Better Than Byron

Finding Closure

XVIII

I only know we loved in vain;

I only feel—farewell! farewell!

-Lord Byron

The white and slender form of a young woman could be seen emerging from the kitchen door, admiring the fog rolling across the grey-green lawn in thin slivers. The birds twittered in the treetops, and the sun flashed its new-sprung rays through the gaps in the trees. The young woman was clothed in a gauzy nightgown and a woollen shawl, and a framed miniature dangled from her finely shaped fingers while her other hand held a bouquet of bluebells.

Margaret smiled thoughtfully at the peace governing her land and then trotted along the edge of the forest, whence a parked fly was waiting for her. "Please take me to the cemetery," she whispered to the driver, glancing discreetly at the house and then fixing her eyes on the road ahead.

The cemetery was fenced in by tall black iron bars and cradled chiefly crumbling stone slabs. After leaving the driver with instructions to wait for her return, she alighted and glided in. The mist was quickly thinning as she plodded along the bumpy surface, and when she at last reached the desired tombstone, she knelt down before it, nestling the portrait of a young man in between an empty vase and the tombstone itself. She deposited the bluebells into the red vase and planted a heartfelt kiss on the engraved name, allowing one tear to roll down the side of her nose. Before rising, she swept the name lovingly with the tips of her fingers and murmured, "I must forget you, Nat. I cannot hang upon your distant memory as though you were to come back. I must forget, or join you in the beyond." And she rose to her feet, tightening her lips in order to suppress a sob.

*

Margaret was absent from breakfast that morning. She had returned home, dressed more fully, and taken a leather-bound notebook from one of her cupboards. She traipsed across the lawn, ducked into the woods, and then disappeared into the temple. Sitting cross-legged on the ice-cold floor, she took out the notebook from underneath her shawl and ran her finger up and down the crusty spine. The sun was throwing long shadows across the broken landscape of the forest, the water glistening as the rays licked its surface. After taking a deep breath she opened the book, the old leather cracking as she did so. Her eyes traversed the few words scrawled on the front page: Mlle Margaret Doria Vickers – 1807.

I was taking a ramble in the meadows with Sabah when Nat came upon me with a bound book and no waistcoat covering his broad shoulders. I remarked on the unconventionality of his appearance, but he only laughed and said not to mind him whilst he insisted that I be seated, and indulged me in a poetic reading.

"What is it?" I demanded after a pause. "I daresay it is Spenser's Faerie Queen."

"It is," he replied, shutting the book. "He wrote it in praise of Queen Elizabeth. And now I wish to ask you something, my queen."

"What is it, Nat? Your face is all scarlet!" It was the queerest thing – his eyes filled with warmth as he put forth with unusual mechanism, "Margaret, do you promise never to leave me?"

"Of course I will never leave you, Nat!" I exclaimed emphatically. "You know we will always be good friends – even when death do us part." The colour in his cheeks sank at my last words, and I thought he looked unusually despondent, so I seized the book from his hand and began reading it aloud with animation.