“Give me the water, Mary.” I sighed. But as I waited for the glass, I heard again Pilot’s excited paws on the floor. “What is the matter?” I asked, having begun to fear an intruder.
Then came a voice that was not Mary’s: “Down, Pilot!”
Iknewthat voice. But it could not be: I was hallucinating. “This is you, Mary, is it not?”
“Mary is in the kitchen,” the voice said, and hope and fear clashed within me. Inadvertently I put out my hand, as if to touch the apparition, as if to assure myself she was real. Oh, that I still had my sight!
“Who is this?” I demanded. “Whoisthis?” I half rose as if I could force an answer. “Answer me—speak again!”
“Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilled half of what was in the glass,” came the calm reply.
“Whois it?Whatis it? Who speaks?”
“Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this evening.”
Jane.Jane.I would know that voice anywhere—had heard it in my fever dreams for a year. But it could not be. “Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?”
“No delusion—no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.” It was she, for certain. The water she had brought me, the water I held in my hand: that was real. How then could she be a dream?
I cried out and reached to touch her, and I felt her small fingers encircling mine. “Her very fingers!” I cried out. “Her small, slight fingers! If so, there must be more of her.” I reached for the rest of her, seeking the form I knew so well in my heart. I wrapped my arm around her waist and drew her close. My heart pounded in my chest, and as I brought her ever closer I could feel hers as well.
“Is it Jane?” I asked stupidly. “Whatis it? This is her shape—this is her size—”
She laughed at my disbelief, and I knew it was my Jane. “And this her voice,” she said. “She is all here: her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”
“Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre!” was all I could say.
At first we just held each other close in silence, and then the words poured out of us. She insisted, over and over, that she was not a vision, not a dream, not an echo of the moors. But without my sight, how could I be sure of her? She laughed and kissed my eyes, which had been so sore for human touch. “Is it you—is it Jane?” I asked, still unbelieving. “You are come back to me, then?”
“I am.”
“And you do not lie dead in some ditch, under some stream?”
She laughed. “No, sir; I am an independent woman now. My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.”
I must have smiled at her, for this was Jane. This was my practical Jane. I could not have dreamed that. “But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like me?” I teased her, yet the worry was real. She had money, and I had nothing else to give her.
“I am my own mistress,” she responded. My heart rose at her words: she was promising to stay with me, to love me, to be my companion. But then she talked of neighbor, nurse, and housekeeper—what was this? This was not love, but pity. Not passion but, at best, devotion to a father past his prime. I sighed—I should have understood that perfect happiness would never be within my grasp. If she would not be my own wife, I should release her.
But, sensing my gloom, her voice changed, and she began to tease me again as of old. I thought she would be revolted by my scars, but instead she claimed she was now in danger of loving me too much. I could not believe her words, but over and over again she laid herself out to me: she was mine, if I wanted her.If I wanted her—my God!
We dined together that evening, still talking—the first time we had ever shared a meal—and it was as it always should have been.
I could barely believe it: my Jane—despite what I had done to her, she was still—alwaysmine.
And I hers.
***
Reader, she married me. I cannot still believe it. The evening she returned, I held her in my arms, and I showed her the necklace I had worn since the day she left, and with her help I took it from my neck and returned it to hers. And I asked the one thing I had to ask her again. “Jane,” I whispered into her ear, “please. Call me Edward.”
I am sure she smiled at me, and she laughed until she recognized the seriousness in my face. “Edward,” she whispered. And then again, “Edward.” And finally, a kiss on my lips and: “Edward.”
I held her. It was all I could do. I could not speak. I could not silence my pounding heart. I could only hold her tight against me and think the words that had become truth:You are my family, and I am yours.
Two days later we were married, and at last—at last!—she was my wife, and I promised her that our honeymoon would shine our whole life long; its beams would only fade over her grave or mine.
Epilogue
