"Speak, Pantulu Iyer; what do you wish to say? I am ready to listen."
Alderbury's gentle manner broke down the nervous constraint and opened the flood-gates of speech. In a voice that was so charged with emotion as to be near breaking point, the old man prayed for the missionary's assistance in the restoration of his son, his only child. There were numbers of others, he pleaded, who were ready and willing to join the Christian religion. Their apostacy would not be felt by their families. With him it was different. In taking away his son the missionary deprived him and his father and grandfather of happiness in a future life. Who was to perform the shraddah ceremonies when he, Pantulu, was dead, if his son Ananda refused to perform them? The thought of his fate and the fate of his ancestors was intolerable, unbearable, appalling!
As he poured forth his entreaty Gunga's tears flowed down her haggard cheeks and fell upon the folds of her tawny silk saree. Her grey hair was dishevelled, and its silvery strands were sprinkled with the dust she had thrown upon her head according to custom in overwhelming grief or misfortune.
Keenly sympathetic to human trouble at all times, Alderbury could not listen unmoved. The appearance of both father and mother told its own tale, and he fully realised the havoc that had been wrought in one of the happiest homes of India. It was ever the same, even from the very beginning of the story of Christianity, he thought with a sigh. All pioneer work must run on similar lines; and although he knew that it was inevitable, his heart ached at the sight of their distress.
"If you feel thus about the future why not take the same path your son has taken? He is right. Go with him and you will find such joy and peace in your old age as you have never experienced before."
"Can the bullock learn a new method of drawing the cart after spending all its life under the yoke? We cannot change at our age. We must follow in the footsteps of our fathers. Oh! sir! if you would only say the word, and bid my son remember his poor old father, all might yet be made right. Let him conform outwardly, whatever he may believe inwardly, for our sake."
Yielding to a sudden impulse, Pantulu and his wife fell at Alderbury's feet, touching their foreheads to the ground. By this time the tears were falling from the old man's eyes.
"Our son! our dearly loved son! Give us back our child, our little one! the only child that was ever sent by the gods to bless us!"
Not a word of reproach was mingled with the prayer which made it all the harder for the missionary to bear.
"He cannot return to you. You must go to him," repeated Alderbury.