Mr. Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of his new governess, but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice her, for he never lifted his head as she approached. Jane Eyre should have realized then that he had passive-aggressive tendencies that would one day escalate into a full-blown dance of deception, ultimately undermining the foundations of their intimacy and preventing fully satisfying coital relations, but she was too busy mentally constructing overly ornate, fustian, nineteenth-century, nonsensical, compound sentences to see past the nose on her face.

“Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said Rochester, and there was something in the forced stiff bow and the impatient yet formal tone that seemed further to express his inability to let down his defenses and bond with women, retreating instead into his own world, brooding over the past, watching Star Trek reruns, and surfing the Internet in search of cybersex. His harsh caprice laid Jane under no obligation. On the contrary, a decent quiescence under the freak of manner gave her the advantage, if only she could figure out how to phrase it without too many semicolons.

“So you are newly come from Lowell School. What do you think of that institution?” he asked, pressing her to reveal herself while he revealed nothing.

“I was near starved, tortured by the pompous and meddling Mr. Brocklehurst, exposed to typhus, and badly neglected in the areas of artistic expression and individual creativity. I was also beaten regularly and then was told I was being sent to hell for my disagreeable disposition. I suppose they thought I ought to be standing on my head naked spinning a pie plate on my toe and whistling Dixie at that treatment,” she replied.

Mr. Rochester raised his formidable eyebrows. “Miss Eyre, you are of singular mind and temperament.”

“You got that right. And by the way, I don’t do windows,” said Jane, laying firm boundaries right from the outset.

“What sort of furniture is in that mind of yours?” said Rochester, peering quizzically into her eyes, as if straining to decipher her mental motif.

“I’m sort of into rattan at present. It’s light and easy to rearrange.” She said. “Why? Are you considering redecorating? Because I don’t do that either.”

He shook his head and turned toward the window, away from her piercing gaze. “Jane, your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall awaken it.” He said, making the typical male mistake of underestimating his governess. “You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you – and you mark my words – you will come some day to a craggy pass of the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points or lifted up and borne on by some master wave into a calmer current – as I am now.”

“I’m sorry, I dozed through most of that, but it’s clear that somebody’s got a little excess baggage he’s carrying around and projecting onto others. And you seem awfully preoccupied with water images, which are, as you know, symbolic of an inability to deal with strong emotion as well as a reluctance to trust women, probably stemming from a conflicted relationship with your mother. Are you by any chance afraid of spiders?” said Jane, remembering that article about Freudian symbolism, which she had read in a recent issue of Psychology for Governesses, that linked arachnophobia with a subliminal fear of a powerful mother.

Mr. Rochester ground his teeth as he paced, obviously the precursor to a serious case of temporomandibular jaw syndrome.

“You really ought to be careful about grinding your teeth like that. It can create serious headaches and balance difficulties while flying, which would be a real problem for a guy like you who wants to travel constantly and avoid the personal demons lodged here at Thornfield,” said Jane, aware of her employer’s tendency toward avoidance behaviors.

Rochester arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.

“Yes, yes, you are right,” said he. “I have plenty of faults of my own, and I don’t wish to palliate them, I assure you. I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a color of life to contemplate within my own breast. I was thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one and twenty, and have never recovered the right course since.” (Of course, had Rochester simply asked for directions at a gas station, perhaps he would have found his way ‘ere this.)

Jane thought immediately of her young French charge, Miss Adele, who bore an uncanny resemblance to the master of the house, despite his claims that he and Adele’s mother had been “just friends.” Jane may have newly come from Lowell School, but she wasn’t born yesterday, “What happened? So you knocked somebody up, right? That’ll teach you to go courting without a condom.”

He turned to her with wounded eyes (which Jane was a real sucker for, given her own victimized past, which compelled her to engage in codependent dynamics fueled by an unconscious repetition compulsion, despite the warnings against such behavior that she had read in an article inVictim’s Lifestyle) and said, “I might have been very different; I might have been as good as you – wiser- almost as stainless. I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory, which no gush or bilge water has turned to fetid puddle.”

