The Little Accals
But Thou didst reckon, when at first
Thy word our hearts and hands did crave,
What it would come to at the worst
To save.
Perpetual knockings at Thy door,
Tears sullying Thy transparent rooms.
[Illustration: THREE LITTLE ACCALS.]
THESE lines come with insistence as I look at the little Accals, who
follow in order after the Accals, convert children, most of them, now
growing up to helpfulness. If part of the story of one such young girl
is told, it may help those to whom such tales are unfamiliar to
understand and to care.
December 16, 1903, was spent by three of us in a rest-house on the
outskirts of a Hindu town. We were on our way to Dohnavur from Madras,
where we had seen Mr. and Mrs. Walker off for England. The two days'
journey had left us somewhat weary; and yet we were strong in hope that
day, for we knew there was special thought for us on board ship and at
home, and something special was being asked as a birthday gift of joy.
Arulai (Star) and Preena (the Elf), the two who were with me, were full
of expectation. The day had often been marked by that joy of joys, a
lost sheep found; and as we looked out at the heathen town with its
many people so unconscious of our thoughts about them, we wondered where
we should find the one our thoughts had singled from among the crowd,
and we went out to look for her.
[Illustration: PREENA AND PREEYA
(To left and right) getting ready for a Coming-Day Feast.]
Up and down the long white streets we looked for her; on the little
narrow verandahs, in the courtyards of the houses, in their dark inner
rooms when we were invited within, out again into the sunshine--but we
could not find her. That evening I remember, though we did not say so to
each other, we felt a little disappointed. We had not met one who even
remotely cared for the things we had come to bring.
No one had responded. There was not, so far as we knew it, even a little
blade to point to, much less a sheaf to lay at His feet. After nightfall
a woman came to see us. But she was a Christian, and beyond trying to
cheer her to more earnest service among the heathen, there was nothing
to be done for her. She left us, she told us afterwards, warmed to hope;
and she talked to a child next morning, a little relative of her own,
whose heart the Lord opened.
For three months we heard nothing; then unexpectedly a letter came. "The
child is much in earnest, and she has made up her mind to join your
Starry Cluster" (a name given by the people to our band, which at that
time was itinerating in the district), "so I purpose sending her at
once." The parents, for reasons of their own, agreed to the arrangement,
and the little girl came to Dohnavur. It was wonderful to watch her
learning. She is not intellectually brilliant, but the soul awakened at
once, and there was that tenderness of response which refreshes the
heart of the teacher. She seemed to come straight to our Lord Jesus and
know Him as her Saviour, child though she was; and soon the longing to
win others possessed her, and a younger child, who was her special
charge among the nursery children, was influenced so gently and so
willingly, that we do not know the time when, led by her little
Accal, she too came to the Lover of children.
But one day, suddenly, trouble came. The parents appeared in the
Dohnavur compound and claimed their daughter; and we had no legal right
to refuse her, for she was under age. We shall never forget the hour
they came. They had haunted the neighbourhood, as we afterwards heard,
and prowled about outside the compound, watching for an opportunity to
carry the child off without our knowledge. But she was always with the
other children, so that plan failed. When first she heard they had come,
she fled to the bungalow. "My parents have come! My father is strong!
Oh, hide me! hide me!" she besought us. "I cannot resist him! I cannot!"
and she cried and clung to us. But when we went out to meet them, she
was perfectly quiet; and no one would have known from her manner as she
stood before them, and answered their questions, without a tremble in
her voice, how frightened she had been before.
"What is this talk about being a Christian?" the father demanded
stormily. "What can an infant know about such matters? Are you wiser
than your fathers, that their religion is not good enough for you?" And
scathing mockery followed, harder to bear than abuse. "Come! Say salaam
to the Missie Ammal, and bring your jewels" (she had taken them off),
"and let us go home together." The child stood absolutely still, looking
up with brave eyes; and to our astonishment said, as though it were the
only thing to be said: "But I am a Christian. I cannot go home."
We had not thought of her saying this. We had, indeed, encouraged her as
we had encouraged ourselves, to rest in our God, who is unto us a God of
deliverances; but we had not suggested any line of resistance, and were
not prepared for the calm refusal which so quietly took it for granted
that she had no power to refuse.
