Can Such Things Be? By Ambrose Bierce
A PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIPWRECK
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 traveling 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,
favored 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 endeavored to analyze
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 3d 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 fore-appointed 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 stateroom 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 a while,” I continued;
“I suppose you will tell me after a while.”
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. Gordon Doyle; ditto lunatic, Mr.
William Jarrett. These two distinguished travelers 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 3d 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 color, 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 fore-appointed 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.
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