The Greatest Obsession

Chapter Twenty-Five: Weaknesses

Sunday evening, Elijah had slept as soundly as he'd ever slept with his brown bag tucked in the drawer beside his bed that held his mother's rosary. His disturbance was impossible to invoke.

These same emotions of relief and peace were what Elijah wished he'd felt when, the next day, Haydn hadn't arrived to drink. Monday had been anticipatory. Monday had been anxiety-ridden, a day where all Elijah did was tap his foot on the floor and wait for nightfall with a heartbeat matching the pace of a horse's happy canter. Happy. Even on Sunday when he ran into the house dancing, singing, and kissing, he wasn't truly happy. It was a brief interlude of freedom.

Freedom had worn on Elijah by morning. Time was the worst thing man had created. Time has always been, Elijah thought in the parlor bouncing his leg as the orange sun pushed past the curtained window, there just wasn't always mankind to tell it.

Tuesday was just the same.

Waking up on the 9th of September, a dull but warm Wednesday, Elijah began to feel a strange dread. He blinked in his bed, furrowed his brows, and swallowed whatever saliva coated his near dry mouth. You mustn't abandon me. It is I who must abandon you. The thought that Haydn had suddenly been absent scared Elijah, and he knew it shouldn't have.

To get this terrible fear away from him for while, Elijah took it upon himself to ask Irina if she'd accompany him on a luncheon date. The girl, who'd been tinkering with the instruments in the house, smiled and agreed. Irina freshened herself before rejoining him.

What shocked Elijah was not the time in which his fiancee prepared but what she wore. Never had he seen Irina in dark clothes, not even at his mother's funeral since he was not in attendance. But there she was, hair in a tight but flattering bun with a curl on either side of her face and a bustle dress that was long sleeved, in case of rain, with the feel of corduroy and the color of chocolate. She'd added the lightest touch of brown to her lips, to turn their stained red shade to a pretty, dark coral. In her hands was a small, brown top hat.

"Is there something wrong with my outfit?" Irina asked, eyes wide. "You keep staring at it."

"No, not at all. I love it," Elijah said, looping his arm through hers. He ran his fingers down the upper sleeve. "Usually, it's I that wears the humble colors."

"Are my outfits not humble?"

"Glamorously so, darling."

They'd taken a carriage to the place the couple had eaten the time before when they'd purchased their future home -- Cafe Royal on 68th Regent Street -- and like the last time, sat at a small table that also connected to the booths. For the second time, Elijah let Irina slip into the booth as he took the hard chair.

When offered a cigarette by their waiter, Elijah refused, remembering how upset it made Irina. Their neighbors were a group of chain smokers and were clouding the air to an unnecessary extent. The couple glared over every few minutes when the men laughed in drunken stupors. The intoxicated foursome left before the two had received their orders, which finally opened the gates of conversation.

Irina grinned. She clasped her hands near her lips, elbows leaned into the table. Elijah believed her to be looking at him, only to realize her eyes loomed just over his shoulder to a table behind them.

A twist of his upper chest let the man view a mother, a governess, and five children. Four of these children were girls, which the oldest appeared no less than sixteen. The youngest child, a girl of about seven, ate quietly, listening to the laughter filled conversation her governess, mother, and eldest sister partook in. Beside the quiet one was a pair of twins holding hands and whispering to each other. They must have been just reaching the age of eleven.