The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [129]
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.
“Where’s Colonel Schitt?” asked the first officer.
Victor shrugged.
“He went away. Something to do with plasma rifles.”
The Goliath officers would have asked more questions but the Welsh foreign secretary himself had arrived and announced that since the matter was now resolved we would be escorted from the Republic. The Goliath operatives started to argue but were soon ushered from the room by several members of the Welsh Republican Army, who were definitely not impressed by their threats.
We were driven in the presidential limousine out of Merthyr and dropped in