[II.]
Seeking the Outcast.
A vivid scene comes before us: We are sitting on a mortar bench, built in a circular form around the trunk of an old tree, in the open court of a Government chakla in one of the Cantonments of India. Some thirty or forty girls come trooping around us, either sitting down on the ground, native style, or bringing their cot-beds with them for seats.
Our sweet-voiced interpreter sings a plaintive song—native words and native tune—and when she has finished there is scarcely a dry eye to be seen. Then follows a simple Gospel message to which all give respectful heed, and at its close we ask, “Why are you in such a place as this?” Several answer in brief monosyllables, accompanied by a gesture as though drawing a line transversely across the brow. “It is our fate! It is our fate!” are the words used in reply; and our interpreter explains to us that these believe, in accordance with their religious instructions, that while they were yet babes, in an unfortunate moment, when left alone by the mother, the messenger of fate entered the room and wrote the word “prostitute” in invisible characters across the brow, and that from that moment to struggle against the lot that awaited them would have been useless.
No wonder that such poor slaves, when once taken and placed with the British soldiers by some wicked mahaldarni, never dream of trying to get away; and small wonder if others who had hoped that a better fate might await them, and who make one ignorant, feeble attempt to escape (and the women of a people whose customs keep them in perpetual seclusion are extremely ignorant of the outside world) and are recaptured by the police, will never be induced to try again, but quickly become convinced that their fate has been also inexorably fixed from the cradle.
“But,” we say, “God is too good; He would not have it so.” And they reply hopelessly, “But what can we do? We cannot starve; we cannot cut our own throats. Oh, that we might die!”
Then they begin to clamour for a chance to tell their individual stories. One is a girl who was left an orphan at the age of six years. At the tender age of eleven she says she was taken by an Englishman and kept three years as his mistress. When he deserted her, there was no door open to receive her but the chakla. One pretty girl said she had been deceived by a bad woman, under promise of employment.