IN the summer of 1874 I was in Liverpool,
whither I had gone on business for the mercantile house of Bronson &
Jarrett, New York. I am William
Jarrett; my partner was Zenas Bronson.
The firm failed last year, and unable to endure the fall from affluence
to poverty he died.
Having finished my business, and feeling the lassitude and exhaustion incident
to its dispatch, I felt that a protracted sea voyage would be both agreeable
and beneficial, so instead of embarking
for my return on one of the many fine passenger steamers I booked for New
York on the sailing vessel Morrow, upon
which I had shipped a large and
valuable invoice of the goods I had bought. The Morrow was an English ship
with, of course, but little accommodation for
passengers, of whom there were
only myself, a young woman and her servant, who was a middle-aged negress.
I thought it singular that a travelling English girl
should be so attended, but she
afterward explained to me that the woman had been left with her family
by a man and his wife from South Carolina, both of whom
had died on the same day at the
house of the young lady's father in Devonshire-a circumstance in itself
sufficiently uncommon to remain rather distinctly in my
memory, even had it not afterward
transpired in conversation with the young lady that the name of the man
was William Jarrett, the same as my own. I knew that
a branch of my family had settled
in South Carolina, but of them and their history I was ignorant.
The Morrow sailed from the mouth of the Mersey on the 15th of June, and
for several weeks we had fair breezes and unclouded skies. The skipper,
an
admirable seaman but nothing more,
favoured us with very little of his society, except at his table; and the
young woman, Miss Janette Harford, and I became
very well acquainted. We were,
in truth, nearly always together, and being of an introspective turn of
mind I often endeavoured to analyse and define the novel
feeling with which she inspired
me-a secret, subtle, but powerful attraction which constantly impelled
me to seek her; but the attempt was hopeless. I could only
be sure that at least it was not
love. Having assured myself of this and being certain that she was quite
as whole-hearted, I ventured one evening (I remember it
was on the 3rd of July) as we sat
on deck to ask her, laughingly, if she could assist me to resolve my psychological
doubt.
For a moment she was silent, with averted face, and I began to fear I had
been extremely rude and indelicate; then she fixed her eyes gravely on
my own.
In an instant my mind was dominated
by as strange a fancy as ever entered human consciousness It seemed as
if she were looking at me, not with, but through,
those eyes-from an immeasurable
distance behind them-and that a number of other persons, men, women and
children, upon whose faces I caught strangely
familiar evanescent expressions,
clustered about her, struggling with gentle eagerness to look at me through
the same orbs. Ship, ocean, sky-all had vanished. I
was conscious of nothing but the
figures in this extraordinary and fantastic scene. Then all at once darkness
fell upon me, and anon from out of it, as to one who
grows accustomed by degrees to
a dimmer light, my former surroundings of deck and mast and cordage slowly
resolved themselves. Miss Harford had closed her
eyes and was leaning back in her
chair, apparently asleep, the book she had been reading open in her lap.
Impelled by surely I cannot say what motive, I glanced
at the top of the page; it was
a copy of that rare and curious work, Denneker's Meditations, and the lady's
index finger rested on this passage:
“To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the body
for a season; for, as concerning rills which would flow across each other
the
weaker is borne along by the stronger,
so there be certain of kin whose paths intersecting, their souls do bear
company, the while their bodies go foreappointed
ways, unknowing.”
Miss Harford arose, shuddering; the sun had sunk below the horizon, but
it was not cold. There was not a breath of wind; there were no clouds in
the sky,
yet not a star was visible. A hurried
tramping sounded on the deck; the captain, summoned from below, joined
the first officer, who stood looking at the
barometer. “Good God!” I heard
him exclaim.
An hour later the form of Janette Harford, invisible in the darkness and
spray, was torn from my grasp by the cruel vortex of the sinking ship,
and I fainted
in the cordage of the floating
mast to which I had lashed myself.
It was by lamplight that I awoke. I lay in a berth amid the familiar surroundings
of the state-room of a steamer. On a couch opposite sat a man, half
undressed for bed, reading a book.
I recognized the face of my friend Gordon Doyle, whom I had met in Liverpool
on the day of my embarkation, when he was
himself about to sail on the steamer
City of Prague, on which he had urged me to accompany him.
After some moments I now spoke his name. He simply said, “Well,” and turned
a leaf in his book without removing his eyes from the page.
“Doyle,” I repeated, “did they save her?”
He now deigned to look at me and smiled as if amused. He evidently thought
me but half awake.
“Her? Whom do you mean?”
“Janette Harford.”
His amusement turned to amazement; he stared at me fixedly, saying nothing.
“You will tell me after awhile,” I continued; “I suppose you will tell
me after awhile.”
A moment later I asked: “What ship is this?” Doyle stared again. “The steamer
City of Prague, bound from Liverpool to New York, three weeks out with
a broken shaft. Principal passenger,
Mr. Gordo n Doyle; ditto lunatic, Mr. William Jarrett. These two distinguished
travellers embarked together, but they are
about to part, it being the resolute
intention of the former to pitch the latter overboard.”
I sat bolt upright. “Do you mean to say that I have been for three weeks
a passenger on this steamer?”
“Yes, pretty nearly; this is the 3rd of July.”
“Have I been ill?”
“Right as a trivet all the time, and punctual at your meals.”
“My God! Doyle, there is some mystery here; do have the goodness to be
serious. Was I not rescued from the wreck of the ship Morrow?”
Doyle changed colour, and approaching me, laid his fingers on my wrist.
A moment later, “What do you know of Janette Harford?” he asked very calmly.
“First tell me what you know of her?”
Mr. Doyle gazed at me for some moments as if thinking what to do, then
seating himself again on the couch, said:
“Why should I not? I am engaged to marry Janette Harford, whom I met a
year ago in London. Her family, one of the wealthiest in Devonshire, cut
up
rough about it, and we eloped-are
eloping rather, for on the day that you and I walked to the landing stage
to go aboard this steamer she and her faithful servant,
a negress, passed us, driving to
the ship Morrow. She would not consent to go in the same vessel with me,
and it had been deemed best that she take a sailing
vessel in order to avoid observation
and lessen the risk of detection. I am now alarmed lest this cursed breaking
of our machinery may detain us so long that the
Morrow will get to New York before
us, and the poor girl will not know where to go.”
I lay still in my berth-so still I hardly breathed. But the subject was
evidently not displeasing to Doyle, and after a short pause he resumed:
“By the way, she is only an adopted daughter of the Harfords. Her mother
was killed at their place by being thrown from a horse while hunting, and
her
father, mad with grief, made away
with himself the same day. No one ever claimed the child, and after a reasonable
time they adopted her. She has grown up in
the belief that she is their daughter.”
“Doyle, what book are you reading?”
“Oh, it's called Denneker's Meditations. It's a rum lot, Janette gave it
to me; she happened to have two copies. Want to see it?”
He tossed me the volume, which opened as it fell. On one of the exposed
pages was a marked passage:
“To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the body
for a season; for, as concerning rills which would flow across each other
the
weaker is borne along by the stronger,
so there be certain of kin whose paths intersecting, their souls do bear
company, the while their bodies go foreappointed
ways, unknowing.”
“She had-she has-a singular taste in reading,” I managed to say, mastering
my agitation.
“Yes. And now perhaps you will have the kindness to explain how you knew
her name and that of the ship she sailed in.”
“You talked of her in your sleep,” I said.
A week later we were towed into the port of New York. But the Morrow was
never heard from.
The End
