I

At a time, when my unpopularity with a part of my readers had reached
the nadir of its glory, and my name had become the central orb of the
journals, to be attended through space with a perpetual rotation of
revilement, I felt the necessity to retire to some quiet place and
endeavour to forget my own existence.

I have a house in the country some miles away from Calcutta, where I can
remain unknown and unmolested. The villagers there have not, as yet,
come to any conclusion about me. They know I am no mere holiday-maker
or pleasure-seeker; for I never outrage the silence of the village
nights with the riotous noises of the city. Nor do they regard me as
ascetic, because the little acquaintance they have of me carries the
savour of comfort about it. I am not, to them, a traveller; for, though
I am a vagabond by nature, my wandering through the village fields is
aimless. They are hardly even quite certain whether I am married or
single; for they have never seen me with my children. So, not being
able to classify me in any animal or vegetable kingdom that they know,
they have long since given me up and left me stolidly alone.

But quite lately I have come to know that there is one person in the
village who is deeply interested in me. Our acquaintance began on a
sultry afternoon in July. There had been rain all the morning, and the
air was still wet and heavy with mist, like eyelids when weeping is
over.

I sat lazily watching a dappled cow grazing on the high bank of the
river. The afternoon sun was playing on her glossy hide. The simple
beauty of this dress of light made me wonder idly at man's deliberate
waste of money in setting up tailors' shops to deprive his own skin of
its natural clothing.

While I was thus watching and lazily musing, a woman of middle age came
and prostrated herself before me, touching the ground with her forehead.
She carried in her robe some bunches of flowers, one of which she
offered to me with folded hands. She said to me, as she offered it:
"This is an offering to my God."

She went away. I was so taken aback as she uttered these words, that I
could hardly catch a glimpse of her before she was gone. The whole
incident was entirely simple, but it left a deep impression on my mind;
and as I turned back once more to look at the cattle in the field, the
zest of life in the cow, who was munching the lush grass with deep
breaths, while she whisked off the flies, appeared to me fraught with
mystery. My readers may laugh at my foolishness, but my heart was full
of adoration. I offered my worship to the pure joy of living, which is
God's own life. Then, plucking a tender shoot from the mango tree, I
fed the cow with it from my own hand, and as I did this I had the
satisfaction of having pleased my God.

The next year when I returned to the village it was February. The cold
season still lingered on. The morning sun came into my room, and I was
grateful for its warmth. I was writing, when the servant came to tell
me that a devotee, of the Vishnu cult, wanted to see me. I told him, in
an absent way, to bring her upstairs, and went on with my writing. The
Devotee came in, and bowed to me, touching my feet. I found that she
was the same woman whom I had met, for a brief moment, a year ago.

I was able now to examine her more closely. She was past that age when
one asks the question whether a woman is beautiful or not. Her stature
was above the ordinary height, and she was strongly built; but
her body was slightly bent owing to her constant attitude of veneration.
Her manner had nothing shrinking about it. The most remarkable of her
features were her two eyes. They seemed to have a penetrating power
which could make distance near.

With those two large eyes of hers, she seemed to push me as she entered.

"What is this?" she asked. "Why have you brought me here before your
throne, my God? I used to see you among the trees; and that was much
better. That was the true place to meet you."

She must have seen me walking in the garden without my seeing her. For
the last few clays, however, I had suffered from a cold, and had been
prevented from going out. I had, perforce, to stay indoors and pay my
homage to the evening sky from my terrace. After a silent pause the
Devotee said to me: "O my God, give me some words of good."

I was quite unprepared for this abrupt request, and answered her on the
spur of the moment: "Good words I neither give nor receive. I simply
open my eyes and keep silence, and then I can at once both hear and see,
even when no sound is uttered. Now, while I am looking at you, it is as
good as listening to your voice."

The Devotee became quite excited as I spoke, and exclaimed: "God speaks
to me, not only with His mouth, but with His whole body."