“Hold on, buster,” said Jane, unwilling to enable his avoidance behavior any longer or to comply with this overly romanticized and erroneous portrait of herself as some perfect embodiment of the nineteenth century’s rendition of the waif look, which had never suited her, or anyone else for that matter. “You don’t have an exclusive arrangement with tragedy. If you don’t call being forced to stand on a stool in the pouring rain while some sadomasochistic headmaster threatens you with the fires of hell just on account of your economic status bilge water, than I don’t know what is. And as for being stainless, it’s only because I’ve forgiven myself. Let me tell you something. Guilt is a useless emotion. You start blaming yourself for every misstep, next thing you know, you’re married to some half-crazed banshee who’s burning your house down every time she slips out of her straitjacket and past the drunken, underpaid servant guarding her in the west wing. Is this ringing any bells here?’

Rochester merely shrugged, unwilling to reveal the secrets of either his inner psyche or the rubber guest room in the attic.

Months passed before Mr. Rochester finally broke down his defenses and addressed the issues head-on, not only because he had a compelling need to confess, but because he had it really bad for his plainspoken young governess and her pointed censures. “Jane, I feel I can speak to you as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary. Not three in three thousand raw school-girl governesses would bust my chops the way you do, and it really makes me hot. Please, punish me.”

“While I do have a considerable background, gathered at the Lowell School, in the finer arts of discipline and physical punishment, I believe that what you need, Mr. Rochester, is not some Victorian dominatrix casting out your demons with each flick of her cat-o’-nine tails, but a little twentieth-century psychoanalysis to help you get in touch with your inner child. I sense that there are difficult issues you are unwilling to confront, particularly when it comes to the women in your life, so let’s talk about the batty babe in the belfry.”

His eyes grew dark. A stormy countenance prevailed, with poor road conditions and a sixty percent chance of thunder showers by morning, and he spoke in low tones. “After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half n dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel – I am bound to you with a strong attachment.”

“You’re avoiding the issue.”

“I think you good, gifted, lovely –“

“Do I sense a fear of confrontation?”

>“Because I feel and know this, I am resolved to marry you. And just forget about the broad in the attic. She’s just a poor plot device designed by some sexually frustrated quill-penned spinster to prevent me from getting my rocks off. So what do you say? Me, you, the French Riviera, long nights strolling along the Cote d’Azure, sipping champagne cocktails at the Negresco, you in a string bikini, me in a Speedo, as the sun sets?”

His proposition stunned her, for she had no inkling that the master of the house could ever love a plain Jane such as herself, particularly since she was far too self-conscious to wear a string bikini. Although she was drawn to glowering bad-boy types, she had a head full of negative thought patterns, clearly the residue of a deprived childhood, as she was informed by that article in Psychology for Governesses, which established a clear link between orphaned childhoods spent in drafty nineteenth-century institutions run by sadomasochistic headmasters and low self-esteem in later life. But she had managed to muster up enough confidence in her twenty-odd some years on the planet to know that while she may have a poor body image, she was not a bigamist and told him so in no uncertain, overly protracted nineteenth-century terms.

“Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours. It would be bitter, wicked to marry you when I know, and you know, and you know I know, and I know you know that the babe in the belfry is your lawfully wedded wife.”

He threw up his hands in tortured resignation. “So you would condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed? Is there no remedy?”

This new vulnerable approach to their relationship’s difficulties softened Jane’s. She found herself smiling at him remembering a little piece she’d just read in Madwoman’s Weekly about revolutionary new advances in the treatment of bipolar illnesses, and she ventured, “Edward, sweetie, have you heard about these new wonder drugs they have been using in the treatment of the mentally ill? They are having marvelous success with few side effects, and I was wondering, perhaps your wife is suffering from a chemical imbalance. Maybe she can lead a perfectly healthy, normal life, free from extreme mood swings that manifest themselves in the form of violent, pyromaniacal outbursts. Why don’t we send for a specialist who can prescribe an experimental course of the medication? Then, if it is effective, you can divorce her without guilt and we can put the past behind us.”

