Jane Slayre

by Sherri Browning Erwin

  "I believe we can get even closer to a cure than that, perhaps cure you entirely. I've been researching. My uncle, in addition to being a vampyre slayer, studied werewolves and successfully cured a few. I have his notes."

  Mr. Rochester sat up straighter. "But, Jane, this is wonderful news! How is it to be done?"

  "Never mind that for now." It was dangerous and I didn't want to think of it. "But I think I know the way."

  After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been, what I had been doing, how I had found him out, but I gave him only partial replies. It was too late to enter into particulars that night.

  "You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?"

  "What, and do you think me a werewolf, too? Or a zombie? Or perhaps you prefer a vampyre? But I cannot be, you know, for I travelled to you all the day, and it has made me quite exhausted. Human I must be."

  "Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise on my lone hearth? Like a fairy you appeared, as if

  380

  out of the air. Not the first time you came to me such, I might add."

  "I did not suddenly appear, as I already told you, but I have had grueling days of journeying and much walking, nay running, to and fro to try and find you."

  "And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? Tomorrow, I fear I shall find her no more."

  It was useless to argue. I merely asked for a comb.

  "A what?"

  "A comb, sir. If I were a fairy, I would merely wrap my magic around you and fix your appearance at once. As it is, your hair is wild and I mean to tame it. Being perfectly human, I need a comb."

  "Am I hideous, Jane?"

  "Very, sir. You always were, you know."

  "Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have sojourned."

  "Yet I have been with good people, far better than you. I will need to write to them tomorrow and tell them I have had a change in plans. And perhaps I will invite them to our wedding, for I mean to accept you this time, and you won't be allowed to produce any excuses to stop me."

  "Who the deuce have you been with?"

  "If you twist in that way, you will make me pull the hair out of your head, and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my substantiality."

  "Who have you been with, Jane?"

  "You shall not get it out of me tonight, sir. You must wait until tomorrow. There, you have the security to know I will still be here in the morning, for I have promised you my tale. Your hair is combed. You look decent. Now I am very tired and going up to bed. Good night."

  381

  "Just one word, Jane. Were there only ladies in the house where you have been?"

  I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs.

  Early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from one room to another.

  As soon as Mary went down, I heard the questions. "Is Miss Slayre here? Which room did you put her into? Was it dry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything, and when she will come down."

  I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast. Entering the room softly, I had a view of him before he discovered my presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. The powerlessness of this strong man touched my heart to the quick; still, I accosted him with what vivacity I could.

  "It is a bright, sunny morning, sir. The rain is over and gone, and there is a tender shining after it. You shall have a walk soon."

  "Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone, not vanished?"

  "Skylark this morning? Last night I was a fairy. It feels a bit like a demotion, sir."

  Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields. I described to him how brilliantly green they were, how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed, how sparkingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree. I sat at his feet. Pilot lay beside us. All was quiet. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and clasped me to him.

  "Cruel, cruel deserter! Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you had fled from Thornfield and taken so little with you, that you had taken no money, nor anything which could serve as

  382

  an equivalent. A pearl necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket. Your trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour. What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless? And what did she do? Let me hear now."

  Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year. I told him all, leaving off parts of the suffering from sleeping outside and starving. I was proud to tell him about my fighting skills, and all I had accomplished, how I had learned to slay and, also, how to find the goodwill to let live. I informed of how I'd prepared to come back and kill Bertha, then thought the better of it because he wouldn't have approved.

  I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making my way. I should have told him my intentions. I should have confided in him. He would have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world. I had endured, he was certain, more than I had confessed to him.

  "Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short." I told him that if I had informed him of my intentions, I doubted I could have ripped myself away.

  "Better still you should never have left me." Here he pulled me up even closer, to sit on his lap.

  I told him more about Moor House, the accession of fortune, and discovery of my relations.

  "This St. John, then, is your cousin? You have spoken of him often. Do you like him?"

  "He was a very good man, sir. I could not help liking him."