I said to her: "When I am silent I can listen with my whole body. I
have come away from Calcutta here to listen to that sound."

The Devotee said: "Yes, I know that, and therefore 1 have come here to
sit by you."

Before taking her leave, she again bowed to me, and touched my feet. I
could see that she was distressed, because my feet were covered. She
wished them to be bare.

Early next morning I came out, and sat on my terrace on the roof.
Beyond the line of trees southward I could see the open country chill
and desolate. I could watch the sun rising over the sugar-cane in
the East, beyond the clump of trees at the side of the village. Out of
the deep shadow of those dark trees the village road suddenly appeared.
It stretched forward, winding its way to some distant villages on the
horizon, till it was lost in the grey of the mist.

That morning it was difficult to say whether the sun had risen or not.
A white fog was still clinging to the tops of the trees. I saw the
Devotee walking through the blurred dawn, like a mist-wraith of the
morning twilight. She was singing her chant to God, and sounding her
cymbals.

The thick haze lifted at last; and the sun, like the kindly grandsire of
the village, took his seat amid all the work that was going on in home
and field.

When I had just settled down at my writing-table, to appease the hungry
appetite of my editor in Calcutta, there came a sound of footsteps on
the stair, and the Devotee, humming a tune to herself, entered, and
bowed before me. I lifted my head from my papers.

She said to me: "My God, yesterday I took as sacred food what was left
over from your meal."

I was startled, and asked her how she could do that.

"Oh," she said, "I waited at your door in the evening, while you were at
dinner, and took some food from your plate when it was carried out."

This was a surprise to me, for every one in the village knew that I had
been to Europe, and had eaten with Europeans. I was a vegetarian, no
doubt, but the sanctity of my cook would not bear investigation, and the
orthodox regarded my food as polluted.

The Devotee, noticing my sign of surprise, said: "My God, why should I
come to you at all, if I could not take your food? "

I asked her what her own caste people would say. She told me she had
already spread the news far and wide all over the village. The caste
people had shaken their heads, but agreed that she must go her own way.

I found out that the Devotee came from a good family in the country, and
that her mother was well to-do, and desired to keep her daughter. But
she preferred to be a mendicant. I asked her how she made her living.
She told me that her followers had given her a piece of land, and that
she begged her food from door to door. She said to me: "The food which
I get by begging is divine."

After I had thought over what she said, I understood her meaning. When
we get our food precariously as alms, we remember God the giver. But
when we receive our food regularly at home, as a matter of course, we
are apt to regard it as ours by right.


I had a great desire to ask her about her husband. But as she never
mentioned him even indirectly, I did not question her.

I found out very soon that the Devotee had no respect at all for that
part of the village where the people of the higher castes lived.

"They never give," she said, "a single farthing to God's service; and
yet they have the largest share of God's glebe. But the poor worship
and starve."

I asked her why she did not go and live among these godless people, and
help them towards a better life. "That," I said with some unction,
"would be the highest form of divine worship."

I had heard sermons of this kind from time to time, and I am rather fond
of copying them myself for the public benefit, when the chance comes.

But the Devotee was not at all impressed. She raised her big round
eyes, and looked straight into mine, and said:

"You mean to say that because God is with the sinners, therefore when
you do them any service you do it to God? Is that so?"

"Yes," I replied, "that is my meaning."

"Of course," she answered almost impatiently, "of course, God is with
them: otherwise, how could they go on living at all? But what is that
to me? My God is not there. My God cannot be worshipped among them;
because I do not find Him there. I seek Him where I can find Him."

As she spoke, she made obeisance to me. What she meant to say was
really this. A mere doctrine of God's omnipresence does not help us.
That God is all-pervading,--this truth may be a mere intangible
abstraction, and therefore unreal to ourselves. Where I can see Him,
there is His
reality in my soul.

I need not explain that all the while she showered her devotion on me
she did it to me not as an individual. I was simply a vehicle of her
divine worship. It was not for me either to receive it or to refuse it:
for it was not mine, but God's.

