Fin de seicle
Jane Rivers was alone again. The Trinidad Ginger painting was finished. She would post it to her New York publisher and the London Botany and Orchid Clubs in the morning. A small fortune sat in the bank of England under her name and her name alone from her many triumphs as an artist. A book was being compiled titled "The Flora and Fauna of Spanish Town" illustrated by the "Celebrated Mrs. Reverend St. John Rivers". Her London and New York agents were enthusiastic about the proofs that were ready to be admitted to the press. All that was needed was the last painting of the ginger.
Would this book even be available in that place called Wisconsin? She heard that the land was inhabited by wild Indians, impoverished ex-patriot Cornish miners, lumberjacks and recent immigrants from Norway. Crispin told her that Wisconsin, in many ways, resembled England with green rolling hills, gentle forests and green meadows. The soil was rich, the large cities like Milwaukee had some culture and even had creditable universites. Helen and her husband homesteaded a farm west of the capital, Madison and purchased other valuable lands. Their children were prospering. It was only that the winters were harsher and the summers were more hot and humid than England. To Jane, it more accurately described Russia. She looked at the place called "Wisconsin" in the atlas and on the globe in the mission school room.
Helen may have well emigrated to the moon and married the man in the moon. All letters Jane sent to her over the many years were either returned or passed into oblivion. Helen refused to see Crispin when he traveled to Wisconsin ten years before. Now, Helen was gone from this earth, like James, little Edward and the two babies in the Thornfield Churchyard. And, her only love...
Helen's anger at her mother's remarriage took her far away. And now, a baby named Erik?
"Why Jane, we have towheaded Norseman ! A little Viking!" Jane froze, started by the voice. HE was talking to her again. She was not surprised, upon turning around, to see Edward sitting at his ease, wearing an old fashioned cravat with an ebony walking stick across his knee. But, he had both eyes, and both hands! How could this be? The special smile, the one just for her, spread from Edward's mouth to the eyes, just as it did all those years ago at Thornfield Hall.
"Oh Edward, you must know that you are dreadfully out of fashion. I could no more wear a leghorn bonnet than you can parade in that cravat." Jane turned again, and the chair was empty.
He was gone. Jane was ever one to busy herself and think in the present. "It is" she sighed. "Ah Edward, it is." She spoke to the empty room.
Jane walked slowly to a cupboard and took out an old leather portfolio. This was a collection so very different from the neatly outlined flowers so prized by the London Botany clubs. The oils and watercolor depicted a sea and a beach of many colors, made wild by an oncoming storm. The water was every shade of green and blue and black with the suggestion of an eye in the darkening clouds. Jane looked at the sky with her critical artist's eye. It needed revising---somehow the colors were just not LURID enough to capture the storms she and Edward watched on Minorca so many years ago.
"Yes, I do have something to do." Said Jane to herself and to the room.
Later in the evening, she applied a fixative to the new colors. On the back of the painting she wrote, "To Erik, from his oldest granny". Jane stepped back and viewed her efforts with satisfaction. "There, this will do nicely" she said.
"Ever my practical little witch, are you not." Oh God, that voice, HE was here again. Did it mean that they would be together again soon?
"You really must not surprise me in that way, Edward." She was sharp, but her voice was now that of a young woman, trying to be a proper young wife as she smothered laughter. "I am merely trying to provide some sort of a legacy to our great-grandchild."
The last thing she heard was his booming laughter as Edward reached out with his restored hand and said, "Let's go home, Janet."