Opened
STAR, grown-up now, was with me when, six years after our last attempt, God opened the Fort to us.
She and I had been travelling together on the Eastern side of the district. Some of her relatives lived in the town to which the Fort belongs, and we had left our direct route home to visit them. But dearly though she loved them, Star found they and she had little in common. The sorrow of this discovery was upon her when we remembered the Fort; and it was with a quickened appreciation of the miracle of conversion where such souls are concerned, that we approached that little citadel, and once more sought an entrance in the name of the Lord.
We found the same door locked and the same door open, as before. Time seemed to have gone to sleep where the old Fort was concerned. All within appeared empty and silent, just as it had been before. We walked through the streets unchallenged.
On the far side we found a grey old temple enclosed by a high red and white wall. A tamarind tree is beside it, and glad to get out of the brilliant light, light beating down from unclouded blue, and light beating up from the glittering sand, we stood in the cool green shade and prayed that some one might come to whom we could speak.
Soon from the distance voices came jangling irreverently through the universal silence. Then some field women strolled across the open and accosted us in the friendliest way, shouting all together in their astonishment at seeing us. They were the Fort people’s servants, they said; they worked in the Fort fields outside, and did the rough work of the place. They applauded our wisdom in not knocking at any of the house doors. “It would have greatly disturbed the women. Why should you trouble them?” They advised us to go out again, because no one would let us in. “The evangelisation of the world in this generation” is our motto; but how are you to evangelise people when you cannot get at them? The women had work to do, and they left us under the tree.
We had not knocked at any door, partly lest we should startle the shy inhabitants, and partly because we were so anxious to be led to the heart prepared. More and more we feel that in work of this kind we need to be led to the one who, through some previous dealing of the Spirit, is ready to discern the truth. So once more we walked past the silent shut-up houses, looking for an open door.
We found one at last. Our call was answered by a girl’s voice. We went in and found a young girl in possession. Her face struck me at once as familiar, though I could not have seen it before.
She was a young wife, tall and slight, with hair that waved and curled round the smooth low brow. Her eyes shone when she spoke to us or smiled, but when she was only listening the light in them passed, and her normal expression seemed one of depression, sharpened by the keenness of some disappointment. She sighed as she sat down, after spreading a mat for us. And she sighed as she listened.
“Sister!” Star began in her simple earnest way, “we have come to bring good news to you. There is a living God who loves you. He has always loved you. He sent us here to tell you so.” “Who loves me?” interrupted the girl. “I have no children.”
We knew enough of the customs of the Fort to understand. The childless wife might any day become the childless widow. To such a one a terribly severe punishment is meted out. We had heard the smothered cry of one as we passed the house where she was confined in what a child, in describing it, called the “eighth (very innermost) room of the house.”
It is not true, thank God, that confinement to an Indian girl is what it would be to an English girl. The free, open-air loving spirit is rarer here than at home. But no words can overstate the bitterness poured into many a cup. And the song — if such tear-words can make a song — that the Fort-widow sings is this: “Where it will may the river wander; where she will the wife may wander. Pent by its banks is the pool. Pent by her fate is the widow. I, the widow, am as the pool, as the pool that never may wander.”
Only a thread withheld this from that girl. Should fate cut that thread, her husband’s life, what an Indian widow has quietly called “The cold fire” would be kindled for her. And all life was a fear to her because she had no children at seventeen.
For a moment the two girls looked at each other. One saw how very alike they were. They might have been sisters. But a world of difference lay between; one saw it and ached to see it as the Star-child leaning forward held out her hands beseechingly, “Take it! His love is all for you. Oh, sister, this news was beautiful to me and the joy of joys” — while the other, leaning back lest defiling hands should touch her, answered the eager words with a yawn. “Is that so?” she said at last, and rose; “I must go and do my cooking.”
Had she the heart prepared? It did not seem like it. And yet one never knows. The seed strikes root sometimes in a narrow crevice in the rock.
We found another open door, and went in full of expectation. A mother was there, and a family of children; bonnie babies played on the floor, and the elder ones clustered about us close, but never close enough to touch, for that would be pollution.
It was the usual South Indian room, dark save for the shaft of light which fell from the open door. It was furnished with a great brass lamp, hung with oleander flowers; and there was one unusual thing, a bed of dark wood finely carved, of a quaint involved design. A pile of silk garments lay on it, crimson and a golden brown, and the shaft of sunlight fell on the pile, and lighted the room with colour. There was colour too in the group on the floor, where half in sight and half in shadow, making unconscious pictures, the mother and children sat looking at us with that calm scrutiny which in India precedes speech, be the speech when it comes never so trivial. “Why have you got no jewels and no oil on your hair?” they asked at length, and launched into conversation.
One by one the women from the inner rooms came out. There was not a sound or a movement as we tried to show our Lord to them. Almost breathless in her eagerness, knowing she might never see them again, Star told them the wonderful story, and still there was silence as I continued, feeling afresh as one told it freshly to those who had never heard it, the infinite marvel of it. Oh for words to tell it as it deserves to be told! Could any heart resist it? How we longed to stay with these women, become Fort women to them, and tell them all about the love of Jesus over and over, till we could be sure they understood! But that could not be. Caste comes at once and makes a distance between us and those to whom we would fain be as sisters. We stayed as long as they cared we should, then left them regretfully. A man saw us as we left the house, but he took no notice of us; so far as getting in was concerned, the Fort was open at last, and we went where we would through the quiet streets and searched for our first friend, the one who had listened six years before; but we could not find her. Death had not waited outside those six years; that was a sobering thought. And we tried to find some trace of the seed sown years ago by the sister we knew had once gone in; but the seed had not been watered, how could it have lived? Perhaps the seed that sister sowed was the seed-corn of prayer. Thank God that seed is imperishable. In the opening of the Fort we saw that seed in fruit.
But now that it is open who is there to go in? Our Mission is considered well manned and well organised. Everything is arranged in departments. There is a Biblewoman department, with, its natural sequence, a Converts’ home. There is a Biblewoman in the town to which the Fort is attached. But the place lies some distance from her home; she has plenty of nearer work, she cannot undertake the Fort. There is no other woman in the town who can. And only a woman has the entree to the Fort. So that the most it can have is an occasional visit. Not that it wants more, or as much. It is not asking for anything. There is no consciousness of need. Still, it is open so far, as we have shown. The narrowness of centuries is widening a little, the exclusiveness is a little less pronounced. And yet, in this “well-manned” Mission, the workers are still too few to allow of one being immediately set apart to buy up an opportunity, buyable now for the first time. The truth is that workers of the right sort are far too few to buy up one out of every hundred opportunities, here and everywhere.