Warped Land
SO far the Weight: thank God there is the Overweight; more than an Overweight of Joy. The Spectator had something to do with its creation.
One day a small girl appeared on my verandah. “I want to be ’ joined,” she remarked. “Joined to what?” “To your preaching band,” was the unexpected answer, with an upward turn of the eyes and a downward droop of the mouth.
We found she had a Christian relation, though her nearest were heathen. Her parents were dead. Her heathen relations had turned her adrift. She drifted to her Christian relation, who forwarded her to us. We interviewed these affectionate relatives, and found them all decided in refusing her. They could do nothing with her, they said. She was nine, and apparently naughty. Not quite a case for the band.
There were reasons which made us hesitate about adopting her. We had newly come to Dohnavur for a year’s work, and were anxious not to do anything which would give colour to the rumours which had preceded us, that we were “Catchers of children.” We had never caught any; we bad only sheltered a few converts who had come to us; but facts are not in question where such stories are concerned. Then, too, we felt the relations ought to do their obvious duty. We were puzzled about ours. In the meantime the little girl was fed. She was given a doll, at which she stared ungratefully. She was not satisfied with her food, and tried to steal other people’s. She was altogether deplorable. After a few days’ experience we could hardly wonder that nobody wanted her, except the One who always wants the naughtiest of us.
It was then that the Spectator came, an old copy which had done duty in several mission stations. In it was an article about Warping. “A recent writer on reclaiming land from the sea gives £40 per acre as the cost of making Warp land. Warping is the art of stealing land from the waters. Reclamation is forcible rescue by building a bank round ground already rising above sea level.”
£40 for an acre of sand: some fancy set me working out the value of an acre of soul. Suppose we did everything for this child for ten years, according to the then purchasing power of the rupee, so far as I could make out the cost would be about £35. Allow £5 for contingencies. It came to £40.
This cold-blooded calculation may shock the mind which never descends to the mundane. Do not mission children subsist upon air? (Indian air being so nourishing.) And as for clothes, in the Tropics of course they are not required. But though sooner or later curry and rice and raiment, and even such a detail as education, have to be considered, I cannot say that at that moment, or ever after in any case, questions affecting provision weighed in the very least. Our Father is our Treasurer. All we wanted was to know what He wanted us to do. The Warp land calculation was merely a freak; its result a “chance” coincidence. But when one is looking for light upon anything it is curious to notice how all manner of little side-lights bend little rays upon it, till the way in which one should walk is all lighted up. The Spectator suggested thoughts about the value of a little sand to man. From this we passed to thoughts about the value of a little soul to God. The value of the sand was measurable: £40 per acre. The value of a single little soul, in one sense at least, was measurable too: we know the price paid down to reclaim it. The question was settled that afternoon. And often since that afternoon the Spectator has repeated its message; when the little acre of soul has seemed unpromising we have remembered that the acre of sand is probably unpromising at first; and the thought of its worth to its Owner has come with inspiration over and over again.
Shortly after our return to the eastern side of the district the little Elf was brought to us. Her deliverance was wonderful enough to require a wonderful explanation, and the firm belief of our people is that the angel who delivered Peter had something to do with it. In all ways the Elf was a contrast to the Imp, as No. 1 was too easily called. She was very much wanted. We never felt her safe till we had settled in Dohnavur again.
Soon after God gave us the Elf He moved once more for the salvation of children in similar danger. Two little girls, whose people were connected with Temple service, became members of our family. Deeper and deeper thereafter we found ourselves involved in what seems like another life-system far remote from our own. Sometimes the children have to be redeemed at cost. Always they are spoils won in battle between the strong man armed and the Stronger. The joy is that they are being won.
