The miracle was that her faith failed not when her tongue did not grow. After the first shock of realization, her mind groped after some explanation which satisfied, and the God lost no worshipper.
So, in Western India, I have known one—a Queen and a daughter of a King—also bowed with years, who had waited half her life for the fulfilment of a promise.
God would see to it that the promise was kept. Why waste resentment on him who seemed a breaker of promises; God would resent for her. She was brought to the verge of death, she had long been the house-mate of poverty; her faith was proof against all. When I saw her last she sat among the squirrels on a dung-smeared veranda in a courtyard, where cows and buffaloes were stalled. The squirrels played about her; she had been herself a squirrel, she told me, in her last generation, wherefore they loved her; and she sat telling her beads as she had sat for fifty years, her hand in the embroidered sock of orthodoxy.
Had any devil prompted me to suggest to her justification for unfaith, I should simply not have been believed. For—of these is the kingdom of heaven.
One more memory stands out from the crowd. It is the lamp-lighting hour in the Temple of the Foot. We have come through the narrow streets, past the sellers of old brass and copper, past the gold and white pyramids of flower-sellers. The air is heavy with the perfume of jasmine, the sacred bulls are sauntering up the steps from the river, pushing through the worshippers with the arrogance of the beloved. A kind priest has lighted us under the archway, and we are in the inner courtyard. Yes, we may come through the forest of columns, standing straight and white and cool in the cloisters, and we may linger close by the great carved door to watch the pooja. It takes some time to see in the darkness ... everything is still, so still. There is a great basin of black marble, and in the middle of it the impress of a great foot.... A priest sits on his heels beside the basin, anointing the foot with sandal-wood oil, washing it, offering it flowers and incense.
Another Priest walks round and round the basin crooning mantras. The real worshipper is a poor woman in an advanced stage of leprosy, the flickering light from the little shells of cocoanut falls upon the masses of white and yellow flowers, upon the fruits and incense, upon the costly offerings, upon the poor mis-shapen face. It is still, so still, so full of mystery, her face, the flowers, the Priest, leaping into life like a pulse-beat, with the flare of the cotton wick.... Shiva’s great white bull sits watching his master’s symbol in the Temple beside us: other worshippers there are none, and the pandas have wandered to the bathing ghat, to encompass the unwary.... Sudden my soul hears through the stillness the message of a child in the strains of that beautiful anthem of Stainer’s. His voice rises clear and exultant so that I can hear it across the seas from the Cathedral of old gray stone in the City of Cities.... “God so loved the World.”...
The Priest is passing the shell-lamp over the foot itself, in the circles of some ritual, and the leper bends forward out of the darkness to see the sacred markings.... Oh! the horror of the ravages of the flesh!... “God so loved the world.”...
The Priest sprinkles the foot with holy water, spooning it out of his copper vessel with practised hand, and the perambulating Priest redoubles his mantras.... The face of the leper is a-quiver with peace, and with a joy that is without dissimulation.... “God so loved the world.”...
The pooja is over, the officiating Priest has pressed the little cotton wicks into darkness. The leper makes her timid way out of the Temple, ringing the great bell in the cloisters, as she returns to her pilgrimage of pain in a world of illusions.... “God so loved the world,” ... and it was the leper in the Temple of the Foot who first gave me a glint of the probable meaning of these glad tidings.