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+Title: The Hungry Stones And Other Stories
+
+Author: Rabindranath Tagore
+
+Release Date: February, 2001  [Etext #2518]
+[We reserved this slot about a year ago. . . .]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 03/15/01]
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+Edition: 10
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+Project Gutenberg's Hungry Stones et. al., by Rabindranath Tagore
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+
+The Hungry Stones And Other Stories
+
+by Rabindranath Tagore
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+The Hungry Stones
+The Victory
+Once There Was A King
+The Home-coming
+My Lord, The Baby
+The Kingdom Of Cards
+The Devotee
+Vision
+The Babus Of Nayanjore
+Living Or Dead?
+"We Crown Thee King"
+The Renunciation
+The Cabuliwallah
+[The Fruitseller from Cabul]
+
+
+
+
+Preface:  The stories contained in this volume were translated by
+several hands. The version of The Victory is the author's own work. The
+seven stories which follow were translated by Mr. C. F. Andrews, with
+the help of the author's help. Assistance has also been given by the
+Rev. E. J. Thompson, Panna Lal Basu, Prabhat Kumar Mukerjii, and the
+Sister Nivedita.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUNGRY STONES
+
+
+
+My kinsman and myself were returning to Calcutta from our Puja trip when
+we met the man in a train.  From his dress and bearing we took him at
+first for an up-country Mahomedan, but we were puzzled as we heard him
+talk.  He discoursed upon all subjects so confidently that you might
+think the Disposer of All Things consulted him at all times in all that
+He did.  Hitherto we had been perfectly happy, as we did not know that
+secret and unheard-of forces were at work, that the Russians had
+advanced close to us, that the English had deep and secret policies,
+that confusion among the native chiefs had come to a head.  But our
+newly-acquired friend said with a sly smile: "There happen more things
+in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are reported in your newspapers." As
+we had never stirred out of our homes before, the demeanour of the man
+struck us dumb with wonder.  Be the topic ever so trivial, he would
+quote science, or comment on the Vedas, or repeat quatrains from some
+Persian poet; and as we had no pretence to a knowledge of science or the
+Vedas or Persian, our admiration for him went on increasing, and my
+kinsman, a theosophist, was firmly convinced that our fellow-passenger
+must have been supernaturally inspired by some strange magnetism" or
+"occult power," by an "astral body" or something of that kind.  He
+listened to the tritest saying that fell from the lips of our
+extraordinary companion with devotional rapture, and secretly took down
+notes of his conversation.  I fancy that the extraordinary man saw this,
+and was a little pleased with it.
+
+When the train reached the junction, we assembled in the waiting room
+for the connection.  It was then 10 P.M., and as the train, we heard,
+was likely to be very late, owing to something wrong in the lines, I
+spread my bed on the table and was about to lie down for a comfortable
+doze, when the extraordinary person deliberately set about spinning the
+following yarn.  Of course, I could get no sleep that night.
+
+When, owing to a disagreement about some questions of administrative
+policy, I threw up my post at Junagarh, and entered the service of the
+Nizam of Hydria, they appointed me at once, as a strong young man,
+collector of cotton duties at Barich.
+
+Barich is a lovely place.  The Susta "chatters over stony ways and
+babbles on the pebbles," tripping, like a skilful dancing girl, in
+through the woods below the lonely hills.  A flight of 150 steps rises
+from the river, and above that flight, on the river's brim and at the
+foot of the hills, there stands a solitary marble palace.  Around it
+there is no habitation of man--the village and the cotton mart of Barich
+being far off.
+
+About 250 years ago the Emperor Mahmud Shah II. had built this lonely
+palace for his pleasure and luxury.  In his days jets of rose-water
+spurted from its fountains, and on the cold marble floors of its spray-
+cooled rooms young Persian damsels would sit, their hair dishevelled
+before bathing, and, splashing their soft naked feet in the clear water
+of the reservoirs, would sing, to the tune of the guitar, the ghazals of
+their vineyards.
+
+The fountains play no longer; the songs have ceased; no longer do
+snow-white feet step gracefully on the snowy marble.  It is but the vast
+and solitary quarters of cess-collectors like us, men oppressed with
+solitude and deprived of the society of women.  Now, Karim Khan, the old
+clerk of my office,  warned me repeatedly not to take  up  my abode
+there. "Pass the day there, if you like," said he, "but never stay the
+night."  I passed it off with a light laugh.  The servants said that
+they would work till dark and go away at night.  I gave my ready assent.
+The house had such a bad name that even thieves would not venture near
+it after dark.
+
+At first the solitude of the deserted palace weighed upon me like a
+nightmare.  I would stay out, and work hard as long as possible, then
+return home at night jaded and tired, go to bed and fall asleep.
+
+Before a week had passed, the place began to exert a weird fascination
+upon me.  It is difficult to describe or to induce people to believe;
+but I felt as if the whole house was like a living organism slowly and
+imperceptibly digesting me by the action of some stupefying gastric
+juice.
+
+Perhaps the process had begun as soon as I set my foot in the house, but
+I distinctly remember the day on which I first was conscious of it.
+
+It was the beginning of summer, and the market being dull I had no work
+to do.  A little before sunset I was sitting in an arm-chair near the
+water's edge below the steps.  The Susta had shrunk and sunk low; a
+broad patch of sand on the other side glowed with the hues of evening;
+on this side the pebbles at the bottom of the clear shallow waters were
+glistening.  There was not a breath of wind anywhere, and the still air
+was laden with an oppressive scent from the spicy shrubs growing on the
+hills close by.
+
+As the sun sank behind the hill-tops a long dark curtain fell upon the
+stage of day, and the intervening hills cut short the time in which
+light and shade mingle at sunset.  I thought of going out for a ride,
+and was about to get up when I heard a footfall on the steps behind.  I
+looked back, but there was no one.
+
+As I sat down again, thinking it to be an illusion, I heard many
+footfalls, as if a large number of persons were rushing down the steps.
+A strange thrill of delight, slightly tinged with fear, passed through
+my frame, and though there was not a figure before my eyes, methought I
+saw a bevy of joyous maidens coming down the steps to bathe in the Susta
+in that summer evening.  Not a sound was in the valley, in the river, or
+in the palace, to break the silence, but I distinctly heard the maidens'
+gay and mirthful laugh, like the gurgle of a spring gushing forth in a
+hundred cascades, as they ran past me, in quick playful pursuit of each
+other, towards the river, without noticing me at all.  As they were
+invisible to me, so I was, as it were, invisible to them.  The river was
+perfectly calm, but I felt that its still, shallow, and clear waters
+were stirred suddenly by the splash of many an arm jingling with
+bracelets, that the girls laughed and dashed and spattered water at one
+another, that the feet of the fair swimmers tossed the tiny waves up in
+showers of pearl.
+
+I felt a thrill at my heart--I cannot say whether the excitement was due
+to fear or delight or curiosity.  I had a strong desire to see them more
+clearly, but naught was visible before me; I thought I could catch all
+that they said if I only strained my ears; but however hard I strained
+them, I heard nothing but the chirping of the cicadas in the woods.  It
+seemed as if a dark curtain of 250 years was hanging before me, and I
+would fain lift a corner of it tremblingly and peer through, though the
+assembly on the other side was completely enveloped in darkness.
+
+The oppressive closeness of the evening was broken by a sudden gust of
+wind, and the still surface of the Suista rippled and curled like the
+hair of a nymph, and from the woods wrapt in the evening gloom there
+came forth a simultaneous murmur, as though they were awakening from a
+black dream.  Call it reality or dream, the momentary glimpse of that
+invisible mirage reflected from a far-off world,  250 years old,
+vanished in a flash.  The mystic forms that brushed past me with their
+quick unbodied steps, and loud, voiceless laughter, and threw themselves
+into the river, did not go back wringing their dripping robes as they
+went.  Like fragrance wafted away by the wind they were dispersed
+by a single breath of the spring.
+
+Then I was filled with a lively fear that it was the Muse that had taken
+advantage of my solitude and possessed me--the witch had evidently come
+to ruin a poor devil like myself making a living by collecting cotton
+duties.  I decided to have a good dinner--it is the empty stomach that
+all sorts of incurable diseases find an easy prey.  I sent for my cook
+and gave orders for a rich, sumptuous moghlai dinner, redolent of spices
+and ghi.
+
+Next morning the whole affair appeared a queer fantasy.  With a light
+heart I put on a sola hat like the sahebs, and drove out to my work.  I
+was to have written my quarterly report that day, and expected to return
+late; but before it was dark I was strangely drawn to my house--by what
+I could not say--I felt they were all waiting, and that I should delay
+no longer.  Leaving my report unfinished I rose, put on my sola hat, and
+startling the dark, shady, desolate path with the rattle of my carriage,
+I reached the vast silent palace standing on the gloomy skirts of the
+hills.
+
+On the first floor the stairs led to a very spacious hall, its roof
+stretching wide over ornamental arches resting on three rows of massive
+pillars, and groaning day and night under the weight of its own intense
+solitude.  The day had just closed, and the lamps had not yet been
+lighted.  As I pushed the door open a great bustle seemed to follow
+within, as if a throng of people had broken up in confusion, and rushed
+out through the doors and windows and corridors and verandas and rooms,
+to make its hurried escape.
+
+As I saw no one I stood bewildered, my hair on end in a kind of ecstatic
+delight, and a faint scent of attar and unguents almost effected by age
+lingered in my nostrils.  Standing in the darkness of that vast desolate
+hall between the rows of those ancient pillars, I could hear the gurgle
+of fountains plashing on the marble floor, a strange tune on the guitar,
+the jingle of ornaments and the tinkle of anklets, the clang of bells
+tolling the hours, the distant note of nahabat, the din of the crystal
+pendants of chandeliers shaken by the breeze, the song of bulbuls from
+the cages in the corridors, the cackle of storks in the gardens, all
+creating round me a strange unearthly music.
+
+Then I came under such a spell that this intangible, inaccessible,
+unearthly vision appeared to be the only reality in the world--and all
+else a mere dream.  That I, that is to say, Srijut So-and-so, the eldest
+son of  So-and-so of blessed memory, should be drawing a monthly salary
+of Rs. 450 by the discharge of my duties as collector of cotton duties,
+and driving in my dog-cart to my office every day in a short coat and
+soia hat, appeared to me to be such an astonishingly ludicrous illusion
+that I burst into a horse-laugh, as I stood in the gloom of that vast
+silent hall.
+
+At that moment my servant entered with a lighted kerosene lamp in his
+hand.  I do not know whether he thought me mad, but it came back to me
+at once that I was in very deed Srijut So-and-so, son of  So-and-so of
+blessed memory, and that, while our poets, great and small, alone could
+say whether inside of or outside the earth there was a region where
+unseen fountains perpetually played and fairy guitars, struck by
+invisible fingers, sent forth an eternal harmony, this at any rate was
+certain, that I collected duties at the cotton market at Banch, and
+earned thereby Rs. 450 per mensem as my salary.  I laughed in great glee
+at my curious illusion, as I sat over the newspaper at my camp-table,
+lighted by the kerosene lamp.
+
+After I had finished my paper and eaten my moghlai dinner, I put out the
+lamp, and lay down on my bed in a small side-room.  Through the open
+window a radiant star, high above the Avalli hills skirted by the
+darkness of their woods, was gazing intently from millions and millions
+of miles away in the sky at Mr. Collector lying on a humble camp-
+bedstead.  I wondered and felt amused at the idea, and do not knew when
+I fell asleep or how long I slept; but I suddenly awoke with a start,
+though I heard no sound and saw no intruder--only the steady bright star
+on the hilltop had set, and the dim light of the new moon was stealthily
+entering the room through the open window, as if ashamed of its
+intrusion.
+
+I saw nobody, but felt as if some one was gently pushing me.  As I awoke
+she said not a word, but beckoned me with her five fingers bedecked with
+rings to follow her cautiously.  I got up noiselessly, and, though not a
+soul save myself was there in the countless apartments of that deserted
+palace with its slumbering sounds and waiting echoes, I feared at every
+step lest any one should wake up.  Most of the rooms of the palace were
+always kept closed, and I had never entered them.
+
+I followed breathless and with silent steps my invisible guide--I cannot
+now say where.  What endless dark and narrow passages, what long
+corridors, what silent and solemn audience-chambers and close secret
+cells I crossed!
+
+Though I could not see my fair guide, her form was not invisible to my
+mind's eye, --an Arab girl, her arms, hard and smooth as marble, visible
+through her loose sleeves, a thin veil falling on her face from the
+fringe of her cap, and a curved dagger at her waist!  Methought that one
+of the thousand and one Arabian Nights had been wafted to me from the
+world of romance, and that at the dead of night I was wending my way
+through the dark narrow alleys of slumbering Bagdad to a  trysting-place
+fraught with peril.
+
+At last my fair guide stopped abruptly before a deep blue screen, and
+seemed to point to something below.  There was nothing there, but a
+sudden dread froze the blood in my heart-methought I saw there on the
+floor at the foot of the screen a terrible negro eunuch dressed in rich
+brocade, sitting and dozing with outstretched legs, with a naked sword
+on his lap.  My fair guide lightly tripped over his legs and held up a
+fringe of the screen.  I could catch a glimpse of a part of the room
+spread with a Persian carpet--some one was sitting inside on a bed--I
+could not see her, but only caught a glimpse of two exquisite feet in
+gold-embroidered slippers, hanging out from loose saffron-coloured
+paijamas and placed idly on the orange-coloured velvet carpet.  On one
+side there was a bluish crystal tray on which a few apples, pears,
+oranges, and bunches of grapes in plenty, two small cups and a gold-
+tinted decanter were evidently waiting the guest.  A fragrant
+intoxicating vapour, issuing from a strange sort of incense that burned
+within, almost overpowered my senses.
+
+As with trembling heart I made an attempt to step across the
+outstretched legs of the eunuch, he woke up suddenly with a start, and
+the sword fell from his lap with a sharp clang on the marble floor.  A
+terrific scream made me jump, and I saw I was sitting on that camp-
+bedstead of mine sweating heavily; and the crescent moon looked pale in
+the morning light like a weary sleepless patient at dawn; and our crazy
+Meher Ali was crying out, as is his daily custom, "Stand back!  Stand
+back!!" while he went along the lonely road.
+
+Such was the abrupt close of one of my Arabian Nights; but there were
+yet a thousand nights left.
+
+Then followed a great discord between my days and nights.  During the
+day I would go to my work worn and tired, cursing the bewitching night
+and her empty dreams, but as night came my daily life with its bonds and
+shackles of work would appear a petty, false, ludicrous vanity.
+
+After nightfall I was caught and overwhelmed in the snare of a strange
+intoxication, I would then be transformed into some unknown personage of
+a bygone age, playing my part in unwritten history; and my short English
+coat and tight breeches did not suit me in the least.  With a red velvet
+cap on my head, loose paijamas, an embroidered vest, a long flowing silk
+gown, and coloured handkerchiefs scented with attar, I would complete my
+elaborate toilet, sit on a high-cushioned chair, and replace my
+cigarette with a many-coiled narghileh filled with rose-water, as if in
+eager expectation of a strange meeting with the beloved one.
+
+I have no power to describe the marvellous incidents that unfolded
+themselves, as the gloom of the night deepened.  I felt as if in the
+curious apartments of that vast edifice the fragments of a beautiful
+story, which I could follow for some distance, but of which I could
+never see the end, flew about in a sudden gust of the vernal breeze.
+And all the same I would wander from room to room in pursuit of them the
+whole night long.
