Old Devai
SHE has been called "Old Devai" ever since we knew her, twelve years
ago; and she is still active in mind and body. "As I was then, even so
is my strength now for war, both to go out and to come in," she would
tell you with a courageous toss of the old grey head. Her spirit at
least is untired.
We knew her first as a woman of character. One Sunday, in our Tamil
church, a sermon was preached upon the love of the Father as compared
with the love of the world. That Sunday Devai went home and acted upon
the teaching in such fashion that she had to suffer from the scourge of
the tongue in her own particular world. But she went on her way, unmoved
by adverse criticism. Some years later, when we were in perplexity as to
how to set about our search for children in danger of being given to
temples, old Devai offered to help. She was peculiarly suitable, both in
age and in position, for this most delicate work; and we accepted her
offer with thanksgiving. Since then she has travelled far, and followed
many a clue discovered in strange ways and in strange company. Perhaps
no one in South India knows as much as Devai knows about the secret
system by which the Temple altars are supplied with little living
victims; but she has no idea of how to put her knowledge into shape and
express it in paragraph form. We learn most from her when she least
knows she is saying anything interesting.
When first we began the work, our great difficulty was, as it is still,
to get upon the track of the children before the Temple women heard of
them. Once they were known to be available, Temple scouts appeared
mysteriously alert; and it is doubly difficult to get a little child
after negotiations have been opened with the subtle Temple scout. How
often old Devai has come to us sick at heart after a long, fruitless
search and effort to save some little child who, perhaps, only an hour
before her arrival was carried off in triumph by the Temple people! "I
pursued after the bandy, and I saw it in the distance; but swiftly went
their bullocks, and I could not overtake it. At last they stopped to
rest, and I came to where they were. But they smiled at me and said:
'Did you ever hear of such a thing as you ask in foolishness? Is it the
custom to give up a child, once it is ours?'" Sometimes a new story is
invented on the spot. "Did you not know it was my sister's child; and I,
her only sister, having no child of my own, have adopted this one as my
own? Would you ask me to give up my own child, the apple of my eye?"
Oftener, however, the clue fails, and all Devai knows is that the little
one is nowhere to be found. Once she traced it straight to a Temple
house, won her way in, and pleaded with tears, offering all compensation
for expenses incurred (travelling and other) if only the Temple woman
would let her take the child. But no: "If it dies, that matters little;
but disgrace is not to be contemplated." When all else fails, we
earnestly ask that the little one in danger may be taken quickly out of
that polluted atmosphere up into purer air; and it is startling to note
how solemnly the answer to that prayer has come in very many instances.
The clue for which we are always on the watch is often like a fine silk
thread leading down into dark places where we cannot see it, can hardly
feel it; it is so thin a thread. Sometimes, when we thought we held it
securely, we have lost it in the dark.
Sometimes it seems as if the Evil One, whose interest in these little
ones may be greater than we know, lays a false clue across our path, and
bewilders us by causing us to spend time and strength in what appears to
be a wholly useless fashion. Once old Devai was lured far out of our own
district in search of two children who did not even exist. She had taken
all precautions to verify the information given, but a false address had
baffled her; and we can only conclude that, for some reason unknown to
us, but well known to those whom we oppose, they were permitted on that
occasion to gain an advantage over us. We made it a rule, after that
will-of-the-wisp experience, that any address out of our own district
must be verified; and that the nearest missionary thereto, or
responsible Indian Christian, must be approached, before further steps
are taken. This rule has saved many a fruitless journey; but also we
cannot help knowing it has sometimes occasioned delays which have had
sad results. For distances are great in India. Devai herself lives two
days' journey from us, and her address is uncertain, as she sets off at
a moment's notice for any place where she has reason to think a child in
danger may be saved. Then, too, missionaries and responsible Indian
Christians are not everywhere. So that sometimes it is a case of
choosing the lesser of two evils, and choosing immediately.
[Illustration: LATHA (FIREFLY) BLOWING BUBBLES.]
Once in the night a knock came to Devai's door. A man stood outside, a
Hindu known to her. "A little girl has just been taken to the Temple of
A., where the great festival is being held. If you go at once you may
perhaps get her." The place named was out of our jurisdiction; but in
such cases Devai knows rules are only made to be broken. Off she went on
foot, got a bandy _en route_, reached the town before the festival was
over, found the house to which she had been directed--a little shut-up
house, doors and windows all closed--managed, how we never knew, to get
in, found a young woman, a Temple woman from Travancore, with a little
child asleep on the mat beside her, persuaded her to slip out of the
house with the child without wakening anyone, crept out of the town and
fled away into the night, thankful for the blessed covering darkness.
The child was being kept in that house till the Temple woman to whom she
was to be given produced the stipulated "Joy-gift," after which she
would become Temple property. Some delay in its being given had caused
that night's retention in the little shut-up house. The child, a most
lovable little girl, had been kidnapped and disguised; and the matter
was so skilfully managed, that we have never been able to discover even
the name of her own town. We only know she must have been well brought
up, for she was from the first a refined little thing with very dainty
ways. She and her little special friend are sitting on the steps looking
at Latha (Firefly), who is blowing bubbles. The other little one has a
similar but different history. Her father brought her to us himself,
fearing lest she should be kidnapped by one related to her who much
wanted to have her. "I, being a man, cannot be always with the child,"
he said, "and I fear for her."
On another occasion the clue was found through Devai's happening to
overhear the conversation of two men in a wood in the early morning. One
said to the other something about someone having taken "It" somewhere;
and Devai, whose scent is keen where little "Its" are concerned, made
friends with the men, and got the information she wanted from them.
Careful work resulted in a little child's salvation; but Devai hardly
dared believe it safe until she reached Dohnavur. When that occurred we
were all at church; for special services were being held in week-day
evenings, and old Devai had to possess her soul in patience till we came
out of church. Then there was a rush round to the nursery, and an eager
showing of the "It." I shall never forget the pang of disappointment and
apprehension. Several little ones had been sent to us who could not
possibly live; and the nurses had got overborne, and we dreaded another
strain for them. It was a tiny thing, three pounds and three-quarters of
pale brown skin and bone. Its face was a criss-cross of wrinkles, and it
looked any age. But "Man looketh upon the outward appearance" would have
been assuredly quoted to us, regardless of context, had we ventured upon
a remark to old Devai, who poured forth the story of its salvation in
vivid sentences. Next evening the old grannie of the compound told us
the baby could not live till morning. She laid it on a mat and regarded
it critically, felt its pulses (both wrists), examined minutely its eyes
and the bridge of its nose: "No, not till morning. Better have the grave
prepared, for early morning will be an inconvenient hour for digging."
Others confirmed her diagnosis, and sorrowfully the order was given and
the grave was dug.
But the baby lived till morning; and though for two years it needed a
nurse to itself, and over and over again all but left us, this baby has
grown one of our healthiest; and now when old Devai comes to see us she
looks at it, and then to Heaven, and sighs with gratitude.