When the Devotee came again, she found me once more engaged with my
books and papers.

"What have you been doing," she said, with evident vexation, "that my
God should make you undertake such drudgery? Whenever I come, I find
you reading and writing."

"God keeps his useless people busy," I answered; "otherwise they would
be bound to get into mischief. They have to do all the least necessary
things in life. It keeps them out of trouble."

The Devotee told me that she could not bear the encumbrances, with
which, day by day, I was surrounded. If she wanted to see me, she was
not allowed by the servants to come straight upstairs. If she wanted to
touch my feet in worship, there were my socks always in the way. And
when she wanted to have a simple talk with me, she found my mind lost in
a wilderness of letters.

This time, before she left me, she folded her hands, and said: "My God!
I felt your feet in my breast this morning. Oh, how cool! And they
were bare, not covered. I held them upon my head for a long time in
worship. That filled my very being. Then, after that, pray what was
the use of my coming to you yourself? Why did I come? My Lord, tell me
truly,--wasn't it a mere infatuation?"

There were some flowers in my vase on the table. While she was there,
the gardener brought some new flowers to put in their place. The
Devotee saw him changing them.

"Is that all? " she exclaimed. "Have you done with the flowers? Then
give them to me."

She held the flowers tenderly in the cup of her hands, and began to gaze
at them with bent head. After a few moments' silence she raised her
head
again, and said to me: "You never look at these flowers; therefore they
become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your
reading and writing would go to the winds."

She tied the flowers together in the end of her robe, and placed them,
in an attitude of worship, on the top of her head, saying reverently:
"Let me carry my God with me."

While she did this, I felt that flowers in our rooms do not receive
their due meed of loving care at our hands. When we stick them in
vases, they are more like a row of naughty schoolboys standing on a form
to be punished.

The Devotee came again the same evening, and sat by my feet on the
terrace of the roof.

"I gave away those flowers," she said, "as I went from house to house
this morning, singing God's name. Beni, the head man of our village,
laughed at me for my devotion, and said: `Why do you waste all this
devotion on Him? Don't you know He is reviled up and down the
countryside?' Is that true, my God? Is it true that they are hard
upon you?"

For a moment I shrank into myself. It was a shock to find that the
stains of printers' ink could reach so far.

The Devotee went on: "Beni imagined that he could blow out the flame of
my devotion at one breath! But this is no mere tiny flame: it is a
burning fire. Why do they abuse you, my God?"

I said: "Because I deserved it. I suppose in my greed I was loitering
about to steal people's hearts in secret."

The Devotee said: "Now you see for yourself how little their hearts are
worth. They are full of poison, and this will cure you of your greed."

"When a man," I answered, "has greed in his heart, he is always on the
verge of being beaten. The greed itself supplies his enemies with
poison."

"Our merciful God," she replied, "beats us with His own hand, and drives
away all the poison. He who endures God's beating to the end is saved."

II

That evening the Devotee told me the story of her life. The stars of
evening rose and set behind the trees, as she went on to the end of her
tale.

"My husband is very simple. Some people think that he is a simpleton;
but I know that those who understand simply, understand truly. In
business and household management he was able to hold his own. Because
his needs were small, and his wants few, he could manage carefully on
what we had. He would never meddle in other matters, nor try to
understand them.

"Both my husband's parents died before we had been married long, and we
were left alone. But my husband always needed some one to be over him.
I am ashamed to confess that he had a sort of reverence for me, and
looked upon me as his superior. But I am sure that he could understand
things better than I, though I had greater powers of talking.

"Of all the people in the world he held his Guru Thakur (spiritual
master) in the highest veneration. Indeed it was not veneration merely
but love; and such love as his is rare.

"Guru Thakur was younger than my husband. Oh! how beautiful he was!

"My husband had played games with him when he was a boy; and from that
time forward he had dedicated his heart and soul to this friend of his
early days. Thakur knew how simple my husband was, and used to tease
him mercilessly.