+
+Amid the eddy of these dream-fragments, amid the smell of henna and the
+twanging of the guitar, amid the waves of air charged with fragrant
+spray, I would catch like a flash of lightning the momentary glimpse of
+a fair damsel.  She it was who had saffron-coloured paijamas, white
+ruddy soft feet in gold-embroidered slippers with curved toes, a close-
+fitting bodice wrought with gold, a red cap, from which a golden frill
+fell on her snowy brow and cheeks.
+
+She had maddened me.  In pursuit of her I wandered from room to room,
+from path to path among the bewildering maze of alleys in the enchanted
+dreamland of the nether world of sleep.
+
+Sometimes in the evening, while arraying myself carefully as a prince of
+the blood-royal before a large mirror, with a candle burning on either
+side, I would see a sudden reflection of the Persian beauty by the side
+of my own.  A swift turn of her neck, a quick eager glance of intense
+passion and pain glowing in her large dark eyes, just a suspicion of
+speech on her dainty red lips, her figure, fair and slim crowned with
+youth like a blossoming creeper, quickly uplifted in her graceful
+tilting gait, a dazzling flash of pain and craving and ecstasy, a smile
+and a glance and a blaze of jewels and silk, and she melted away.  A
+wild glist of wind, laden with all the fragrance of hills and woods,
+would put out my light, and I would fling aside my dress and lie down on
+my bed, my eyes closed and my body thrilling with delight, and there
+around me in the breeze, amid all the perfume of the woods and hills,
+floated through the silent gloom many a caress and many a kiss and many
+a tender touch of hands, and gentle murmurs in my ears, and fragrant
+breaths on my brow; or a sweetly-perfumed kerchief was wafted again and
+again on my cheeks.  Then slowly a mysterious serpent would twist her
+stupefying coils about me; and heaving a heavy sigh, I would lapse into
+insensibility, and then into a profound slumber.
+
+One evening I decided to go out on my horse--I do not know who implored
+me to stay-but I would listen to no entreaties that day.  My English hat
+and coat were resting on a rack, and I was about to take them down when
+a sudden whirlwind, crested with the sands of the Susta and the dead
+leaves of the Avalli hills, caught them up, and whirled them round and
+round, while a loud peal of merry laughter rose higher and higher,
+striking all the chords of mirth till it died away in the land of
+sunset.
+
+I could not go out for my ride, and the next day I gave up my queer
+English coat and hat for good.
+
+That day again at dead of night I heard the stifled heart-breaking sobs
+of some one--as if below the bed, below the floor, below the stony
+foundation of that gigantic palace, from the depths of a dark damp
+grave, a voice piteously cried and implored me: "Oh, rescue me!  Break
+through these doors of hard illusion, deathlike slumber and fruitless
+dreams, place by your side on the saddle, press me to your heart, and,
+riding through hills and woods and across the river, take me to the warm
+radiance of your sunny rooms above!"
+
+Who am I?  Oh, how can I rescue thee?  What drowning beauty, what
+incarnate passion shall I drag to the shore from this wild eddy of
+dreams?  O lovely ethereal apparition!  Where didst thou flourish and
+when?"  By what cool spring, under the shade of what date-groves, wast
+thou born--in the lap of what homeless wanderer in the desert?  What
+Bedouin snatched thee from thy mother's arms, an opening bud plucked
+from a wild creeper, placed thee on a horse swift as lightning, crossed
+the burning sands, and took thee to the slave-market of what royal city?
+And there, what officer of the Badshah, seeing the glory of thy bashful
+blossoming youth, paid for thee in gold, placed thee in a golden
+palanquin, and offered thee as a present for the seraglio of his master?
+And O, the history of that place!  The music of the sareng, the jingle
+of anklets, the occasional flash of daggers and the glowing wine of
+Shiraz poison, and the piercing flashing glance!  What infinite
+grandeur, what endless  servitude!
+
+The slave-girls to thy right and left waved the chamar as diamonds
+flashed from their bracelets; the Badshah, the king of kings, fell on
+his knees at thy snowy feet in bejewelled shoes, and outside the
+terrible Abyssinian eunuch, looking like a messenger of death, but
+clothed like an angel, stood with a naked sword in his hand!  Then, O,
+thou flower of the desert, swept away by the blood-stained dazzling
+ocean of grandeur, with its foam of jealousy, its rocks and shoals of
+intrigue, on what shore of cruel death wast thou cast, or in what other
+land more splendid and more cruel?
+
+Suddenly at this moment that crazy Meher Ali screamed out: "Stand back!
+Stand back!!  All is false!  All is false!!"  I opened my eyes and saw
+that it was already light.  My chaprasi came and handed me my letters,
+and the cook waited with a salam for my orders.
+
+I said; "No, I can stay here no longer."  That very day I packed up, and
+moved to my office.  Old Karim Khan smiled a little as he saw me.  I
+felt nettled, but said nothing, and fell to my work.
+
+As evening approached I grew absent-minded; I felt as if I had an
+appointment to keep; and the work of examining the cotton accounts
+seemed wholly useless; even the Nizamat of the Nizam did not appear to
+be of much worth.  Whatever belonged to the present, whatever was moving
+and acting and working for bread seemed trivial, meaningless, and
+contemptible.
+
+I threw my pen down, closed my ledgers, got into my dog-cart, and drove
+away.  I noticed that it stopped of itself at the gate of the marble
+palace just at the hour of twilight.  With quick steps I climbed the
+stairs, and entered the room.
+
+A heavy silence was reigning within.  The dark rooms were looking
+sullen as if they had taken offence.  My heart was full of contrition,
+but there was no one to whom I could lay it bare, or of whom I could ask
+forgiveness.  I wandered about the dark rooms with a vacant mind.  I
+wished I had a guitar to which I could sing to the unknown:  "O fire,
+the poor moth that made a vain effort to fly away has come back to thee!
+Forgive it but this once, burn its wings and consume it in thy flame!"
+
+Suddenly two tear-drops fell from overhead on my brow.  Dark masses of
+clouds overcast the top of the Avalli hills that day.  The gloomy woods
+and the sooty waters of the Susta were waiting in terrible suspense and
+in an ominous calm.  Suddenly land, water, and sky shivered, and a wild
+tempest-blast rushed howling through the distant pathless woods, showing
+its lightning-teeth like a raving maniac who had broken his chains.  The
+desolate halls of the palace banged their doors, and moaned in the
+bitterness of anguish.
+
+The servants were all in the office, and there was no one to light the
+lamps.  The night was cloudy and moonless.  In the dense gloom within I
+could distinctly feel that a woman was lying on her face on the carpet
+below the bed--clasping and tearing her long dishevelled hair with
+desperate fingers.  Blood was tricking down her fair brow, and she was
+now laughing a hard, harsh, mirthless laugh, now bursting into violent
+wringing sobs, now rending her bodice and striking at her bare bosom, as
+the wind roared in through the open window, and the rain poured in
+torrents and soaked her through and through.
+
+All night there was no cessation of the storm or of the passionate cry.
+I wandered from room to room in the dark, with unavailing sorrow.  Whom
+could I console when no one was by?  Whose was this intense agony of
+sorrow?  Whence arose this inconsolable grief?
+
+And the mad man cried out: "Stand back!  Stand back!!  All is false!
+All is false!!"
+
+I saw that the day had dawned, and Meher Ali was going round and
+round the palace with his usual cry in that dreadful weather.  Suddenly
+it came to me that perhaps he also had once lived in that house, and
+that, though he had gone mad, he came there every day, and went round
+and round, fascinated by the weird spell cast by the marble demon.
+
+Despite the storm and rain I ran to him and asked: "Ho, Meher Ali, what
+is false?"
+
+The man answered nothing, but pushing me aside went round and round with
+his frantic cry, like a bird flying fascinated about the jaws of a
+snake, and made a desperate effort to warn himself by repeating: "Stand
+back!  Stand back!!  All is false!  All is false!!"
+
+I ran like a mad man through the pelting rain to my office, and asked
+Karim Khan: "Tell me the meaning of all this!"
+
+What I gathered from that old man was this: That at one time countless
+unrequited passions and unsatisfied longings and lurid flames of wild
+blazing pleasure raged within that palace, and that the curse of all the
+heart-aches and blasted hopes had made its every stone thirsty and
+hungry, eager to swallow up like a famished ogress any living man who
+might chance to approach.  Not one of those who lived there for three
+consecutive nights could escape these cruel jaws, save Meher Ali, who
+had escaped at the cost of his reason.
+
+I asked: "Is there no means whatever of my release?" The old man said:
+"There is only one means, and that is very difficult.  I will tell you
+what it is, but first you must hear the history of a young Persian girl
+who once lived in that pleasure-dome.  A stranger or a more bitterly
+heart-rending tragedy was never enacted on this earth."
+
+Just at this moment the coolies announced that the train was coming.  So
+soon?  We hurriedly packed up our luggage, as the tram steamed in.  An
+English gentleman, apparently just aroused from slumber, was looking out
+of a first-class carriage endeavouring to read the name of the station.
+As soon as he caught sight of our fellow-passenger, he cried, "Hallo,"
+and took him into his own compartment.  As we got into a second-class
+carriage, we had no chance of finding out who the man was nor what was
+the end of his story.
+
+I said; "The man evidently took us for fools and imposed upon us out of
+fun.  The story is pure fabrication from start to finish."  The
+discussion that followed ended in a lifelong rupture between my
+theosophist kinsman and myself.
+
+
+
+THE VICTORY
+
+She was the Princess Ajita.  And the court poet of King Narayan had
+never seen her.  On the day he recited a new poem to the king he would
+raise his voice just to that pitch which could be heard by unseen
+hearers in the screened balcony high above the hall.  He sent up his
+song towards the star-land out of his reach, where, circled with light,
+the planet who ruled his destiny shone unknown and out of ken.
+
+He would espy some shadow moving behind the veil.  A tinkling sound
+would come to his car from afar, and would set him dreaming of the
+ankles whose tiny golden bells sang at each step.  Ah, the rosy red
+tender feet that walked the dust of the earth like God's mercy on the
+fallen!  The poet had placed them on the altar of his heart, where he
+wove his songs to the tune of those golden bells.  Doubt never arose in
+his mind as to whose shadow it was that moved behind the screen, and
+whose anklets they were that sang to the time of his beating heart.
+
+Manjari, the maid of the princess, passed by the poet's house on her way
+to the river, and she never missed a day to have a few words with him on
+the sly.  When she found the road deserted, and the shadow of dusk on
+the land, she would boldly enter his room, and sit at the corner of his
+carpet.  There was a suspicion of an added care in the choice of the
+colour of her veil, in the setting of the flower in her hair.
+
+People smiled and whispered at this, and they were not to blame.  For
+Shekhar the poet never took the trouble to hide the fact that these
+meetings were a pure joy to him.
+
+The meaning of her name was the spray of flowers.  One must confess that
+for an ordinary mortal it was sufficient in its sweetness.  But Shekhar
+made his own addition to this name, and called her the Spray of Spring
+Flowers.  And ordinary mortals shook their heads and said, Ah, me!
+
+In the spring songs that the poet sang the praise of the spray of
+spring flowers was conspicuously reiterated; and the king winked and
+smiled at him when he heard it, and the poet smiled in answer.
+
+The king would put him the question; "Is it the business of the bee
+merely to hum in the court of the spring?"
+
+The poet would answer; "No, but also to sip the honey of the spray of
+spring flowers."
+
+And they all laughed in the king's hall.  And it was rumoured that the
+Princess Akita also laughed at her maid's accepting the poet's name for
+her, and Manjari felt glad in her heart.
+
+Thus truth and falsehood mingle in life--and to what God builds man adds
+his own decoration.
+
+Only those were pure truths which were sung by the poet.  The theme was
+Krishna, the lover god, and Radha, the beloved, the Eternal Man and the
+Eternal Woman, the sorrow that comes from the beginning of time, and the
+joy without end.  The truth of these songs was tested in his inmost
+heart by everybody from the beggar to the king himself.  The poet's
+songs were on the lips of all.  At the merest glimmer of the moon and
+the faintest whisper of the summer breeze his songs would break forth in
+the land from windows and courtyards, from sailing-boats, from shadows
+of the wayside trees, in numberless voices.
+
+Thus passed the days happily.  The poet recited, the king listened, the
+hearers applauded, Manjari passed and repassed by the poet's room on her
+way to the river--the shadow flitted behind the screened balcony, and
+the tiny golden bells tinkled from afar.
+
+Just then set forth from his home in the south a poet on his path of
+conquest.  He came to King Narayan, in the kingdom of Amarapur.  He
+stood before the throne, and uttered a verse in praise of the king.  He
+had challenged all the court poets on his way, and his career of victory
+had been unbroken.
+
+The king received him with honour, and said: "Poet, I offer you
+welcome."
+
+Pundarik, the poet, proudly replied : "Sire, I ask for war."
+
+Shekhar, the court poet of the king did not know how the battle of the
+muse was to be waged.  He had no sleep at night.  The mighty figure of
+the famous Pundarik, his sharp nose curved like a scimitar, and his
+proud head tilted on one side, haunted the poet's vision in the dark.
+
+With a trembling heart Shekhar entered the arena in the morning.  The
+theatre was filled with the crowd.
+
+The poet greeted his rival with a smile and a bow.  Pundarik returned it
+with a slight toss of his head, and turned his face towards his circle
+of adoring followers with a meaning smile.  Shekhar cast his glance
+towards the screened balcony high above, and saluted his lady in his
+mind, saying! "If I am the winner at the combat to-day, my lady, thy
+victorious name shall be glorified."
+
+The trumpet sounded.  The great crowd stood up, shouting victory to the
+king.  The king, dressed in an ample robe of white, slowly came into the
+hall like a floating cloud of autumn, and sat on his throne.
+
+Pundarik stood up, and the vast hall became still.  With his head raised
+high and chest expanded, he began in his thundering voice to recite the
+praise of King Narayan.  His words burst upon the walls of the hall like
+breakers of the sea, and seemed to rattle against the ribs of the
+listening crowd.  The skill with which he gave varied meanings to the
+name Narayan, and wove each letter of it through the web of his verses
+in all mariner of combinations, took away the breath of his amazed
+hearers.
+
+For some minutes after he took his seat his voice continued to vibrate
+among the numberless pillars of the king's court and in thousands of
+speechless hearts.  The learned professors who had come from distant
+lands raised their right hands, and cried, Bravo !
+
+The king threw a glance on Shekhar's face, and Shekhar in answer raised
+for a moment his eyes full of pain towards his master, and then stood up
+like a stricken deer at bay.  His face was pale, his bashfulness was
+almost that of a woman, his slight youthful figure, delicate in its
+outline, seemed like a tensely strung vina ready to break out in music
+at the least touch.
+
+His head was bent, his voice was low, when he began.  The first few
+verses were almost inaudible.  Then he slowly raised his head, and his
+clear sweet voice rose into the sky like a quivering flame of fire.  He
+began with the ancient legend of  the kingly line lost in the haze of
+the past, and brought it down through its long course of heroism  and
+matchless generosity to the present age.  He fixed his gaze on the
+king's face, and all the vast and unexpressed love of the people for the
+royal house rose like incense in his song, and enwreathed the throne on
+all sides.  These were his last words when, trembling, he took his seat:
+"My master, I may be beaten in play of words, but not in my love for
+thee,"
+
+Tears filled the eyes of the hearers, and the stone walls shook with
+cries of victory.
+
+Mocking this popular outburst of feeling, with an august shake of his
+head and a contemptuous sneer, Pundarik stood up, and flung this
+question to the assembly; "What is there superior to words?"  In a
+moment the hall lapsed into silence again.
