‘Oh, my child! my child!’ she cried, and went with a blind step into the parlour and sank into a chair, weeping bitterly. Ay, it is on such occasions as this that death is most terribly felt; when you go forth with someone beloved by you and return alone, then is the house desolate and every familiar object a pang and every sound will make you start as though the dear one were at hand and about to enter, and whatever your gaze rests on bristles with bitter-sweet memories. I knelt beside Mrs. Lee; the old servant stood in the doorway crying and looking at her mistress, but not offering to say a word of comfort—perhaps because of a little natural feeling of jealousy, for I cannot be certain that Mrs. Lee had made any reference to me in her letter, beyond saying that she was bringing a friend home with her. The poor old woman in the doorway might suppose, from my familiar manner of kneeling and speaking to Mrs. Lee and holding her hand and soothing her, that her mistress had adopted me as a daughter in the place of Alice.
The room that Alice had occupied was to be mine. The old housekeeper, whose name was Sarah, conducted me to it at the request of Mrs. Lee, and left me to return to her mistress, who would now explain all about me and win the old thing’s sympathy for me.
I stood in the room that had been Alice Lee’s and looked around. It was sacred ground to me—consecrated by love, death, and memory. Often had she spoken of this little room, of the view from the window, of the weeks during which she would lie ill in yonder bed, and she seemed to stand before me as I gazed; I saw her sweet, pale, wasted face, her gentle, touching, prayerful eyes, and the last smile she had given me—a smile that had lain like God’s glory upon her countenance as she put her hand into her mother’s and turned her face to the ship’s side. Often to amuse me she had, girl-like, spoken of her little possessions, and many of them I now saw and remembered as though I had seen them before. There was a little white marble cross; there was her Bible, lying at the foot of the steps of the cross; there were pencil-sketches and water-colours by her own hand, all dealing with subjects which showed that her heart was for ever with her God. Many more trifles of decoration could I name, such things as a sweet young soul, a tender girl, would love to collect and cherish as embellishments for her bedroom.
I stepped to the window, that stood wide open, and I looked forth. The prospect was a fair English scene, clothed just now with summer evening beauty. For Jesmond, where Mrs. Lee’s house was situated, is universally considered the prettiest part of the neighbourhood of Newcastle-on-Tyne. The effect largely lies in contrast; for you come out of Newcastle, whose atmosphere is tinged with smoke and often poisonous with the fumes of the chemical works—you come from that great noisy town, or city as it now is, with its hard stony streets over which every vehicle roars, with its crowds upon the pavements, its horned cattle newly arrived from some Scandinavian port and thrashed bellowing through the throng, its tumult of newspaper urchins, its distracting cry of hawkers, its dark tide of Tyne smearing as though the mud of the banks through which it flows were tar—from all this you come into a country of gentle and sometimes of romantic beauty when you arrive at Jesmond, whose Dene, as it is called, lives in the memory of those who view it as one of the sweetest pictures that our garden-land of England has to offer.
For some days we lived very retired. Nobody appeared to know that Mrs. Lee had returned, and this she had provided for by bidding the old housekeeper Sarah and the other servants hold their peace. She desired time to battle with the deep grief which visited her with the sight of the home in which she was now to live childless as she had before lived a widow; and when at last we made an excursion our first walk was to Jesmond cemetery, there to view the grave of Alice’s twin sister.
The mother wept as she looked upon the grave. It had been carefully tended during her absence; it was rich with flowers, and the cross at the head of it was as white as the foam of the sea, and the gilt letters upon it burned in the sun. The mother wept, for her thoughts were with that other blessed child whose grave was the mighty deep.
‘Oh,’ she cried to me, ‘if I could but have laid my darling by the side of her sister here!’
As we returned home from this visit to the cemetery Mrs. Lee met the wife of the clergyman of the parish church, and after that there were many callers—for it seemed that the Lees had lived for the greater part of their lives at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and had a number of friends in the district. But she denied herself to most of the visitors; she received but a few and they had been Alice’s most valued friends.
Five days had not passed since our arrival at Newcastle when the postman brought a newspaper addressed to Mrs. Lee. The wrapper was initialled ‘F. L.,’ and when she opened the paper her eye lighted upon a paragraph with a cross of red ink against it, under which were the initials ‘F. L.,’ so we might be sure that this newspaper had been sent to us by Captain Frederick Ladmore. The newspaper was the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, and the paragraph indicated by the red mark was buried in a half column of shipping intelligence. It ran thus:—
‘The ship Deal Castle, Ladmore, arrived in the Thames on ——. Her master reports that on such and such a date, when in latitude — N. and longitude — W., she was in collision with the French brig Notre Dame de Boulogne. The night was dark and squally, and a moderate sea was running. The Deal Castle hove to within a mile of the vessel she had run into and for some time continued to burn flares and to send up rockets. At daybreak the French brig was found to be still afloat, and a boat was sent in charge of the third officer of the Deal Castle, who discovered that all hands of the Frenchman had left the brig, leaving behind them a woman who was imprisoned in her berth owing to a cask having been dislodged and rolled against the door. When this woman was brought aboard the Deal Castle she was found to be without memory, and could give no further account of herself than saying that she had been fallen in with by the French brig, in an insensible condition, drifting about in a boat. It is supposed that she is the survivor of a wreck. She was landed in London, and those interested may obtain her present address on application to Messrs ——, etc.’