Another joy is found in the change that passes upon them after they are won. Sometimes they come to us looking like little women-girls. No light on the little faces, no natural child-expression. The photographs which illustrate this were not taken for that purpose. Nor are they perfect as illustrations, for the little girl shown here was never a Temple child. The strained, tooold expression, was the result of the extreme severity exercised by the child’s father, a man of powerful will, who had beaten down resistance in his sons, and determined to do the same with his little daughter. But nevertheless the photo shows that happy thing, the growing younger of a child who has grown too old. So we let it tell its tale, which in the case of a Temple child is far more emphasised, for even the most unnatural Hindu home life cannot compare for unnaturalness with the life lived by the little Temple girl.
There was one — I wish we could show her photo — who, when she was brought to us a baby barely two years old, was more like a trapped wild animal than a little human child. She had changed hands four times within a few days. She was old enough to suffer pitifully. The little face with its terrified eyes told us that. For five days that little child moaned and cried like a whipped puppy. She cried even in her sleep. Once, a week after she came to us, she saw a woman standing at the gate with a child in her arms. It must have wakened up some baby memory, for in a moment both little arms went out in wildest entreaty, and the child, who had never spoken to us in articulate words, suddenly cried, “There! there!” meaning she wanted to be taken there. And she sobbed for hours after that, over and over and over again, till we were heart-sick at the sound, the Tamil baby word for “Mother! Mother! Mother!”
That poor mother had refused to give her baby to the Temple women who wanted her. Something was done to force her, the particulars are not known, but she became mad, and tried to drown the little child. Then while she slept it was taken from her, and sent off to a Travancore Temple. The mother is wandering, no one knows where, quite mad.
This little child, such a happy child now, full of coaxing little ways and funny broken talk, was heard the other day teaching her junior, a small, very fat, curlyheaded little tot, to repeat the few English words she, little Lotus, knows: “DeaJi Loleypoley! say ’ ‘ittle darrling!’”
Sometimes when the children come they are like the ghosts of little girls. One, who is now a sunny little maid, was like a child walking in her sleep for a whole month after her arrival, until we began to fear for her mind, she was so strange. She would sit for hours without moving, dazed and absent. She rarely spoke; she never smiled. She was a four-year-old Brahman child from the Malabar coast, who, so far as we could learn, had been kidnapped by Temple scouts, and brought over to our side of the mountains for sale. Her ears had been cut to disguise her. Her little body had been burnt. The cuts and the burns had healed, but there must have been some inward hurt, and it was still unhealed. She told us nothing, never has told us anything; we hope she has forgotten all. To this day we can only guess what the shock must have been from which recovery was so slow. It came at last. The place in the compound where we were when first the child-nature woke and laughed, is marked by one of those bright marks memory makes sometimes. Leela — Lightsomeness, Playfulness — is her name now, and her nursery pet name is Little Laughter.
Lotus and Leela are helpful, when new children who look hopeless enough to discourage the most sanguine of us, come. After our experience with them we feel we have courage for anything. Two Little girls were brought to us lately about whom we should have naturally despaired. But who could despair with Leela and Lotus in evidence? Every time we saw them at play we felt cheered in hope for the new two.
These two had a tragic story. Their father in a fit of passion killed their mother, while the little sisters looked on horrified. They fell into bad hands, and were taken to a Temple house. Finally they were brought to us. The year had left an ugly mark upon them. The ideal Temple child is refined in manner; that passes too often as the years pass, but the child at first is an attractive little thing. No other is of use. She is usually “fair,”
as the word goes here, anything from olive to hazel-nut colour. She has a certain manner and way of her own, and she is responsive to influence, keen-brained, bright. These two were the opposite of this. They were coarsened little beings, inside and out. They were extremely dull. It was not the dulness of drugging, as in little Leela’s case. It may have been the result of abnormally severe treatment, for one of the children had been pinched through the skin as a punishment, and the other had been burnt with the flat side of a knife on either arm; the marks are still distinct. Whatever the cause, the children were most miserable, not pathetic or interestingly sorrowful, but just very cross. We felt inclined to call them Mumps and Grumps, but instead gave them names meaning Pleasure and Friendliness. I overheard a scrap of six praying by herself in a corner: “Help me to love the two new little girls just as if they were nice.” This prayer expressed our feelings. Everything is different now. Six months’ persistent anointing with cocoanut oil had a most smoothing effect on the roughened exterior. An equally softening inward effect was produced by six months’ lavish love and happiness. It is an effort of memory now to recall the time when the two little girls were rude and glum and sulky, and almost made us call them Mumps and Grumps.