+
+Then with a marvellous display of learning, he proved that the Word was
+in the beginning, that the Word was God.  He piled up quotations from
+scriptures, and built a high altar for the Word to be seated above all
+that there is in heaven and in earth.  He repeated that question in his
+mighty voice: "What is there superior to words?"
+
+Proudly he looked around him.  None dared to accept his challenge, and
+he slowly took his seat like a lion who had just made a full meal of its
+victim.  The pandits shouted, Bravo !  The king remained silent with
+wonder, and the poet Shekhar felt himself of no account by the side of
+this stupendous learning.  The assembly broke up for that day.
+
+Next day Shekhar began his song.  It was of that day when the pipings of
+love's flute startled for the first time the hushed air of the Vrinda
+forest.  The shepherd women did not know who was the player or whence
+came the music.  Sometimes it seemed to come from the heart of the south
+wind, and sometimes from the straying clouds of the hilltops.  It came
+with a message of tryst from the land of the sunrise, and it floated
+from the verge of sunset with its sigh of sorrow.  The stars seemed to
+be the stops of the instrument that flooded the dreams of the night with
+melody.  The music seemed to burst all at once from all sides, from
+fields and groves, from the shady lanes and lonely roads, from the
+melting blue of the sky, from the shimmering green of the grass.  They
+neither knew its meaning nor could they find words to give utterance to
+the desire of their hearts.  Tears filled their eyes, and their life
+seemed to long for a death that would be its consummation.
+
+Shekhar forgot his audience, forgot the trial of his strength with a
+rival.  He stood alone amid his thoughts that rustled and quivered round
+him like leaves in a summer breeze, and sang the Song of the Flute.  He
+had in his mind the vision of an image that had taken its shape from a
+shadow, and the echo of a faint tinkling sound of a distant footstep.
+
+He took his seat.  His hearers trembled with the sadness of an
+indefinable delight, immense and vague, and they forgot to
+applaud him.  As this feeling died away Pundarik stood up before the
+throne and challenged his rival to define who was this Lover and who was
+the Beloved.  He arrogantly looked around him, he smiled at his
+followers and then put the question again : "Who is Krishna, the lover,
+and who is Radha, the beloved?"
+
+Then he began to analyse the roots of those names,--and various
+interpretations of their meanings.  He brought before the bewildered
+audience all the intricacies of the different schools of metaphysics
+with consummate skill.  Each letter of those names he divided from its
+fellow, and then pursued them with a relentless logic till they fell to
+the dust in confusion, to be caught up again and restored to a meaning
+never before imagined by the subtlest of word-mongers.
+
+The pandits were in ecstasy; they applauded vociferously ; and the crowd
+followed them, deluded into the certainty that they had witnessed, that
+day, the last shred of the curtains of Truth torn to pieces before their
+eyes by a prodigy of intellect.  The performance of his tremendous feat
+so delighted them that they forgot to ask themselves if there was any
+truth behind it after all.
+
+The king's mind was overwhelmed with wonder.  The atmosphere was
+completely cleared of all illusion of music, and the vision of the world
+around  seemed to be changed from its freshness of tender green to the
+solidity of a high road levelled and made hard with crushed stones.
+
+To the people assembled their own poet appeared a mere boy in comparison
+with this giant, who walked with such case, knocking down difficulties
+at each step in the world of words and thoughts.  It became evident to
+them for the first time that the poems Shekhar wrote were absurdly
+simple, and it must be a mere accident that they did not write them
+themselves.  They were neither new, nor difficult, nor instructive, nor
+necessary.
+
+The king tried to goad his poet with keen glances, silently inciting him
+to make a final effort.  But Shekhar took no notice, and remained fixed
+to his seat.
+
+The king in anger came down from his throne--took off his pearl chain
+and put it on Pundarik's head.  Everybody in the hall cheered.  From the
+upper balcony came a slight sound of the movements of rustling robes and
+waist-chains hung with golden bells.  Shekhar rose from his seat and
+left the hall.
+
+It was a dark night of waning moon.  The poet Shekhar took down his MSS.
+from his shelves and heaped them on the floor.  Some of them contained
+his earliest writings, which he had almost forgotten.  He turned over
+the pages, reading passages here and there.  They all seemed to him poor
+and trivial--mere words and childish rhymes!
+
+One by one he tore his books to fragments, and threw them into a vessel
+containing fire, and said : "To thee, to thee, O my beauty, my fire!
+Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years.  If my life
+were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is
+a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of
+ashes."
+
+The night wore on.  Shekhar opened wide his windows.  He spread upon his
+bed the white flowers that he loved, the jasmines, tuberoses and
+chrysanthemums, and brought into his bedroom all the lamps he had in his
+house and lighted them.  Then mixing with honey the juice of some
+poisonous root he drank it and lay down on his bed.
+
+Golden anklets tinkled in the passage outside the door, and a subtle
+perfume came into the room with the breeze.
+
+The poet, with his eyes shut, said; "My lady, have you taken pity upon
+your servant at last and come to see him ?"
+
+The answer came in a sweet voice "My poet, I have come."
+
+Shekhar opened his eyes--and saw before his bed the figure of a woman.
+
+His sight was dim and blurred.  And it seemed to him that the image made
+of a shadow that he had ever kept throned in the secret shrine of his
+heart had come into the outer world in his last moment to gaze upon his
+face.
+
+The woman said; "I am the Princess Ajita."
+
+The poet with a great effort sat up on his bed.
+
+The princess whispered into his car : "The king has not done you
+justice.  It was you who won at the combat, my poet, and I have come to
+crown you with the crown of victory."
+
+She took the garland of flowers from her own neck, and put it on his
+hair, and the poet fell down upon his bed stricken by death.
+
+
+
+ONCE THERE WAS A KING
+
+"Once upon a time there was a king."
+
+When we were children there was no need to know who the king in the
+fairy story was.  It didn't matter whether he was called Shiladitya or
+Shaliban, whether he lived at Kashi or Kanauj.  The thing that made a
+seven-year-old boy's heart go thump, thump with delight was this one
+sovereign truth; this reality of all realities:  "Once there was a
+king."
+
+But the readers of this modern age are far more exact and exacting.
+When they hear such an opening to a story, they are at once critical and
+suspicious.  They apply the searchlight of science to its legendary haze
+and ask: "Which king? "
+
+The story-tellers have become more precise in their turn.  They are no
+longer content with the old indefinite, "There was a king," but assume
+instead a look of profound learning,  and begin: "Once there was a king
+named Ajatasatru,"
+
+The modern reader's curiosity, however, is not so easily satisfied.  He
+blinks at the author through his scientific spectacles, and asks again:
+"Which Ajatasatru? "
+
+"Every schoolboy knows," the author proceeds, "that there were three
+Ajatasatrus.  The first was born in the twentieth century B.C., and died
+at the tender age of two years and eight months,  I deeply regret that
+it is impossible to find, from any trustworthy source, a detailed
+account of his reign.  The second Ajatasatru is better known to
+historians.  If you refer to the new Encyclopedia of History. . . ."
+
+By this time the modem reader's suspicions are dissolved.  He feels he
+may safely trust his author.  He says to himself: "Now we shall have a
+story that is both improving and instructive."
+
+Ah! how we all love to be deluded!  We have a secret dread of being
+thought ignorant.  And we end by being ignorant after all, only we have
+done it in a long and roundabout way.
+
+There is an English proverb ; "Ask me no questions, and I will tell you
+no lies."  The boy of seven who is listening to a fairy story
+understands that perfectly well; he withholds his questions, while the
+story is being told.  So the pure and beautiful falsehood of it all
+remains naked and innocent as a babe; transparent as truth itself;
+limpid as afresh bubbling spring.  But the ponderous and learned lie of
+our moderns has to keep its true character draped and veiled.  And if
+there is discovered anywhere the least little peep-hole of deception,
+the reader turns away with a prudish disgust, and the author is
+discredited.
+
+When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect
+the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own.  We never
+cared for such useless things as knowledge.  We only cared for truth.
+And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the Crystal Palace
+of Truth lay and how to reach it.  But to-day we are expected to write
+pages of facts, while the truth is simply this:
+
+"There was a king."
+
+I remember vividly that evening in Calcutta when the fairy story began.
+The rain and the storm had been incessant.  The whole of the city was
+flooded.  The water was knee-deep in our lane.  I had a  straining hope,
+which was almost a certainty, that my tutor would be prevented from
+coming that evening.  I sat on the stool in the far corner of the
+veranda looking down the lane, with a heart beating faster and faster.
+Every minute I kept my eye on the rain, and when it began to grow less I
+prayed with all my might; "Please, God, send some more rain till half-
+past seven is over."  For I was quite ready to believe that there was no
+other need for rain except to protect one helpless boy one evening in
+one corner of Calcutta from the deadly clutches of his tutor.
+
+If not in answer to my prayer, at any rate according to some grosser law
+of physical nature, the rain did not give up.
+
+But, alas !  nor did my teacher.
+
+Exactly to the minute, in the bend of the lane, I saw his approaching
+umbrella.  The great bubble of hope burst in my breast, and my heart
+collapsed.  Truly, if there is a punishment to fit the crime after
+death, then my tutor will be born again as me, and I shall be born as my
+tutor.
+
+As soon as I saw his umbrella I ran as hard as I could to my mother's
+room.  My mother and my grandmother were sitting opposite one another
+playing cards by the light of a lamp.  I ran into the room, and flung
+myself on the bed beside my mother, and said:
+
+"Mother dear, the tutor has come, and I have such a bad headache;
+couldn't I have no lessons today?"
+
+I hope no child of immature age will be allowed to read this story, and
+I sincerely trust it will not be used in text-books or primers for
+schools.  For what I did was dreadfully bad, and I received no
+punishment whatever.  On the contrary, my wickedness was crowned with
+success.
+
+My mother said to me: "All right," and turning to the servant added:
+"Tell the tutor that he can go back home."
+
+It was perfectly plain that she didn't think my illness very serious, as
+she went on with her game as before, and took no further notice.  And I
+also, burying my head in the pillow, laughed to my heart's content.  We
+perfectly understood one another, my mother and I.
+
+But every one must know how hard it is for a boy of seven years old to
+keep up the illusion of illness for a long time.  After about a minute I
+got hold of Grandmother, and said: "Grannie, do tell me a story."
+
+I had to ask this many times.  Grannie and Mother went on playing cards,
+and took no notice.  At last Mother said to me: "Child, don't bother.
+Wait till we've finished our game."  But I persisted:  "Grannie,  do
+tell me a story."  I told Mother she could finish her game to-morrow,
+but she must let Grannie tell me a story there and then.
+
+At last Mother threw down the cards and said: "You had better do what he
+wants.  I can't manage him."  Perhaps she had it in her mind that she
+would have no tiresome tutor on the morrow, while I should be obliged to
+be back to those stupid lessons.
+
+As soon as ever Mother had given way, I rushed at Grannie.  I got hold
+of her hand, and, dancing with delight, dragged her inside my  mosquito
+curtain on to the bed.  I clutched hold of the bolster with both hands
+in my excitement, and jumped up and down with joy, and when I had got a
+little quieter, said: "Now, Grannie, let' s  have  the story!"
+
+Grannie went on: "And the king had a queen."  That was good to begin
+with.  He had only one.
+
+It is usual for kings in fairy stories to be extravagant in queens.  And
+whenever we hear that there are two queens, our hearts begin to sink.
+One is sure to be unhappy.  But in Grannie's story that danger was past.
+He had only one queen.
+
+We next hear that the king had not got any son.  At the age of seven I
+didn't think there was any need to bother if a man had had no son.  He
+might only have been in the way.  Nor are we greatly excited when we
+hear that the king has gone away into the forest to practise austerities
+in order to get a son.  There was only one thing that would have made me
+go into the forest, and that was to get away from my tutor!
+
+But the king left behind with his queen a small girl, who grew up into a
+beautiful princess.
+
+Twelve years pass away, and the king goes on practising austerities, and
+never thinks all this while of his beautiful daughter.  The princess has
+reached the full bloom of her youth.  The age of marriage has passed,
+but the king does not return.  And the queen pines away with grief and
+cries : "Is my golden daughter destined to die unmarried?  Ah me!  What
+a fate is mine."
+
+Then the queen sent men to the king to entreat him earnestly to come
+back for a single night and take one meal in the palace.  And the king
+consented.
+
+The queen cooked with her own hand, and with the greatest care, sixty-
+four dishes, and made a seat for him of sandal-wood, and arranged the
+food in plates of gold and cups of silver.  The princess stood behind
+with the peacock-tail fan in her hand.  The king, after twelve years'
+absence, came into the house, and the princess waved the fan, lighting
+up all the room with her beauty.  The king looked in his daughter's
+face, and forgot to take his food.
+
+At last he asked his queen: "Pray, who is this girl whose beauty shines
+as the gold image of the goddess?  Whose daughter is she?"
+
+The queen beat her forehead, and cried: "Ah, how evil is my fate
+!  Do you not know your own daughter?"
+
+The king was struck with amazement.  He said at last; "My tiny daughter
+has grown to be a woman."
+
+"What else? " the queen said with a sigh. "Do you not know
+that twelve years have passed by?"
+
+"But why did you not give her in marriage? " asked the king.
+
+"You were away," the queen said. "And how could I find her a
+suitable husband?"
+
+The king became vehement with excitement. "The first man I see
+to-morrow," he said, "when I come out of the palace shall marry her."
+
+The princess went on waving her fan of peacock feathers, and the
+king finished his meal.
+
+The next morning, as the king came out of his palace, he saw the son of
+a Brahman gathering sticks in the forest outside the palace gates.  His
+age was about seven or eight.
+
+The king said: "I will marry my daughter to him."
+
+Who can interfere with a king's command?  At once the boy was called,
+and the marriage garlands were exchanged between him and the princess.
+
+At this point I came up close to my wise Grannie and asked her eagerly:
+"What then? "
+
+In the bottom of my heart there was a devout wish to substitute
+myself for that fortunate wood-gatherer of seven years old.  The
+night was resonant with the patter of rain.  The earthen lamp by
+my bedside was burning low.  My grandmother's voice droned on as she
+told the story.  And all these things served to create in a corner of my
+credulous heart the belief that I had been gathering sticks in the dawn
+of some indefinite time in the kingdom of some unknown king, and in a
+moment garlands had been exchanged between me and the princess,
+beautiful as the Goddess of Grace.  She had a gold band on her hair and
+gold earrings in her ears.  She bad a necklace and bracelets of gold,
+and a golden waist-chain round her waist, and a pair of golden anklets
+tinkled above her feet.
+
+If my grandmother were an author how many explanations she would have to
+offer for this little story!  First of all, every one would ask why the
+king remained twelve years in the forest?  Secondly, why should the
+king's daughter remain unmarried all that while?  This would be regarded
+as absurd.
+
+Even if she could have got so far without a quarrel, still there would
+have been a great hue and cry about the marriage itself.  First, it
+never happened.  Secondly, how could there be a marriage between a
+princess of the Warrior Caste and a boy of the priestly Brahman Caste?
+Her readers would have imagined at once that the writer was preaching
+against our social customs in an underhand way.  And they would write
+letters to the papers.
+
+So I pray with all my heart that my grandmother may be born a
+grandmother again, and not through some cursed fate take birth as her
+luckless grandson.
+
+So with a throb of joy and delight, I asked Grannie:  "What then?"
+
+Grannie went on:  Then the princess took her little husband away
+in great distress, and built a large palace with seven wings, and
+began to cherish her husband with great care.
+
+I jumped up and down in my bed and clutched at the bolster more
+tightly than ever and said: "What then?"
