Lock of hair, initialed, signed and dated "73d year" and "Oct. 29, 1891."

Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 (Creator)

“Miss Dashwood, if I may—”

Colonel Brandon’s voice was low, pitched so he would not disturb the sickroom, and in the dim light through the drawn curtains, he looked his age, his visage haggard, except for his eyes, which looked as young as Marianne’s had before she fell into her delirium. His usually immaculate linen was rumpled, his frockcoat creased, and there was a shadow at his jaw that meant he’d waved off his valet when he’d dressed shortly after daybreak.

Without the physician he’d brought, the extra candles and the bounty of the Delaford kitchens, Marianne would surely have already been lost to them. The forgotten cup of tea at Elinor’s side was due to him and the arrangement of hothouse roses set in Marianne’s line of sight, to gladden her when she woke. If she woke.

“We, I am in your eternal debt, Colonel Brandon. Whatever favor you wish granted, only tell me,” Elinor said. It was a miracle she’d strung the words together; she was exhausted, beyond appetite, the ache between her shoulders and the ache of her hips anchoring her. She’d sent her mother and Margaret off to rest, though she suspected her mother would weep and her sister would run wild in the fields, any tears shed whisked away by the wind.

“I’ve been praying for her,” Colonel Brandon said. “Though to see her so makes me question my faith—”

“I know,” Elinor said. 

“It is perhaps an imposition, one too great, and yet I find I cannot help asking,” he said.

“What is it, sir?”

“A lock of her hair? If you would let me have that, to keep, to have something of her,” he said and did not say if she dies, though his meaning was clear in the timbre of his voice, the angle of his neck. Elinor had refused to have all Marianne’s hair cut off when her fever climbed treacherously high, but though it might break every tenet of propriety, she could not see a reason to deny the man before her. If Marianne did not survive, he would be devastated as a widower, as a lover bereft of his beloved. Elinor used the small pair of scissors hanging from her chatelaine to cut off a chestnut curl, tying it with a scrap of ribbon, and handed it to Colonel Brandon. Marianne lay still, insensible, her pale face turned away from both of them. 

“Thank you,” he said, touching the silky hair very gently. Elinor saw how he would have nursed Marianne, had he been her husband. How he cherished her and always would.

“She would want you to have it,” Elinor said.

Colonel Brandon made a sound very distantly like a laugh, his lip curled in a wry grimace.

“She would want nothing of the sort. But you are most generous to lie, Miss Dashwood,” he said.

“I wish I could lie to myself,” Elinor said.

“I know,” he replied. “The closest I’ve come is my prayers.”

Pendant owned by Queen Victoria, mourning her daughter Alice, c. 1878

Onyx, banded agate, enamel and diamond pendant, cross-shaped with a central onyx heart with 'ALICE' beneath a coronet, and a glazed compartment containing a lock of hair.

A bird delivers a lock of hair. Behind the veil. 1906. Austin Osman Spare, illus.