"I TOO have had many troubles," said Karim, after a little pause,
"perhaps even greater troubles than you. But my Father has helped me
out of them all."
"It is a great thing to have a father near at hand," said the young
zamindar. "Probably you live with yours, and see him every day."
"I have never seen Him yet," replied Karim.
"Never seen him yet!" repeated Matrá. "Then you are worse off than I
am. But you say that he helps you in all your troubles."
"There is not a thing that happens to grieve me that I do not tell Him
of," said Karim, "and my Father sets everything right. There never was
another so kind and so wise, or so powerful either."
"Then I wonder that he keeps you here looking after the trains,"
observed Matrá. "He might find some better situation for you; or, if he
be rich, give you all that you want, without need of your working at
all."
"My Father thinks it better for me to earn my bread by honest labour,"
observed the official. "But after awhile, He will call me to His own
beautiful dwelling-place, and put splendid robes upon me, and give me
freely all that my heart can desire."
"I wish that my father could do so," said Matrá; "but I doubt that he
will ever have enough to pay off our debt. Does your father live very
far off, that he never sees you at all?"
"He sees me always," said Karim, looking upwards; "night and day, in
darkness and light, He is ever close beside me. God is my Heavenly
Father, I have now no parent beside Him."
"Are you a Christian?" asked the zamindar. There was a little scorn in
his tone as he uttered the word.
"I am a Christian," was Karim's reply. "A year ago, I had father,
mother, brother, sisters, friends, and as many rupees as I chose to
spend; now I am cast off by every one except that Heavenly Father,
whose love makes up for all."
The zamindar did not understand why a man should give up home and
everything for the sake of changing his religion. "I suppose that you
were a Mahomedan," he said.
"I was, and a bigoted one," replied Karim.
"I think that the Mahomedan religion is good for the Mahomedans, and
the Christian for the English, and the Hindu for us Hindus," said
Matrá. "I believe what my fathers believed, and do what my fathers did.
They always performed pujá to the gods."
"And what benefit did they receive from so doing?" asked Karim.
It was a difficult question to answer; Matrá did not attempt to reply.
"You do pujá to many gods; we pray but to One Supreme Being," said
Karim; "He is the Maker of everything that we behold, the bright sun,
yon moon, earth, sea, and the myriads of creatures that live therein.
As to a man there can be but one father, so can there be but one God,
and that God is Love. This is what we are taught in our holy Book."
"I know that you Christians believe not in Krishan, Vishnu, or
Mahedeo," said Matrá, slowly rising to his feet, as if inclined to end
the conversation.
"Listen to me, brother," said Karim, also rising to a standing
position. "You are expecting your father by the coming train, a father
whom you love, though you do not remember his face. Suppose that, when
the train stops, a Brahmin should get out of a carriage, and carry with
him some dozens of images, one with the head of an elephant, another
with a hundred arms, another with no shape at all, and should say to
you, 'Rejoice, O zamindar! "These" are the fathers whom you have been
expecting so long! Would you take the figures of brass or stone to your
bosom, and cry, 'Now am I satisfied!' Would you receive the lifeless
things, and acknowledge them to be your parent indeed?"
The zamindar shook his head. He was expecting a living father, a loving
father; he could not receive as such any image of stone or brass.
"And if it would be an insult to your parent to let an image for
one moment take his place, think you that the one great Father, the
Eternal, the Invisible, is not offended when His creatures liken Him to
such monstrous forms as you do pujá to in your temples?"
"No one ever spake such things to me before," said Matrá, his common
sense striving against the force of old habits, and his fear of the
anger of those whom he had been taught to look on as gods.
"Listen but a minute longer," said Karim earnestly. "If in your village
you heard any one saying that your father had committed theft, murder,
and done other things that it is shameful even to mention, would you
listen with a pleased countenance, and reward the speaker at the end?"
"I would break the liar's head with my goad!" muttered the young
zamindar.
"And yet you are willing that Brahmins should tell you of deities
committing crimes, which, if committed by a man, would drive him
from society and bring him to prison, or to the gallows! Look at yon
clear sky with its pure moon, and the stars just beginning to shine
above us, can you believe it to be peopled with beings revelling in
blood, delighting in suffering, pleased with the shrieks of helpless
babes flung into the Ganges, or the groans of victims crushed under
Juggernath's car? Does not Nature, beautiful, bounteous, pure, tell of
a Maker all perfect and holy—repeat, as it were, the words of our Book,
that there is one God, the Heavenly Father of all, and that He is Love?"
There was no time for reply, for as Karim uttered the last word, the
whistle was heard which announced the coming train. Soon, snorting and
puffing, like some mighty monster, its one red eye gleaming through the
gloom, the train rushed up. It slackened its pace, and then stopped as
it reached the side of the platform. Karim was ready at his post. With
lamp in his hand, he passed from carriage to carriage, giving the name
of the station in case any traveller should wish to alight.
Eagerly Matrá ran along the platform, passing the carriages occupied
by Europeans with scarcely a glance at the faces within, but anxiously
peering into every one filled with natives. The station was a small
one, and but few passengers alighted. There was a sahib whose "sais"
(groom) was waiting with his horse, a bunniah and his family, and that
was all. There was not a trace of a sepoy.
It was with a heavy heart as well as weary limbs that poor Matrá left
the station. He knew too well the face of the bunniah, for he owed him
a debt, and had found in him one of the hardest of his creditors. The
poor man slunk away, as debtors will, with mingled fear and shame.
Matrá murmured to himself as he left the station, "I have had my weary
walk for nothing."