+
+Grannie continued :  The little boy went to school and learnt many
+lessons from his teachers, and as he grew up his class-fellows began to
+ask him: "Who is that beautiful lady who lives with you in the palace
+with the seven wings? "  The Brahman's son was eager to know who she
+was.  He could only remember how one day he had been gathering sticks,
+and a great disturbance arose.  But all that was so long ago, that he
+had no clear recollection.
+
+Four or five years passed in this way.  His companions always asked him:
+"Who is that beautiful lady in the palace with the seven wings?"  And
+the Brahman's son would come back from school and sadly tell the
+princess: "My school companions always ask me who is that beautiful lady
+in the palace with the seven wings, and I can give them no reply.  Tell
+me, oh, tell me, who you are!"
+
+The princess said : "Let it pass to-day.  I will tell  you  some  other
+day." And  every  day  the Brahman's son would ask; "Who are you? " and
+the princess would reply: "Let it pass to-day.  I will tell you some
+other day."  In this manner four or five more years passed away.
+
+At last the Brahman's son became very impatient, and said: "If you do
+not tell me to-day who you are, O beautiful lady, I will leave this
+palace with the seven wings."  Then the princess said: "I will certainly
+tell you to-morrow."
+
+Next day the Brahman's son, as soon as he came home from school, said:
+"Now, tell me who you are."  The princess said: "To-night I will tell
+you after supper, when you are in bed."
+
+The Brahman's son said : "Very well " ; and he began to count the hours
+in expectation of the night.  And the princess, on her side, spread
+white flowers over the golden bed, and lighted a gold lamp with fragrant
+oil, and adorned her hair, and dressed herself in a beautiful robe of
+blue, and began to count the hours in expectation of the night.
+
+That evening when her husband, the Brahman's son, had finished his meal,
+too excited almost to eat, and had gone to the golden bed in the bed-
+chamber strewn with flowers, he said to himself: "To-night I shall
+surely know who this beautiful lady is in the palace with the seven
+wings."
+
+The princess took for her the food that was left over by her husband,
+and slowly entered the bed-chamber.  She had to answer that night the
+question,  which was the beautiful lady who lived in  the palace with
+the seven wings.  And as she went up to the bed to tell him she found a
+serpent had crept out of the flowers and had bitten the Brahman's son.
+Her boy-husband was lying on the bed of flowers, with face pale in
+death.
+
+My heart suddenly ceased to throb, and I asked with choking voice: "What
+then? "
+
+Grannie said; "Then . . ."
+
+But what is the use of going on any further with the story?  It would
+only lead on to what was more and more impossible.  The boy of seven did
+not know that, if there were some "What then? " after death, no
+grandmother of a grandmother could tell us all about it.
+
+But the child's faith never admits defeat, and it would snatch at the
+mantle of death itself to turn him back.  It would be outrageous for him
+to think that such a story of one teacherless evening could so suddenly
+come to a stop.  Therefore the grandmother had to call back her story
+from the ever-shut chamber of the great End, but she does it so simply:
+it is merely by floating the dead body on a banana stem on the river,
+and having some incantations read by a magician.  But in that rainy
+night and in the dim light of a lamp death loses all its horror in the
+mind of the boy, and seems nothing more than a deep slumber of a single
+night.  When the story ends the tired eyelids are weighed down with
+sleep.  Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on
+the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning
+read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the world of life and
+light.
+
+
+
+THE HOME-COMING
+
+Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village.  A new
+mischief got into his head.  There was a heavy log lying on the mud-flat
+of the river waiting to be shaped into a mast for a boat.  He decided
+that they should all work together to shift the log by main force from
+its place and roll it away.  The owner of the log would be angry and
+surprised, and they would all enjoy the fun.  Every one seconded the
+proposal, and it was carried unanimously.
+
+But just as the fun was about to begin, Makhan, Phatik's younger
+brother, sauntered up, and sat down on the log in front of them all
+without a word.  The boys were puzzled for a moment.  He was pushed,
+rather timidly, by one of the boys and told to get up but he remained
+quite unconcerned.  He appeared like a young philosopher meditating on
+the futility of games.  Phatik was furious. "Makhan," he cried, "if you
+don't get down this minute I'll thrash you!"
+
+Makhan only moved to a more comfortable position.
+
+Now, if Phatik was to keep his regal dignity before the public, it was
+clear he ought to carry out his threat.  But his courage failed him at
+the crisis.  His fertile brain, however, rapidly seized upon a new
+manoeuvre which would discomfit his brother and afford his followers an
+added amusement.  He gave the word of command to roll the log and Makhan
+over together.  Makhan heard the order, and made it a point of honour to
+stick on.  But he overlooked the fact, like those who attempt earthly
+fame in other matters, that there was peril in it.
+
+The boys began to heave at the log with all their might, calling out,
+"One, two, three, go,"  At the word "go" the log went; and with it went
+Makhan's philosophy, glory and all.
+
+All the other boys shouted themselves hoarse with delight.  But Phatik
+was a little frightened.  He knew what was coming.  And, sure enough,
+Makhan rose from Mother Earth blind as Fate and screaming like the
+Furies.  He rushed at Phatik and scratched his face and beat him and
+kicked him, and then went crying home.  The first act of the drama was
+over.
+
+Phatik wiped his face, and sat down on the edge of a sunken barge on the
+river bank, and began to chew a piece of grass.  A boat came up to the
+landing, and a middle-aged man, with grey hair and dark moustache,
+stepped on shore.  He saw the boy sitting there doing nothing, and asked
+him where the Chakravortis lived. Phatik went on chewing the grass, and
+said: "Over there," but it was quite impossible to tell where he
+pointed.  The stranger asked him again.  He swung his legs to and fro on
+the side of the barge, and said; "Go and find out," and continued to
+chew the grass as before.
+
+But now a servant came down from the house, and told Phatik his mother
+wanted him.  Phatik refused to move.  But the servant was the master on
+this occasion.  He took Phatik up roughly, and carried him, kicking and
+struggling in impotent rage.
+
+When Phatik came into the house, his mother saw him.  She called out
+angrily: "So you have been hitting Makhan again?"
+
+Phatik answered indignantly: "No, I haven't; who told you that? "
+
+His mother shouted: "Don't tell lies!  You have."
+
+Phatik said suddenly: "I tell you, I haven't.  You ask Makhan!"
+But Makhan thought it best to stick to his previous statement.
+He said: "Yes, mother.  Phatik did hit me."
+
+Phatik's patience was  already exhausted.  He could not hear this
+injustice.  He rushed at Makban, and hammered him with blows:
+"Take that" he cried, "and that, and that, for telling lies."
+
+His mother took Makhan's side in a moment, and pulled Phatik away,
+beating him with her hands.  When Phatik pushed her aside, she shouted
+out: "What I you little villain!  would you hit your own mother?"
+
+It was just at this critical juncture that the grey-haired stranger
+arrived.  He asked what was the matter.  Phatik looked sheepish and
+ashamed.
+
+But when his mother stepped back and looked at the stranger, her anger
+was changed to surprise.  For she recognised her brother, and cried:
+"Why, Dada!  Where have you come from? "As she said these words, she
+bowed to the ground and touched his feet.  Her brother had gone away
+soon after she had married, and he had started business in Bombay.  His
+sister had lost her husband while he was In Bombay.  Bishamber had now
+come back to Calcutta, and had at once made enquiries about his sister.
+He had then hastened to see her as soon as he found out where she
+was.
+
+The next few days were full of rejoicing.  The brother asked after the
+education of the two boys.  He was told by his sister that Phatik was a
+perpetual nuisance.  He was lazy, disobedient, and wild.  But Makhan was
+as good as gold, as quiet as a lamb, and very fond of reading,
+Bishamber kindly offered to take Phatik off his sister's hands, and
+educate him with his own children in Calcutta.  The widowed mother
+readily agreed.  When his uncle asked Phatik If he would like to
+go to Calcutta with him, his joy knew no bounds, and he said; "Oh, yes,
+uncle! "  In a way that made it quite clear that he meant it.
+
+It was an immense relief to the mother to get rid of Phatik.  She had a
+prejudice against the boy, and no love was lost between the two
+brothers.  She was in daily fear that he would either drown Makhan some
+day in the river, or break his head in a fight, or run him into some
+danger or other.  At the same time she was somewhat distressed to see
+Phatik's extreme eagerness to get away.
+
+Phatik, as soon as all was settled, kept asking his uncle every minute
+when they were to start.  He was on pins and needles all day long with
+excitement, and lay awake most of the night.  He bequeathed to Makhan,
+in perpetuity, his fishing-rod, his big kite and his marbles.  Indeed,
+at this time of departure his generosity towards Makhan
+was unbounded.
+
+When they reached Calcutta, Phatik made the acquaintance of his aunt for
+the first time.  She was by no means pleased with this unnecessary
+addition to her family.  She found her own three boys quite enough to
+manage without taking any one else.  And to bring a village lad of
+fourteen into their midst was terribly upsetting.  Bishamber should
+really have thought twice before committing such an indiscretion.
+
+In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at
+the age of fourteen.  He is neither ornamental, nor useful.  It is
+impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is
+always getting in the way.  If he talks with a childish lisp he is
+called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called
+impertinent.  In fact any talk at all from him is resented.  Then he is
+at the unattractive, growing age.  He grows out of his  clothes with
+indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face
+grows suddenly angular and unsightly.  It is easy to excuse the
+shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even
+unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen.  The lad himself becomes
+painfully self-conscious.  When he talks with elderly people he is
+either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of
+his very existence.
+
+Yet it is at this very age when in his heart of hearts a young lad most
+craves for recognition and love; and he becomes the devoted slave of any
+one who shows him consideration.  But none dare openly love him, for
+that would be regarded as undue indulgence, and therefore bad for the
+boy.  So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a
+stray dog that has lost his master.
+
+For a boy of fourteen his own home is the only Paradise.  To live in a
+strange house with strange people is little short of torture, while the
+height of bliss is to receive the kind looks of women, and never to be
+slighted by them.
+
+It was anguish to Phatik to be the unwelcome guest in his aunt's house,
+despised by this elderly woman, and slighted, on every occasion.  If she
+ever asked him to do anything for her, he would be so overjoyed that he
+would overdo it; and then she would tell him not to be so stupid, but to
+get on with his lessons.
+
+The cramped atmosphere of neglect in his aunt's house oppressed Phatik
+so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe.  He wanted to go out
+into the open country and fill his lungs and breathe freely.  But there
+was no open country to go to. Surrounded on all sides by Calcutta houses
+and walls, be would dream night after night of his village home, and
+long to be back there.  He remembered the glorious meadow where he used
+to By his kite all day long; the broad river-banks where he would wander
+about the livelong day singing and shouting for joy; the narrow
+brook where he could go and dive and swim at any time he liked.  He
+thought of his band of boy companions over whom he was despot; and,
+above all, the memory of that tyrant mother of his, who had such a
+prejudice against him, occupied him day and night.  A kind of physical
+love like that of animals; a longing to be in the presence of the one
+who is loved; an inexpressible wistfulness during absence; a silent cry
+of the inmost heart for the mother, like the lowing of a calf in the
+twilight;-this love, which was almost an animal instinct, agitated the
+shy, nervous, lean, uncouth and ugly boy.  No one could understand it,
+but it preyed upon his mind continually.
+
+There was no more backward boy in the whole school than Phatik. He gaped
+and remained silent when the teacher asked him a question, and like an
+overladen ass patiently suffered all the blows that came down on his
+back.  When other boys were out at play, he stood wistfully by the
+window and gazed at the roofs of the distant houses.  And if by chance
+he espied children playing on the open terrace of any roof, his heart
+would ache with longing.
+
+One day he summoned up all his courage, and asked his uncle: "Uncle,
+when can I go home?"
+
+His uncle answered; "Wait till the holidays come."But the holidays would
+not come till November, and there was a long time still to wait.
+
+One day Phatik lost his lesson-book.  Even with the help of books he had
+found it very difficult indeed to prepare his lesson.  Now it was
+impossible.  Day after day the teacher would cane him unmercifully.  His
+condition became so abjectly miserable that even his cousins were
+ashamed to own him.  They began to jeer and insult him more than the
+other boys.  He went to his aunt at last, and told her that he bad lost
+his book.
+
+His aunt pursed her lips in contempt, and said: "You great clumsy,
+country lout.  How can I afford, with all my family, to buy you new
+books five times a month?"
+
+That night, on his way back from school, Phatik had a bad headache with
+a fit of shivering.  He felt he was going to have an attack of malarial
+fever.  His one great fear was that he would be a nuisance to his aunt.
+
+The next morning Phatik was nowhere to be seen.  All searches in the
+neighbourhood proved futile.  The rain had been pouring in torrents all
+night, and those who went out in search of the boy got drenched through
+to the skin.  At last Bisbamber asked help from the police.
+
+At the end of the day a police van stopped at the door before the house.
+It was still raining and the  streets were  all  flooded.  Two
+constables brought out Phatik in their arms and placed him before
+Bishamber.  He was wet through from head to foot, muddy all over, his
+face and eyes flushed red with fever, and his limbs all trembling.
+Bishamber carried him in his arms, and took him into the inner
+apartments.  When his wife saw him, she exclaimed; "What a heap of
+trouble this boy has given us.  Hadn't you better send him home ?"
+
+Phatik heard her words, and sobbed out loud: "Uncle, I was just
+going home; but they dragged me back again,"
+
+The fever rose very high, and all that night the boy was delirious.
+Bishamber brought in a doctor.  Phatik opened his eyes flushed with
+fever, and looked up to the ceiling, and said vacantly: "Uncle, have the
+holidays come yet?  May I go home?"
+
+Bishamber wiped the tears from his own eyes, and took Phatik's lean and
+burning hands in his own, and sat by him through the night.  The boy
+began again to mutter.  At last his voice became excited: "Mother," he
+cried, "don't beat me like that!  Mother!  I am telling the truth!"
+
+The next day Phatik became conscious for a short time.  He turned his
+eyes about the room, as if expecting some one to come.  At last, with an
+air of disappointment, his head sank back on the pillow.  He turned his
+face to the wall with a deep sigh.
+
+Bishamber knew his thoughts, and, bending down his head, whispered:
+"Phatik, I have sent for your mother."  The day went by.  The doctor
+said in a troubled voice that the boy's condition was very critical.
+
+Phatik began to cry out; "By the mark! --three fathoms.  By the mark--
+four fathoms.  By the mark-."  He had heard the sailor on the river-
+steamer calling out the mark on the plumb-line.  Now he was himself
+plumbing an unfathomable sea.
+
+Later in the day Phatik's mother burst into the room like a whirlwind,
+and began to toss from side to side and moan and cry in a loud voice.
+
+Bishamber tried to calm her agitation, but she flung herself on the bed,
+and cried: "Phatik, my darling, my darling."
+
+Phatik stopped his restless movements for a moment.  His hands ceased
+beating up and down.  He said: "Eh?"
+
+The mother cried again: "Phatik, my darling, my darling."
+
+Phatik very slowly turned his head and, without seeing anybody, said:
+"Mother, the holidays have come."
+
+
+
+MY LORD, THE BABY
+
+I
+
+Raicharan was twelve years old when he came as a servant to his master's
+house.  He belonged to the same caste as his master, and was given his
+master's little son to nurse.  As time went on the boy left Raicharan's
+arms to go to school.  From school he went on to college, and after
+college he entered the  judicial  service.  Always,  until he  married,
+Raicharan was his sole attendant.
