The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1)

They read delightedly as Jane changed her mind about India and St. John Rivers and decided to return to Thornfield.

I made it back to Ferndean and Rochester just before Jane did. I met Rochester in the dining room and told him the news; how I had found her at the Riverses’ house, gone to her window and barked: “Jane, Jane, Jane!” in a hoarse whisper the way that Rochester did. It wasn’t a good impersonation but it did the trick. I saw Jane start to fluster and pack almost immediately. Rochester seemed less than excited about the news.

“I don’t know whether I should thank you or curse you, Miss Next. To think that I should be seen like this, a blind man with one good arm. And Thornfield a ruin! She shall hate me, I know it!”

“You are wrong, Mr. Rochester. And if you know Jane as well as I think you do, you would not even begin to entertain such thoughts!”

There was a rap at the door. It was Mary. She announced that Rochester had a visitor but that they would not give their name.

“Oh Lord!” exclaimed Rochester. “It’s her! Tell me, Miss Next, could she love me? Like this, I mean?”

I leaned across and kissed his forehead.

“Of course she could. Anyone could. Mary, refuse her entry; if I know her she will enter anyway. Goodbye, Mr. Rochester. I can think of no way to thank you, so I shall just say that you and Jane will be in my thoughts always.”

Rochester moved his head, trying to gauge where I was by sound alone. He put out his hand and held mine tightly. He was warm to the touch, yet soft. Thoughts of Landen entered my mind.

“Farewell, Miss Next! You have a great heart; do not let it go to waste. You have one who loves you and whom you love yourself. Choose happiness!”

I slipped quickly out into the adjoining room as Jane entered. I quietly latched the door as Rochester did a fine job of pretending that he didn’t know who she was.

“Give me the water, Mary,” I heard him say. There was a rustle and then I heard Pilot padding about.

“What is the matter?” asked Rochester in his most annoyed and gruff expression. I stifled a giggle.

“Down, Pilot!” said Jane. The dog was quiet and there was a pause.

“This is you, Mary, is it not?” asked Rochester.

“Mary is in the kitchen,” replied Jane.

I pulled the now battered manual out of my pocket with the slightly charred poem. I still had Jack Schitt to contend with, but that would have to wait. I sat down on a chair as an exclamation from Rochester made its way through the door:

“Who is it? What is it? Who speaks?”

I strained to hear the conversation.

“Pilot knows me,” returned Jane happily, “and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this afternoon!”

“Great God!” exclaimed Rochester. “What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?”

I whispered: “Thank you, Edward,” as the portal opened in the corner of the room. I took one last look around at a place to which I would never return, and stepped through.

There was a flash and a blast of static, Ferndean Manor was gone, and in its place I saw the familiar surroundings of the shabby lounge of the Penderyn Hotel. Bowden, Mycroft and Victor all rushed forward to greet me. I handed the manual and poem to Mycroft, who swiftly set about opening the door to “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”

“Hades?” asked Victor.

“Dead.”

“Completely?”

“Utterly.”

In a few moments the Prose Portal reopened and Mycroft rushed inside, returning shortly afterward clutching Polly by the hand; she was holding a bunch of daffodils and trying to explain something.

“We were just talking, Crofty, my love! You don’t think I would be interested in a dead poet, do you?”

“My turn,” said Jack Schitt excitedly, waving his copy of The Plasma Rifle in War. He placed it with the bookworms and signaled to Mycroft to open the portal. As soon as the worms had done their work Mycroft did as he was bid. Schitt grinned and reached through the shimmering white doorway, feeling around for one of the plasma rifles that had been so well described in the book. Bowden had other ideas. He gave him a small shove and Jack Schitt disappeared through the doorway with a yell. Bowden nodded at Mycroft, who pulled the plug; the machine fell silent, the gateway to the book severed. It was bad timing on Jack Schitt’s part. In his eagerness to get his hands on the rifle he had not made sure his Goliath officers were with him. By the time the two guards had returned, Bowden was assisting Mycroft in smashing the Prose Portal after carefully transferring the bookworms and returning the original manuscript of Jane Eyre—the ending now slightly altered— to the Brontë Federation.