  "A good man. Does that mean a respectable, well-conducted man of fifty? Or what does it mean?"

  "St. John is only twenty-nine, sir."

  "Tell me he was ugly, a person of low stature, phlegmatic, and plain. A person whose goodness consists rather in his guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue."

  383

  "He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to perform."

  "But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well, but you shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?"

  "He talks little, sir. What he does say is ever to the point. His brain is first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous."

  "A thoroughly educated man?"

  "St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar."

  "His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste? Priggish and dull?"

  "I never mentioned his manners, but they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike."

  "His appearance, again? I forget what description you gave of his appearance. A sort of raw curate, half-strangled with his white neckcloth, eh?"

  "St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man, tall, fair, with blue eyes, and a Grecian profile."

  "Damn him! But, did you like him, Jane?"

  "Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him. But you asked me that before."

  "Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Slayre?" was the next, somewhat unexpected observation.

  "Why not, Mr. Rochester?"

  "The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too overwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily a graceful Apollo. And here you have me."

  "I much prefer you. What use have I for a man prettier than me?"

  He laughed. I loved the sound.

  "You had a little cottage near the school, you say. Did he ever come there to see you?"

  "Now and then."

  "Of an evening?"

  "Once or twice."

&n
bsp; A pause. "how long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship was discovered?"

  384

  "Five months. Yes, he spent much time at home. We all studied together a great deal."

  "What did you study?"

  "Hindustani."

  "Rivers taught you Hindustani?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And his sisters also?"

  "No. Only me."

  "Did you ask to learn?"

  "No. He asked me to learn it. He intended me to go with him to India."

  "Ah! Here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him?"

  "He asked me to marry him."

  "That is a fiction--an impudent invention to vex me."

  "I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth. He asked me more than once and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be."

  "Miss Slayre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remain perched on my knee when I have given you notice to quit?"

  "Because I am comfortable there. Because I love you, and only you. Now stop your jealous inquiries. I did not wish to marry St. John, and he never loved me."

  "What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between you and Rivers?"

  "Absolutely, sir! Oh, you need not be jealous. All my heart is yours, sir. It belongs to you, and with you it would remain were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever."

  He kissed me. As he turned aside his face a minute, I saw a tear slide from under the eyelid and trickle down the manly cheek.

  "Jane, you will marry me?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?"

  385

  "Yes, sir."

  "A wolf that might attack and try to eat you in the night?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Truly, Jane?"

  "Most truly, sir."

  "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 license to get, and after the first full moon, we marry. I need you to see what I can be like once transformed before I bind you to me forever."

  "I'll not consider myself bound, sir. I shall be connected to you in the freest, most wonderful way. And as I've told you, I believe we have a cure. I've read my uncle's notes. If you are willing to place yourself in my hands, I think we can drive the wolf straight out of you."

  "There is no one I trust more. In your hands is where I long to be. Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened around under my cravat? I have worn it since the day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her."

  I smiled, but he could not see. "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. I did wrong. I would have sullied my innocent flower--breathed guilt on its purity. The Omnipotent snatched it from me. Of late, Jane, only of late, I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to seek repentance, the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray. Some days since--four days to be exact, it was last Monday night--a singular mood came over me, one in which grief replaced frenzy. I had long had the impression that since

  386

  I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night, 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 longed for you, Jane! I called out your name, three times. 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' "

  "Did you speak these words aloud?"

  "I did. I shouted."

  "Monday night, somewhere near midnight?"

  "Yes, but the time is of no consequence. What followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious. 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.' 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 the voice was yours. I thank God for your return."

  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 around my shoulder. We entered the wood and wended homeward.

  CHAPTER 40

  READER, I BURIED HIM.

  Following the instructions in my uncle's journal precisely, on the rising of the full moon--the first full moon we were together again--I tethered Edward's hands and feet with silver chains and filled him full of potion.