+
+But,  when  a  mistress  came  into  the  house, Raicharan found two
+masters instead of one.  All his  former influence passed to the new
+mistress.  This was compensated  for by a  fresh arrival.  Anukul had a
+son born to him, and Raicharan by his unsparing attentions soon got a
+complete hold over the child.  He used to toss him up in his arms, call
+to  him  in  absurd baby language, put his  face close to the baby's and
+draw it away again with a grin.
+
+Presently the child was able to crawl and cross the doorway.  When
+Raicharan went to catch him, he would scream with mischievous laughter
+and make for safety.  Raicharan was amazed at the profound skill and
+exact judgment the baby showed when pursued.  He would say to his
+mistress with a look of awe and mystery: "Your son will be a judge some
+day."
+
+New wonders came in their turn.  When the baby began to toddle, that was
+to Raicharan an epoch in human history.  When he called his father Ba-ba
+and  his mother  Ma-ma  and  Raicharan Chan-na, then Raicharan's ecstasy
+knew no bounds.  He went out to tell the news to all the world.
+
+After a while Raicharan was asked to show his ingenuity in other ways.
+He had, for instance, to play the part of a horse, holding the reins
+between his teeth and prancing with his feet.  He had also to wrestle
+with his little charge, and if he could not, by a wrestler's trick, fall
+on his back defeated at the end, a great outcry was certain.
+
+About this time Anukul was transferred to a district on the banks of the
+Padma.  On his way through Calcutta he bought his son a little go-cart.
+He bought him also a yellow satin waistcoat, a gold-laced cap, and some
+gold bracelets and anklets.  Raicharan was wont to take these out, and
+put them on his little charge with ceremonial pride, whenever they went
+for a walk.
+
+Then came the rainy season, and day after day the rain poured down in
+torrents.  The hungry river, like an enormous serpent, swallowed down
+terraces, villages, cornfields, and covered with its flood the tall
+grasses and wild casuarinas on the sand-banks.  From time to time there
+was a deep thud, as the river-banks crumbled.  The unceasing roar of the
+rain current could be beard from far away.  Masses of foam, carried
+swiftly past, proved to the eye the swiftness of the stream.
+
+One afternoon the rain cleared.  It was cloudy, but cool and bright.
+Raicharan's little despot did not want to stay in on such a fine
+afternoon.  His lordship climbed into the go-cart.  Raicharan, between
+the shafts, dragged him slowly along till he reached the rice-fields on
+the banks of the river.  There was no one in the fields, and no boat on
+the stream.  Across the water, on the farther side, the clouds were
+rifted in the west.  The silent ceremonial of the setting sun was
+revealed in all its glowing splendour.  In the midst of that stillness
+the child, all of a sudden, pointed with his finger in front of him and
+cried: "Chan-nal  Pitty fow."
+
+Close by on a mud-flat stood a large Kadamba tree in full flower.  My
+lord, the baby, looked at it with greedy eyes, and Raicharan knew his
+meaning.  Only a short time before he had made, out of these very flower
+balls, a small go-cart; and the child had been so entirely happy
+dragging it about with a string, that for the whole day Raicharan was
+not made to put on the reins at all.  He was promoted from a horse into
+a groom.
+
+But Raicharan had no wish that evening to go splashing knee-deep through
+the mud to reach the flowers.  So he quickly pointed his finger in the
+opposite direction, calling out: "Oh, look, baby, look!  Look at the
+bird."  And with all sorts of curious noises he pushed the go-cart
+rapidly away from the tree.
+
+But a child, destined to be a judge, cannot be put off so easily.  And
+besides, there was at the time nothing to attract his eyes.  And you
+cannot keep up for ever the pretence of an imaginary bird.
+
+The little Master's mind was made up, and Raicharan was at his wits'
+end. "Very well, baby," he said at last, "you sit still in the cart, and
+I'll go and get you the pretty flower.  Only mind you don't go near the
+water."
+
+As he said this, he made his legs bare to the knee, and waded
+through the oozing mud towards the tree.
+
+The moment Raicharan had gone, his little Master went off at racing
+speed to the forbidden water.  The baby saw the river rushing by,
+splashing and gurgling as it went.  It seemed as though the disobedient
+wavelets themselves were running away from some greater Raicharan with
+the laughter of a thousand children.  At the sight of their mischief,
+the heart of the human child grew excited and restless.  He got down
+stealthily from the go-cart and toddled off towards the river.  On his
+way he picked up a small stick, and leant over the bank of the stream
+pretending to fish.  The mischievous fairies of the river with their
+mysterious voices seemed inviting him into their play-house.
+
+Raicharan had plucked a handful of flowers from the tree, and was
+carrying them back in the end of his cloth, with his face wreathed in
+smiles.  But when he reached the go-cart, there was no one there.  He
+looked on all sides and there was no one there.  He looked back at the
+cart and there was no one there.
+
+In that first terrible moment his blood froze within him.  Before his
+eyes the whole universe swam round like a dark mist.  From the depth of
+his broken heart he gave one piercing cry; "Master, Master, little
+Master."
+
+But no voice answered "Chan-na."  No child laughed mischievously back;
+no scream of baby delight welcomed his return.  Only the river ran on,
+with its splashing, gurgling noise as before,--as though it knew nothing
+at all, and had no time to attend to such a tiny human event as the
+death of a child.
+
+As the evening passed by Raicharan's mistress became very anxious.  She
+sent men out on all sides to search.  They went with lanterns in their
+hands, and reached at last the banks of the Padma.  There they found
+Raicharan rushing up and down the fields, like a stormy wind, shouting
+the cry of despair: "Master, Master, little Master!"
+
+When they got Raicharan home at last, he fell prostrate at his
+mistress's feet.  They shook him, and questioned him, and asked him
+repeatedly where he had left the child; but all he could say was, that
+he knew nothing.
+
+Though every one held the opinion that the Padma had swallowed the
+child, there was a lurking doubt left in the mind.  For a band of
+gipsies had been noticed outside the village that afternoon, and some
+suspicion rested on them.  The mother went so far in her wild grief as
+to think it possible that Raicharan himself had stolen the child.  She
+called him aside with piteous entreaty and said: "Raicharan, give me
+back my baby.  Oh !  give me back my child.  Take from me any money you
+ask, but give me back my child!"
+
+Raicharan only beat his forehead in reply.  His mistress ordered him out
+of the house.
+
+Artukul tried to reason his wife out of this wholly unjust suspicion:
+"Why on earth," he said, "should he commit such a crime as that?"
+
+The mother only replied: "The baby had gold ornaments on his body.  Who
+knows?"
+
+It was impossible to reason with her after that.
+
+II
+
+Raicharan went back to his own village.  Up to this time he had had no
+son, and there was no hope that any child would now be born to him.  But
+it came about before the end of a year that his wife gave birth to a son
+and died.
+
+All overwhelming resentment at first grew up in Raicharan's heart at the
+sight of this new baby.  At the back of his mind was resentful suspicion
+that it had come as a usurper in place of the little Master.  He also
+thought it would be a grave offence to be happy with a son of his own
+after what had happened to his master's little child.  Indeed, if it had
+not been for a widowed sister, who mothered the new baby, it would not
+have lived long.
+
+But a change gradually came over Raicharan's mind.  A wonderful thing
+happened.  This new baby in turn began to crawl about, and cross the
+doorway with mischief in its face.  It also showed an amusing cleverness
+in making its escape to safety.  Its voice, its sounds of laughter and
+tears, its gestures, were those of the little Master.  On some days,
+when  Raicharan listened to its crying, his heart suddenly began
+thumping wildly against his ribs, and it seemed to him that his former
+little Master was crying somewhere in the unknown land of death because
+he had lost his Chan-na.
+
+Phailna (for that was the name Raicharan's sister gave to the new baby)
+soon began to talk.  It learnt to say Ba-ba and Ma-ma with a baby
+accent.  When Raicharan heard those familiar sounds the mystery suddenly
+became clear.  The little Master could not cast off the spell of his
+Chan-na, and therefore he had been reborn in his own house.
+
+The arguments in favour of this were, to Raicharan, altogether beyond
+dispute:
+
+(i.) The new baby was born soon after his little master's death.
+
+(ii.) His wife could never have accumulated such merit as to give birth
+to a son in middle age.
+
+(iii.)  The new baby walked with a toddle and called out Ba-ba and Ma-
+ma.  There was no sign lacking which marked out the future judge.
+
+Then suddenly Raicharan remembered that terrible accusation of the
+mother. "Ah," he said to himself with amazement, "the mother's heart was
+right.  She knew I had stolen her child."  When once he had come to this
+conclusion, he was filled with remorse for his past neglect.  He now
+gave himself over, body and soul, to the new baby, and became its
+devoted attendant.  He began to bring it up, as if it were the son of a
+rich man.  He bought a go-cart, a yellow satin waistcoat, and a gold-
+embroidered cap.  He melted down the ornaments of his dead wife, and
+made gold bangles and anklets.  He refused to let the little child play
+with any one of the neighbourhood, and became himself its sole companion
+day and night.  As the baby grew up to boyhood, he was so petted and
+spoilt and clad in such finery that the village children would call him
+"Your Lordship," and jeer at him; and older people regarded Raicharan as
+unaccountably crazy about the child.
+
+At last the time came for the boy to go to school.  Raicharan sold his
+small piece of land, and went to Calcutta.  There he got employment with
+great difficulty as a servant, and sent Phailna to school.  He spared no
+pains to give him the best education, the best clothes, the best food.
+Meanwhile he lived himself on a mere handful of rice, and would say in
+secret: "Ah!  my little Master, my dear little Master, you loved me so
+much that you came back to my house.  You shall never suffer from any
+neglect of mine."
+
+Twelve years passed away in this manner.  The boy was able to read and
+write well.  He was bright and healthy and good-looking.  He paid a
+great deal of attention to his personal appearance, and was specially
+careful in parting his hair.  He was inclined to extravagance and
+finery, and spent money freely.  He could never quite look on Raicharan
+as a father, because, though fatherly in affection, he had the manner of
+a servant.  A further fault was this, that Raicharan kept secret from
+every one that himself was the father of the child.
+
+The students of the hostel, where Phailna was a boarder, were greatly
+amused by Raicharan's country manners, and I have to confess that behind
+his father's back Phailna joined in their fun.  But, in the bottom of
+their hearts, all the students loved the  innocent  and  tender-hearted
+old  man,  and Phailna was very fond of him also.  But, as I have said
+before,  he loved him with a kind of condescension.
+
+Raicharan grew older and older, and his employer was continually finding
+fault with him for his incompetent work.  He had been starving himself
+for the boy's sake.  So he had grown physically weak, and no longer up
+to his work.  He would forget things, and his mind became dull and
+stupid.  But his employer expected a full servant's work out of him, and
+would not brook excuses.  The money that Raicharan had brought with him
+from the sale of his land was exhausted.  The boy was continually
+grumbling about his clothes, and asking for more money.
+
+Raicharan made up his mind.  He gave up the situation where he was
+working as a servant, and left some money with Phailna and said: "I have
+some business to do at home in my village, and shall be back soon."
+
+He went off at once to Baraset where Anukul was magistrate.  Anukul's
+wife was still broken down with grief.  She had had no other child.
+
+One day Anukul was resting after a long and weary day in court.  His
+wife was buying, at an exorbitant price, a herb from a mendicant quack,
+which was said to ensure the birth of a child.  A voice of  greeting was
+heard  in the  courtyard.  Anukul went out to see who was there.  It was
+Raicharan.  Anukul's heart was softened when he saw his old servant.  He
+asked him many questions, and offered to take him back into service.
+
+Raicharan smiled faintly, and said in reply; "I want to make obeisance
+to my mistress."
+
+Anukul went with Raicharan into the house, where the mistress did not
+receive him as warmly as his old master.  Raicharan took no notice of
+this, but folded his hands, and said: "It was not the Padma that stole
+your baby.  It was I."
+
+Anukul exclaimed: "Great God!  Eh!  What!  Where is he ? "Raicharan
+replied: "He is with me,  I will bring him the day after to-morrow."
+
+It was Sunday.  There was no magistrate's court sitting.  Both husband
+and wife were looking expectantly along the road, waiting from early
+morning for Raicharan's appearance.  At ten o'clock he came, leading
+Phailna by the hand.
+
+Anukul's wife, without a question, took the boy into her lap, and was
+wild with excitement, sometimes laughing, sometimes weeping, touching
+him, kissing his hair and his forehead, and gazing into his face with
+hungry, eager eyes.  The boy was very good-looking and dressed like a
+gentleman's son.  The heart of Anukul brimmed over with a sudden rush of
+affection.
+
+Nevertheless the magistrate in him asked: "Have you any proofs?
+"Raicharan said: "How could there be any proof of such a deed?  God
+alone knows that I stole your boy, and no one else in the world."
+
+When Anukul saw how eagerly his wife was clinging to the boy, he
+realised the futility of asking for proofs.  It would be wiser to
+believe.  And then--where could an old man like Raicharan get such a boy
+from?  And why should his faithful servant deceive him for nothing?
+
+"But," he added severely, "Raicharan, you must not stay here."
+
+"Where shall I go, Master?" said Raicharan, in a choking voice, folding
+his hands; "I am old.  Who will take in an old man as a servant?"
+
+The mistress said: "Let him stay.  My child will be pleased.  I forgive
+him."
+
+But Anukul's magisterial conscience would not allow him. "No," he said,
+"he cannot be forgiven for what he has done."
+
+Raicharan bowed to the ground, and clasped Anukul's feet. "Master," he
+cried, "let me stay.  It was not I who did it.  It was God."
+
+Anukul's conscience was worse stricken than ever, when Raicharan tried
+to put the blame on God's shoulders.
+
+"No," he said, "I could not allow it.  I cannot trust you any more.  You
+have done an act of treachery."
+
+Raicharan rose to his feet and said: "It was not I who did it."
+
+"Who was it then?" asked Anukul.
+
+Raicharan replied: "It was my fate."
+
+But no educated man could take this for an excuse.  Anukul remained
+obdurate.
+
+When Phailna saw that he was the wealthy magistrate's son, and not
+Raicharan's, be was angry at first, thinking that he had been cheated
+all this time of his birthright.  But seeing Raicharan in distress, he
+generously said to his father: "Father, forgive him.  Even if you don't
+let him live with us, let him have a small monthly pension."
+
+After hearing this, Raicharan did not utter another word.  He looked for
+the last time on the face of his son; he made obeisance to his old
+master and mistress.  Then he went out, and was mingled with the
+numberless people of the world.
+
+At the end of the month Anukul sent him some money to his village.  But
+the money came back.  There was no one there of the name of Raicharan.
+
+
+
+
+THE KINGDOM OF CARDS
+
+I
+
+Once upon a time there was a lonely island in a distant sea where
+lived the Kings and Queens, the Aces and the Knaves, in the Kingdom of
+Cards. The Tens and Nines, with the Twos and Threes, and all the other
+members, had long ago settled there also.  But these were not twice-born
+people, like the famous Court Cards.
+
+The Ace, the King, and the Knave were the three highest castes. The
+fourth Caste was made up of a mixture of the lower Cards.  The Twos and
+Threes were lowest of all.  These inferior Cards were never allowed to
+sit in the same row with the great Court Cards.
+
+Wonderful indeed were the regulations and rules of that island kingdom.
+The particular rank of each individual had been settled from time
+immemorial.  Every one had his own appointed work, and never did
+anything else.  An unseen hand appeared to be directing them wherever
+they went, --according to the Rules.
+
+No one in the Kingdom of Cards had any occasion to think: no one had any
+need to come to any decision: no one was ever required to debate any new
+subject.  The citizens all moved along in a listless groove without
+speech.  When they fell, they made no noise.  They lay down on their
+backs, and gazed upward at the sky with each prim feature firmly fixed
+for ever.
