"I wish you'd seen it," said Mercy wistfully. "I lived there for six years, and I still write to Dr. and Mrs. Harrison and to Sister Grace."
"Their names are well known, though I have not had the good fortune to meet them personally," answered Dr. Severn, gazing steadily at Mercy with a strange look in his blue eyes. "Can you remember much of your life in China?"
"Not a great deal. I was only seven when I left and there has been nobody to talk to me about it and remind me. I haven't forgotten the narrow streets and the crowds of people in strange dresses who used to be walking about in them, nor our garden at the hospital with the camellias, and the high wall round it. I remember the little mission church, too, where we had service on Sundays. It was all in Chinese, but I could speak it then quite easily. I couldn't understand a single word now."
"Do you know Chinese, Doctor?" asked Linda.
"Very well," replied Dr. Severn, "though it took me many years of hard study to learn it. It's the most difficult language in the world."
"Worse than French?"
"Fifty times worse!"
"I shouldn't think it was worth the trouble."
"There were reasons which made me consider it worth any amount of trouble. I wished to talk to the people, and as they couldn't understand my speech I was forced to learn theirs."
"Were they pleased?"
"Some of them were grateful, some of them didn't care, and some were very angry with me. I was like the man who sowed the seed. I had to fling it everywhere, no matter what ground it fell on."
"And can you write Chinese characters too?" asked Marian.
"A little, but not so well as I can talk. Here comes your drawing teacher. I'm afraid he'll think I'm encouraging you to be idle.
Goodbye for the present! You may very likely see me again before the day is over."
"I wonder what Dr. Severn talked to the people about in China!" said Sylvia, as she watched his retreating figure walking briskly away down the road. "It must have been something very important to make him take so much trouble."
"I think I can guess," said Mercy softly, as she picked up her half-finished sketch and ran back to her easel in time for the master's criticism.
CHAPTER XVIII
Dr. Severn Explains
Linda and Sylvia had been much delighted at their unexpected meeting with the owner of Dale Side, and could talk of nothing else during tea. You may judge, therefore, Sylvia's astonishment and interest when, on passing the drawing-room shortly before preparation hour, she caught a glimpse of Dr. Severn seated there engaged in earnest conversation with Miss Kaye. The drawing-room was forbidden ground to the girls, so, after one hasty glance, Sylvia was on the point of hurrying away, and had already reached the bottom of the stairs when Miss Kaye called to her.
"Come in, my dear," said the mistress, as Sylvia timidly presented herself, not certain whether she had done anything wrong or not, "come in, and close the door after you."
Dr. Severn smiled and held out his hand, and Sylvia went and stood by his side, feeling sure now that whatever was the matter she was not going to be scolded.
"It was Sylvia and not Linda who spoke of it?" enquired Miss Kaye; "I believe you said Sylvia?"
"I did," replied Dr. Severn. "She mentioned that her schoolfellow had shown it to her. It may, of course, be merely a coincidence, but it seems worth investigating, and I should greatly like to see it."
"What are they talking about?" Sylvia wondered, glancing from one to another to try and read the answer in their faces. She could not understand the conversation at all, nor connect it with anything that had occurred. Miss Kaye, however, soon enlightened her.
"You told Dr. Severn, Sylvia, that Mercy Ingledew had shown you a carved ivory locket which was tied round her neck when she was found at the hospital in China. I was not aware that Mercy possessed it, and I have never seen it myself. Can you describe it?"
"It was just the same as the one Dr. Severn has," answered Sylvia. "It was seeing his that made me think of Mercy's. They are both exactly alike."
"You are absolutely sure?"
"Quite! It was small and beautifully carved, with little leaves round the edge and funny letters in the middle. I thought it must be meant for a locket, only it won't open."
"As you say, it is certainly a remarkable coincidence," said Miss Kaye, turning to Dr. Severn. "I am very anxious not to distress the poor girl needlessly, but I think we are justified in looking into the matter. Sylvia, will you go and find Mercy, and tell her quietly that I wish to speak to her in the drawing-room, and ask her to bring this locket with her. Do not try to explain anything, and do not let any of the other girls hear you. I would rather they did not know about it."
Sylvia left the room in a whirl of excitement. Something was going to happen. Of that she was sure. Did Dr. Severn, who had been in China himself, know anything about Mercy's relations? The idea was so overwhelming and so delightful that it almost took her breath away.
Ever since she had first heard Mercy's story she had been hoping that some clue might be found to her parentage, and that at last they were on a right track seemed absolutely too good to be true. She found her friend reading in the garden, and was able to give her message as briefly and quietly as Miss Kaye had desired. Mercy rose at once, and, asking no questions, went to her bedroom to fetch the locket, then, rejoining Sylvia, who had waited for her at the foot of the stairs, she took the child's hand and walked into the drawing-room. It was a moment of intense anxiety for all.
"Mercy dear," began Miss Kaye, after a moment's pause, as if she hardly knew how to open the subject, "we had agreed that it was wiser not to speak about the events which occurred in the first year of your life, but I am going to break through my rule to-day. Dr. Severn, whom you met this afternoon, believes that he can throw some light upon your early history, and even solve the mystery of your birth. From what he tells me a very strange chain of circumstances has led him to make enquiries, and it seems more than probable that you may learn something at last. Try and calm yourself, my dear child, and let Dr.
Severn look at the locket which you have brought."
Poor Mercy was trembling with agitation. Was her long-deferred hope at length to be realized? Ever since she had been old enough to notice the difference between herself and other girls, she had looked forward to this, at first with eager expectation, but latterly as a dream never likely to be fulfilled and only leading to perpetual disappointment. All the cherished castles in the air which she had striven so bravely to put away from her, all the longing and yearning which she had so often felt for those unknown parents of her infancy, all the grief, the solitude, and the shrinking sense of her lonely position rose up in renewed force as, with shaking fingers, she laid her Chinese charm in the doctor's outstretched hand.
