Things as They Are Part 19

"By the love He stood alone in, His sole G.o.dhead rose complete, And the false G.o.ds fell down moaning, Each from off his golden seat; All the false G.o.ds with a cry Rendered up their deity-- Pan, Pan was dead."

CHAPTER XXIV

"Married to the G.o.d"

"One thing one notices very much as a 'freshman'--that is, the unconscious influence which Christianity has over a nation. Go to the most depraved wretch you can find in England, and he has probably got a conscience, if only one can get at it. _But here the result of heathenism seems to be to destroy men's consciences. They never feel sin as such._"

_Rev. E. S. Carr, India._

"I have heard people say they enjoyed hearing about missions. I often wonder if they would enjoy watching a s.h.i.+pwreck."

_Mrs. Robert Stewart, China._

LEAVE this chapter if you want "something interesting to read"; hold your finger in the flame of a candle if you want to know what it is like to write it. If you do this, then you will know something of the burning at heart every missionary goes through who has to see the sort of thing I have to write about. Such things do not make interesting reading. Fire is an uncompromising thing, its characteristic is that it burns; and one writes with a hot heart sometimes. There are things like flames of fire.

But perhaps one cares too much; it is only about a little girl.

I was coming home from work a few evenings ago when I met two men and a child. They were Caste men in flowing white scarves--dignified, educated men. But the child? She glanced up at me, smiled, and salaamed. Then I remembered her; I had seen her before in her own home. These men belonged to her village. What were they doing with her?

Then a sudden fear shot through me, and I looked at the men, and they laughed. "We are taking her to the temple there," and they pointed across through the trees, "to marry her to the G.o.d."

It all pa.s.sed in a moment. One of them caught her hand, and they went on. I stood looking after them--just looking. The child turned once and waved her little hand to me. Then the trees came between.

The men's faces haunted me all night. I slept, and saw them in my dreams; I woke, and saw them in the dark. And that little girl--oh, poor little girl!--always I saw her, one hand in theirs, and the other waving to me!

And now it is over, the diabolical farce is over, and she is "tied," as their idiom has it, "tied to the stone." Oh, she is tied indeed, tied with ropes Satan twisted in his cruellest hour in h.e.l.l!

We had to drive through the village a night or two later, and it was all ablaze. There was a crowd, and it broke to let our bullock carts pa.s.s, then it closed round two palanquins.

There were many men there, and girls. In the palanquins were two idols, G.o.d and G.o.ddess, out on view. It was their wedding night. We saw it all as we pa.s.sed: the gorgeous decorations, gaudy tinsels, flowers fading in the heat and glare; saw, long after we had pa.s.sed, the gleaming of the coloured lights, as they moved among the trees; heard for a mile and more along the road the sound of that heathen revelry; and every thud of the tom-tom was a thud upon one's heart. Our little girl was there, as one "married" to that G.o.d.

I had seen her only once before. She belonged to an interesting high-caste village, one of those so lately closed; and because there they have a story about the magic powder which, say what we will, they imagine I dust upon children's faces, I had not gone often lest it should shut the doors. But that last time I went, this child came up to me, and, with all the confidingness of a child, asked me to take her home with me. "Do let me come!" she said.

There were eyes upon me in a moment and heads shaken knowingly, and there were whispers at once among the women. The magic dust had been at work! I had "drawn" the little girl's heart to myself. Who could doubt it now? And one mother gathered her child in her arms and disappeared into the house. So I had to answer carefully, so that everyone could hear. Of course I knew they would not give her to me, and I thought no more of it.

I was talking to her grandmother then, a very remarkable old lady. She could repeat page after page from their beloved cla.s.sics, and rather than let me sing Christian stanzas to her and explain them, she preferred to sing Hindu stanzas to me and explain them. "Consider the age of our great Religion, consider its literature--millions of stanzas!

What can you have to compare with it? These ignorant people about us do not appreciate things. They know nothing of the cla.s.sics; as for the language, the depths of Tamil are beyond them--is it not a sh.o.r.eless sea?" And so she held the conversation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: This is vile enough to look at, but nothing to the reality. If the outer form is this, what must the soul within it be? Yet this is a "holy Brahman;" and if we sat down on that stone verandah he would shuffle past the pillar lest we should defile him. Look at the shadowy shapes behind; they might be spirits of darkness. It is he, and such as he, who have power over little temple flowers.]

It was just at this point the child reappeared, and, standing by the verandah upon which we were sitting, her little head on a level with our feet, she joined in the stanza her grandmother was chanting, and, to my astonishment, continued through the next and the next, while I listened wondering. Then jumping up and down, first on one foot, then on the other, with her little face full of delight at my evident surprise, she told me she was learning much poetry now; and then, with the merriest little laugh, she ran off again to play.

And _this_ was the child. All that brightness, all that intelligence, "married to a G.o.d."

_Now_ I understood the question she had asked me. She was an orphan, as we afterwards heard, living in charge of an old aunt, who had some connection with the temple. She must have heard her future being discussed, and not understanding it, and being frightened, had wondered if she might come to us. But they had taken their own way of reconciling her to it; a few sweets, a cake or two, and a promise of more, a vision of the gay time the magic word marriage conjures up, and the child was content to go with them, to be led to the temple--and left there.

But her people were so thoroughly refined and nice, so educated too,--could it be, _can_ it be, possibly true? Yes, it is true; this is Hinduism--not in theory of course, but in practice. Think of it; it is done to-day.

