The Greatest Obsession

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Man who Lost his Religion (Part 1)

Elijah sat on the edge of his bed with his hand cupping his forehead. Below him, in a once neatly folded brown bag, were the beads and the cross of his mothers rosary. The string was missing and the man couldn't be sure if all of the beads were in the bag, some of which had crumbled in his palm as he sought to cradle what was left in his arms. Elijah had no idea when the rosary had been destroyed, but his first assumption was the best one, it had shattered with the glass pitcher.

In the state Elijah had been, how could he have known? It was kind of Kathy to collect the remains and set them away. Of course, he could never thank her for it because her memory was erased of ever having done so. He sighed heavily. He tossed the bag onto the nightstand and stood with a pursed frown etched into his face.

Elijah let his lids lay limp over his eyes. He let them close, and as he reopened them, cast them to the portrait of his mother. He stole a glance to his father but came back to Abigail's vivid and harsh blue eyes. The eyes of his mother were beautiful but so cold unless they'd been upon him. That wouldn't have been the case now, had she been alive.

Im sorry, Mother, may God have mercy on my soul.

There was a strange comfort in speaking to the portrait. It couldn't talk back to him, shame him, but it also couldn't comfort him--then again, Abigail was never one to comfort the way most mothers did. She was a special, but a wonderful type of mother. Elijah knew one thing was for certain, and that was that she would have told him to find Irina.

Elijah absent-mindedly nodded to the portrait as if it had told him these words. He stood, smoothing his nightgown and retrieving his slippers before wandering in throughout the house with purple shadows under his eyes and droopy shoulders. As he passed Margaret, the woman turned her nose at him but whispered her usual morning greeting. Haydn had said her emotions weren't forgotten, only the memories that came with it.

This woman despises me, entirely, and has no idea why...oh, what is going through her head right now? "Has Abraham returned home?"

"No, we should not expect him to be back until past noontime."

"I see." Elijah shuffled past to the dining room and as he went to twist the handle of the French doors, Margaret called out to him.

"Mr. Marks," such formality, "you have a letter sitting in the parlor."

"Thank you, Margaret. Who is it from?" Elijah asked, staring into his own reflection. The morning still carried the gray clouds of last nights storm. Wind twisted the branches of the trees beyond.

"Your cousin, Arthur."

Elijah smiled. He missed Arthur. "Thank you," he said, again, and departed from the house.

The sound of the dawns chorus greeted him. Birds in the trees fluttered and chirped in merriment and it was a very peaceful sound. Elijah wished he could have fallen in the grass and drifted off into a land of happy dreams with the cold dewy foliage beneath him and the feel of the wet, misty wind coaxing him from his internal heat. Elijah trudged on in his search and managed to the center of the maze without a second thought.

There she sat, on the canopied swing, looking as opulent as Hamlets Ophelia with her Magdalene hair swaying as she pushed the swing with her bare feet. It was a small, unconscious motion--something done in thought or stress. Elijah reckoned that despite her dead eyes and red, tear-stained cheeks, that Irina looked beautiful. There was something erotic about this image of the young woman in her nightgown with the green of the hedge as her background, like something out of a painting.

She did not look at him as he approached. As he had in Hyde Park, he took the space beside her. The swing creaked beneath him, adding a new awkward layer of tension. Still, the woman did not stir. Elijah listened to the birds and tried to look into the grey sky but the sun, even blocked by the overwhelming mass of fluff, hurt his eyes.