Recalling Our First Encounter
754 Words
I sat with Jane on the couch, sipping lightly on a very sweet glass of champagne. We were both done crying, and we had begun to laugh and joke with each other.
Suddenly, my mind recalled the day that William and I first met.
Jane and I, as well as all the other third-year girls in the academy, had a recital one Sunday afternoon. The air was sticky with the oncoming summer, and all the girls were fidgety and anxious for summer to come and to return to their families. Jane and I had just finished dressing when there was a tentative knock at the door. It was the housekeeper.
"Miss Leach, your presence is requested in the parlor,” the old and hobbled woman croaked dismally. Jane left the room with the old maid, and I sat on the bed, running a comb through my wild caramel hair. Only a few minutes after she left, Jane ran through the door to our dormitory, gasping for breath with a huge smile on her face. Clearly, she had run all the way here, in such unladylike decorum. Certainly she would be reprimanded for this later.
"Oh, Caroline, Caroline! You simply must come meet my family, they are positively dying to meet my best girl!” Her excitement was palpable in the lazy heat of the room. She grabbed me by the arms and pulled me to my feet. I took her hand and followed her, in a hurried shuffle, to the parlor. She swung the door open with an intense grandeur. “Leach family, this is Caroline Shaw. Caroline Shaw, this is my mama, my papa and my big brother William.”
I was taken aback by Jane's family. Jane was my best friend, don't get me wrong, but she was not thin or attractive by any means. But when I saw her brother, I first questioned their relation. He was tall and thin, with wiry muscles just barely visible on his forearms where he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to fight the oppressive heat. His eyes, like Jane's, were brown, but where hers were glassy and speckled, his were dark and entrancing with heavy and uniform brows. His hands were scrubbed clean, but stubborn dirt was still beneath his fingernails. He had this nervous confidence about him, and I instantly found him wildly attractive. He swept a strand of blonde hair away from his face as he reached out to shake my hand.
"How do you do, Miss Shaw?” I gave him a slight curtsy, feeling an immense heat rising to my cheeks. I knew I should say something--anything--but in that moment I forgot how to speak. I couldn't remember my own name.
Realizing what was happening, Jane rushed to grab my other arm and ushered me over to her parents, where I was warmly received. Jane and I sat together on the loveseat between her parents and her brother.
It came to my attention rather quickly that this man, a total stranger to me, was going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
The five of us spoke about many arbitrary things, but the conversation shifted to William's career. To a sixteen-year-old girl, attending college seemed like a silly dream. But after hearing about William's college career, I began dreaming of a university at which I could study.
It never happened, but I wanted it to.
At the age of thirteen, he went to school at a small university in America, before finishing his medical schooling in London. He was a trained surgeon, which was quite an accomplishment for a man of only eighteen years.
But just as quickly as the subject came up and his family began to brag about him, he blurted out, “I don't want to be a surgeon for the rest of my life,” he stammered, “I want to be a zoologist. I always have.”
His father's deep voice boomed at him, “Son, you already are a surgeon. And you're a very good one too. Now, stop this nonsense and focus on your chosen career path.”
"But father, you've chosen my surgical career path. I have always wanted to be a zoologist.”
"The answer is no, son. No son of mine will waste his life on such tomfoolery.”
But William would soon prove that his chosen career path was anything but tomfoolery.
William Elford Leach, despite what his father said, was not a fool.
- Writer
