent to something new.
She might have been a poor soloist on the pianoforte, but she found she was a fine accompanist for her excellent singer of a husband. She was the velvet case of the jewel, showing it off to its best advantage; the rich dark sky against which the stars shone. She knew that Tom had enough taste and musical ability to be aware that what they were making was good, more than good, but he never raised the idea of sharing it in company, and neither did she. It was just for them, something they were doing for themselves and for each other, music made for their own ears, in their own house.
Mary knew that she might not be vain any longer, but this unwillingness to share did not spring entirely from modesty. Rather, she was jealous, in the Old Testament sense: she wanted to keep it all to herself. Every sweet note, every intake of breath, every alteration of posture she caught out of the corner of her eye, every glimpse of his lovely hands as he leant forward over her shoulder to turn the page. His shadow in the lamplight. His warm side pressed against hers as he gave into temptation and came to sit beside her on the piano stool, which was always the beginning of the end of any really good music because it would make his voice unsteady and set her heart racing so, even after months of marriage now.
Nobody else knows about him like this, she would think, with a nearly vicious thrill, as she closed her eyes and breathed him in and played the next bars by touch alone. When we are at a party and some rake finds him dull. When some fashionable lady cuts him for his accent. When the other women praise me for having such a well-mannered husband, as if he is a dog that can come to heel. When good-intentioned gentlemen who knew me as a girl, who know of my family’s shame, tell me comfortingly that he seems a “sensible chap,” and they believe that he is prudent pedantic barrister who has found a match above his station, and that is true, but it is only part of the truth. The part that is more comprehensible to them than a man who recites poetry on boats and fell so deeply in love he ran away to Yorkshire because he believed it best for me. None of them know that he sings the way he does, and even if they did know, they would not feel it as I do, it would be like listening to a language they have not learnt to understand.
The dependable, cautious, bespectacled Mr Hayward was no more the whole of Tom than Mary was nothing more than her mother’s least favourite Miss Bennet. Plain and dull, grateful for any attention at all. Certainly not what Tom saw: a girl playing graces in an empty room, a mind sharp enough to cut diamond, eyes like the sea off Whitby on a spring day, always changing. Certainly not a nimble pianist who could follow her singer and polish him into something ethereal, set his voice spinning like the planets in their heaven.
Even though Miss Sedgewick had only been taught by Miss Bennet for a month or two before her wedding, and Mary had been engaged for much of that time, somehow, Miss Sedgewick still struggled to address her as “Mrs Hayward.”
At first, Mary had been a little offended by it. Was it a way for Miss Sedgwick to subtly undermine her authority in the schoolroom, letting her know that she thought of Mary as only a spinster? But as time went on Mary realised that this way of thinking was uncharitable, was something she’d inherited from her mother and the kind of society she kept. Miss Sedgewick was simply a little young, a little awkward, and dealing with a lot of change at once. And so she continued patiently correcting her, and needing to less and less, and didn’t let it trouble her unduly, because in every respect Miss Sedgewick was a model pupil.
She read everything, quickly and voraciously, elbows on the table pushing back her dark curls from her face as if she was about to duck her head below the surface of the pages. Miss Sedgewick had not much talent for languages, she told Mary ruefully, and had been happy to let this fall by the wayside, in favor of subjects she enjoyed more. She had no trouble with theory, and Mary suspected that the girl would be an excellent mathematician—certainly she was already bumping against the limits of Mary’s knowledge in that area, and even in philosophical logic—and Mary resolved that she might be so bold as to ask Mr Sedgewick about the possibility of finding a tutor for this one subject, with Mary sitting in to chaperone (and perhaps learning a little herself, she hoped).
What really endeared Mary to her young pupil, however, was her enthusiasm for educational excursions. Mary, having learnt from her experiences teaching poetry to the Gardiner children (and their torpor when listening to her read aloud from a book) believed whole-heartedly in teaching through practice. And so a few times a week, they would go down to one of London’s parks and identify the species of plants, the ornamental rocks, and the local fauna, though they saw rather a lot of rattus rattus and the humble pigeon. Heedless of the cold, Miss Sedgewick would abandon her attempts at ladylike poise, talking nineteen to the dozen and surveying the natural world, such as it was in London, to her heart's content. They drew a couple of curious glances but no comments yet; thankfully, Londoners were blessed with an oft-practiced knack for minding their own business in the face of public eccentricity.
