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 Icome 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.
