1.02.03. Book 2: Ch 3. Forsaken

CHAPTER III

POOR little frightened Brownie. She turned eagerly as the man laid hold of her and tried to smile to me, as if to reassure me, but you cannot smile for long when your wrists are being twisted, and the cry that escaped her rang through me; and then the uncle did something more cruel, and lest he should do worse in his rage at seeing her look so longingly at us, we left, hard though it was to do it; at such a moment one would give all one possesses to be able to stay and share blows and miseries. The next thing we heard was that she had been turned out of her home, and sent to an uncle who lived three miles away and could be depended upon to deal severely with her. The fawn child was married in a hurry, and we never saw her again.

About this time a letter came from home asking for a book for children. I thought of the Brownie, and also of a little boy of whom we knew, into whose eyes his father threatened to put pepper if he would not give up his wish to be a Christian. To write a book just for the sake of adding another to the pile of books already in the world was out of the question. If I wrote one at all I wanted it to do something, not just talk. If only I could tell the children at home of those two children they would help them, I was sure; in the one single way they could be helped. So I wrote their short stories and sent the MS. home, praying with all my heart that it might not be a mere interesting story to be read and forgotten, but that it might work among the children of England for those two imprisoned children in India.

After a few weeks it came back again. "It was too harrowing," the friend who was deputed to write to me told me. It must be "modified, even for grown-up people." But I did not see how I could "modify" the truth; and after all, what did the word mean? Did it mean turn the pepper into flour, and the wrist-twisting into pats, smother the misery of the cross with flowers? But what good would that do? Besides how could one? So I put the unwanted manuscript back in its envelope and wrote across it words I had read a week or two before in "Aurora Leigh,"

You must not pump spring water unawares Upon a gracious public full of nerves. and dropped the envelope into a drawer, and wished I could write properly; for I had so wanted to help the Brownie and Pearl-boy, and it seemed such a failure. I would have tried again, and written better if I could; but I did not see how I could get children at home to care very much if I might not tell them in unpainted words how much those two in India needed their help. So it seemed of no use. But this lame attempt, this failure as I felt it, had something to do years afterwards, and this is what happened. A friend, straight out from home, was one day rummaging among my papers, when she lighted on that envelope which I had by that time entirely forgotten. She read the note on it, and looked inside; and she felt there were people in England who could bear to know the truth, would choose to know it indeed, if the chance were offered them. And that was the beginning of "Things as they are" and all the other books (which, however, were never intended for children, being full of far more poignant things than wrist-twisting and pepper in eyes). And if, by the kindness of our God, those books have done anything at all, it is owing in the first place to the kindly-meant advice, to modify that un­pleasant, unnecessary, harrowing thing, the down­right real truth. But it is good to have been many years journeying on the road of life, for one learns so many things. For example, how easy it is to do things wrong when one most wishes to do them right, and to blunder and mistake the leading, and be altogether very trying to one’s Guide. By these matters one learns mercy. Perhaps that is why the old are so much more merciful than the young. They have so many more mistakes, and misdeeds, to be sorry for. And there is another thing one learns: the marvellous power of the Lord our God to over-rule and bring things to a happy conclusion which had seemed entirely set on going wrong. Where we have failed He comes in and takes the poor, little, mangled attempts and perfects them, and the thing we tried to do and could not do, is done. The Brownie was kept faithful as we shall see, and finally delivered. As for the Pearl-boy, he is working beside me at this moment, he and his dear little wife, who is the "M" of a "Lotus Buds" chapter, whom to save we had to fight three long battles in the law courts, winning two and losing the last. "The child will be given back," said the judge on earth: "She shall not," said the Judge of the Heavens. That was eight years ago, and here she is; and to perfect the story here too is their first-born son, David, the joy of us all. Sometimes when I look back over the years of strife, and bring to mind the fears and despairs, and the failures, the only word that satisfies my longing to tell it out is this, "Who shall express the noble acts of the Lord or show forth all His praise?" But we have left the Brownie, even as in the years that followed we seemed to leave her, very lonely, very sorrowful, a forsaken child in a cruel house. "Thou tellest my flittings, put my tears into Thy bottle: are not these things noted in Thy book?" Not Forsaken Blessed is he . . . who is not fallen from his hope in the Lord.- Sir 19:2.