“It will be better in the spring,” Mary promised Miss Sedgewick, who was looking in vain for bugs in the hard earth of a frosty flowerbed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, nose red and cheeks ruddy with cold. Mary was careful not to be too apologetic or ask for reassurance from her pupil too often, it was not proper, but she did not want to seem closed off to any wishes Miss Sedgewick might have for her own education.
She need not have worried, however. When Miss Sedgewick looked up, she took Mary’s gloved hand in her both her own. “Oh, don’t worry, Miss Bennet!” she said earnestly. “It’s already wonderful to be out and about.”
“Mrs Hayward,” Mary corrected gently.
“Mrs Hayward,” Miss Sedgewick said agreeably, returning to her search.
As Mary watched her, she felt satisfaction and annoyance war in her. Because she was a good governess, she knew this. And yet, that was precisely the problem. A small but smarting piece of Mary resented it when she thought back on how much she would have loved this kind of education as a child, remembering the time when she had gathered her courage and asked whether she and Kitty and Lydia might have a governess, and been cut down from all sides. Her father should have arranged it, but he would barely allow her into his library, let alone--
She was pulled from her thoughts by a strangely familiar cooing sound from behind her, once, and then again, closer.
Miss Sedgewick, accurate to a fault, looked up. “That’s not a pigeon.”
A slow smile broke over Mary’s face. “Oh, I suppose we are close by the courts!”
She turned around to see her husband striding across Lincoln’s Inn Fields towards them, cheeks flushed with the cold, hands cupped in preparation to imitate London’s most ubiquitous bird once again.
“Tom!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. And then, “Mr Hayward, I believe you have not yet met my charge, Miss Sedgwick.”
Miss Sedgewick awkwardly extricated herself from the flowerbed, holding out a gloved hand for Tom to take. “How do you do,” she said, polite but unsmiling.
“Miss Sedgewick!” he said delightedly. “Mary told me that you might be walking in this park today. I had to come by to see two of London’s most brilliant minds in action.” Then, a little more gently, “she speaks extremely highly of you, as a model pupil.”
This finally brought a shy smile to Miss Sedgwick’s face. “Thank you. I hear you are a barrister?”
“Yes. I was just venturing from my offices for some sustenance.”
“Perhaps we might interest you in some seeds or a crust of bread?” Mary teased. “Since you were doing such an admirable impression of the London pigeon.”
Tom laughed. “A crust of bread? You’re a hard wife indeed.” At that moment, someone called his name from the far end of the park, and he sighed, his expression dimming somewhat. “Would that I could, but unfortunately it is to be still more business. There is a prospective client whom we must wine and dine.” Mary fought down her disappointment, knowing it was foolish. She would see him at home in just a few hours. Was she such a hopelessly clinging wife as this? But from the way he looked into her eyes and pressed her fingers with his own a moment later, she knew he felt the same way.
“I will leave you in these most capable hands, Miss Sedgewick,” he said, though still looking at Mary. “It was an honor to meet you at last, however briefly.” Then he released her hands and pulled away, bowing to them both, and strode over the frosty grass in the direction of the call.
Mary watched him go, then turned her thoughts firmly back to their lesson. “Now, where were we, Miss Sedgwick?”
“He’s rather a clown,” Miss Sedgewick said, haughtily.
Mary looked at her in shock. It was by far the unkindest thing that she’d heard her young charge say. “He is my husband, Miss Sedgewick,” she said, with equal hauteur.
Miss Sedgewick seemed to remember herself. Her mouth turned down, apologetic but also, strangely, betrayed. “I don’t know. I just… I feel that a man should possess a certain seriousness of mind. I would not want to always be more serious than my husband.”