A moment ago I looked up from my writing and saw the little Elf running towards me, charmed to find me all alone, and quite at leisure for her. And now I watch her as she runs, dancing gleefully down the path, turning again--for she knows I am watching--to throw kisses to me. And I think of her and her childish ways, naughty ways so often, too, but in their very naughtiness only childish and small, and I s.h.i.+ver as I think of her, and a thousand thousand as small as she, being trained to be devil's toys. They brought one here a few days ago to act as decoy to get the Elf back. She was a beautiful child of five. Think of the shame of it!

We are told to modify things, not to write too vividly, never to harrow sensitive hearts. Friends, we cannot modify truth, we cannot write half vividly enough; and as for harrowing hearts, oh that we could do it!

That we could tear them up, that they might pour out like water! that we could see hands lifted up towards G.o.d for the life of these young children! Oh, to care, and oh for power to make others care, not less but far, far more! care till our eyes do fail with tears for the destruction of the daughters of our people!

This photo is from death in life; a carca.s.s, moving, breathing, sinning--such a one sits by that child to-day.

I saw him once. There is a monastery near the temple. He is "the holiest man in it"; the people wors.h.i.+p him. The day I saw him they had wreathed him with fresh-cut flowers; white flowers crowned that hideous head, hung round his neck and down his breast; a servant in front carried flowers. Was there ever such desecration? That vileness crowned with flowers!

I knew something about the man. His life is simply unthinkable. Talk of beasts in human shape! It is slandering the good animals to compare bad men to beasts. Safer far a tiger's den than that man's monastery.

But he is a temple saint, wise in the wisdom of his creed; earthly, sensual, devilish. Look at him till you feel as if you had seen him. Let the photo do its work. It is loathsome--yes, _but true_.

Now, put a flower in his hand--a human flower this time. Now put beside him, if you can, a little girl--your own little girl--and leave her there--_yes, leave her there in his hand_.

CHAPTER XXV

Skirting the Abyss

"The first thing for us all is to _see_ and _feel_ the great need, and to create a sentiment among Christian people on this subject. One of the characteristics of this great system is its secrecy--its subtlety. So few _know_ of the evils of child-marriage, it is so hidden away in the secluded lives and prison homes of the people. And those of us who enter beyond these veils, and go down into these homes, are so apt to feel that it is a case of the inevitable, and nothing can be done."

_Mrs. Lee, India._

I HAVE been to the Great Lake Village to-day trying again to find out something about our little girl. I went to the Hindu school near the temple. The schoolmaster is a friend of ours, one of the honourable men of the village from which they took that flower. He was drilling the little Brahman boys as they stood in a row chanting the poem they were learning off by heart; but he made them stop when he saw us coming, and called us in.

I asked him about the child. It was true. She was in the temple, "married to the stone." Yes, it was true they had taken her there that day.

I asked if the family were poor; but he said, "Do not for a moment think that poverty was the cause. Certainly not. Our village is not poor!" And he looked quite offended at the thought. I knew the village was rich enough, but had thought perhaps that particular family might be poor, and so tempted to sell the little one; but he exclaimed with great warmth, Certainly not. The child was a relative of his own; there was no question of poverty!

We had left the school, and were talking out in the street facing the temple house. I looked at it, he looked at it. "From hence a pa.s.sage broad, smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to h.e.l.l"; he knew it well. "Yes, she is a relative of my own," he continued, and explained minutely the degree of relations.h.i.+p. "Her grandmother, whom you doubtless remember, is not like the ignorant women of these parts. She has learning." And again he repeated, as if desirous of thoroughly convincing me as to the satisfactory nature of the transaction, "Certainly she was not sold. She is a relative of my own."

A relative of his own! And he could teach his school outside those walls, and know what was going on inside, and never raise a finger to stop it, educated Hindu though he is. I could not understand it.

He seemed quite concerned at my concern, but explained that for generations one of that particular household had always been devoted to the G.o.ds. The practice could not be defended; it was the custom. That was all. "Our custom."

A stone's-throw from his door is another child who is living a strangely unnatural life, which strikes no one as unnatural because it is "our custom." She is quite a little girl, and as playful as a kitten. Her soft round arms and little dimpled hands looked fit for no harder work than play, but she was pounding rice when I saw her, and looked tired, and as if she wanted her mother.

While I was with her a very old man hobbled in. He was crippled, and leaned full weight with both hands on his stick. He seemed asthmatic too, and coughed and panted woefully. A withered, decrepit old ghoul.

The child stood up when he came in and touched her neck where the marriage symbol lay. Then I knew he was her husband.

"What, No blush at the avowal--you dared to buy A girl of age beseems your grand-daughter, like ox or a.s.s?

_Are flesh and blood ware? are heart and soul a chattel?_"

Yes! like chattels they are sold to the highest bidder. In that auction Caste comes first, then wealth and position. And the chattel is bought, the bit of breathing flesh and blood is converted into property; and the living, throbbing heart of the child may be trampled and stamped down under foot in the mire and the mud of that market-place, for all anyone cares.

It is not long since a young wife came for refuge to our house. Three times she had tried to kill herself; at last she fled to us. Her husband came. "Get up, slave," he said, as she crouched on the floor. She would not stir or speak. Then he got her own people to come, and then it was as if a pent-up torrent was bursting out of an over full heart. "You gave me to him. You gave me to him." The words came over and over again; she reminded them in a pa.s.sion of reproach how, knowing what his character was, they had handed her over to him. But we could hardly follow her, the words poured forth with such fierce emotion, as with streaming eyes, and hands that showed everything in gestures, she besought them not to force her back. They promised, and believing them, she returned with them. The other day when I pa.s.sed the house someone said, "Beautiful is there. He keeps her locked up in the back room now."