"Then I just shan't."
"All right! Shall I tell Linda you said you wouldn't?"
"You can if you like. I'm sure I don't care. I haven't time to race about the school finding other people's things. It's almost half-past now." And Sylvia marched away to the dancing class with her nose in the air, as much out of temper as she had ever felt in her life.
It was not possible for Hazel or anyone else to fetch the shoes, as the rules of the school inflicted dire penalties on any girl who entered another's bedroom; so when Linda hurried into the dressing-room a few minutes afterwards, expecting to be able to put them on, she was much disappointed not to find them there. She hunted about, but they were nowhere to be seen, and, afraid of being late she was forced to go to the lesson in her ordinary, common ankle-band slippers. She was furious, since the whole point of the tarantella lay in the elegant way in which she must point her toes and turn a graceful pirouette, and how was she to do so in these thick, awkward shoes that were only meant for the hard wear and tear of everyday use!
Linda was rather proud of her dancing, and it was very annoying to have her best steps spoilt for lack of proper slippers. She could not venture to ask to be allowed to go and change them, because Miss Kaye was sitting in the room, and would be sure to give her a severe scolding for her carelessness; so she would be obliged to manage as best she could and hope that no one in authority would notice her feet.
"Didn't you give Sylvia my message?" she said to Hazel at the first opportunity, when the three girls were able to speak together during a rest.
"Of course I did, but she just flatly said she wouldn't go," replied Hazel, delighted to have this opportunity of making mischief between the friends.
"Did you really, Sylvia?" asked Linda, her eyes full of reproachful enquiry, and leaning upon Hazel's arm.
Now Sylvia was still not at all in an amiable frame of mind, and the sight of Linda's head pressed against Hazel's shoulder heaped coals on to her wrath.
"I hadn't time," she snapped, and, turning away, began to talk to Nina Forster.
At this point the mistress called for the tarantella, and Linda stood up with several elder girls, holding her tambourine and long ribbons gracefully above her head. How she longed for the dainty bronze shoes that were left in the bedroom upstairs! Her steps felt so awkward that she could neither glide nor spring properly, and she was not surprised when at the end of the dance Miss Delaney said: "Hardly so good as usual, my dear." Linda considered she had very good cause to feel offended with Sylvia, and she would not look at her for the rest of the afternoon. She scarcely touched the tips of her fingers when they met in the "grand chain", and kept as far away from her as she possibly could, choosing Hazel for her partner in the waltz and Connie Camden in the Highland schottische.
Sylvia tried to show by her manner that she did not care, but in reality she felt on the verge of tears. She danced with little Sadie Thompson, casting a wistful look every now and then at Linda's back, though she took no notice if they happened to meet face to face. She managed to change places at tea and sit between Gwennie Woodhouse and Jessie Ellis, and at evening recreation she retired to a corner of the playroom with a book.
The great ordeal was when the two children found themselves alone in their bedroom at night. Each considered the other so entirely in the wrong that neither would give way, and they both undressed in stony silence, very different indeed from the confidences which they were accustomed to exchange.
Sylvia peeped at Linda's bed in the morning, wondering whether she would show any signs of relenting. But no, Linda got up without noticing her in the least, and the breach seemed as wide as ever.
It was Saturday, and except for mending and stocking darning the girls might amuse themselves as they wished. The two friends had planned to finish their garden and to plant the delightful collection of snowdrops, crocuses, and tulips which Mrs. Lindsay had sent them.
Sylvia carried the box down, and a trowel, and set to work in a half-hearted manner, putting in little groups and rows, though she certainly was not enjoying herself. Linda, who was equally unhappy, waited ten minutes, then, arriving with her spade, began solemnly to dig up her root of hepatica and her clump of primroses.
"Do you want to put them here?" enquired Sylvia anxiously, moving some of her bulbs out of the way.
"No, thank you," replied Linda with cold politeness. "I'm going back to my old garden." And, carrying her treasures in her arms, she stalked away.
Poor Sylvia felt this was the last straw. To be thus deserted was a cruel blow; she would never enjoy her flowers alone, however lovely they might prove. She had written for the bulbs chiefly on Linda's account, and if they were not to share them she did not care to plant them at all. She flung down her trowel, and, walking away to a retired part of the grounds, sat down on a seat under a hawthorn tree and began to cry as if her heart would break.
She had not been there very long before chance, or something better than chance, brought Mercy Ingledew to the same spot with her Latin grammar. As monitress of the upper landing she had the whole of the third class under her care, and, seeing one of her charges in such distress, she came at once to enquire the cause.
"You needn't be at all afraid to tell me, dear," she said. "If you've got yourself into a scrape it's my business to help you. Just tell me everything as you would to your elder sister."
"I haven't got any sister," sobbed Sylvia.
"No more have I, I only wish I had, so I'm going to pretend now that you're mine. What's the trouble? I don't like to see my third class girls crying."
