It couldn't end like this. So fast. Gone within a night, like a star which would stop shining in the sky. Unexpected. She didn't even give me time to say goodbye. I had departed so quickly,, this thought had only crossed my mind a few hours ago. I had left, unnoticed, at the setting of the sun, my whole body shaking with fear and adrenaline. Each seconds counted. It was a war. A battle against fate. A battle I couldn't afford to fail. I had lost my first love, I wasn't ready to lose this one.
Miss Marianne would always surprise us. She was the thunder, the rain, but also the sunshine of the people who were blessed enough to know her. Her smiles, her happiness -unreserved- would spread to everyone around,. Her torments would be whole -dramatic, poetic, worthy of those tragic heroines who could only love in the most burning meaning of it; heartwarming until it turned their heart into ashes. I couldn't expect less of Marianne whose whole life had been conducted by her romanticism, and so would her very end. For the end was near, I was sure. I knew, with all my heart, that the young girl was strong enough to recover from a simple cold, but I also knew that she, as impetuous as she could be, would wish to die if it could save her from a broken heart.
And so would Miss Marianne disappear from my life, as violently as she entered it – an arrow through my heart, from the sweet sound of a voice at the end of a corridor, to the quick relief of a breath. All those weeks I desperately tried to catch a glimpse from her -unreachable- the way people would try to catch a cloud of smoke with their bare hands. Hopeless. Fools.
In the end, I was glad I hadn't taken the time to say goodbye. It would have broken me. I was holding her hand when Eliza died. I knew if I had been anyway near Marianne when Miss Dashwood asked me to fetch their mother I would never had been able to leave. Though, the true reason why I hurried to the stables under Miss Dashwood's request was rather the relief of having something to do, for expecting the doctor's lethal statement that could come at any moment had become unbearable. It was insufferable to feel she was only a thin wall away and that all I could do was wait, powerless, placing my fate into the weak hand of a seventeen-year old girl. Back there, I could feel every ticking of the clock resonate through my body and beat into my head. Hurtful. I felt like a tiger within a cage, walking around pointlessly -restlessly- letting my rage for that one man responsible for all this consume me and burn in my stomach. I would jump at every opening of a door, and look at any sign of distress in Miss Dashwood's eyes that would betray her emotions. But there were none. She was strong. Stronger than me, hiding her feelings. What I couldn't do. I didn't care. They all knew, anyway. All but the very one person who I wished I had told, for it might be too late now.