+
+There was a remarkable stillness in the Kingdom of Cards.  Satisfaction
+and contentment were complete in all their rounded wholeness.  There was
+never any uproar or violence.  There was never any excitement or
+enthusiasm.
+
+The great ocean, crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped
+the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave's white
+hands.  The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding
+mother-bird, nestled the island round with its downy plume.  For on the
+distant horizon a deep blue line betokened another shore.  But no sound
+of quarrel or strife could reach the Island of Cards, to break its calm
+repose.
+
+II
+
+In that far-off foreign land.  across the sea, there lived a young
+Prince whose mother was a sorrowing queen.  This queen had fallen from
+favour, and was living with her only son on the seashore.  The Prince
+passed his childhood alone and forlorn, sitting by his forlorn mother,
+weaving the net of his big desires.  He longed to go in search of the
+Flying Horse, the Jewel in the Cobra's hood, the Rose of Heaven, the
+Magic  Roads, or to find where the Princess Beauty was sleeping in the
+Ogre's castle over the thirteen rivers and across the seven seas.
+
+>From the Son of the Merchant at school the young Prince learnt the
+stories of  foreign kingdoms.  From the Son of the Kotwal he learnt the
+adventures of the Two Genii of the Lamp.  And when the rain came beating
+down, and the clouds covered the sky, he would sit on the threshold
+facing the sea, and say to his sorrowing mother: "Tell me, mother, a
+story of some very far-off land."
+
+And his mother would tell him an endless tale she had heard in her
+childhood of a wonderful country beyond the sea where dwelt the Princess
+Beauty.  And the heart of the young Prince would become sick with
+longing, as he sat on the threshold, looking out on the ocean, listening
+to his mother's wonderful story, while the rain outside came beating
+down and the grey clouds covered the sky.
+
+One day the Son of the Merchant came to the Prince, and said boldly:
+"Comrade, my studies are over.  I am now setting out on my travels to
+seek my fortunes on the sea.  I have come to bid you good-bye."
+
+The Prince said; "I will go with you."
+
+And the Son of Kotwal said also: "Comrades, trusty and true, you will
+not leave me behind.  I also will be your companion."
+
+Then the young Prince said to his sorrowing mother; "Mother, I am now
+setting out on my travels to seek my fortune.  When I come back once
+more, I shall surely have found some way to remove all your sorrow."
+
+So the Three Companions set out on their travels together.  In the
+harbour were anchored the twelve ships of the merchant, and the Three
+Companions got on board.  The south wind was blowing, and the twelve
+ships sailed away, as fast as the desires which rose in the Prince's
+breast.
+
+At the Conch Shell Island they filled one ship with conchs.  At the
+Sandal Wood Island they filled a second ship with sandal-wood,  and at
+the Coral Island they filled a third ship with coral.
+
+Four years passed away, and they filled four more ships,  one with
+ivory, one  with musk,  one with cloves, and one with nutmegs.
+
+But when these ships were all loaded a terrible tempest arose.  The
+ships were all of them sunk, with their cloves and nutmeg, and musk and
+ivory, and coral and sandal-wood and conchs.  But the ship with the
+Three Companions struck on an island reef, buried them safe ashore, and
+itself broke in pieces.
+
+This was the famous Island of Cards, where lived the Ace and King and
+Queen and Knave, with the Nines and Tens and all the other Members--
+according to the Rules.
+
+III
+
+Up till now there had been nothing to disturb that island stillness.  No
+new thing had ever happened.  No discussion had ever been held.
+
+And then, of a sudden, the Three Companions appeared, thrown up by the
+sea,--and the Great Debate began.  There were three main points of
+dispute.
+
+First,  to  what  caste  should  these  unclassed strangers belong?
+Should they rank with the Court Cards?  Or were they merely lower-caste
+people, to be ranked with the Nines and Tens ?  No precedent could be
+quoted to decide this weighty question.
+
+Secondly, what was their clan?  Had they the fairer hue and bright
+complexion of the Hearts, or was theirs the darker complexion of the
+Clubs?  Over this question there were interminable disputes.  The whole
+marriage system of the island, with its intricate regulations, would
+depend on its nice adjustment.
+
+Thirdly, what food should they take?  With whom should they live and
+sleep ?  And should their heads be placed south-west, north-west, or
+only north-east?  In all the Kingdom of Cards a series of problems so
+vital and critical had never been debated before.
+
+But the Three Companions grew desperately hungry.  They had to get food
+in some way or other.  So while this debate went on, with its
+interminable silence and pauses, and while the Aces called their own
+meeting, and formed themselves into a Committee, to find some obsolete
+dealing with the question, the Three Companions themselves were eating
+all they could find, and drinking out of every vessel, and breaking all
+regulations.
+
+Even the Twos and Threes were shocked at this outrageous behaviour.  The
+Threes said; "Brother Twos, these people are openly shameless!"  And the
+Twos said: "Brother Threes, they are evidently of lower caste than
+ourselves! "After their meal was over, the Three Companions went for a
+stroll in the city.
+
+When they saw the ponderous people moving in their dismal processions
+with prim and solemn faces, then the Prince turned to the Son of the
+Merchant and the Son of the Kotwal, and threw back his head, and gave
+one stupendous laugh.
+
+Down Royal Street and across Ace Square and along the Knave Embankment
+ran the quiver of this strange,  unheard-of  laughter,  the  laughter
+that, amazed at itself, expired in the vast vacuum of silence.
+
+The Son of the Kotwal and the Son of the Merchant were chilled through
+to the bone by the ghost-like stillness  around  them.  They turned  to
+the Prince, and said: "Comrade, let us away.  Let us not stop for a
+moment in this awful land of ghosts."
+
+But the Prince said: "Comrades, these people resemble men, so I am going
+to find out, by shaking them upside down and outside in, whether they
+have a single drop of warm living blood left in their veins.
+
+IV
+
+The days passed one by one, and the placid existence of the Island went
+on almost without a ripple.  The Three Companions obeyed no rules nor
+regulations.  They never did anything correctly either in sitting or
+standing or turning themselves round or lying on their back.  On the
+contrary, wherever they saw these things going on precisely and exactly
+according to the Rules, they gave way to inordinate laughter.  They
+remained unimpressed altogether by the eternal gravity of those eternal
+regulations.
+
+One day the great Court Cards came to the Son of the Kotwal and the Son
+of the Merchant and the Prince.
+
+"Why,"  they  asked  slowly, "are  you  not moving according to the
+Rules?"
+
+The Three Companions answered: "Because that is our Ichcha (wish)."
+
+The great Court Cards with hollow, cavernous voices, as if slowly
+awakening from an age-long dream, said together: "Ich-cha!  And pray who
+is Ich-cha?"
+
+They could not understand who Ichcha was then, but the whole island was
+to understand it by-and-by.  The first glimmer of light passed the
+threshold of their minds when they found out, through watching the
+actions of the Prince, that they might move in a straight line in an
+opposite direction from the one in which they had always gone before.
+Then they made another startling discovery, that there was another
+side to the Cards which they had never yet noticed with attention.  This
+was the beginning of the change.
+
+Now that the change had begun, the Three Companions were able to
+initiate them more and more deeply into the mysteries of Ichcha.  The
+Cards gradually became aware that life was not bound by regulations.
+They began to feel a secret satisfaction in the kingly power of choosing
+for themselves.
+
+But with this first impact of Ichcha the whole pack of cards began to
+totter slowly, and then tumble down to the ground.  The scene was like
+that of some huge python awaking from a long sleep, as it slowly unfolds
+its numberless coils with a quiver that runs through its whole frame.
+
+V
+
+Hitherto the Queens of Spades and Clubs and Diamonds and Hearts had
+remained behind curtains with eyes that gazed vacantly into space, or
+else remained fixed upon the ground.
+
+And now, all of a sudden, on an afternoon in spring the Queen of Hearts
+from the balcony raised her dark eyebrows for a moment, and cast a
+single glance upon the Prince from the corner of her eye.
+
+"Great God," cried the Prince, "I thought they were all painted images.
+But I am wrong.  They are women after all."
+
+Then the young Prince called to his side his two Companions, and said in
+a meditative voice; "My comrades !  There is a charm about these ladies
+that I never noticed before.  When I saw that glance of the Queen's
+dark, luminous eyes, brightening with new emotion, it seemed to me like
+the first faint streak of dawn in a newly created world."
+
+The two Companions smiled a knowing smile, and said: "Is that really so,
+Prince?"
+
+And the poor Queen of Hearts from that day went from bad to worse.  She
+began to forget all rules in a truly scandalous manner.  If, for
+instance, her place in the row was beside the Knave, she suddenly found
+herself quite accidentally standing beside the Prince instead.  At this,
+the Knave, with motionless face and solemn voice, would say: "Queen, you
+have made a mistake."
+
+And the poor Queen of Hearts' red cheeks would get redder than ever.
+But the Prince would come gallantly to her rescue and say: "No!  There
+is no mistake.  From to-day I am going to be Knave!"
+
+Now it came to pass that, while every one was trying to correct the
+improprieties of the guilty Queen of Hearts, they began to make mistakes
+themselves.  The Aces  found themselves elbowed out by the Kings.  The
+Kings got muddled up with the Knaves.  The Nines and Tens assumed airs
+as though they belonged to the Great Court Cards.  The Twos and Threes
+were found secretly taking the places specially resented for the Fours
+and Fives.  Confusion had never been so confounded before.
+
+Many spring seasons had come and gone in that Island of Cards.  The
+Kokil, the bird of Spring, had sung its song year after year.  But it
+had never stirred the blood as it stirred it now.  In days gone by the
+sea had sung its tireless melody.  But, then, it had  proclaimed  only
+the  inflexible  monotony of the Rule.  And suddenly its waves were
+telling, through all their flashing light and luminous shade and myriad
+voices, the deepest yearnings of the heart of love!
+
+VI
+
+Where are vanished now their prim, round, regular, complacent features?
+Here is a face full of love-sick longing.  Here is a heart heating wild
+with regrets.  Here is a mind racked sore with doubts.  Music and
+sighing, and smiles and tears, are filling the air.  Life is throbbing;
+hearts are breaking; passions are kindling.
+
+Every one is now thinking of his own appearance, and comparing himself
+with others.  The Ace of Clubs is musing to himself, that the King of
+Spades may be just passably good-looking. "But," says he, "when I walk
+down the street you have only to see how people's eyes turn towards me."
+The King of Spades is saying; "Why on earth is that Ace of Clubs always
+straining his neck and strutting about like a peacock?  He imagines all
+the Queens are dying of love for him, while the real fact is --"Here he
+pauses, and examines his face in the glass.
+
+But the Queens were the worst of all.  They began to spend all their
+time in dressing themselves up to the Nines.  And the Nines would become
+their hopeless and abject slaves.  But their cutting remarks about one
+another were more shocking still.
+
+So the young men would sit listless on the leaves under the trees,
+lolling with outstretched limbs in the forest shade.  And the young
+maidens, dressed in pale-blue robes, would come walking accidentally to
+the same shade of the same forest by the same trees, and turn their eyes
+as though they saw no one there, and look as though they came out to see
+nothing at all.  And then one young man more forward than the rest in a
+fit of madness would dare to go near to a maiden in blue.  But, as he
+drew near, speech would forsake him.  He would stand there tongue-tied
+and foolish, and the favourable moment would pass.
+
+The Kokil birds were singing in the boughs overhead.  The mischievous
+South wind was blowing; it disarrayed the hair, it whispered in the ear,
+and stirred the music in the blood.  The leaves of the trees were
+murmuring with rustling delight.  And the ceaseless sound of the ocean
+made all the mute longings of the heart of man and maid surge backwards
+and forwards on the full springtide of love.
+
+The Three Companions had brought into the dried-up channels of the
+Kingdom of Cards the full flood-tide of a new life.
+
+VII
+
+And, though the tide was full, there -was a pause as though the
+rising waters would not break into foam but remain suspended for
+ever.  There were no outspoken words, only a cautious going forward one
+step and receding two.  All seemed busy heaping up their unfulfilled
+desires like castles in the air, or fortresses of sand.  They were pale
+and speechless,  their eyes were burning, their lips trembling with
+unspoken secrets.
+
+The Prince saw what was wrong.  He summoned every one on the Island and
+said: "Bring hither the flutes and the cymbals, the pipes and drums.
+Let all be played together, and raise loud shouts of rejoicing.  For the
+Queen of Hearts this very night is going to choose her Mate !"
+
+So the Tens and Nines began to blow on their flutes and pipes; the
+Eights and Sevens played on their sackbuts and viols; and even the Twos
+and Threes began to beat madly on their drums.
+
+When this tumultous gust of music came, it swept away at one blast all
+those sighings and mopings.  And then what a torrent of laughter and
+words poured forth!  There were daring proposals and locking refusals,
+and gossip and chatter, and jests and merriment.  It was like the
+swaying and shaking, and rustling and soughing, in a summer gale, of a
+million leaves and branches in the depth of the primeval forest.
+
+But the Queen of Hearts, in a rose-red robe, sat silent in the shadow of
+her secret bower, and listened to the great uproarious sound of music
+and mirth, that came floating towards her.  She shut her eyes, and
+dreamt her dream of lore.  And when she opened them she found the Prince
+seated on the ground before her gazing up at her face.  And she covered
+her eyes with both hands, and shrank back quivering with an inward
+tumult of joy.
+
+And the Prince passed the whole day alone, walking by the side of the
+surging sea.  He carried in his mind that startled look, that shrinking
+gesture of the Queen, and his heart beat high with hope.
+
+That night the serried, gaily-dressed ranks of young men and maidens
+waited with smiling faces at the Palace Gates.  The Palace Hall was
+lighted with fairy lamps and festooned with the flowers of spring.
+Slowly the Queen of Hearts entered, and the whole assembly rose to greet
+her.  With a jasmine garland in her hand, she stood before the Prince
+with downcast eyes.  In her lowly bashfulness she could hardly raise the
+garland to the neck of the Mate she had chosen.  But the Prince bowed
+his head, and the garland slipped to its place.  The assembly of youths
+and maidens had waited her choice with eager, expectant hush.  And when
+the choice was made, the whole vast concourse rocked and swayed with a
+tumult of wild delight.  And the sound of their shouts was heard in
+every part of the island, and by ships far out at sea.  Never had such a
+shout been raised in the Kingdom of Cards before.
+
+And they carried the Prince and his Bride, and seated them on the
+throne, and crowned them then and there in the Ancient Island of Cards.
+
+And the sorrowing Mother Queen, on the 'far-off island shore on the
+other side of the sea, came sailing to her son's new kingdom in a ship
+adorned with gold.
+
+And the citizens are no longer regulated according to the Rules, but are
+good or bad, or both, according to their Ichcha.
+
+
+
+THE DEVOTEE
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+VISION
+
+I
+
+When I was a very young wife, I gave birth to a dead child, and came
+near to death myself.  I recovered strength very slowly, and my eyesight
+became weaker and weaker.
+
+My husband at this time was studying medicine.  He was not altogether
+sorry to have a chance of testing his medical knowledge on me.  So he
+began to treat my eyes himself.
+
+My elder brother was reading for his law examination.  One day he came
+to see me, and was alarmed at my condition.
+
+"What are you doing?" he said to my husband. "You are ruining Kumo's
+eyes.  You ought to consult a good doctor at once."
+
+My husband said irritably: "Why! what can a good doctor do more than I
+am doing?  The case is quite a simple one, and the remedies are all well
+known."
+
+Dada answered with scorn: "I suppose you think there is no difference
+between you and a Professor in your own Medical College."
