1.02.04. Book 2: Ch 4. Not Forsaken

CHAPTER IV

ONE day some months after the affair of the returned MS. we were walking through a thorny, jungly place, dear Ponnammal and I, and Ponnammal was talk­ing of the people of the village near the bungalow, and of the secret things done among them, as they are done in every village in India .

We were on our way home from work, and nothing very exciting had happened. It had been a dull, uninteresting day, but the evening was to be very much otherwise, filled as it was with a story I seemed to see, though I only heard it, just as I tell it now.

We were passing some particularly vicious bushes of long, straggly acacia, with no shade, nor at that season anything but thorns. The thorns caught at our light muslin saries as we passed, and Ponnammal stopped to unhook me. "Under these bushes," she said! as she warily fingered the thorns, "the mother of that child you have so grieved over, lay for a whole day in despair, and that night she was killed by her brother, brother of him whom you saw twist the child’s wrists."

Then she told me how the mother, a widow, had, contrary to custom, escaped from the mewed-up life of the back rooms of her brother’s house, the only life suitable for a self-respecting widow, and run to this jungle, and thrown herself down under these thorn bushes and longed to die. And that night when she went home her brother took her, and because she had broken the rules of her caste, he there and then slew her. And he dug a hole in the earthen floor, packed her into it, covered her over, and told no one. In the morning she was missed; his castefolk guessed what he had done; and they thoroughly approved, or if any did not, they were wise and said nothing, and a few rupees made all safe. Certainly the last thing in the world would have been to inform the authorities. Why bring trouble on the village, and especially upon the caste? The brother went to a town three miles off, where he had property, and Brownie stayed with her other uncle, and played on her mother’s grave, and never knew it was her grave till one day, for some reason the floor was dug up, the bones were found, and the story slipped out. She was such a nice girl, that girl-mother, Ponnammal said; the Brownie was very like her, the same soft­ eyes and gentle little bird ways. But she had not known how to bear being cooped up in the dark back room, and this foolish human longing for a breath of the fresh air had been her undoing.

I looked at the thorny bushes, unfriendly even to us, how much more so to her as she crouched under them through that one day of her poor, brief freedom. And I almost seemed to see her, the Brownie, but a trifle older, with that look in her eyes that I knew, the wistful, startled, puzzled look of a hunted animal taking breath, and saw her too, returning at night to that grim room, and that stern man, whose features might have been chiselled in flint for all the kindness there was in them. And in the hands of that man, that day, was our Brownie. Not till long afterwards, when she was safely with us, did I hear of what it meant to be in those hands. The Brownie had one lesson set her now. She had to learn to suffer. The uncle had of course been told of what she had done, and his business was to see that she did not do it again, so to make sure she would never dream of doing it, as well as by way of punishment for having done it, she was frequently beaten with a rod kept for the purpose.

Sometimes her uncle took her into a room which had no window, only a heavy door covered with brass bosses, and fitted with a huge iron lock. When that door was shut, not a sound penetrated from it to the house. To give him light to see what he was doing, he would tell her to bring a lamp, a small brass saucer with a wick floating in the oil.

Once in, he would shut the door, bid her put the lamp on the floor, and then stand before her, raining abuse upon her head till he had worked himself up into a sufficiently violent passion, while she stood trembling before him, watching the rod with fearful, fascinated eyes.

Then with a quick gesture he would tear away the one slight cotton garment worn by a Tamil child from her back and shoulders, and holding her by the arm, beat her till she fell at his feet. How she dreaded that rod, longed to break it or burn it or in some way lose it, but she never dared. The next might be even heavier. "An unbeaten bullock, an undisciplined child, they are one in uselessness," her uncle would observe, then, "Go bring the stick and the lamp." It was a hard, hard life for the little girl.

One day, after severe punishment with that detestable rod for some trifling fault (and any fault awoke, of course, the remembrance of that greater fault and aggravated the punishment), the Brownie was left alone in the dark room with not even the lamp for comfort. The door was locked on the outside, and as the big key turned in the lock it seemed to lock her in to an utterly uncomforted misery. Bruised and aching was her poor little body, bruised and aching her spirit. She tried hard to re­member what she had heard that day in the bungalow. Most of it had gone from her, driven out by the events which seemed so thoroughly to con­tradict all that we had said. At last this memory came:

She saw, as in a picture hung up in her mind, one in pain, being beaten. Something dimly seen about a death in pain followed; the story had been outlined to her on that first evening in the palm wood, she had not heard a whisper of it since; but the Spirit, the Spirit who makes vital the things that matter, took this thing and showed it to her. Then He comforted her, taught her, but how she could never quite explain, that she was not forsaken, "He Who knew what it felt like to be beaten" was with her, the Sufferer of sufferers of Whom she had heard in the wood. It was this, the power of the truth in it held her-no glad God to whom pain was unknown could have helped her now, but the Man acquainted with grief was her Succourer. The God of Joy, she would meet later. The Loris CHILDREN’S FOREST SONG.

Dim, green forest Of a thousand secrets, When you were planted Did the angels sing?

Many things I wonder, Are they all your secrets?

Won’t you ever tell me anything?

Great; white waterfall Breaking through the forest, Where do you come from? Where do you go? Had you a beginning? Will you go on for ever? For ever and for ever will you flow?

Great, black, glistening wall Veiled in shining glory, Piled among the waters

Rock upon rock, 0, to have stood and seen Hands at work upon you Shivering you and shattering, shock on shock!

Deep, dark, silent pool Hollowed at the fall’s foot, What do you think of All the long day? Do you hear the thunder Of tremendous waters? Do you hear the laughter of the spray?