  Twelve vials remained of the potion Edward Rochester had saved from the fire, and I made him drink three for good measure. Uncle John mentioned a specific potion that could be got in Rome to

  387

  chase the lycanthropy--as he called it--from an infected body, but he never specified the volume of potion required for a cure. If this was indeed the very potion, and I prayed it was, then I knew two wouldn't kill him, for Richard Mason had drunk two at Mr. Rochester's urging and he'd lived to walk away. Three seemed a more potent possibility. Four might have been too much. As it was, the fever broke over Edward and he began to writhe in a pretransformation dance as he drank. John had to help me hold him to force the third down his throat.

  Edward became agitated and powerfully strong, despite the silver chains that were to help weaken him, and John and I had to hurry through the ritual to accomplish our goals in time. I feared we wouldn't make it. Halfway through the digging of the grave, I began to cry, but soldiered on.

  Edward twisted in his bindings. We doubled them. His nose and mouth turned to something of a snout, and all my earlier efforts to cut and tame his hair had come to naught. Hair grew all over him, including a considerable length on his already abundantly tressed head. I shuddered to see him thus, but I tenderly addressed him and refused to look away. Still, I was wise to avoid drawing close enough to get bitten. I was glad, now, he couldn't see because the worst was about to come.

  John and I had to lift Edward into a box that would serve as his temporary coffin and bury his body in the temporary grave. It was as my uncle advised. The potion would eventually work its magic, slowing the heart and the breathing, shutting down all but the most necessary body functions. In short, it would bring on a condition closely resembling death, necessary for the body to heal. To facilitate this process, my uncle Slayre advised digging a hole, like a grave, and covering the body with dirt.

  Why was it advisable? It seemed a tad too hard for me to bear. But bear it I did. My uncle documented his experiments, and a number of the potion-treated werewolves who were not buried broke into a murderous rage, escaping their bindings and killing

  388

  many of my uncle Slayre's assistants. The burial was a safeguard in case of the the worst, the potion having an inflaming effect on the drinker. Burying the werewolf made it harder for him to escape and attack in such an event. And in the best case--that the potion worked properly--the body functions were shut down to the extent that the drinker needed little oxygen to survive for the eight hours required.

  In the best case, I would dig up my Edward in the morning, in the hour before sunrise, to find that he was alive and well--and cured. In the worst case, I would find a corpse. It was a tremendous risk.

  Would it not have been better, reader, to let nature take its course once a month? To lock him up until it passed and hope he would never break free? It seemed to me it would. But Edward would not hear of it. If there was a cure, he wanted it. He had been through enough with Bertha to ever imagine himself in that wolf-like condition, to think that he could be in a murderous state with his precious Jane near. So, a cure was tried.

  The pot
ion consumed, the hole dug, the box ready, all that remained was to wrestle our enormous, beasty Rochester into his temporary coffin and bury him in his grave. It was accomplished more easily than John or I imagined, for Edward had begun to settle down. I hoped it meant the potion was beginning to take effect. Edward's gaze met my own as I closed the lid, and I felt certain in that second that he could see me. Curious, that! And not only that he could see me, that he recognised me with love in his eyes. Once I closed the lid, I kissed the top and rained tears all over it.

  John urged Mary to lead me to a chair and bid me to drink some wine, to calm me, while he finished shoveling the dirt onto the coffin, filling the hole.

  All that remained was the waiting. It was the longest night of my life.

  389

  CHAPTER 41

  THREE DAYS AFTER THE full moon, reader, I married him.

  We had a quiet wedding in a church with only the parson and the clerk as witnesses. Edward had become superstitious about having guests at a wedding, and I couldn't blame him, though I knew he no longer had anything to fear or to hide.

  On the night of the full moon, after the eight hours had passed, I'd cried all over again when we'd opened the coffin and found Edward, not a wolf, but a man, smiling sweetly in his sleep. He awakened, groggy but alive, some minutes afterwards and declared that my face was the most beautiful sight that ever met his eyes. He had his vision back, as well as being free from the lycanthropy. Our happiness on that morning was exceeded only by the elation we knew at finally being pronounced man and wife.