The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [128]
“Are you in much pain, sir?” I asked, looking at the bedraggled figure; he still had bandaged eyes.
“Luckily, no,” he lied, wincing as he moved.
“Thank you; you have saved my life for a second time.”
He gave a wan smile.
“You returned my Jane to me. For those few months of happiness, I would suffer twice these wounds. But let us not speak of my wretched state. You are well?”
“Thanks to you.”
“Yes, yes, but how will you return? I expect Jane is already in India by now with that gutless pantaloon Rivers; and with her goes the narrative. I don’t see your friends being able to rescue you.”
“I will think of something,” I said, patting him on the sleeve. “You never know what the future will bring.”
It was the morning of the following day; my months in the book had passed in as much time as it takes to read them. The Welsh Politburo, alerted to the wrongdoings on their doorstep, had given Victor, Finisterre and a member of the Brontë Federation a safe conduct to the moldering Penderyn Hotel, where they now stood with Bowden, Mycroft and an increasingly nervous Jack Schitt. The representative of the Brontë Federation was reading the words as they appeared on the yellowed manuscript in front of him. Aside from a few minor changes, the book was traveling the same course it always did; it had been word perfect for the past two hours. Jane was being proposed to by St. John Rivers, who wanted her to go with him to India as his wife, and she was about to make up her mind.
Mycroft drummed his fingers on the desk and glanced at the rows of flicking dials on his contraption; all he needed was somewhere to open the door. Trouble was, they were fast running out of pages.
Then, the miraculous happened. The Brontë Federation expert, a small, usually unexcitable man named Plink, was suddenly ignited by shock.
“Wait a minute; this is new! This didn’t happen!”
“What?” cried Victor, rapidly flicking to his own copy. Indeed, Mr. Plink was correct. There, as the words etched themselves across the paper, was a new development in the narrative. After Jane promised St. John Rivers that if it was God’s will that they should be married, then they would, there was a voice—a new voice, Rochester’s voice, calling to her across the ether. But from where? It was a question that was being asked simultaneously by nearly eighty million people worldwide, all following the new story unfolding in front of their eyes.
“What does it mean?” asked Victor.
“I don’t know,” replied Plink. “It’s pure Charlotte Brontë but it definitely wasn’t there before!”
“Thursday,” murmured Victor. “It has to be. Mycroft, stay on your toes!”
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?