Well, I was right about the wonder drugs. Mrs. Rochester is now a fully functional and independent woman happily running a gift shop in Kingston, Jamaica; in fact, she filed for a no-contest divorce, having met and engaged to a rakish wayfarer with a hoop in his ear and a motherlode of plundered booty, which the tourists go mad for.

And Mr. Rochester? Reader, I married him, in a quiet ceremony in a small country church in the old village of Nice. We honeymooned there on the Cote d’Azur, swimming topless in the forgiving waters of the Mediterranean. Mr. Rochester seemed to have put his demons and his negative coping behaviors behind him and acquired a new lease on life as well as his own subscription to Governess Today – and I have become a featured columnist.

CHAPTER I.

My earliest impressions are of a huge, misshapen rock, against which the hoarse waves beat unceasingly. On this rock three pelicans are standing in a defiant attitude. A dark sky lowers in the background, while two sea-gulls and a gigantic cormorant eye with extreme disfavor the floating corpse of a drowned woman in the foreground. A few bracelets, coral necklaces, and other articles of jewelry, scattered around loosely, complete this remarkable picture.

It is one which, in some vague, unconscious way, symbolizes, to my fancy, the character of a man. I have never been able to explain exactly why. I think I must have seen the picture in some illustrated volume, when a baby, or my mother may have dreamed it before I was born.

As a child I was not handsome. When I consulted the triangular bit of looking-glass which I always carried with me, it showed a pale, sandy, and freckled face, shaded by locks like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes it in deep water. My eyes were said to be indistinctive; they were a faint, ashen gray; but above them rose-- my only beauty--a high, massive, domelike forehead, with polished temples, like door-knobs of the purest porcelain.

Our family was a family of governesses. My mother had been one, and my sisters had the same occupation. Consequently, when, at the age of thirteen, my eldest sister handed me the advertisement of Mr. Rawjester, clipped from that day's "Times," I accepted it as my destiny. Nevertheless, a mysterious presentiment of an indefinite future haunted me in my dreams that night, as I lay upon my little snow-white bed. The next morning, with two bandboxes tied up in silk handkerchiefs, and a hair trunk, I turned my back upon Minerva Cottage forever.

CHAPTER II.

Blunderbore Hall, the seat of James Rawjester, Esq., was encompassed by dark pines and funereal hemlocks on all sides. The wind sang weirdly in the turrets and moaned through the long-drawn avenues of the park. As I approached the house I saw several mysterious figures flit before the windows, and a yell of demoniac laughter answered my summons at the bell. While I strove to repress my gloomy forebodings, the housekeeper, a timid, scared- looking old woman, showed me into the library.

I entered, overcome with conflicting emotions. I was dressed in a narrow gown of dark serge, trimmed with black bugles. A thick green shawl was pinned across my breast. My hands were encased with black half-mittens worked with steel beads; on my feet were large pattens, originally the property of my deceased grandmother. I carried a blue cotton umbrella. As I passed before a mirror, I could not help glancing at it, nor could I disguise from myself the fact that I was not handsome.

Drawing a chair into a recess, I sat down with folded hands, calmly awaiting the arrival of my master. Once or twice a fearful yell rang through the house, or the rattling of chains, and curses uttered in a deep, manly voice, broke upon the oppressive stillness. I began to feel my soul rising with the emergency of the moment.

"You look alarmed, miss. You don't hear anything, my dear, do you?" asked the housekeeper nervously.

"Nothing whatever," I remarked calmly, as a terrific scream, followed by the dragging of chairs and tables in the room above, drowned for a moment my reply. "It is the silence, on the contrary, which has made me foolishly nervous."

The housekeeper looked at me approvingly, and instantly made some tea for me.

I drank seven cups; as I was beginning the eighth, I heard a crash, and the next moment a man leaped into the room through the broken window.

CHAPTER III.

The crash startled me from my self-control. The housekeeper bent toward me and whispered:--

"Don't be excited. It's Mr. Rawjester,--he prefers to come in sometimes in this way. It's his playfulness, ha! ha! ha!"