"He and his comrades would play jokes upon him for their own amusement;
but he would bear them all with longsuffering.

"When I married into this family, Guru Thakur was studying at Benares.
My husband used to pay all his expenses. I was eighteen years old when
he returned home to our village.

"At the age of fifteen I had my child. I was so young I did not know
how to take care of him. I was fond of gossip, and liked to be with my
village friends for hours together. I used to get quite cross with my
boy when I was compelled to stay at home and nurse him. Alas! my
child-God came into my life, but His playthings were not ready for Him.
He came to the mother's heart, but the mother's heart lagged behind. He
left me in anger; and ever since I have been searching for Him up and
down the world.

"The boy was the joy of his father's life. My careless neglect used to
pain my husband. But his was a mute soul. He has never been able to
give expression to his pain.

"The wonderful thing was this, that in spite of my neglect the child
used to love me more than any one else. He seemed to have the dread
that I would one day go away and leave him. So even when I was with
him, he would watch me with a restless look in his eyes. He had me very
little to himself, and therefore his desire to be with me was always
painfully eager. When I went each day to the river, he used to fret and
stretch
out his little arms to be taken with me. But the bathing ghal was my
place for meeting my friends, and I did not care to burden myself with
the child.

"It was an early morning in August. Fold after fold of grey clouds had
wrapped the mid-day round with a wet clinging robe. I asked the maid to
take care of the boy, while I went down to the river. The child cried
after me as I went away.

"There was no one there at the bathing ghat when I arrived. As a
swimmer, I was the best among all the village women. The river was
quite full with the rains. I swam out into the middle of the stream
some distance from the shore.

"Then I heard a cry from the bank, 'Mother!' I turned my head and saw
my boy coming down the steps, calling me as he came. I shouted to him
to stop, but he went on, laughing and calling. My feet and hands became
cramped with fear. I shut my eyes, afraid to see. When I opened
them, there, at the slippery stairs, my boy's ripple of laughter had
disappeared for ever.

"I got back to the shore. I raised him from the water. I took him in
my arms, my boy, my darling, who had begged so often in vain for me to
take him. I took him now, but he no more looked in my eyes and called `
Mother.'

"My child-God had come. I had ever neglected Him. I had ever made Him
cry. And now all that neglect began to beat against my own heart, blow
upon blow, blow upon blow. When my boy was with me, I had left him
alone. I had refused to take him with me. And now, when he is dead,
his memory clings to me and never leaves me.

"God alone knows all that my husband suffered. If he had only punished
me for my sin, it would have been better for us both. But be knew only
how to endure in silence, not how to speak.

"When I was almost mad with grief, Guru Thakur came back. In earlier
days, the relation between him and my husband had been that of boyish
friendship. Now, my husband's reverence for his sanctity and learning
was unbounded. He could hardly speak in his presence, his awe of him
was so great.

"My husband asked his Guru to try to give me some consolation. Guru
Thakur began to read and explain to me the scriptures. But I do not
think they had much effect on my mind. All their value for me lay in
the voice that uttered them. God makes the draught of divine life
deepest
in the heart for man to drink, through the human voice. He has no
better vessel in His hand than that; and He Himself drinks His divine
draught out of the same vessel.

"My husband's love and veneration for his Guru filled our house, as
incense fills a temple shrine. I showed that veneration, and had peace.
I saw my God in the form of that Guru. He used to come to take his meal
at our house every morning. The first thought that would come to my
mind on waking from sleep was that of his food as a sacred gift from
God. When I prepared the things for his meal, my fingers would sing for
joy.

"When my husband saw my devotion to his Guru, his respect for me greatly
increased. He noticed his Guru's eager desire to explain the scriptures
to me. He used to think that he could never expect to earn any regard
from his Guru himself, on account of his stupidity; but his wife had
made up for it.

