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Jane was about to place her suitcase in the back seat of the car, but she found it occupied by a large, black and white dog, who observed her with a panting smile. Moments later, the trunk popped open, and she put her luggage there instead. She slammed the trunk shut and rounded back to the passenger’s seat door. She entered and was immediately presented with a hand to shake, and she disentangled her thumb from the sleeve of her sweater to shake it.
“You’re Jane Eyre,” the driver observed. “My name is Mr. Edward Rochester.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jane said, a little taken aback by his odd formality.
The beast of a dog in the back seat poked his nose between them and set his wide brown eyes pleadingly on Jane, who laughed and petted him.
“This is Pilot, my constant companion.”
“Hey there, Pilot,” Jane cooed.
Mr. Edward Rochester started up the car and they were off—the car accelerated at an alarming rate.
“So, Jane Eyre,” he said, taking a swift left turn with one hand on the steering wheel, “tell me about yourself.”
Jane was still trying to accustom herself to Mr. Edward Rochester’s dubious driving abilities combined with his love of high speeds and sharp turns, so she took a moment to respond, and then only stupidly repeated him. “About m-myself?”
“Yes, your life’s ambition, the deepest, most desperate desires of your heart…”
Jane turned a slightly terrified eye toward Rochester (over Pilot’s protruding nose and lolling tongue), who was taking a little too much time to look at her for her liking, both because he had an unnerving stare, and because it meant he wasn’t looking at the road.
“…or where you went to school. I’m not picky.”
“Oh… I go to UBC,” she said, “for nursing—”
“—with an emphasis on childhood development, I know. I meant before that.”
“I, um…” Another fear was starting to take over from her immediate fear of crashing into a tree. “I went to… a private school.”
“Private school? Vague. Very vague. That tells me nothing.” He took a right turn so severe that Jane knocked heads with Pilot, who in turn fell forward with a yelp, his forelegs slipping from the edge of the back seat. “What school was it?” he asked mildly, completely unfazed by the turn.
“I went to Lowood School for Girls,” she answered, cringing inwardly as she waited for the inevitable reaction.
It came.
“Isn’t that—?”
“The school that was taken over by the government because of the abusive conditions, yes.”
“It was run by some… religious nutcase.”
“Not all religious people are nutcases,” she countered, then bit her bottom lip, immediately regretting her words, which had been the result of a knee-jerk reaction.
“You’re religious, then?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Not religious? You give an oddly impassioned defense of religion for someone who doesn’t practice it.”
Jane’s own childhood faith, such as it was, could not survive the harsh environment of Lowood, but Jane’s defense of religion was not for herself. It was in memory of Helen, her closest friend from that school, who had ultimately died because of the conditions there, whom Jane remembered for her ability to somehow face the reality of her own faith being used as a weapon against her with such grace and serene unconcern, always forgiving though no forgiveness was offered her, loving though all she received was cold indifference. Jane never understood Helen’s faith, but she admired it.
After the government intervened, and Helen’s death was discovered, she was, for a time, used as a rallying cry against religion, proof that belief in a higher power killed people. It had made Jane so angry she wanted to scream.
But Helen would have forgiven them, and that just made Jane feel worse.
She didn’t feel inclined to tell all of this to Mr. Edward Rochester, her acquaintance of mere minutes, so she merely said, “I have my reasons.”
“Ah, I see that further inquiry will not be fruitful.”
“An astute observation,” she replied sarcastically.
Rochester laughed, fixing his eyes upon Jane again. She was about to remind him to keep his eyes on the road when he hit a patch of road slick with the light rain that had begun to fall. They spun. The world outside was a blur of dark blues and greens—Jane screamed, Rochester yelled, Pilot howled—there was a momentary weightlessness, then a jarring impact from below, then sudden stillness.
“Damn it,” Rochester cursed. “God Damn it.”
Breathing heavily, Jane surveyed her surroundings. They were a ditch a foot or two lower than the road—the car must have flown over the edge of it and landed here. She felt shaken up—her heart was fluttering in her chest, and her neck had been jerked around pretty violently, and she’d be feeling that later—but for the most part, she believed she was unharmed, and was able to give a positive answer when Rochester paused from cursing everything from the car to the rain for long enough to ask after her well-being.
He reached a hand back to Pilot, who was huddled in the corner of the back seat, still whimpering. The dog gave a sudden yelp and pulled his paw back. Rochester unfastened his seat belt and exited the car, coming back in through the back door, crawling toward the injured dog.
“Jane, I realize that you are no veterinary, but it seems I am in need of your assistance.”
She exited the car herself, noting as she did so that the wheels of the car had deflated from the impact, and the car was resting on bent rims. The rain drifted over her in a fine mist. She opened the back door on her side, and crouched beside Pilot, who stared up at her through wide, fearful eyes while emitting constant, breathy whimpers, his ears pressed flat against his head.
She stroked him reassuringly around his head and ears and could feel him trembling. Her hand traveled gently down to the injured foot. Pilot’s whimpering grew louder, and voiced itself in a strangled yelp as she neared the injury.
“Shh, shh—it’s okay,” she murmured, “I just need to see what’s wrong with you.” She was finally able to feel it. “It’s a pretty bad sprain. We should get him to the vet. Do you have a phone on you?”
“No, don’t you?”
“I, um… I seem to have left it on the bus.” She would be panicking right now, but she seemed to have reached her quota for the day. “What should we do?”
“As it happens, our accident has occurred in my own front yard. There,” He pointed. “You can see the light from my windows. Can he be moved?”
Jane sighed. “Well, it will be better than leaving him out here alone.”
He nodded and rounded the back of the car to her side, carefully scooping the dog up in his arms. She accompanied him back to his house.
So this is Thornfield Hall, Jane mused, observing the looming edifice. It was impossible to distinguish any details beyond the bright glow of the windows against the dark background of the building itself, but she could see enough to know that it was grand and stately and had high, arched Gothic windows. The romance novel fanatic in her swooned a little.
“I suppose I should be thanking you,” Rochester said, breaking the silence as they walked.
“Thanking me?”
“Yes. Thanking you. I never would have worn a seat belt if I hadn’t been self-conscious of the fact that I would be in the presence of a certified nurse, who would inevitably look down on me if I didn’t take proper safety precautions.”
“I don’t look down on you, but I am glad you wore a seat belt.”
“It seems I owe you my life. You’re my guardian angel, my agnostic guardian angel. Is that possible?”
“I don’t know?” she said with a bewildered laugh.
“It fits you, at any rate. You’re a contradiction in terms—a non-believer who defends belief, a certified nurse who has decided not to work in nursing.”
“You make me sound a lot more interesting than I am,” she said.
“I doubt it. Ah, here we are. Would you mind? I believe it is unlocked.” He jerked his head toward the door. She opened it and entered after him and the injured Pilot into her new life.