"I perceive," I said calmly. "It's the unfettered impulse of a lofty soul breaking the tyrannizing bonds of custom." And I turned toward him.

He had never once looked at me. He stood with his back to the fire, which set off the herculean breadth of his shoulders. His face was dark and expressive; his under jaw squarely formed, and remarkably heavy. I was struck with his remarkable likeness to a Gorilla.

As he absently tied the poker into hard knots with his nervous fingers, I watched him with some interest. Suddenly he turned toward me:--

"Do you think I'm handsome, young woman?"

"Not classically beautiful," I returned calmly; "but you have, if I may so express myself, an abstract manliness,--a sincere and wholesome barbarity which, involving as it does the naturalness--" But I stopped, for he yawned at that moment,--an action which singularly developed the immense breadth of his lower jaw,--and I saw he had forgotten me. Presently he turned to the housekeeper:--

"Leave us."

The old woman withdrew with a courtesy.

Mr. Rawjester deliberately turned his back upon me and remained silent for twenty minutes. I drew my shawl the more closely around my shoulders and closed my eyes.

"You are the governess?" at length he said.

"I am, sir."

"A creature who teaches geography, arithmetic, and the use of the globes--ha!--a wretched remnant of femininity,--a skimp pattern of girlhood with a premature flavor of tea-leaves and morality. Ugh!"

I bowed my head silently.

"Listen to me, girl!" he said sternly; "this child you have come to teach--my ward--is not legitimate. She is the offspring of my mistress,--a common harlot. Ah! Miss Mix, what do you think of me now?"

"I admire," I replied calmly, "your sincerity. A mawkish regard for delicacy might have kept this disclosure to yourself. I only recognize in your frankness that perfect community of thought and sentiment which should exist between original natures."

I looked up; he had already forgotten my presence, and was engaged in pulling off his boots and coat. This done, he sank down in an arm-chair before the fire, and ran the poker wearily through his hair. I could not help pitying him.

The wind howled dismally without, and the rain beat furiously against the windows. I crept toward him and seated myself on a low stool beside his chair.

Presently he turned, without seeing me, and placed his foot absently in my lap. I affected not to notice it. But he started and looked down.

"You here yet--Carrothead? Ah, I forgot. Do you speak French?"

"Oui, Monsieur"

"Taisez-vous!" he said sharply, with singular purity of accent. I complied. The wind moaned fearfully in the chimney, and the light burned dimly. I shuddered in spite of myself. "Ah, you tremble, girl!"

"It is a fearful night."

"Fearful! Call you this fearful, ha! ha! ha! Look! you wretched little atom, look!" and he dashed forward, and, leaping out of the window, stood like a statue in the pelting storm, with folded arms. He did not stay long, but in a few minutes returned by way of the hall chimney. I saw from the way that he wiped his feet on my dress that he had again forgotten my presence.

"You are a governess. What can you teach?" he asked, suddenly and fiercely thrusting his face in mine.

"Manners!" I replied, calmly.

"Ha! teach ME!"

You mistake yourself," I said, adjusting my mittens. "Your manners require not the artificial restraint of society. You are radically polite; this impetuosity and ferociousness is simply the sincerity which is the basis of a proper deportment. Your instincts are moral; your better nature, I see, is religious. As St. Paul justly remarks--see chap. 6, 8, 9, and 10--"

He seized a heavy candlestick, and threw it at me. I dodged it submissively but firmly.

"Excuse me," he remarked, as his under jaw slowly relaxed. "Excuse me, Miss Mix--but I can't stand St. Paul! Enough--you are engaged."

CHAPTER IV.

I followed the housekeeper as she led the way timidly to my room. As we passed into a dark hall in the wing, I noticed that it was closed by an iron gate with a grating. Three of the doors on the corridor were likewise grated. A strange noise, as of shuffling feet and the howling of infuriated animals, rang through the hall. Bidding the housekeeper good night, and taking the candle, I entered my bedchamber.

