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Miss Jennings’s Companion
by
“Can I help you?” asked the First Officer–everybody is ready to help a Sister, no matter what his rank or how pressing his duties.
“Yes, please–I want to know where my room is. It is Number 49, so my ticket says.”
Here the Purser came up–he, too, would help a Sister.
“Sister Teresa, is it not–from the Convent of the Sacred Heart? Yes, we knew you would get on at Cherbourg. You are on the lower deck in the same stateroom with Miss Jennings. Steward–take the Sister to–“
“With whom?” she cried, with a look of blank amazement “But I thought I was alone! They told me so at the office. Oh, I cannot share my room with anybody. Please let–“
“Yes, but we had to double up. We would willingly give you a room alone, but there isn’t an empty berth on board.” He was telling the truth and showed it in his voice.
“But I have the money to pay for a whole room. I would have paid for it at the office in Paris, but they told me it was not necessary.”
“I know, Sister, and I’m very sorry, but it can’t be helped now. Steward, take Sister Teresa to Number 49.” This last came as an order, and ended the discussion.
When the Steward pushed open the door Miss Jennings was sitting on the sofa berth reading, a long gray cloak about her shoulders. She had a quiet, calm face and steady eyes framed in gold spectacles. She looked to be a woman of fifty who had seen life and understood it.
“The officer says I am to share your room,” began Sister Teresa in a trembling voice. “Don’t think me rude, please, but I don’t want to share your room. I want to be alone, and so do you. Can’t you help me?”
“But I don’t mind it, and you won’t after you get used to it.” The voice was poised and well modulated–evidently a woman without nerves–a direct, masterful sort of woman, who looked you straight in the eyes, was without guile, hated a lie and believed in human nature. “And we ought to get on together,” she continued simply, as if it were a matter of course. “You are a Sister, and from one of the French institutions–I recognize your dress. I’m a nurse from the London Hospital. The First Officer told me you had the other berth and I was looking for you aboard the Cherbourg tender, but I couldn’t see you for the smoke, you were so far below me. We’ll get on together, never fear. Which bed will you have–this one or the one curtained off?”
“Oh, do you take the one curtained off,” she answered in a hopeless tone, as if further resistance was useless. “The sofa is easier perhaps for me, for I always undress in the dark.”
“No, turn on the light. It won’t wake me–I’m used to sleeping anywhere–sometimes bolt upright in my chair with my hand on my patient.”
“But it is one of the rules of our order to dress and undress in the dark,” the Sister pleaded; “candles are luxuries only used for the sick, and so we do without them.”
“All right–just as you say,” rejoined Miss Jennings cheerily. “My only desire was to make you comfortable.”
That night at dinner Sister Teresa and Nurse Jennings found themselves seated next to each other, the Chief Steward, who had special orders from the First Officer to show Miss Jennings and her companion every courtesy, having conducted them to their seats.
Before the repast was half over, the two had attracted the attention of all about them. What was particularly noticed was the abstemious self-denying life of the Sister so plainly shown in the lines of her grave, almost hard, face, framed close in the tight bands of white linen concealing every vestige of her hair, the whole in strong contrast to the kind, sympathetic face of the Nurse, whose soft gray locks hung loosely about her temples. Their history, gleaned at the First Officer’s table had also become public property. Nurse Jennings had served two years in South Africa, where she had charge of a ward in one of the largest field hospitals outside of Pretoria; on her return to England, she had been placed over an important case in one of the London hospitals–that of a gallant Canadian officer who had been shipped home convalescent, and who had now sent for her to come to him in Montreal. The good Sister was one of those unfortunate women who had been expelled from France under the new law, and who was now on her way to Quebec, there to take up her life-work again. This had been the fifth refugee, the officer added, whom the Line had cared for.