How Long?
"I shivered as if standing in the neighbourhood of
hell."
_Henry Martyn, India._
I HAVE come home from vainly trying to help another child. She had heard
of the children's Saviour, and I think she would have come to Him, but
they suffered her not. She was, when I first saw her, sweet and
innocent, with eyes full of light, great glancing, dancing eyes, which
grew wistful for a moment sometimes, and then filled with a laugh again.
She told me her mother lived very near, and asked me to come and see
her; so I went.
The mother startled me. Such a face, or such a want of a face. One was
looking at what had once been a face, but was now a strange spoiled
thing, with strange hard eyes, so unlike the child's. There was no other
feature fully shaped; it was one dreadful blank. She listened that day,
with almost eagerness. She understood so quickly, too, one felt she must
have heard before. But she told us nothing about herself, and we only
knew that there was something very wrong. Her surroundings told us
that.
Before we went again we heard who she was; a relative of one of our most
honoured pastors, himself a convert years ago. Then a great longing
possessed us to try to save her from a life for which she had not been
trained, and especially we longed to save her little girl, and we went
to try. This time the mother welcomed us, and told us how our words had
brought back things she had heard when she was young. "But now it is all
different, for I am different," and she told us her story. . . . "So I
took poison, but it acted not as I intended. _It only destroyed my
face_," and she touched the poor remnant with her hand, and went on with
her terrible tale. There were people listening outside, and she spoke in
a hoarse whisper. We could hardly believe she meant what she said, as
she told of the fate proposed for her child. And oh, how we besought her
then and there to give up the life, and let us help her, and that dear
little one. She seemed moved. Something awoke within her and strove.
Tears filled those hard eyes and rolled down her cheeks as we pleaded
with her, in the name of all that was motherly, not to doom her little
innocent girl, not to push her with her own hands down to hell. At last
she yielded, promised that if in one week's time we would come again she
would give her up to us, and as for herself, she would think of it, and
perhaps she also would give up the life; she hated it, she said.
There was another girl there, a fair, quiet girl of fifteen. She was ill
and very suffering, and we tried for her too; but there seemed no hope.
"Take the little one; you are not too late for her," the mother said,
and we went with the promise, "One more week and she is yours."
The week passed, and every day we prayed for that little one. Then when
the time came, we went. Hope and fear alternated within us. One felt
sick with dread lest anything had happened to break the mother's word,
and yet one hoped. The house door was open. The people in the street
smiled as we stopped our bandy, got out, and went in. I remembered their
smiles afterwards, and understood. The mother was there: in a corner,
crouching in pain, was the girl; on the floor asleep, _drugged_, lay the
child with her little arms stretched out. The mother's eyes were hard.
It was no use. Outside in the street the people sat on their verandahs
and laughed. "Offer twenty thousand rupees, and see if her mother will
give her to you!" shouted one. Inside we sat beside that mother, not
knowing what to say.
The child stirred in her sleep, and turned. "Will you go?" said the
mother very roughly in her ear. She opened listless, senseless eyes. She
had no wish to go. "She wanted to come last week," we said. The mother
hardened, and pushed the child, and rolled her over with her foot. "_She
will not go now_," she said.
Oh, it did seem pitiful! One of those pitiful, pitiful things which
never grow less pitiful because they are common everywhere. That
_little_ girl, and this!
We took the mother's hands in ours, and pleaded once again. And then
words failed us. They sometimes do. There are things that stifle words.
At last they asked us to go. The girl in the corner would not
speak--could not, perhaps she only moaned; we passed her and went out.
The mother followed us, half sorry for us,--there is something of the
woman left in her,--half sullen, with a lowering sullenness. "You will
never see her again," she said, and she named the town, one of the
Sodoms of this Province, to which the child was soon to be sent; and
then, just a little ashamed of her broken promise, she added, "I would
have let her go, but _he_ would not, no, never; and she does not belong
to me now, so what could I do?" We did not ask her who "he" was. We
knew. Nor did we ask the price he had paid. We knew; fifty rupees, about
three pounds, was the price paid down for a younger child bought for the
same purpose not long ago. This one's price might be a little higher.
That is all.
We stood by the bullock cart ready to get in. The people were watching.
The mother had gone back into the house. Then a great wave of longing
for that child swept over us again. We turned and looked at the little
form as it lay on the floor, dead, as it seemed, to all outward things.
Oh that it had been dead! And we pleaded once more with all our heart,
and once more failed.
We drove away. We could see them crowding to look after us, and we shut
our eyes to shut out the sight of their smiles. The bullock bells
jingled too gladly, it seemed, and we shut our ears to shut out the
sound. And then we shut ourselves in with God, who knew all about it,
and cared. How long, O God, how long?
And now we have heard that she has gone, and we know, from watching
what happened before, just what will happen now. How day by day they
will sear that child's soul with red-hot irons, till it does not feel or
care any more. And a child's seared soul is an awful thing.
Forgive us for words which may hurt and shock; we are telling the day's
life-story. Hurt or not, shocked or not, should you not know the truth?
How can you pray as you ought if you only know fragments of truth? Truth
is a loaf; you may cut it up nicely, like thin bread and butter, with
all the crusts carefully trimmed. No one objects to it then. Or you can
cut it as it comes, crust and all.
Think of that child to-night as you gather your children about you, and
look in their innocent faces and their clear, frank eyes. Our very last
news of her was that she had been in some way influenced to spread a lie
about the place, first sign of the searing begun. I think of her as I
saw her that first day, bright as a bird; and then of her as I saw her
last, drugged on the floor; I think of her as she must be now, bright
again, but with a different brightness--not the little girl I
knew--never to be quite that little girl again.
Oh, comrades, do you wonder that we care? Do you wonder that we plead
with you to care? Do you wonder that we have no words sometimes, and
fall back into silence, or break out into words wrung from one more
gifted with expression, who knew what it was to feel!
With such words, then, we close; looking back once more at that child on
the floor, with the hands stretched out and the heavy eyes shut--and we
know what it was they saw when they opened from that sleep--
"My God! can such things be?
Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one,
Is even done to Thee?
. . . . . . .
Hoarse, horrible; and strong,
Rises to heaven that agonising cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
HOW LONG, O GOD, HOW LONG?"