I took off my dress, and, putting on a yellow flannel nightgown, which I could not help feeling did not agree with my complexion, I composed myself to rest by reading Blair's Rhetoric and Paley's Moral Philosophy. I had just put out the light, when I heard voices in the corridor. I listened attentively. I recognized Mr. Rawjester's stern tones.

"Have you fed No. 1?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said a gruff voice, apparently belonging to a domestic.

"How's No. 2?"

"She's a little off her feed, just now, but will pick up in a day or two!"

"And No. 3?"

"Perfectly furious, sir. Her tantrums are ungovernable."

"Hush!"

The voices died away, and I sank into a fitful slumber.

I dreamed that I was wandering through a tropical forest. Suddenly I saw the figure of a gorilla approaching me. As it neared me, I recognized the features of Mr. Rawjester. He held his hand to his side as if in pain. I saw that he had been wounded. He recognized me and called me by name, but at the same moment the vision changed to an Ashantee village, where, around the fire, a group of negroes were dancing and participating in some wild Obi festival. I awoke with the strain still ringing in my ears.

"Hokee-pokee wokee fum!"

Good Heavens! could I be dreaming? I heard the voice distinctly on the floor below, and smelt something burning. I arose, with an indistinct presentiment of evil, and hastily putting some cotton in my ears and tying a towel about my head, I wrapped myself in a shawl and rushed down stairs. The door of Mr. Rawjester's room was open. I entered.

Mr. Rawjester lay apparently in a deep slumber, from which even the clouds of smoke that came from the burning curtains of his bed could not rouse him. Around the room a large and powerful negress, scantily attired, with her head adorned with feathers, was dancing wildly, accompanying herself with bone castanets. It looked like some terrible fetich.

I did not lose my calmness. After firmly emptying the pitcher, basin, and slop-jar on the burning bed, I proceeded cautiously to the garden, and, returning with the garden-engine, I directed a small stream at Mr. Rawjester.

At my entrance the gigantic negress fled. Mr. Rawjester yawned and woke. I explained to him, as he rose dripping from the bed, the reason of my presence. He did not seem to be excited, alarmed, or discomposed. He gazed at me curiously.

"So you risked your life to save mine, eh? you canary-colored teacher of infants."

I blushed modestly, and drew my shawl tightly over my yellow flannel nightgown.

"You love me, Mary Jane,--don't deny it! This trembling shows it!" He drew me closely toward him, and said, with his deep voice tenderly modulated:--

"How's her pooty tootens,--did she get her 'ittle tootens wet,-- bess her?"

I understood his allusion to my feet. I glanced down and saw that in my hurry I had put on a pair of his old india-rubbers. My feet were not small or pretty, and the addition did not add to their beauty.

"Let me go, sir," I remarked quietly. "This is entirely improper; it sets a bad example for your child." And I firmly but gently extricated myself from his grasp. I approached the door. He seemed for a moment buried in deep thought.

"You say this was a negress?"

"Yes, sir."

"Humph, No. 1, I suppose?"

"Who is Number One, sir?"

"My FIRST," he remarked, with a significant and sarcastic smile. Then, relapsing into his old manner, he threw his boots at my head, and bade me begone. I withdrew calmly.

CHAPTER V.

My pupil was a bright little girl, who spoke French with a perfect accent. Her mother had been a French ballet-dancer, which probably accounted for it. Although she was only six years old, it was easy to perceive that she had been several times in love. She once said to me:--

"Miss Mix, did you ever have the grande passion? Did you ever feel a fluttering here?" and she placed her hand upon her small chest, and sighed quaintly, "a kind of distaste for bonbons and caromels, when the world seemed as tasteless and hollow as a broken cordial drop."

"Then you have felt it, Nina?" I said quietly. "O dear, yes. There was Buttons,--that was our page, you know,--I loved him dearly, but papa sent him away. Then there was Dick, the groom, but he laughed at me, and I suffered misery!" and she struck a tragic French attitude. "There is to be company here to-morrow," she added, rattling on with childish naivete, "and papa's sweetheart--Blanche Marabout--is to be here. You know they say she is to be my mamma."