+
+My husband replied angrily: "If you ever get married, and there is a
+dispute about your wife's property, you won't take my advice about Law.
+Why, then, do you now come advising me about Medicine?"
+
+While they were quarrelling, I was saying to myself that it was always
+the poor grass that suffered most when two kings went to war.  Here was
+a dispute going on between these two, and I had to bear the brunt of it.
+
+It also seemed to me very unfair that, when my family had given me in
+marriage, they should interfere afterwards.  After all, my pleasure and
+pain are my husband's concern, not theirs.
+
+>From that day forward, merely over this trifling matter of my eyes, the
+bond between my husband and Dada was strained.
+
+To my surprise one afternoon, while my husband was away, Dada brought a
+doctor in to see me.  He examined my eyes very carefully, and looked
+grave.  He said that further neglect would be dangerous.  He wrote out a
+prescription, and Dada for the medicine at once.  When the strange
+doctor had gone, I implored my Dada not to interfere.  I was sure that
+only evil would come from the stealthy visits of a doctor.
+
+I was surprised at myself for plucking up courage speak to my brother
+like that.  I had always hitherto been afraid of him.  I am sure also
+that Dada was surprised at my boldness.  He kept silence for a while,
+and then said to me: "Very well, Kumo.  I won't call in the doctor any
+more.  But when the medicine comes you must take it."
+
+Dada then went away.  The medicine came from chemist.  I took it--
+bottles, powders, prescriptions and all--and threw it down the well!
+
+My husband had been irritated by Dada's interference, and he began to
+treat my eyes with greater diligence than ever.  He tried all sorts of
+remedies.  I bandaged my eyes as he told me, I wore his coloured
+glasses, I put in his drops, I took all his powders.  I even drank the
+cod-liver oil he gave me, though my gorge rose against it.
+
+Each time he came back from the hospital, he would ask me anxiously how
+I felt; and I would answer: "Oh!  much better."  Indeed I became an
+expert in self-delusion.  When I found that the water in my eyes was
+still increasing, I would console myself with the thought that it was a
+good thing to get rid of so much bad fluid; and, when the flow of water
+in my eyes decreased, I was elated at my husband's skill.
+
+But after a while the agony became unbearable.  My eyesight faded away,
+and I had continual headaches day and night.  I saw how much alarmed my
+husband was getting.  I gathered from his manner that he was casting
+about for a pretext to call in a doctor.  So I hinted that it might be
+as well to call one in.
+
+That he was greatly relieved, I could see.  He called in an English
+doctor that very day.  I do not know what talk they had together, but I
+gathered that the Sahib had spoken very sharply to my husband.
+
+He remained silent for some time after the doctor had gone.  I took his
+hands in mine, and said: "What an ill-mannered brute that was!  Why
+didn't you call in an Indian doctor?  That would have been much better.
+Do you think that man knows better than you do about my eyes?"
+
+My husband was very silent for a moment, and then said with a broken
+voice: "Kumo, your eyes must be operated on."
+
+I pretended to be vexed with him for concealing the fact from me so
+long.
+
+"Here you have known this all the time," said I, "and yet you have said
+nothing about it!  Do you think I am such a baby as to be afraid of an
+operation?"
+
+At that be regained his good spirits: "There are very few men," said he,
+"who are heroic enough to look forward to an operation without
+shrinking."
+
+I laughed at him: "Yes, that is so.  Men are heroic only before their
+wives!"
+
+He looked at me gravely, and said: "You are perfectly right.  We men are
+dreadfully vain."
+
+I laughed away his seriousness: "Are you sure you can beat us women even
+in vanity? "
+
+When Dada came, I took him aside: "Dada, that treatment your doctor
+recommended would have done me a world of good; only unfortunately.  I
+mistook the mixture for the lotion.  And since the day I made the
+mistake, my eyes have grown steadily worse; and now an operation is
+needed."
+
+Dada said to me: "You were under your husband's treatment, and that is
+why I gave up coming to visit you."
+
+"No," I answered. "In reality, I was secretly treating myself in
+accordance with your doctor's directions."
+
+Oh!  what lies we women have to tell!  When we are mothers, we tell lies
+to pacify our children; and when we are wives, we tell lies to pacify
+the fathers of our children.  We are never free from this necessity.
+
+My deception had the effect of bringing about a better feeling between
+my husband and Dada.  Dada blamed himself for asking me to keep a secret
+from my husband: and my husband regretted that he had not taken my
+brother's advice at the first.
+
+At last, with the consent of both, an English doctor came, and operated
+on my left eye.  That eye, however, was too weak to bear the strain; and
+the last flickering glimmer of light went out.  Then the other eye
+gradually lost itself in darkness.
+
+One day my husband came to my bedside. "I cannot brazen it out before
+you any longer," said he, "Kumo, it is I who have ruined your eyes."
+
+I felt that his voice was choking with tears, and so I took up his right
+hand in both of mine and said: "Why!  you did exactly what was right.
+You have dealt only with that which was your very own.  Just imagine, if
+some strange doctor had come and taken away my eyesight.  What
+consolation should I have had then?  But now I can feel that all has
+happened for the best; and my great comfort is to know that it is at
+your hands I have lost my eyes.  When Ramchandra found one lotus too few
+with which to worship God, he offered both his eyes in place of the
+lotus.  And I hate dedicated my eyes to my God.  From now, whenever you
+see something that is a joy to you, then you must describe it to me; and
+I will feed upon your words as a sacred gift left over from your
+vision."
+
+I do not mean, of course, that I said all this there and then, for it is
+impossible to speak these things an the spur of the moment.  But I used
+to think over words like these for days and days together.  And when I
+was very depressed, or if at any time the light of my devotion became
+dim, and I pitied my evil fate, then I made my mind utter these
+sentences, one by one, as a child repeats a story that is told.  And so
+I could breathe once more the serener air of peace and love.
+
+At the very time of our talk together, I said enough to show my husband
+what was in my heart.
+
+"Kumo," he said to me, "the mischief I have done by my folly can never
+be made good.  But I can do one thing.  I can ever remain by your side,
+and try to make up for your want of vision as much as is in my power."
+
+"No," said I. "That will never do.  I shall not ask you to turn your
+house into an hospital for the blind.  There is only one thing to be
+done, you must marry again."
+
+As I tried to explain to him that this was necessary, my voice broke a
+little.  I coughed, and tried to hide my emotion, but he burst out
+saying:
+
+"Kumo, I know I am a fool, and a braggart, and all that, but I am not a
+villain!  If ever I marry again, I swear to you--I swear to you the most
+solemn oath by my family god, Gopinath--may that most hated of all sins,
+the sin of parricide, fall on my head!"
+
+Ah!  I should never, never have allowed him to swear that dreadful oath.
+But tears were choking my voice, and I could not say a word for
+insufferable joy.  I hid my blind face in my pillows, and sobbed, and
+sobbed again.  At last, when the first flood of my tears was over, I
+drew his head down to my breast.
+
+"Ah I " said I, "why did you take such a terrible oath?  Do you think I
+asked you to marry again for your own sordid pleasure?  No!  I was
+thinking of myself, for she could perform those services which were mine
+to give you when I had my sight."
+
+"Services! " said he, "services!  Those can be done by servants.  Do you
+think I am mad enough to bring a slave into my house, and bid her share
+the throne with this my Goddess?"
+
+As he said the word "Goddess," he held up my face in his hands, and
+placed a kiss between my brows.  At that moment the third eye of divine
+wisdom was opened, where he kissed me, and verily I had a consecration.
+
+I said in my own mind: "It is well.  I am no longer able to serve him in
+the lower world of household cares.  But I shall rise to a higher
+region.  I shall bring down blessings from above.  No more lies!  No
+more deceptions for me!  All the littlenesses and hypocrisies of my
+former life shall be banished for ever!"
+
+That day, the whole day through, I felt a conflict going on within me.
+The joy of the thought, that after this solemn oath it was impossible
+for my husband to marry again, fixed its roots deep in my heart, and I
+could not tear them out.  But the new Goddess, who had taken her new
+throne in me, said: "The time might come when it would be good for your
+husband to break his oath and marry again."  But the woman, who was
+within me, said: "That may be; but all the same an oath is an oath, and
+there is no way out."  The Goddess, who was within me, answered: "That
+is no reason why you should exult over it."  But the woman, who was
+within me, replied: "What you say is quite true, no doubt; all the same
+he has taken his oath."  And the same story went on again and again.  At
+last the Goddess frowned in silence, and the darkness of a horrible fear
+came down upon me.
+
+My repentant husband would not let the servants do my work; he must do
+it all himself.  At first it gave me unbounded delight to be dependent
+on him thus for every little thing.  It was a means of keeping him by my
+side, and my desire to have him with me had become intense since my
+blindness.  That share of his presence, which my eyes had lost, my other
+senses craved.  When he was absent from my side, I would feel as if I
+were hanging in mid-air, and had lost my hold of all things tangible.
+
+Formerly, when my husband came back late from the hospital, I used to
+open my window and gaze at the road.  That road was the link which
+connected his world with mine.  Now when I had lost that link through my
+blindness, all my body would go out to seek him.  The bridge that united
+us had given way, and there was now this unsurpassable chasm.  When he
+left my side the gulf seemed to yawn wide open.  I could only wait for
+the time when he should cross back again from his own shore to mine.
+
+But such intense longing and such utter dependence can never be good.  A
+wife is a burden enough to a man, in all conscience, and to add to it
+the burden of this blindness was to make his life unbearable.  I vowed
+that I would suffer alone, and never wrap my husband round in the folds
+of my all-pervading darkness.
+
+Within an incredibly short space of time I managed to train myself to do
+all my household duties by the help of touch and sound and smell.  In
+fact I soon found that I could get on with greater skill than before.
+For sight often distracts rather than helps us.  And so it came to pass
+that, when these roving eyes of mine could do their work no longer, all
+the other senses took up their several duties with quietude and
+completeness.
+
+When I had gained experience by constant practice, I would not let my
+husband do any more household duties for me.  He complained bitterly at
+first that I was depriving him of his penance.
+
+This did not convince me.  Whatever he might say, I could feel that he
+had a real sense of relief when these household duties were over.  To
+serve daily a wife who is blind can never make up the life of a man.
+
+II
+
+My husband at last had finished his medical course.  He went away from
+Calcutta to a small town to practise as a doctor.  There in the country
+I felt with joy, through all my blindness, that I was restored to the
+arms of my mother.  I had left my village birthplace for Calcutta when I
+was eight years old.  Since then ten years had passed away, and in the
+great city the memory of my village home had grown dim.  As long as I
+had eyesight, Calcutta with its busy life screened from view the memory
+of my early days.  But when I lost my eyesight I knew for the first time
+that Calcutta allured only the eyes: it could not fill the mind.  And
+now, in my blindness, the scenes of my childhood shone out once more,
+like stars that appear one by one in the evening sky at the end of the
+day.
+
+It was the beginning of November when we left Calcutta for Harsingpur.
+The place was new to me, but the scents and sounds of the countryside
+pressed round and embraced me.  The morning breeze coming fresh from the
+newly ploughed land, the sweet and tender smell of the flowering
+mustard, the shepherd-boy's flute sounding in the distance, even the
+creaking noise of the bullock-cart, as it groaned over the broken
+village road, filled my world with delight.  The memory of my past life,
+with all its ineffable fragrance and sound, became a living present to
+me, and my blind eyes could not tell me I was wrong.  I went back, and
+lived over again my childhood.  Only one thing was absent: my mother was
+not with me.
+
+I could see my home with the large peepul trees growing along the edge
+of the village pool.  I could picture in my mind's eye my old
+grandmother seated on the ground with her thin wisps of hair untied,
+warming her back in the sun as she made the little round lentil balls to
+be dried and used for cooking.  But somehow I could not recall the songs
+she used to croon to herself in her weak and quavering voice.  In the
+evening, whenever I heard the lowing of cattle, I could almost watch the
+figure of my mother going round the sheds with lighted lamp in her hand.
+The smell of the wet fodder and the pungent smoke of the straw fire
+would enter into my very heart.  And in the distance I seemed to hear
+the clanging of the temple bell wafted up by the breeze from the river
+bank.
+
+Calcutta, with all its turmoil and gossip, curdles the heart.  There,
+all the beautiful duties of life lose their freshness and innocence.  I
+remember one day, when a friend of mine came in, and said to me: "Kumo,
+why don't you feel angry?  If I had been treated like you by my husband,
+I would never look upon his face again."
+
+She tried to make me indignant, because he had been so long calling in a
+doctor.
+
+"My blindness," said I, "was itself a sufficient evil.  Why should I
+make it worse by allowing hatred to grow up against my husband?"
+
+My friend shook her head in great contempt, when she heard such old-
+fashioned talk from the lips of a mere chit of a girl.  She went away in
+disdain.  But whatever might be my answer at the time, such words as
+these left their poison; and the venom was never wholly got out of the
+soul, when once they had been uttered.
+
+So you see Calcutta, with its never-ending gossip, does harden the
+heart.  But when I came back to the country all my earlier hopes and
+faiths, all that I held true in life during childhood, became fresh and
+bright once more.  God came to me, and filled my heart and my world.  I
+bowed to Him, and said:
+
+"It is well that Thou has taken away my eyes.  Thou art with me."
+
+Ah!  But I said more than was right.  It was a presumption to say: "Thou
+art with me."  All we can say is this: "I must be true to Thee."  Even
+when nothing is left for us, still we have to go on living.
+
+III
+
+We passed a few happy months together.  My husband gained some
+reputation in his profession as a doctor.  And money came with it.
+
+But there is a mischief in money.  I cannot point to any one event; but,
+because the blind have keener perceptions than other people, I could
+discern the change which came over my husband along with the increase of
+wealth.
+
+He had a keen sense of justice when he was younger, and had often told
+me of his great desire to help the poor when once he obtained a practice
+of his own.  He had a noble contempt far those in his profession who
+would not feel the pulse of a poor patient before collecting his fee.
+But now I noticed a difference.  He had become strangely hard.  Once
+when a poor woman came, and begged him, out of charity, to save the life
+of her only child, he bluntly refused.  And when I implored him myself
+to help her, he did his work perfunctorily.
+
+While we were less rich my husband disliked sharp practice in money
+matters.  He was scrupulously honourable in such things.  But since he
+had got a large account at the bank he was often closeted for hours with
+some scamp of a landlord's agent, for purposes which clearly boded no
+good.
+
+Where has he drifted?  What has become of this husband of mine, --the
+husband I knew before I was blind; the husband who kissed me that day
+between my brows, and enshrined me on the throne of a Goddess?  Those
+whom a sudden gust of passion brings down to the dust can rise up
+again with a new strong impulse of goodness.  But those who, day by day,
+become dried up in the very fibre of their moral being; those who by
+some outer parasitic growth choke the inner life by slow degrees,--such
+wench one day a deadness which knows no healing.
+
+The separation caused by blindness is the merest physical trifle.  But,
+ah!  it suffocates me to find that he is no longer with me, where he
+stood with me in that hour when we both knew that I was blind.  That is
+a separation indeed!
+
+I, with my love fresh and my faith unbroken, have kept to the shelter of
+my heart's inner shrine.  But my husband has left the cool shade of
+those things that are ageless and unfading.  He is fast disappearing
+into the barren, waterless waste in his mad thirst for gold.
+
+Sometimes the suspicion comes to me that things not so bad as they seem:
+that perhaps I exaggerate because I am blind.  It may be that, if my
+eyesight were unimpaired, I should have accepted world as I found it.
+This, at any rate, was the light in which my husband looked at all my
+moods and fancies.