Sylvia never forgot how kind Mercy was. She listened patiently to the whole matter, and then sat thinking for a while, and stroking Sylvia's fluffy hair.
"There seem to have been faults on both sides," she said at last.
"Doesn't it strike you, dear, that it's just a little selfish of you to want to keep Linda entirely to yourself?"
"But she's my friend!" said Sylvia in astonishment.
"She was Hazel's first. Why can't you all be jolly together without this continual jealousy? You'd be a great deal happier."
"Ye-es," said Sylvia doubtfully. "What I feel, though, is that I mind so dreadfully, and I'm sure Linda doesn't care half as much, because she has Hazel."
"Perhaps she cares more than you think. If I were you I should go and tell her exactly what happened about the shoes, and say you're sorry.
You'll have done your part at any rate, and if she likes to make it up she can."
Sylvia took Mercy's advice, and, finding Linda mooning aimlessly up and down the avenue, she went straight to the point without any further delay, and explained the whole affair.
"I'm afraid it was I who was cross," said Linda. "I've been feeling perfectly horrid all the morning. I hate being out of friends with anyone, and especially with you. I wish my wretched dancing shoes had been at the bottom of the sea. Have you planted all the bulbs yet? We meant to put the snowdrops in the middle, you know. I don't like my old garden at all. It's no fun doing it alone. Shall I bring back the primroses and the hepatica?"
CHAPTER VII
The Story of Mercy Ingledew
One result of the coolness and subsequent reconciliation between Linda and Sylvia was the establishment of a firm friendship between the latter and Mercy Ingledew. Sylvia, who had been more accustomed at home to grown-up people than children, was attracted to Mercy at once, and the elder girl saw so much that was unusual and lovable in the younger one's character that she took a strong interest in getting to know her better. Mercy was a tall, fair girl of sixteen, with a sweet, thoughtful face, and a particularly pleasant open expression. She was a great favourite, both with teachers and pupils, a plodding, conscientious worker, and always ready to give help or sympathy to anyone who stood in need of either. Miss Kaye had made a wise choice in appointing her monitress of the upper landing, as no one could have more fully appreciated the responsibilities of the post. She tried as much as lay in her power to 'mother' all the eight little girls of the third class, looking after them in their bedrooms, reviewing their clothing, helping to brush their hair, settling their disputes, advising them in any question of right and wrong, and keeping them up to the mark in matters of school discipline, and she managed to do it in such a jolly, hearty, affectionate, tactful manner that not one of them resented her interference. Mercy had very soon discovered that Sylvia had far more in her than most girls of her age, the expressive hazel-grey eyes, lost sometimes in a brown study, or shining with excitement over some new pleasure, told a tale of the eager mind behind them; and the child's many quaint remarks, decided opinions, the flashes of humour or flights of fancy in which she occasionally indulged, singled her out as possessing powers far beyond the average.
"She has just twice the brains of Connie Camden or Nina Forster," said Mercy to a fellow monitress; "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she were to be a great credit to the school some day. You should hear the clever games she invents for the babies, and the marvellous stories she makes up for them. She really has a wonderful imagination. She has got through nearly half the Waverley novels already, and I found her reading Tennyson one day. She's rather too fond of airing her ideas, and is a little conceited, but Hazel and Marian sit upon her so hard that she'll soon get over it. She's a most affectionate child, far more so than any of the others. She's the only one who ever seems really grateful for what one does for them. I think she's a dear little thing, and I'm glad she has come here."
If Mercy were disposed to make much of Sylvia, the latter was only too ready to return her kindness with that devotion which a younger girl often feels for one considerably older than herself. With Sylvia it was not a shifting fancy, such as Nina Forster formed nearly every week, and changed as rapidly, but a genuine love, founded on a firm basis of all-round admiration. She thought Mercy the prettiest, cleverest, and best girl she had ever known in her life, and when she discovered her to be the heroine of a most romantic history, her interest in her was increased a thousandfold. She had heard once or twice that Mercy was an orphan, and had no home of her own to go to during the holidays, but it was only by degrees she gathered the various facts of the case, though when they were fitted together they formed a narrative as thrilling as any to be found in the gaily bound volumes over which it had been her delight to pore. As Sylvia got the account mostly in disjointed scraps, first from one girl and then from another, and was obliged to connect them for herself, it will be as well to tell Mercy's story here as she learnt it more fully afterwards, since it had some bearing and influence on various incidents which happened later and led in the end to unforeseen events.
Fifteen years ago there was great uneasiness among the white residents of the city of Tsien-Lou, in a certain inland province of China. There had been rumours of serious riots and outrages against foreigners farther up the country; terrible tales were whispered of houses burnt and families murdered, and both the British Consul and the Commissioner of Trade had warned the little colony of Europeans to keep strictly within its own quarter, and not to trust to any fair promises made by their yellow-skinned, almond-eyed neighbours, who resented their presence in the land with such fierce intolerance.