What thrill was this shot through me? But I rose calmly, and, administering a slight correction to the child, left the apartment.

Blunderbore House, for the next week, was the scene of gayety and merriment. That portion of the mansion closed with a grating was walled up, and the midnight shrieks no longer troubled me.

But I felt more keenly the degradation of my situation. I was obliged to help Lady Blanche at her toilet and help her to look beautiful. For what? To captivate him? O--no, no,--but why this sudden thrill and faintness? Did he really love her? I had seen him pinch and swear at her. But I reflected that he had thrown a candlestick at my head, and my foolish heart was reassured.

It was a night of festivity, when a sudden message obliged Mr. Rawjester to leave his guests for a few hours. "Make yourselves merry, idiots," he added, under his breath, as he passed me. The door closed and he was gone.

An half-hour passed. In the midst of the dancing a shriek was heard, and out of the swaying crowd of fainting women and excited men a wild figure strode into the room. One glance showed it to be a highwayman, heavily armed, holding a pistol in each hand.

"Let no one pass out of this room!" he said, in a voice of thunder. "The house is surrounded and you cannot escape. The first one who crosses yonder threshold will be shot like a dog. Gentlemen, I'll trouble you to approach in single file, and hand me your purses and watches."

Finding resistance useless, the order was ungraciously obeyed.

"Now, ladies, please to pass up your jewelry and trinkets."

This order was still more ungraciously complied with. As Blanche handed to the bandit captain her bracelet, she endeavored to conceal a diamond necklace, the gift of Mr. Rawjester, in her bosom. But, with a demoniac grin, the powerful brute tore it from its concealment, and, administering a hearty box on the ear of the young girl, flung her aside.

It was now my turn. With a beating heart I made my way to the robber chieftain, and sank at his feet. "O sir, I am nothing but a poor governess, pray let me go."

"O ho! A governess? Give me your last month's wages, then. Give me what you have stolen from your master!" and he laughed fiendishly.

I gazed at him quietly, and said, in a low voice: "I have stolen nothing from you, Mr. Rawjester!"

"Ah, discovered! Hush! listen, girl!" he hissed, in a fiercer whisper, "utter a syllable to frustrate my plans and you die; aid me, and--" But he was gone.

In a few moments the party, with the exception of myself, were gagged and locked in the cellar. The next moment torches were applied to the rich hangings, and the house was in flames. I felt a strong hand seize me, and bear me out in the open air and place me upon the hillside, where I could overlook the burning mansion. It was Mr. Rawjester.

"Burn!" he said, as he shook his fist at the flames. Then sinking on his knees before me, he said hurriedly:--

"Mary Jane, I love you; the obstacles to our union are or will be soon removed. In yonder mansion were confined my three crazy wives. One of them, as you know, attempted to kill me! Ha! this is vengeance! But will you be mine?"

I fell, without a word, upon his neck.

THE END.

My love behaved
A bit erratic
Our nuptial day
Brought truth dramatic:
He had a wife,
Mad, in an attic

I fled! I roamed
O'er moor and ditch
When life had struck
It's lowest pitch
An uncle died
And left me rich

I sought my love
Again to find
An awful fire
His home had mined,
Kippered his wife
And left him blind

Reader, guess what?
I married him.
My cup is filled
Up to the brim;
Now we are one,
We play, we swim

The power we share
Defies all pain
We soar above
Life's tangled plain
He Mr. Rochester,
Me Jane!

Orphan Jane is both plain and unhappy
Her guardian has favourites, is snappy;
This pious old ghoul
Sents her ward off to school,
Hoping Lowood will make her less yappy.

Thinly clothed, poorly fed, badly taught,
Jane despairs as her plans come to naught,
Til she's offered a job
With an upper-class yob
Who is brooding, erotic and fraught.

Jane leaves when the boss gets too randy
(He's still got a wife - ain't that dandy?);
Then fate plays a hand -
Jane is left twenty grand
Which for Jane (and the plot) is quite handy.

