I stared at his small slumped form against the fading dusk reflecting through the drawing room window. His lips were drawn in a tight frown and his brow wrinkled in mock of deep thought, in truth of unsettling dreams. In a dim corner his boots rested, a crumpled heap, speaking of their age and misuse.
The air from the balcony was stiff and stagnate, another stuffy July evening amongst the sweltering buildings of the city. In the wake of twilight, children scuttled home along the lane whispering all of dreams, possibility and excitement. It seemed as though it had so long ago been us living for the thrill of hoping, hoping for the thrill of living. But for me girlhood's final threshold was fast approaching, and for my brothers' time was growing ever shorter.
I reached out to the boots gently securing one in each hand. I gazed at the beaten things sadly, how quickly my young brother had donned a man's clothing. Accompanied by nothing but the dull scrape of my house shoes on the carpeted floor I exited the drawing room in silence. So I left Michael to face his own dreams, there is too much of him that I could no longer know.
The house was how I had always known it, staunch, stable and always impeccable tidiness to match the impeccable and painfully appropriate décor. As a girl the perfect sterility of it had thrilled me and granted me a sort of peace. Now I looked at it as quaint reminder of days passed, days that wouldn't return.
The hallway was dark and resonated of things that had passed, the present state and things that might yet come. This world had once been humming with happiness and prospects, and I had loved it then. I was a child with the world in the pupil of her wide eyes. This house always reminded me of it.
Two years at finishing school, Madame Helena's Academy for Girls, and I had nothing different in my true demeanor to show for it. It had not changed my attitude, not after summers of living like a disgusting heathen, bathing naked in the midst of twenty boys and crawling through the dingy summer heat to follow savages and pirates. No polish could ever clean me as well as anyone would have liked. The old boots and I were beginning to look alike.
After five years I was once again living in the nursery. The walls seemed to be washed in pallor, lacking all of the luster and shades of excitement they once possessed. I idly paced about the room with the boots in hand; somehow and without thought I always stopped at the window. Absently, I unlocked it and let the setting sun reflecting off some opposite building fill the room.
He had not come for me this spring. Somehow I knew that he had found other windows, younger adventurers. I couldn't exactly claim to be sad of it, there were so many other things to worry about. My time had after all been quite occupied with garden parties, evenings at the ballet, visits to the resplendent homes of old socialite dragons and of course making sure that my youngest brother was keeping up with his studies and having appropriate adventures. I was growing up, as I had so long ago promised not to.
The stiff heat was giving way to evening breezes. They wound through the room and down the hall, softly ushering out some of the wretched humidity. Sunset was but thirty minutes away. Soon Mother would be in to see to it that I was properly dressed for the most important night of my young life. Tonight was after all the surprise engagement party that I had known about for two weeks.
As soon as the sun set the lamps in Joseph Absmeire III's garden would be lit, the fine china set out and guests would arrive for the engagement of his only son Joseph Absmeire IV to Ms Wendy Moira Angela Darling. I almost laughed aloud at the very thought of the arrangement. That is certainly not to say I found the young man completely disagreeable.
Where would I even begin to describe my dearest Joseph Absmeire IV, but to say that never was there a gentleman so honest, hard working or sincere. Every Sunday found him bright-eyed and fully awake in the pew of a church. He shone his shoes and dressed as any sensible banker should. He did whatever he could to please his mother and aunts. But above all things he was completely without exceptionality.
I tuckedMichael's boots away into my own closet. I would need them later that evening...