Blue Larkspur

This post is a digression from Anna Bøg's story. It is a vignette about a young Manchurian Christian girl named Blue Larkspur who lost her life as the result of a bandit attack. It was apparently based on an actual event. It brings home the Manchurian scourge of banditry and the fact that bandits did attack family homes and inns as well as persons traveling on the millet-bordered roads.

The writer was Dr. Isabel Mitchell (1879-1917), an Irish Presbyterian missionary physician who served in Fakumen, Manchuria, northeast of Mukden, near Mongolia, from 1905 to 1917. Dr. Mitchell died in Fakumen of diphtheria in March, 1917. The story is dated August, 1910:

Blue Larkspur

"She lived in a little clustered village, where the flat-roofed, brown mud houses sheltered together amid the wide stretches of the millet fields. She and her sister kept house turn about on the quiet Sabbath days, and little Larkspur was learning to read her New Testament, and to say a few of the easy hymns they sang in the village Chapel.

"It was in the sweet summer time that trouble came to the little mud house. The green millet had grown very high, far away above Blue Larkspur's head, as she danced down the narrow paths with their walls of green, far even above her father's head; for the grain grew high there, and the heavy green heads nodded in the breeze, and the long shiny green leaves rustled in the soft night air and sang little Larkspur to sleep, many a time. The family all slept in the one small room, on the wide brick kang, which was the family sitting-place in the daytime, and on which they spread their mattresses at night. One night, when midnight was at its deepest and stillest over all the land, a shot rang sharply in the little room, and a sudden bullet was lodged in the rafter. Blue Larkspur's father sprang to his feet, and in her terror Larkspur threw her arms around his knees and clung to him. Without another moment's interval another bullet whizzed through the window, open wide to the cool summer night. Then came a stunning agony as it passed right through the little clinging body and into her father's leg. Father and child fell in a heap on the kang. What happened after that, little Larkspur never knew.

"The robbers followed quickly on their dastardly shots, great rough men with fierce faces and cruel hands. Paying no attention to the groaning man and the unconscious child, they demanded from the eldest brother all the money he had in the house. He protested his utter ignorance of any money, of any hiding-place whatsoever. But the robbers could not wait. The villagers might come at any moment; their spoil must be secured at once. Quick as lighting the great black food-pot was smashed and wrenched from its place in the brick stove, and while cruel hands bound the strong brother, other cruel hands kindled a fire of the dried millet stalk piled in the kitchen. Then they held him over the flames until all his flesh was scorched and burned, shouting all the time, 'Tell us quickly where the money is.'

"The brave young wife had fled to raise the neighbours from the little village street, and soon they came thirty to forty strong, pulling on their coats as they ran, and catching up whatever weapons they had. But the robbers were gone. The young man was lying bound, and crying out in his pain, and the tiny hoard of a poor man's savings was gone too, into the green recesses of the miles of millet.

"But the human wreckage left behind! What was to be done? Away ten miles over the hills was the nearest Hospital, and the nearest chance of help. So willing hands went to work. Rough stretchers were made, bearers were soon ready, the sufferers were gently lifted, and the procession started. That was how little Larkspur came to us, carried by eight strong men, with her little face drawn with suffering, and the frightened eyes, to which consciousness had returned, looking out upon us with a confused dread. From the first we had very little hope of the little girl's life. But she came through her operation bravely, with the kind help of the 'dream-medicine,' and awakened again in a cool quiet room in a little white bed. Then followed a weary week of lying still, with restlessness stirring every nerve, and the burning heat of the summer days adding to the fever of the parched lips. The nights were the worst, those long, breathless nights, when all the other patients lay in refreshing sleep, and only the one little sufferer tossed wearily on her pillow. We never left her day or night, and often through the long hours before the dawn she would ask us to sing to her, sometimes joining with her little weak voice in 'Jesus loves me,' . . . And once, thinking herself alone and quiet, we found her praying softly to the loving Heavenly Father that he would carry his little lamb safely through the Valley of the Shadow. She made a brave fight for life, which had been sweet and bright to her. But after a week's vain struggling, the gentle angel, who comes with noiseless step and veiled face, at last brought to little suffering Larkspur peace and rest."

Source:
O'Neill, F.W.S. (Ed.); Dr. Isabel Mitchell of Manchuria (James Clarke & Co., London, 1917), pp. 215-218.

Image:
Botanical print "Delphinium Grandiflorum", from Wikimedia Commons. In the public domain.