Back at Thornfield the lad's less erratic
Since Bertha's escape from the attic;
Jane hears of the arson
Then sends for the parson
And Rochester's blindly ecstatic.

JANE

MY LITTLE SUNBEAM

WHERE ARE YOU

I NEED YOU BY MY SIDE

I’'m taking a walk

be back for dinner

AH YES MY CAGED SPRITE

COMMUNE WITH NATURE AND UPON YOUR RETURN

RELATE TO ME THE VAGRANT GLORIES OF THE RUINED WOODS

do you really want me to describe my walk to you

MORE THAN ANYTHING YOU POCKET WITCH

it is fairly cloudy out

looks like rain soon

AHHH TO THINK THAT MY LITTLE STARLING JANE

SHOULD RETURN

TO PERCH ON MY BROKEN MALFORMED SHOULDER

SINGING A SONG OF THE GREY AND WRACKING SKIES

MAKES MY HEART SWELL TO BURST

all right

JANE

JANE I BOUGHT YOU A DRESS MADE OF TEN THOUSAND PEARLS AS A BRIDAL PRESENT

where on earth would I wear that

YOU COULD WEAR IT ON THE MOON

that seems impractical

how would i even breathe on the moon?

I WOULD BREATHE FOR YOU MY JANE

JANE WHERE HAVE YOU GONE

I AM BEREFT AND WITHOUT MY JANE I SHALL SINK INTO ROGUERY

i am with my cousins

WHICH COUSIN

IS IT THE SEXY ONE

Please don't try to talk to me again

IT IS YOUR SEXY COUSIN

"ST. JOHN"

WHAT KIND OF A NAME IS ST. JOHN

I'm not going to answer that

I KNEW IT

DID YOU LEAVE BECAUSE OF MY ATTIC WIFE

IS THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT

yes

absolutely

BECAUSE MY HOUSE IN FRANCE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE AN ATTIC

IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WERE WORRIED ABOUT

IT HAS A CELLAR THOUGH SO YOU KNOW

DON'T CROSS ME

HAHA I'M ONLY JOKING

I hope you're packed for India already

I'm not going to India with you, St. John

That's not what these TWO TICKETS TO INDIA say

You know I don't want to marry you

Why don't you marry Rosamond instead?

Take her with you

Marry her?

MARRY HER?

Don't be ridiculous, I'm attracted to her

That's disgusting

You are disgusting, Jane

So you're really not coming then

I'm really not

I would be an amazing husband

you know that?

I know

I taught you Hindi and everything

That's basically the same as getting engaged

for missionaries

And I really appreciate that

It will be terribly useful in my career as an English governess

See? That. There.

that is exactly the kind of tone I mean

One round of cholera in the tropics would sear that sarcasm right out of you

guess I really missed out

Guess so

1.

Jane poured molasses in her cousins' loafers.
She was just ten- burnt porridge for breakfast
and trips to the red-room for discipline, fast
spankings and slow recoveries. Bessie
made monkey faces behind Sarah Reed,
Jane's mean aunt, let Jane lick the cake batter
in secret. Then it was on to Lowood where
unflattering jumpers with little pockets
made her hips look like pudgy birds' nests.
She was the original Plain Jane,
Jane Doe, Calamity Jane, the best Jane
for the job. The Janes who came after her -
Girl Fridays, hash-slingers no longer lured
towards dull husbands - learned self-reliance from her.

2.

Rochester had a wife but who can blame him
for wanting more than mad sex, a diet
of mutton and morose chatter? The quiet
had driven Bertha nuts, Rochester brooding
in his poppy garden, needing soothing
girl-hands to heal him. Hadn't his French mistress
done enough damage? Jane forgave him for Blanche
though she no longer liked white or blanched peas
and she practiced vindictive stitchery
with the best. Meanwhile Grace Poole's love of gin
kept her from finking. If she'd begin
speaking of Bertha, she was sure to doze off.
If Mr. Briggs, that practioner of
law, hadn't suddenly spoken up, what then?