EPILOGUE—Part Five: The Love Story

“What are you reading, Jane?” Kaz asked from his place in bed beside me. I smiled; his dim eyes were closed, and he had reached out with the gentle tendrils of his mind to ascertain what activity was keeping me awake, mind-buzzing.

I took in a contented breath and let it string out long as I finished the sentence I was on. “An old favorite,” I replied, dog-earring the battered copy of Charlotte Brontë’s beloved classic. “Jane Eyre.”

“Don’t tell me,” Kaz said, turning over so that his head was resting on his arm. “You picked up the book because the heroine had the same name as you do.”

I chuckled quietly in the warm glow of the bedside lamp and laid the book down on the mattress next to me. “Yeah,” I affirmed, “something like that. But you’d be shocked to learn how many similarities there are between this story and my own. Positively shocked.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm.”

In the months since we’d come to the enclave, I had come to meet and know our Ivaldan neighbors. And so far, the resistance had been relatively quiet. But Riley told us he didn’t expect that to last long. Riley maintained that they would come for us any day now, and it would be wise for us to be lax in our security. Ever vigilant, he said. And the people followed him. But it was a sleepy Sunday night, and the community was quiet. It felt like Kaz and I were the only two beings in the entire universe. Well, us, and the huge kicking creature I was growing in my stomach.

Kaz propped his head up on his hand and reached out with his free hand to entangle our fingers. He ran his thumb over the gold band I was wearing. “And how does it end, then?” he asked. “This story that is so much like your own.”

“It ends well for love,” I said, smiling down at him.

“Read some to me.”

“Really?” I quirked a brow. I disentangled our fingers and picked up the book with one hand, placing the other on the protruding slope of my belly. Just as I did, I could feel our little one turn somersaults inside of me. I groaned and Kaz sat immediately up.

“Are you all right?” He asked, perturbed.

“I’m fine, Kaz,” I insisted. “Really. She’s just getting restless in there, is all. I think she’s about ready to make her grand entrance into the world.”

“I can’t wait to meet her.”

I smiled. “Neither can I.” And I felt her kicking, and I knew she’d be with us any day now. Any day. But not today, not this night, in this perfect moment, our little fledgling family safe and tucked into bed.

“Well, if we’re not giving birth to a baby right now, you may as well read to me,” Kaz said, grinning and settling back into a comfortable position in the bed next to me.

“What’s this ‘we’ business, mister?” I teased, not altogether relishing the moment when I’d have to start pushing. But I smiled and opened the book to the page I’d marked and began to read:

“Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life—if ever I thought a good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer—if ever I wished a righteous wish—I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth."

"Because you delight in sacrifice."

"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice."

"And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies."

"Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector."

"Hitherto I have hated to be helped—to be led: henceforth, I feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling's, but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane's little fingers. I preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but Jane's soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit her?"

"To the finest fibre of my nature, sir."

“Wait—” Kaz interrupted. “I’m very confused as to who is speaking. There are no dialogue tags in this ancient tome of a novel.”

“Don’t you dare speak ill of Charlotte Brontë!” I countered, and he smiled, holding up both hands as if to say, whatever you say, dear.

“All I’m saying,” he went on, “is that a little ‘he said’, ‘she said’ would be useful in this instance.”

“There are only two people in the scene! Jane and Mr. Rochester. And when she says ‘Sir,’ you know that Jane is speaking to Rochester and not the other way around. Got it?”

He considered me for a moment, and I wondered what, if anything, he could see of me. Probably only my disapproving outline. “Why don’t you ever call me sir?” He asked, and I thwacked him soundly with the book.

“I am perfectly capable of reading this to myself in my brain, if you won’t shut up.”

“I could just listen in there,” he countered, and I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, missy!”

“Get out of my brain!”

“Fine,” he said in a faux huff, resettling his head on the pillow near mine. “Please. Keep reading.”

“Very well.” I went on:

"The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be married instantly." He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising. "We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the licence to get—then we marry."

"Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at your watch."

"Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no use for it."

“Wait—who is Janet?” Kaz again interrupted.

“Shhh!”

"It is nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, sir. Don't you feel hungry?"

"The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never mind fine clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip."

"The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still: it is quite hot."

"Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it since the day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her."

"We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way."

He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.

"Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. HIS chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane—only—only of late—I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.

"Some days since: nay, I can number them—four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy—sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night—perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o'clock—ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.

"I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—'Jane! Jane! Jane!'"

"Did you speak these words aloud?"

"I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy."

"And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?"

"Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious—some superstition I have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true—true at least it is that I heard what I now relate.

"As I exclaimed 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' a voice—I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was—replied, 'I am coming: wait for me;' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words—'Where are you?'

"I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. 'Where are you?' seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents—as certain as I live—they were yours!"

Reader, it was on Monday night—near midnight—that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester's narrative, but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart.

"You cannot now wonder," continued my master, "that when you rose upon me so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any other than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt to silence and annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted before. Now, I thank God! I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I thank God!"

He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible.

"I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!"

Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the wood, and wended homeward.

I closed the book then, rubbing absently at my belly and breathing that same sigh I had always breathed when I finished reading through this much beloved novel.

“Is that all?” Kaz asked. “What happens next?”

“Well, that’s the end of the chapter,” I said, and Kaz took my hand in his.

“What happens in the next chapter?”

I didn’t even have to open the book to know the words that began the next and final chapter. “Reader,” I said by rote, “I married him.”

“And they lived happily ever after?” Kaz teased.

I scoffed. “This isn’t a fairy tale, Kazimir,” I asserted. “I don’t know if they lived happily ever after. But what I do know is that they loved, together, in a life they chose, after much suffering and heartache. So did they live happily ever after? I hope they did. But the point is that whatever that life looked like, they chose it.”

Kaz’s fingertips found the silvery scar from our first wedding, and he traced it with his fingertips. I didn’t hear him speak the words, but I felt them radiate out from him like light from the sun: blood of my blood.

“Yes,” I murmured. “Blood of my blood.” Reader, I married him. And we had a beautiful baby girl together, the first of a new hybrid species. The fight was far from over, and we knew that we may have been bringing this beautiful creature into a world rife with conflict, but this is the life we chose, this was the thing we could not bear to lose. And sometimes it takes monumental struggle to understand what it is that is important in your life. Now, after ever, I know.

The End