"Thus another five years went by happily, and my whole life would have
passed like that; but beneath the surface some stealing was going on
somewhere in secret. I could not detect it; but it was detected by the
God of my heart. Then came a day when, in a moment our whole life was
turned upside down.

"It was a morning in midsummer. I was returning home from bathing, my
clothes all wet, down a shady lane. At the bend of the road, under the
mango tree, I met my Guru Thakur. He had his towel on his shoulder and
was repeating some Sanskrit verses as he was going to take his bath.
With my wet clothes clinging all about me I was ashamed to meet him. I
tried to pass by quickly, and avoid being seen. He called me by my
name.

"I stopped, lowering my eyes, shrinking into myself. He fixed his gaze
upon me, and said: `How beautiful is your body!'

"All the universe of birds seemed to break into song in the branches
overhead. All the bushes in the lane seemed ablaze with flowers. It
was as though the earth and sky and everything had become a riot of
intoxicating joy.

"I cannot tell how I got home. I only remember that I rushed into the
room where we worship God. But the room seemed empty. Only before my
eyes those same gold spangles of light were dancing which had quivered
in front of me in that shady lane on my way back from the river.

"Guru Thakur came to take his food that day, and asked my husband where
I had gone. He searched for me, but could not find me anywhere.

"Ah! I have not the same earth now any longer. The same sunlight is
not mine. I called on my God in my dismay, and He kept His face turned
away from me.

"The day passed, I know not how. That night I had to meet my husband.
But the night is dark and silent. It is the time when my husband's mind
comes out shining, like stars at twilight. I had heard him speak things
in the dark, and I had been surprised to find how deeply he understood.

"Sometimes I am late in the evening in going to rest on account of
household work. My husband waits for me, seated on the floor, without
going to bed. Our talk at such times had often begun with something
about our Guru.

That night, when it was past midnight, I came to my room, and found my
husband sleeping on the floor. Without disturbing him I lay down on the
ground at his feet, my head towards him. Once he stretched his feet,
while sleeping, and struck me on the breast. That was his last bequest.

"Next morning, when my husband woke up from his sleep, I was already
sitting by him. Outside the window, over the thick foliage of the jack-
fruit tree, appeared the first pale red of the dawn at the fringe of the
night. It was so early that the crows had not yet begun to call.

"I bowed, and touched my husband's feet with my forehead. He sat up,
starting as if waking from a dream, and looked at my face in amazement.
I said:

"' I have made up my mind. I must leave the world. I cannot belong to
you any longer. I must leave your home.'

"Perhaps my husband thought that he was still dreaming. He said not a
word.

Ah! do hear me l' I pleaded with infinite pain. ` Do hear me and
understand I You must marry another wife. I must take my leave.'

"My husband said: ' What is all this wild, mad talk? Who advises you to
leave the world?'

"I said: ` My Guru Thakur.'

"My husband looked bewildered. ' Guru Thakur!' he cried. ' When did he
give you this advice?'

"` In the morning,' I answered, ' yesterday, when I met him on my way
back from the river.'

"His voice trembled a little. He turned, and looked in my face, and
asked me: `Why did he give you such a behest?'

"` I do not know,' I answered. ' Ask him 1 He will tell you himself, if
he can.'

"My husband said: `It is possible to leave the world, even when
continuing to live in it. You need not leave my home. I will speak to
my Guru about it.'

"` Your Guru,' I said, ` may accept your petition; but my heart will
never give its consent. I must leave your home. From henceforth, the
world is no more to me.'

"My husband remained silent, and we sat there on the floor in the dark.
When it was light, he said to me: ' Let us both came to him.'

"I folded my hands and said: ` I shall never meet him again.'

"He looked into my face. I lowered my eyes. He said no more. I knew
that, somehow, he had seen into my mind, and understood what was there.
In this world of mine, there were only two who loved me best-my boy and
my husband. That love was my God, and therefore it could brook no
falsehood. One of these two left me, and I left the other. Now I must
have truth, and truth alone."

She touched the ground at my feet, rose and bowed to me, and departed.