Chapter 2

Until a few years ago, Madame Mendel, who had been her mother’s closest friend, attended the mass, but ever since her health had worsened not long ago, she had only sent occasional word. Then again, since it was a full day’s journey from the capital, it would have been difficult even for a healthy person.

“O Lord, highest of all and source of life. Please grant Your mercy so that she may rest in peace.”

Ordinarily, she would have been overcome with sorrow while trying to picture her mother’s face, one she could not even remember, but Ellen could not focus on the mass at all. There was only one thing in her head. The single word ‘marriage’ kept repeating as though stamped into a frame.

To her, marriage had been one of those things belonging to the distant future. A few decades ago, when women had almost no place in society, marriage had come first, but lately that situation had been gradually changing.

Even looking only at the older female graduates who had finished before her, they were living far from marriage, enjoying the lives of modern women, forming new orchestras or studying abroad in foreign countries. Naturally, the custom of marrying between prearranged families was also gradually becoming a thing of the past.

And yet marriage.

Ellen Sawyer, called a talent at the Imperial Academy and courted by countless orchestras, getting married!

To her, this was no different from a bolt from the blue crashing down upon her life. For the five years she had spent at the academy, dreaming of the brilliant future that would unfold after graduation, she had devoted herself wholly to managing her grades, burying herself to death in study and practice.

If this was how it was going to turn out in the end anyway, then what had she lived like that for all this time? She even felt a sense of futility.

Fine, if she conceded a hundred times, her father, still conservative as he was, could perhaps be explained away. But her brothers, who not only failed to stop him but simply stood by, especially her eldest brother Servan, felt all the more irresponsible.

Didn’t he always say I was the cutest? That he had no idea how he could ever marry me off! If anyone absolutely had to get married, shouldn’t he, as the eldest son, be the first?

Filled with intense betrayal, Ellen clenched both fists tight and quietly suppressed her anger, when a familiar voice came from the seat beside her.

“What are you trembling like that for? Are you cold?”

Turning her head, she saw Felix Mendel standing there with an indifferent face, her longtime childhood friend, the second son of Madame Mendel, and the star of the Imperial Academy.

“Hah, what are you doing here?”

“I asked if you’re cold.”

“Wouldn’t it be stranger not to be cold in weather like this?”

Without bothering to hide her displeasure, Ellen snapped back at him. When their eyes met, Felix fiddled with the buttons of his coat, as if about to take it off for her.

“Then dress more warmly. You always wear something thin and then shiver because you’re cold.”

Unlike his earlier attitude, Felix clicked his tongue as he looked her outfit up and down. Then he fastened the buttons that were already tightly closed and blocked out even the slightest draft.

“What are you staring at?”

As if conscious of her gaze, Felix spoke curtly and stared at Ellen. Because of that, for a brief instant, she felt endlessly embarrassed that she had expected even a trace of kindness from a person as pest-like as him.

“I was just thinking you must be very warm.”

“Of course. Maybe because the fur is good, sometimes I even sweat.”

Even at Ellen’s sarcasm, Felix shot back without yielding a single word. It had been nice that at least on weekends she did not have to see that irritating face, but now he had gone to the trouble of coming all the way here just to pick a quarrel, enough to make admiration rise in her.

“So why are you here?”

“I stopped by on my way somewhere.”

“Oh, and just where exactly are you headed, that you came all the way here from the capital?”

“I was taking care of something Mother asked of me. Don’t tell me…… you’re under the illusion I came to see you right now?”

“What illusion? Just don’t you dare say, even as a joke, that it was because of me.”

As her voice grew louder, everyone’s eyes, including Earl Sawyer’s, turned toward the two of them. Making his earlier pestering seem pointless, Felix kept a calm face and greeted her father and brothers with a glance.

Perhaps because of excessive stress, even her father’s expression as he looked at Felix seemed momentarily pleased. Only a few minutes ago, he had dropped a thunderbolt on his own daughter, yet now he was smiling brightly at another family’s son as if he were the sunlight of spring, and that only made her angrier.

“What are you doing after mass?”

But Felix, who had no way of knowing her circumstances, asked another question, and Ellen glared at him with narrowed eyes.

“Nothing.”

Then she answered shortly and looked straight ahead. Felix said,

“If you don’t have anything special, come back with me.”

“Why would I? No.”

“Since we’re going the same way, it’d be nice to save here and there.”

“You do all the saving you want.”

“You’re going back to the dormitory anyway.”

At those words, it felt as though her father’s insistence on marriage, saying it was decided anyway, came back to mind.

She knew Felix meant no harm. But to Ellen, already twisted up as far as she could be, there was no way she could see that. Because of that, words she did not even mean at heart finally burst out.

“I said no. I’m already sick to death of running into you at the academy, and now I have to spend the weekend with you too?”

At her pointed response, Felix looked momentarily at a loss for words. She wondered belatedly if she should apologize, but her petty heart would not allow her to care about someone else’s feelings, especially not that irritating man’s.

“Do whatever you want, then.”

With that, Felix did not try speaking to her again. Amid the uncomfortable silence that followed, her mother’s requiem mass drew toward its end.

“O loving Lord. Today, through this rite, please grant Your mercy so that no greater sorrow may take root in Earl Sawyer and his family, who lost a great mother and beloved wife.”

Unlike Ellen, who had secretly watched Felix’s mood throughout the prayer, the Earl repeatedly swallowed back sobs as he wiped at his reddened eyes.

“At his age, you’d think he could have taken a new wife, but instead he’s all alone like that……”

“How devoted those two were to each other. How could Lowell have closed her eyes, leaving him alone like that?”

The people said such things as they looked at her father with pity. Perhaps because it had been so long since she had seen that side of him and it felt so poignant, in the end she could do nothing but swallow down the words asking him to postpone the marriage, unable even to bring them out of her mouth.

Because to Ellen, family was both her greatest weakness and her source of support.