“Serious men may pride themselves rather too much on their own seriousness to take much notice of your own,” Mary said, after a moment’s hesitation, remembering her aunt’s remarks on this matter, about Tom. “One cannot always be too much on one’s dignity.”
“I see, M-Mrs Hayward,” she said, properly contrite now. “I did not mean to offend.”
“Think nothing of it,” she said mildly. “Now, if I might turn your attention to the process of oxidation occurring on these railings…”
“Sorry, Mrs Hayward, but I wanted to ask you something,” Miss Sedgewick interrupted diffidently. She moved back to the flowerbed. “It is just, I found this beetle, it appears to be dead and yet it was buried under the earth without decay.”
She unflinchingly picked it up to show Mary, and Mary was struck again that this was a very singular girl indeed.
“I think it may be hibernating, or in a state of torpor,” Mary said, after a moment of inspection. “That is, waiting out the colder months before re-emerging once the warmer weather comes.”
“Rather like a butterfly in a chrysalis,” Miss Sedgewick mused, “but with no transformation.”
“Indeed. It is a very common survival strategy across the animal kingdoms. And in fact, we might call plants’ loss of leaves in the winter a kind of hibernation.”
“I envy them it,” Miss Sedgewick huffed, her breath misting the air, placing the beetle gently in the flowerbed once more and covering it with earth. Then she paused. “Perhaps it would be interesting to warm it up, and see if that makes it come alive?”
Mary was struck by this idea. “Perhaps. But if we are to begin to incorporate live experiments as part of your curriculum, we must plan them out properly, rather than smuggling beetles into our sleeves!”
Miss Sedgewick laughed, a bit caught out. “Yes, Mrs Hayward. I suppose that is right.”
As they walked home, Miss Sedgewick said, “I do feel that insects which have chrysali or live in the earth over the winter are very intelligent indeed. It must be rather nice to wait out the difficult parts of life, insensible to it all.”
Mary looked at her with a new sympathy, and an almost surprised respect: it was a wise remark for such a young girl to utter. “I see what you mean, Miss Sedgewick. But come, if we were to sleep through winter, we could not relish hot tea and scones by the fire when we arrive home, which I’m sure your mother's cook has waiting for us!”
As Advent began, for five days in a row, Mary woke in the black pre-dawn with a seasick feeling, and on the fifth morning, as she pulled her wrap about her and went to splash cold water on her face, she soberly considered the facts. Jane had mentioned this sickness in her letters, had said it was characteristic of the early stages. Mary had noticed, as she put on her winter dresses and coats, that previously well-fitted garments felt tight in certain places, that she was having to wear her stays slightly but noticeably looser than before. And perhaps most conclusively, she was now more than a month late, at which point, she reflected, it stopped being late at all and became never.
At breakfast with Tom, she forced down some toast and he solicitously said he’d heard her awake early. Was she quite well?
“I think that I may need to be examined by a physician,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation, because she knew once she told him it would change everything. “You see…”
He looked at her quizzically for one, two, three seconds before the penny dropped. “Mary!” he exclaimed with delight, his dark eyes sparkling. “That is—you are—”
“It is still very early,” she said, as his warm hands covered her own. “But, I think, yes. We will hear what the doctor has to say.”
“This calls for a celebration,” he said, and ran to the larder to open a new jar of raspberry preserves, her favorite. This simple gesture of joy made her feel desperately affectionate for a moment, even as she still fought her own physical sickness and rather more intellectual misgivings. How complex would her confinement be—was it too much to hope it could be simple as Jane’s first had been, or at least as simple as her sister had allowed Mary to believe? Would she still be able to work? For how long, before it became too taxing, or was judged so? When would she inform the Sedgewicks, her aunt and uncle? Oh, heaven preserve her, when would she tell her mother?
He spread a slice of toast thickly with jam and butter and presented it with her solemnly. “There you go, my dear. Now you are eating for two, after all.”
“And already I’m being accosted with such truisms!” Mary exclaimed with a laugh, and made herself eat. But the fragrant tartness of the raspberries, a moment of high summer in December, did alleviate the sickness somewhat, and suddenly, she felt hungry after all.