“Conscience does not reproach me for incurring my debt,” said Alton Sahib gravely, “but conscience would give me no rest if I neglected doing my utmost to pay back what I owe. I hope, when my last month’s salary comes in on Monday, to send back the last rupee to my friend; and the day on which I find myself free from debt will doubtless be one of the happiest days of my life.”
“Ah! then the Sahib will be able, after all, to lend to his servant!” exclaimed Hassan with pleasure; “the marriage of my daughter will not take place for more than a month.”
Alton Sahib felt vexed that all that he had said had had so little effect on the mind of the Christian moonshee. The young man closed the Bible and returned to his seat.
“Moonshee Jé,” he said, “I borrowed money from pressing necessity; you would borrow without necessity.”
Again surprise awoke in the breast of the moonshee. “Did I not tell your excellency,” he said, “that I required money for the wedding festivities of my daughter?”[23]
“And what necessity is there that those festivities should involve you in great expense, or entangle you in debt?” said Alton Sahib. “If you could be content to put aside pride and ostentation, to place simple fare before a moderate number of guests, and avoid all waste and show, your own means would suffice for the marriage expenses. Will your daughter be more happy as a wife, because her wedding-feast has made her father act in a way that befits not a Christian? Is God’s blessing on the union to be procured by disobeying God’s command? What profit is there in an expensive wedding-feast?”
“It is the dastur,”[24] observed Hassan, as if that expression were a sufficient answer to all objections.
“O my friend!” exclaimed Alton Sahib, “you who condemn the worship of idols, make not for yourself an idol of dastur. It was once the dastur in England for Sahibs who received a slight affront to call out the offender to some retired spot, that the two might shoot at each other with pistols, that so the offence, however small, might be wiped out in blood.”
“A very evil dastur,” remarked the moonshee.