CHAPTER V.

AGAIN, on the train's arrival, Matrá ran anxiously along the line of carriages, in search of his father. There was the usual hum of many speaking, and the hissing noise of the steam let out from the boiler, but no sound of greeting from a once familiar voice! The prisoner was hurried by his keepers into a third-class carriage, and Matrá saw him no more.

Once again the zamindar sorrowfully retraced his steps homewards. He had not the same peaceful feeling which had soothed him on the preceding night. It was not so much a God of Love that had been presented to his mind, as the terrible condition of those born and living in sin.

"Satan was cruel indeed to make the man and woman so miserable," thought Matrá, "when they were so peaceful and happy. Why did they listen to his evil counsel? But I might as well ask, why did we go into debt? We knew well enough that a money-lender's heart is as hard as a buffalo's hide. The crackers at my wedding were soon let off, the fireworks died into darkness, the sweetmeats were eaten, the fun was over, and then came the debt to crush us! We've had to pay dear for the honour of the thing. Why, all that we have borrowed for wedding, burning, and everything else hardly came to 500 rupees, and I'm sure that, little by little, 'we've paid the whole sum three times over,' * yet the debt remains large as ever!

"Our land is mortgaged, every inch of it; my creditors only leave the fields to me now, because they enable me to work, and as long as I can work, they can squeeze something out of me still, ay, if it were my very life-blood! Were I to fall sick—and ill-fed as I am, I am likely enough to do so—they would be down on me at once. My poor old grandmother and I might just lie down by the side of the road and perish of hunger. That station-man did but mock my misery when he asked how I should feel if I heard that my debt could be cleared off at once, and I be restored to my father, with peace and plenty before me. That never, never will be!"

* I fear that this is no exaggeration. The simple peasants are grievously cheated, and pay enormous interest.

Matrá walked fast, as if he wished to walk away from his own bitter thoughts, but they followed him like his black shadow. When he had almost reached his mud hut, which was at the nearer end of the village, the zamindar heard a low murmuring behind some bushes, in a voice which he recognised as that of his grandmother.

Noiselessly Matrá approached the spot, near enough to catch the meaning of the words uttered. The old woman, with her hands pressed together, and her forehead almost touching the ground was in the attitude of one performing pujá, but there was no temple or idol in that place, only the quiet jungle before her, and the dark blue sky above her. These were the words which the zamindar heard, broken by a few low sobs—

"I have done pujá at many shrines, but the gods do not hear me; I am poor and old, and getting blind, and if my son does not come back soon, I shall die without seeing his face. O God of Love! Hear me! We are very needy and wretched, and sorely want Thy help. Perhaps up in the bright place Thou canst look down on us poor ignorant folk, who do not even know how to pray. Wilt Thou be angry if I too say, 'Our Father,' and beg Thee very, very hard to send back my only son!"

A slight rustling in the bush made by Matrá, startled the poor old woman. She raised herself trembling lest she should have drawn upon herself a storm of wrath by such a strange and terrible act as that of addressing the God of the Christians. It had been some remembrance of olden days that had made the poor creature attempt to do what she had seen done by the English lady and Missy Baba.

Matrá looked on Sibbi quietly for some time without uttering a word. In the faint moonlight, and with her dimmed eyes she could not tell from his face whether her grandson were angry or not. Still less could Sibbi read the strange thoughts that were rising in the soul of Matrá. Without knowing it, the old Hindu had dropped another seed of life into the zamindar's heart. He saw devotion in a form to him perfectly new. It was no shouting of "Rám! Rám!" or "Hari! Hari!" No wild loud singing and drum-beating before a painted idol; no Brahmin's purchased prayers! It was addressing an unseen Being as if He could listen, and answer, and help. It was like a child's cry of pain, which a parent at least understands.

Matrá turned silently away.

Sibbi said to herself, "He despises me; he thinks I have done an evil thing. If I were not his grandmother, Matrá would spurn me with his foot, and get the Brahmins to curse me."

But Matrá's silence was not that of contempt, it was that of perplexity and doubt. As he lay down to rest that night on his charpai, wrapped in his ragged blanket, Matrá, caught himself repeating some of his grandmother's words of prayer.

When in the morning Matrá looked towards the rising sun, he thought of what the Christian had told him about the God who made it, and wondered whether there were in truth such a Being, to whom the sorrowful might go in their troubles, to find in Him a Father indeed. Then Matrá remembered what the Christian had been saying when the conversation had been suddenly interrupted, of God's having found a way to save poor sinners.

"I will tie up the buffaloes a little earlier than usual," said Matrá to himself, "that I may have a longer talk with the Christian. He at least finds comfort in his religion, and I have none in mine. I will hear of the way of being saved of which he told me; there is no harm in knowing what other men believe. That Christian must have found something in his faith very precious to be ready to give up for its sake father, mother, all that he had in the world. Did he not say that the love of his God made up for the loss of all?"