The dear little Firefly flew to us out of a similar background of darkness, but she never was depressed. The children called her Firefly from the first, because of her lightness and brightness. The beginning of her story was written in sorrow in the chapter whose name
1 Chapter xi.
contains a prophecy — “The Grace of the People to come.” It did not seem possible then that she could be delivered: to-day she is with us, an Overweight of Joy.
But the children in detail would weary you, perhaps. There is nothing remarkable about them. They are chiefly interesting to their own, to whom in truth they become more interesting every day.
They are rejoicing now in possessing a nursery proper. For some time they were all cramped up in a room which had to serve for kitchen, dining, and bedroom. Then friends, — fellow-missionaries, chiefly, — sent us what built a fine long room with verandah closing on either end, and this, built so as to form a square with the old room for one side, makes a perfect nursery. In the centre is a courtyard garden, with a tulip tree, which, as the children firmly believe, God caused to be planted on purpose for us; and flowers and creepers, and, above all, a swing, make this courtyard a place of delight.
The nursery children begin with the babies. The first to come to us was four hours old when she was taken to the Temple woman’s house, and for ten days she was kept there, and considered, as the custom is, the daughter of the Temple woman who had adopted her. About the same time another tiny baby was adopted by a Temple woman known to us, ,-nd another baby-girl we had traced to a Temple horse disappeared before we could reach her. It is most difficult in the first place to trace, and in the second place to prove our traces, where these babies are concerned. Then, too, as one of the letters quoted told, there are cases where the priest of the temple to which the child is eventually to belong, supports the mother until the little one can be dedicated. So that every possible selfish feeling and consideration is ranged against us, and the devil fights for his minute prey as if each unconscious infant were a little queen. One cannot understand it till one remembers that if only he can hold on for the next few years, the child will become not only doubly his, but his for others’ destruction. Touch a Temple child and you touch the heart of the system which has only one rival in all the world for its subjugating power. No wonder the devil fights.
A few nights before that baby of four hours old was taken to the temple, one of our pastors and an evangelist saw for the first time what we have so often seen, Temple women and children out in the street in the evening. The sight stirred them, and later, when the pastor heard of that baby, it moved him to try to save it. He worked hard and he prayed, and this child, the only one of the three, was saved.
We shall never forget the night she came: the little, old, tired baby face, the little, feeble, weary cry, the little hands moving restlessly as if feeling for a mother, none of us ever forget. She had travelled over a hundred miles, and she almost died on my knee that night; but we did not know then how much she had been hurt, and we hardly understood what we had undertaken. The experienced say she cannot live to grow up, but her smiles “cool our hearts,” and we hope much for her.
“What is she to be called, our very first Temple baby?” This important question came from all the children at once. The Elf ran off for her “gee-lit Bible,” turned the pages hurriedly, found a verse and read it:
“‘The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.’ This is the stone I like ‘The twelfth an Amethyst! She was going to be a
stone in Satan’s city wall, and now” The Elf
stopped and looked tentatively at me. We all thought it would do. So our first Temple baby is called Amethyst.
When the second came, the lovely laughing Eajput baby, saved by another pastor, the jewel verse was referred to again: “The second a Sapphire.” The name expresses the little one. There is the unclouded serenity as of deep blue skies about her. Indraneela (Sapphire), she is the joy of our hearts, such a whole round gift of joy.
Then came baby No. 3, terribly injured, whose wails at first were ceaseless. But a few months’ care worked a change that was good to see. Little Sunflower we call her, in faith that her life will be full of sunshine, in spite of its dark beginning. These three make the nursery the centre of things interesting, and I think we all have felt the fascination of the little loving things who ask for so much, get more than they ask, and give more so unconsciously.