Dr. Severn had removed his own locket from his watch chain, and he now placed the two side by side on the table.
"You observe, Miss Kaye," he said, "that they are so exactly alike that it would be impossible to tell them apart, but when they are together you may notice that there is a slight difference in the characters which form the centre. To one unacquainted with Chinese it is perhaps hardly perceptible, but if you had any knowledge of the written language it could not fail to strike you. This, however, is only one of the minor points. I have still to make the great test."
He took his own locket in his hand and pressed a secret spring. It opened, disclosing inside a small coloured photograph of a lady with a sweet face and fair hair, at which he asked both Miss Kaye and Mercy to look carefully. He then lifted the other locket from the table.
"If, as I believe, this is the true duplicate," he said, "the spring will be here, and it will open like its fellow."
The three spectators held their breath. Sylvia was white as a ghost, and Miss Kaye put her arm round Mercy to prevent her from falling. One swift pressure of the doctor's thumb, and the charm had flown open, revealing an exact facsimile of the former portrait. Dr. Severn placed the pair side by side again upon the table and turned to Mercy.
"You did not know its secret?" he asked. "How could you when there was no one to show you the tiny catch? You have seen that the pictures in the two lockets are of the same person? In mine it is of my beloved wife, and in yours it is the portrait of your mother. Yes, Mercy, you are indeed my daughter, given back, as it seems to me, from the dead, and after all these years of our separation I claim you thus through the memory of one by whom we were both held equally dear!"
"So you're really Dr. Severn's own daughter! It's almost too nice to believe!" exclaimed Sylvia a few minutes later, when Mercy, with an April face, half-smiles and half-tears, kissed her and thanked her for her share in bringing about her new-found happiness.
"It is true nevertheless," replied Dr. Severn. "The locket has removed every shadow of doubt. There is still, however, a great deal to be explained, and with Miss Kaye's permission I will relate both how I lost my child and why I had apparently made no effort to recover her.
It is a long story, but for a full understanding of the facts of the case it is necessary for me to begin at the beginning.
"It is now more than twenty years ago that, having obtained my degree as a doctor of medicine, and held appointments at various hospitals in London and the provinces, I determined to devote myself to the mission field, and sailed for China. I was appointed head of the medical mission at Tsi-chin in the canton of Szu-chwan, and on arrival there I bade goodbye to Western civilization. In those days the people of China were even more ignorant and fanatical than they are now. The prejudice against Europeans was intense, and for a long time our best efforts seemed thrown away. I should have been very disappointed and down-hearted if it had not been for the cheery hopeful courage of my wife, who had given up an easy life in England to help the cause, and whose work among the Chinese women was the beginning of the ultimate success which attended our mission.
"The very first to become a Christian was a woman named Lao-ya, and through her we found access to numerous houses, the doors of which had been formerly closed against us. Our small church began to grow. Many who came to the hospital as patients would listen to our story of the Great Physician, and tell it again in their own homes.
"I wish I could describe to you our life in that strange inland Chinese city. We were hundreds of miles from Hong-Kong, which was the nearest British settlement, and travelling was so difficult and so slow that it took many weeks to reach the coast, and was both fatiguing and dangerous. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could in the house, half-Chinese, half-European, which had been built under my directions, and we tried to grow English seeds in our garden to remind us of the home we had left.
"Three children were born to us, a boy named Edmund, and twin girls whom we christened Mary and Una, and, though we were so far away from our own native land, we managed to be a very happy little household.
The woman Lao-ya was our nurse, and as devoted to the babies as if they had been her own. She would never leave them for an instant, and no trouble seemed too great for her to take on their behalf.
"Among the more earnest members of our church was a man called Kan-Sou, who was a very clever carver of ivories, an art in which the Chinese excel. I had been able to cure his wife of a painful disease, and he was anxious to give me a present of some of his own work. One day, therefore, he brought me two small lockets which he had made specially for my two little girls. The exquisite threefold tracery of the border was intended, so he said, as a symbol of the doctrine of the Trinity; on one side was the Chinese equivalent for 'Good Luck', and on the other, also in Chinese characters, the names Mary and Una.
He had contrived a secret spring by which the lockets would open, and had carved inside the date of the children's baptism, the entire Western part of the idea being copied from a trinket we possessed in the house, which Lao-ya had once shown him, though his rendering of it was wholly Eastern. As I found there was sufficient space in each to contain a portrait, I inserted two small photographs of my wife which I had taken myself, and coloured, and, to show our appreciation of his kindness, we tied his gifts round the babies' necks with pieces of ribbon. I believe poor Lao-ya must have considered them to be some kind of Christian charm, for she would never allow them to be taken off, and always treated them as if they were objects of veneration.
"All this time the people of Tsi-chin, though regarding us with extreme suspicion, had never yet proved themselves to be absolutely hostile. When the twins were nearly a year old, however, we began to notice a marked change in the demeanour of the townsfolk, both towards us and the Mission. Ugly rumours reached us of riots in other cities, and cruelties the very mention of which was enough to fill one with horror. There was an epidemic of disease among the natives, caused by their own dirt and ignorance of the common laws of health, and many of their priests had spread the report that it had been introduced by the foreigners for the purpose of reducing their numbers, and thus enabling the British to conquer their country, and that all true patriots must rise and destroy the source of the evil. This dangerous doctrine spread rapidly, and the news filled me with the greatest uneasiness. I hesitated long whether I ought to take my wife and children to the coast, but I decided that the danger among the strangers whom we should be forced to encounter on our long journey was even greater than that of remaining in the place where we had cured many sick people and could certainly count upon obtaining help from at least a few of them.