Miss Jennings's Companion

Miss Jennings's Companion

Miss Jennings, a nurse from the London Hospital who has served in South Africa and is now traveling to Montreal to attend a convalescent Canadian officer, boards a transatlantic Liner and is assigned a shared stateroom, Number 49, with a new passenger who comes aboard from the Cherbourg tender. That passenger, Sister Teresa, is registered as a refugee nun expelled from France under the new law and bound for a convent in Quebec. Sister Teresa is distressed at having to share quarters and unsuccessfully pleads with the First Officer and Purser for a room alone, then makes the same plea to Miss Jennings, who refuses to give up the arrangement but is kind and accommodating, letting Sister Teresa choose her berth and promising to protect her daily "Hour of Silence," during which the Sister says she must be alone to pray, and telling her she may dress in the dark and rise before dawn, as is apparently the custom of her order. Aboard the ship, Miss Jennings and Sister Teresa become a noticed pair at the Captain's table, their histories becoming known to the other passengers: Miss Jennings's hospital service in South Africa and London, and Sister Teresa's status as one of several nuns the Line has carried after expulsion from France. Also aboard, unbeknownst at first to have any bearing on the two women, is Hobson, a Scotland Yard detective who has been searching the ship for a wanted man and who disembarks on the Cherbourg tender without finding him, telling the First Officer he suspects the man may be in Paris. On deck, Miss Jennings and Sister Teresa discuss Hobson's work hunting criminals. Miss Jennings recounts having once nursed a wounded thief whom Hobson tracked down in her ward, a man who had stolen to help his mother and whom she had unsuccessfully pleaded to have given another chance; she says the law is "cruel" because it never makes allowances. Sister Teresa responds even more strongly, calling the law "brutal," and then tells a story of a man known to her order: a London theatre scene-painter whose wife, an actress, deserted him and their daughter; the daughter was raised and educated by Sister Teresa's convent and later visited her father at the theatre, where a scene-shifter who had quarreled with the painter grabbed the girl, was struck by the father in her defense, and fell to his death, telling a false story before he died that made the killing look premeditated. The father fled to Paris with his daughter, who was placed in the order's school at Rouen, while he took work, disguised, in a convent garden until a visitor recognized him despite his shaved beard, forcing him to flee again as a hunted fugitive. Sister Teresa asks Miss Jennings whether she would hand such a father over to the police, and Miss Jennings answers that she would not, and that she would even help him escape if he trusted her. Overcome, Sister Teresa goes off to observe her Hour of Silence, thanking God. Later, Sister Teresa insists Miss Jennings come to their stateroom at once, locks the door, and reveals that she is not a woman at all but the scene-painter himself, disguised as a nun, using face paint and a shaved, cropped head to pass unnoticed, and having obtained a genuine letter of introduction from a Mother Superior in Paris to one in Quebec. He begs Miss Jennings not to expose him, offering to sleep on the floor, and pleads for the chance to be reunited with his daughter and to build a hidden life with her in America. Miss Jennings, feeling deceived and violated in her privacy, moves to report him, but is interrupted by the First Officer, who summons her urgently to treat an emigrant injured in a fall down the forecastle hatch. For the remainder of the crossing, Miss Jennings stays in the steerage tending the injured emigrant, sending only for her belongings and never returning to spend a night in Number 49 or seeing her companion again during the voyage. The fugitive, left alone, becomes increasingly anxious, listening for her footsteps, uncertain whether she means to betray him to the First Officer, to Hobson, or to the authorities upon arrival in New York, and increasingly suspects that her avoidance of him signals she is only waiting until they reach the dock to expose him without implicating herself in having shared his stateroom. As the ship arrives in New York, another plainclothes detective from the Central Office, acting on a cable from Hobson, approaches Miss Jennings on deck, shows his badge, and asks whether she noticed any man aboard matching a description of the fugitive he seeks, mentioning that the Purser told him she had helped in the steerage. Miss Jennings replies that she was too occupied with her steerage patient to notice anyone particular among the first-class passengers, and states that the only person she really spoke with was her dear Sister Teresa, who shared her stateroom, whom she describes as one of the nuns driven out of France and now traveling to a convent in Quebec, adding that she herself will accompany her as far as Montreal. The text ends at this point, with Miss Jennings's answer to the detective left as the final line.

By Francis Hopkinson Smith · First published 1892 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Drama · 5,546 words

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The big Liner slowed down and dropped anchor inside the Breakwater. Sweeping toward her, pushing the white foam in long lines from her bow, her flag of black smoke trailing behind, came the company's tender -- out from Cherbourg with passengers.

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Miss Jennings's Companion is listed on Textopian as a novel by Francis Hopkinson Smith, dated 1892 CE.

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romance · historical fiction · 19th century · American literature · social commentary · character development · female protagonist · friendship · family dynamics · society · love story · adventure

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