But on the fourth day, as darkness was starting to fall, I felt an urge to step outside on my own. Down the one step to the grass, cautiously. A step out. And then another, my hands outstretched for balance and because I knew there were trees even that close. As the first drops of rain descended I thought I heard a footstep, or a voice. “Who’s there?” I whispered, but no one responded. A woodland sprite, perhaps, waiting for me. If only it were real. The only sound I could hear was the wind in the trees, but I stood there anyway, for I felt a kind of comforting presence that I had not felt since coming to Ferndean.
Just then I heard John’s voice coming from my side. “Will you take my arm, sir?” he said. “There’s a heavy shower coming on: had you not better go in?”
“Let me alone,” I said impatiently, for I felt as if there were something just out of reach, and for a few moments I tried to walk toward it, as if I could find it and hold it in my hand, but it was useless, and finally I turned and made my way back into the house, feeling worse than I had before.
I had only just returned to my chair when Mary came in. I thought at first she was bringing my tea, but instead she said, “Sir, there is someone asking to speak with you. What shall I tell them?”
I was annoyed. It had been a difficult few days, and was growing worse. Besides, Mary knew I did not see strangers. “Who is it at this time of night?”
“I—I did not ask a name, sir.”
“Well, if he cannot give his name and his business, I certainly have no desire to see him. And bring me a glass of water. Please.”
She hurried away, her shoes scuffing against the floor.
When she returned, she had no more than entered the room before I heard Pilot scramble up from beside me with a soft yelp and leap upon her, splashing the water. She whispered a quiet order. The commotion was so unlike Pilot—or Mary—that I turned toward the noise, straining. This damnable body!
“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!”
I knew that 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. “Who is this?” 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.
“Who is it? What is 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. “What is 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.”