Business for a while was suspended; it was not considered safe for a white face to be seen in the streets, and even the Chinese servants who did their daily duties in the houses were regarded with suspicion.
Only the Ingledew Medical Missionary Station, at the outskirts of the town near the old Kia-yu gate, went on with its work as usual, nursing the sick in the hospital, attending to the numerous outpatients who came every day for medicine and treatment, teaching the children in the school, and holding the daily Bible readings which all were still invited to attend. It was an anxious time for both doctors and nurses; they knew that they carried their lives in their hands, and that at some given signal the flame of fanaticism might burst out, and hordes of shrieking, murderous, pigtailed natives might sweep over the mission, leaving nothing but smoking ruins and desolation behind them.
It was with a troubled mind, therefore, that Sister Grace, the head of the nursing staff, went out one evening into the patch of enclosed garden which surrounded the hospital buildings, and, shading her eyes with her hand, looked far along the road that led to the hill country.
There was a fierce, fiery sunset; it seemed as if the very sky were stained with blood, and the cross on the top of the little chapel stood out dark and startling against the lurid background. She passed slowly down the walk to shut the great gate, which, though open by day to every comer, was always safely barred at night, and she was in the act of sliding the bolt and securing the chain, when she paused suddenly and listened. She had heard a moan outside, a distinct, long-drawn, suffering sigh, that quivered a moment and then died away into silence. Someone on the other side of the gate was in distress or pain, and it was clearly her duty to enquire into the cause. With a beating heart she undid the fastening and peeped out. Crouched down on the step, as if she could drag herself no farther, was a Chinese woman bearing a baby fastened on to her back. She was desperately wounded, the blood still flowed from a gash on her head, and stains on the roadside marked the track along which she must have crawled in her agony to reach the friendly shelter of the wooden archway. Life was almost spent, but with an effort of desperation she managed to raise herself into a kneeling posture, and, clasping her hands together, cried out in Chinese: "Mercy! Mercy! The child!" and, with a last glance of supplicating appeal, fell across the threshold at the feet of the trembling nurse. Help was summoned at once, and she was carried into the hospital; but she was already past all human aid. She had accomplished her errand with the last spark of her dying strength, and had gone out into the light beyond the sunset.
Sister Grace took the baby from her and laid the little creature gently on the bed, unfolding some of the curious Chinese clothing in which it was closely wrapped. She had unloosed the wadded coat, and now pulled off the queer double-peaked crimson cap, disclosing as she did so, not the expected shaved head, with its fringe of coarse black hair, but a crop of short, tight, flaxen curls, like rings of floss silk, falling round a pair of flushed cheeks as pink as appleblossom.
She uttered a cry that drew both doctor and nurses to her side. "Look!
Look!" she exclaimed, "the child is white!"
Where the poor baby had come from or to whom it belonged no one knew.
It was warm and unhurt, though in such a deep sleep that it had evidently been drugged to prevent it from crying. Beyond a small woollen vest it was dressed in Chinese clothes, no doubt with the intention of passing it off as a native, and it wore a carved Chinese charm tied round its neck. It was a little girl of apparently about a year old, so round and pretty and dimpled that, when at last, after many hours, she opened her big blue eyes, she won all hearts in the hospital at once.
It was impossible to institute any enquiries regarding her during the troublous time which followed. The Mission, indeed, escaped attack, but it was many months before communication with the outside world was safely established, and by then every clue seemed to have been lost.
The consul did his best, and made the case widely known among the European residents in China, but many families had perished in the uprising, and no one could tell by which of them the child might have been claimed.
The little waif stayed on therefore at the Ingledew hospital, where she grew apace, and was soon the pet and darling of everybody who knew her. It was decided to call her "Mercy", in memory of the last words of the woman who had saved her life, and "Ingledew" was added as a surname for lack of any other.
It was when she was about seven years old that the doctor and his wife, who were returning to England for a year's leave, determined to take her with them and to try to make some arrangements for her education. A philanthropic lady, who happened to join the ship at Ceylon, heard the strange story, and, taking a fancy to the child, offered to send her to school; so it was in this way that Mercy had come to Miss Kaye's, where she had remained ever since.
Last year, however, a great misfortune had occurred. Her kind guardian, who had always taken the warmest interest in her welfare, had died suddenly without making a will; her heirs did not feel themselves bound to continue Mercy's school fees; and again she was left utterly unprovided for. Here Miss Kaye had come to the rescue, and had promised to keep her at Heathercliffe House until she should be old enough to earn her own living as a teacher, and Mercy repaid the kindness bestowed upon her by working her very best and trying to fit herself for the career which she was to follow by and by. Nine years at Aberglyn had blurred her memories of her early life in China, but she still wrote to her friends at the Mission, and said she never forgot that one spot, though other scenes might have faded from her remembrance.