The father was evidently nonplussed. He knew his little daughter, a
timid child, whose translated name, Fawn, seems to express her exactly,
and he gazed down upon her in silence for one surprised moment, then
burst out in wrath and indignant revilings. "Snake! nurtured in the
bosom only to turn and sting! Vile, filthy, disgusting insect, born to
disgrace her caste!" And they cursed her as she stood.
Then their mood changed, and they tried pleadings, much more difficult
to resist. The father reminded her of his pilgrimage to a famous Temple
at her birth: "He had named her before the gods." Her mother touched on
tenderer memories, till we could feel the quiver of soul, and feared for
the little Fawn. Then they promised her liberty at home. She should read
her Bible, pray to the true God, "for all gods are one." I saw Fawn shut
her eyes for a moment. What she saw in that moment she told me
afterwards: a fire lighted on the floor, a Bible tossed into it, two
schoolboy brothers (whose leanings towards Christianity had been
discovered) pushed into an inner room, the sound of blows and cries.
"And after that my brothers did not want to be Christians any more."
Poor little timid Fawn! We hardly wonder as we look at her that she
shrank and shut her eyes. I have seen a child of twelve held down by a
powerful arm and beaten across the bare shoulders with a cocoa-nut shell
fastened to the end of a stick; I have seen her wrists twisted almost to
dislocation--seen it, and been unable to help. I think of the child, now
our happy Gladness, lover of the unlovable babies; and I for one cannot
wonder at the little Fawn's fear. But aloud she only said: "Forgive me,
I cannot go home."
The father grew impatient. "Get your jewels and let us be gone!" Fawn
ran into the house, brought her jewels, and handed them to her father.
He counted them over--pretty little chains and bangles, and then he eyed
her curiously. A child to give up her jewels like this--he found it
unaccountable. And then he began to argue, but Fawn answered him with
clearness and simplicity, and he could not perplex her. She knew Whom
she believed.
At last they rose to go, cursing the day she was born with a curse that
sounded horrible. But their younger daughter, whom they had brought with
them, threw herself upon the ground, tearing her hair, beating her
breast, shrieking and rolling and flinging the dust about like a mad
thing. "I will not go without my sister! I will not go! I will not go!"
And she clung to Fawn, and wept and bewailed till we hardly dared to
hope the child would be able to withstand her. For a moment the parents
stood and waited. We, too, stood in tension of spirit. "They have told
her to do it," whispered Fawn, and stood firm. Then the father stooped,
snatched up the younger child, and departed, followed by the mother.
All this time two of our number had been waiting upon God in a quiet
place out of sight. One of the two went after the parents, hoping for a
chance to explain matters to the mother. As she drew near she heard the
wife say in an undertone to her husband: "Leave them for to-day. Wait
till to-night. You have carried off the younger in your arms against her
will. What hinders you doing the same to the elder?" And that night we
prayed that the Wall of Fire might be round us, and slept in peace.
As a dream when one awaketh, so was the memory of that afternoon when we
awoke next morning. And as a dream so the parents passed out of sight,
for they left before the dawn. But weeks afterwards we heard what had
happened that night. They had lodged in the Hindu village outside our
gate. There has never been a Christian there, and the people have never
responded in any way. It is a little shut-in place of darkness on the
borders of the light. But when the parents proposed a raid upon the
bungalow that night they would not rise to it. "No, we have no feud with
the bungalow. We will not do it." The nearest white face was a day's
journey distant, and a woman alone, white or brown, does not count for
much in Hindu eyes. But the Wall of Fire was around us, and so we were
safe.
If the story could stop here, how easy life would be! One fight, one
fling to the lions, and then the palm and crown. But it is not so. The
perils of reaction are greater for the convert than the first great
strain of facing the alternative, "Diana or Christ." Home-sickness
comes, wave upon wave, and all but sweeps the soul away; feelings and
longings asleep in the child awake in the girl, and draw her and woo
her, and blind her too often to all that yielding means. She forgets the
under-side of the life she has forsaken; she remembers only the
alluring; and all that is natural pleads within her, and will not let
her rest. "Across the will of Nature leads on the path of God," is
sternly true for the convert in a Hindu or Moslem land.
And so we write this unfinished story in faith that some one reading it
will remember the young girl-converts as well as the little children.
Fawn has been kept steadfast, but she still needs prayer. These last
five years have held anxious hours for those who love her, and to us, as
to all who have to do with converts. "Perpetual knockings at Thy door,
tears sullying Thy transparent rooms," are words that go deep and touch
the heart of things.