+
+One day an old Musalman came to the house.  He asked my husband to visit
+his little grand-daughter.  I could hear the old man say: "Baba, I am a
+poor man; but come with me, and Allah will do you good."  My husband
+answered coldly: "What Allah will do won't help matters; I want to know
+what you can do for me."
+
+When I heard it, I wondered in my mind why God had not made me deaf as
+well as blind.  The old man heaved a deep sigh, and departed.  I sent
+my maid to fetch him to my room.  I met him at the door of the inner
+apartment, and put some money into his hand.
+
+"Please take this from me," said I, "for your little grand-daughter, and
+get a trustworthy doctor to look after her.  And-pray for my husband."
+
+But the whole of that day I could take no food at all.  In the
+afternoon, when my husband got up from sleep, he asked me: "Why do you
+look so pale?"
+
+I was about to say, as I used to do in the past: "Oh! It's nothing ";
+but those days of deception were over, and I spoke to him plainly.
+
+"I have been hesitating," I said, "for days together to tell you
+something.  It has been hard to think out what exactly it was I wanted
+to say.  Even now I may not be able to explain what I had in my mind.
+But I am sure you know what has happened.  Our lives have drifted
+apart."
+
+My husband laughed in a forced manner, and said: "Change is the law of
+nature."
+
+I said to him: "I know that.  But there are some things that are
+eternal."
+
+Then he became serious.
+
+"There are many women," said he, "who have a real cause for sorrow.
+There are some whose husbands do not earn money.  There are others whose
+husbands do not love them.  But you are making yourself wretched about
+nothing at all."
+
+Then it became clear to me that my very blindness had conferred on me
+the power of seeing a world which is beyond all change.  Yes!  It is
+true.
+I am not like other women.  And my husband will never understand me.
+
+IV
+
+Our two lives went on with their dull routine for some time.  Then there
+was a break in the monotony.  An aunt of my husband came to pay us a
+visit.
+
+The first thing she blurted out after our first greeting was this:
+"Well, Krum, it's a great pity you have become blind; but why do you
+impose your own affliction on your husband?  You must get him to another
+wife."
+
+There was an awkward pause.  If my husband had only said something in
+jest, or laughed in her face, all would have been over.  But he
+stammered and hesitated, and said at last in a nervous, stupid way: "Do
+you really think so?  Really, Aunt, you shouldn't talk like that"
+
+His aunt appealed to me. "Was I wrong, Kumo?"
+
+I laughed a hollow laugh.
+
+"Had not you better," said I, "consult some one more competent to
+decide?  The pickpocket never asks permission from the man whose pocket
+he is going to pick."
+
+"You are quite right," she replied blandly. "Abinash, my dear, let us
+have our little conference in private.  What do you say to that?"
+
+After a few days my husband asked her, in my presence, if she knew of
+any girl of a decent family who could come and help me in my household
+work.  He knew quite well that I needed no help.  I kept silence.
+
+"Oh!  there are heaps of them," replied his aunt. "My cousin has a
+daughter who is just of the marriageable age, and as nice a girl as you
+could wish.  Her people would be only too glad to secure you as a
+husband."
+
+Again there came from him that forced, hesitating laugh, and he said:
+"But I never mentioned marriage."
+
+"How could you expect," asked his aunt, "a girl of decent family to come
+and live in your house without marriage? "
+
+He had to admit that this was reasonable, and remained nervously silent.
+
+I stood alone within the closed doors of my blindness after he had gone,
+and called upon my God and prayed: "O God, save my husband."
+
+When I was coming out of the household shrine from my morning worship a
+few days later, his aunt took hold of both my hands warmly.
+
+"Kumo, here is the girl," said she, "we were speaking about the other
+day.  Her name is Hemangini.  She will be delighted to meet you.  Hemo,
+come here and be introduced to your sister."
+
+My husband entered the room at the same moment.  He feigned surprise
+when he saw the strange girl, and was about to retire.  But his aunt
+said: "Abinash, my dear, what are you running away for?  There is no
+need to do that.  Here is my cousin's daughter, Hemangini, come to see
+you.  Hemo, make your bow to him."
+
+As if taken quite by surprise, he began to ply his aunt with questions
+about the when and why and how of the new arrival.
+
+I saw the hollowness of the whole thing, and took Hemangini by the hand
+and led her to my own room.  I gently stroked her face and arms and
+hair, and found that she was about fifteen years old, and very
+beautiful.
+
+As I felt her face, she suddenly burst out laughing and said: "Why!
+what are you doing?  Are you hypnotising me?"
+
+That sweet ringing laughter of hers swept away in a moment all the dark
+clouds that stood between us.  I threw my right arm about her neck.
+
+"Dear one," said I, "I am trying to see you."  And again I stroked her
+soft face with my left hand.
+
+"Trying to see me? "  she said, with a new burst of laughter. "Am I like
+a vegetable marrow, grown in your garden, that you want to feel me all
+round to see how soft I am?"
+
+I suddenly bethought me that she did not know I had lost my sight.
+
+"Sister, I am blind," said I.
+
+She was silent.  I could feel her big young eyes, full of curiosity,
+peering into my face.  I knew they were full of pity.  Then she grew
+thoughtful and puzzled, and said, after a short pause:
+
+"Oh! I see now.  That was the reason your husband invited his aunt to
+come and stay here."
+
+"No!"  I replied, "you are quite mistaken.  He did not ask her to come.
+She came of her own accord."
+
+Hemangini went off into a peal of laughter. "That's just like my aunt,"
+said she. "Oh I wasn't it nice of her to come without any invitation?
+But now she's come, you won't get her to move for some time, I can
+assure you!"
+
+Then she paused, and looked puzzled.
+
+"But why did father send me?" she asked. "Can you tell me that? "
+
+The aunt had come into the room while we were talking.  Hemangini said
+to her: "When are you thinking of going back, Aunt? "
+
+The aunt looked very much upset.
+
+"What a question to ask!" said she, "I've never seen such a restless
+body as you.  We've only just come, and you ask when we're going back!"
+
+"It is all very well for you," Hemangini said, "for this house belongs
+to your near relations.  But what about me?  I tell you plainly I can't
+stop here."  And then she held my hand and said: "What do you think,
+dear?"
+
+I drew her to my heart, but said nothing.  The aunt was in a great
+difficulty.  She felt the situation was getting beyond her control; so
+she proposed that she and her niece should go out together to bathe.
+
+"No!  we two will go together," said Hemangini, clinging to me.  The
+aunt gave in, fearing opposition if she tried to drag her away.
+
+Going down to the river Hemangini asked me: "Why don't you have
+children? "
+
+I was startled by her question, and answered: "How can I tell?  My God
+has not given me any.  That is the reason."
+
+"No!  That's not the reason," said Hemangini quickly. "You must have
+committed some sin.  Look at my aunt.  She is childless.  It must be
+because her heart has some wickedness.  But what wickedness is in your
+heart?"
+
+The words hurt me.  I have no solution to offer for the problem of evil.
+I sighed deeply, and said in the silence of my soul: "My God!  Thou
+knowest the reason."
+
+"Gracious goodness," cried Hemangini, "what are you sighing for?  No one
+ever takes me seriously."
+
+And her laughter pealed across the river.
+
+V
+
+I found out after this that there were constant interruptions in my
+husband's professional duties.  He refused all calls from a distance,
+and would hurry away from his patients, even when they were close at
+hand.
+
+Formerly it was only during the mid-day meals and at night-time that he
+could come into the inner apartment.  But now, with unnecessary anxiety
+for his aunt's comfort, he began to visit her at all hours of the day.
+I knew at once that he had come to her room, when I heard her shouting
+for Hemangini to bring in a glass of water.  At first the girl would do
+what she was told; but later on she refused altogether.
+
+Then the aunt would call, in an endearing voice: "Hemo!  Hemo!
+Hemangini."  But the girl would cling to me with an impulse of pity.  A
+sense of dread and sadness would keep her silent.  Sometimes she would
+shrink towards me like a hunted thing, who scarcely knew what was
+coming.
+
+About this time my brother came down from Calcutta to visit me.  I knew
+how keen his powers of observation were, and what a hard judge he was.
+I feared my husband would be put on his defence, and have to stand his
+trial before him.  So I endeavoured to hide the true situation
+behind a mask of noisy cheerfulness.  But I am afraid I overdid the
+part: it was unnatural for me.
+
+My husband began to fidget openly, and asked bow long my brother was
+going to stay.  At last his impatience became little short of insulting,
+and my brother had no help for it but to leave.  Before going he placed
+his hand on my head, and kept it there for some time.  I noticed that
+his hand shook, and a tear fell from his eyes, as he silently gave me
+his blessing.
+
+I well remember that it was an evening in April, and a market-day.
+People who had come into the town were going back home from market.
+There was the feeling of an impending storm in the air; the smell of the
+wet earth and the moisture in the wind were all-pervading.  I never
+keep a lighted lamp in my bedroom, when I am alone, lest my clothes
+should catch fire, or some accident happen.  I sat on the floor in my
+dark room, and called upon the God of my blind world.
+
+"O my Lord," I cried, "Thy face is hidden.  I cannot see.  I am blind.
+I hold tight this broken rudder of a heart till my hands bleed.  The
+waves have become too strong for me.  How long wilt thou try me, my God,
+how long?"
+
+I kept my head prone upon the bedstead and began to sob.  As I did so, I
+felt the bedstead move a little.  The next moment Hemangini was by my
+side.  She clung to my neck, and wiped my tears away silently.  I do not
+know why she had been waiting that evening in the inner room, or why
+she had been lying alone there in the dusk.  She asked me no question.
+She said no word.  She simply placed her cool hand on my forehead, and
+kissed me, and departed.
+
+The next morning Hemangini said to her aunt in my presence : "If you
+want to stay on, you can.  But I don't.  I'm going away home with our
+family servant."
+
+The aunt said there was no need for her to go alone, for she was going
+away also.  Then smilingly and mincingly she brought out, from a plush
+case, a ring set with pearls.
+
+"Look, Hemo," said she, "what a beautiful ring my Abinash brought for
+you."
+
+Hemangini snatched the ring from her hand.
+
+"Look, Aunt," she answered quickly, "just see how splendidly I aim."
+And she flung the ring into the tank outside the window.
+
+The aunt, overwhelmed with alarm, vexation, and surprise, bristled like
+a hedgehog.  She turned to me, and held me by the hand.
+
+"Kumo," she repeated again and again, "don't say a word about this
+childish freak to Abinash.  He would be fearfully vexed."
+
+I assured her that she need not fear.  Not a word would reach him about
+it from my lips.
+
+The next day before starting for home Hemangini embraced me, and said:
+"Dearest, keep me in mind; do not forget me."
+
+I stroked her face over and over with my fingers, and said: "Sister, the
+blind have long memories."
+
+I drew her head towards me, and kissed her hair and her forehead.  My
+world suddenly became grey.  All the beauty and laughter and tender
+youth, which had nestled so close to me, vanished when Hemangini
+departed.  I went groping about with arms outstretched, seeking to find
+out what was left in my deserted world.
+
+My husband came in later.  He affected a great relief now that they were
+gone, but it was exaggerated and empty.  He pretended that his aunt's
+visit had kept him away from work.
+
+Hitherto there had been only the one barrier of blindness between me and
+my husband.  Now another barrier was added, --this deliberate silence
+about Hemangini.  He feigned utter indifference, but I knew he was
+having letters about her.
+
+It was early in May.  My maid entered my room one morning, and asked me:
+"What is all this preparation going on at the landing on the river?
+Where is Master going?"
+
+I knew there was something impending, but I said to the maid: "I can't
+say."
+
+The maid did not dare to ask me any more questions.  She sighed, and
+went away.
+
+Late that night my husband came to me.
+
+"I have to visit a patient in the country," said he. "I shall have to
+start very early to-morrow morning, and I may have to be away for two or
+three days."
+
+I got up from my bed.  I stood before him, and cried aloud: "Why are you
+telling me lies?"
+
+My husband stammered out: "What--what lies have I told you?"
+
+I said: "You are going to get married."
+
+He remained silent.  For some moments there was no sound in the room.
+Then I broke the silence:
+
+"Answer me," I cried. "Say, yes."
+
+He answered, "Yes," like a feeble echo.
+
+I shouted out with a loud voice: "No!  I shall never allow you.  I shall
+save you from this great disaster, this dreadful sin.  If I fail in
+this, then why am I your wife, and why did I ever worship my God?"
+
+The room remained still as a stone.  I dropped on the floor, and clung
+to my husband's knees.
+
+"What have I done?"  I asked. "Where have I been lacking?  Tell me
+truly.  Why do you want another wife?"
+
+My husband said slowly: "I will tell you the truth.  I am afraid of you.
+Your blindness has enclosed you in its fortress, and I have now no
+entrance.  To me you are no longer a woman.  You are awful as my God.  I
+cannot live my every day life with you.  I want a woman--just an
+ordinary woman--whom I can be free to chide and coax and pet and scold."
+
+Oh, tear open my heart and see!  What am I else but that, --just an
+ordinary woman?  I am the same girl that I was when I was newly wed, a
+girl with all her need to believe, to confide, to worship.
+
+I do not recollect exactly the words that I uttered.  I only remember
+that I said: "If I be a true wife, then, may God be my witness, you
+shall never do this wicked deed, you shall never break your oath.
+Before you commit such sacrilege, either I shall become a widow, or
+Hemangini shall die."
+
+Then I fell down on the floor in a swoon.  When I came to myself, it was
+still dark.  The birds were silent.  My husband had gone.
+
+All that day I sat at my worship in the sanctuary at the household
+shrine.  In the evening a fierce storm, with thunder and lightning and
+rain, swept down upon the house and shook it.  As I crouched before the
+shrine, I did not ask my God to save my husband from the storm, though
+he must have been at that time in peril on the river.  I prayed that
+whatever might happen to me, my husband might be saved from this great
+sin.
+
+Night passed.  The whole of the next day I kept my seat at worship.
+When it was evening there was the noise of shaking and beating at the
+door.  When the door was broken open, they found me lying unconscious on
+the ground, and carried me to my room.
+
+When I came to myself at last, I heard some one whispering in my ear:
+"Sister."
+
+I found that I was lying in my room with my head on Hemangini's lap.
+When my head moved, I heard her dress rustle.  It was the sound of
+bridal silk.
+
+O my God, my God!  My prayer has gone unheeded!  My husband has fallen!
+
+Hemangini bent her head low, and said in a sweet whisper: "Sister,
+dearest, I have come to ask your blessing on our marriage."
+
+At first my whole body stiffened like the trunk of a tree that has been
+struck by lightning.  Then I sat up, and said, painfully, forcing myself
+to speak the words: "Why should I not bless you?  You have done no
+wrong."
+
+Hemangini laughed her merry laugh.
+
+"Wrong!" said she. "When you married it was right; and when I marry, you
+call it wrong! "
+
+I tried to smile in answer to her laughter.  I said in my mind: "My
+prayer is not the final thing in this world.  His will is all.  Let the
+blows descend upon my head; but may they leave my faith and hope in God
+untouched."
+
+Hemangini bowed to me, and touched my feet. "May you be happy," said I,
+blessing her, "and enjoy unbroken prosperity."
+
+Hemangini was still unsatisfied.
+
+"Dearest sister," she said, "a blessing for me is not enough.  You must
+make our happiness complete.  You must, with those saintly hands of
+yours, accept into your home my husband also.  Let me bring him to you."
+
+I said: "Yes, bring him to me."
+
+A few moments later I heard a familiar footstep, and the question,
+"Kumo, how are you ? "
+
+I started up, and bowed to the ground, and cried: "Dada! "
+
+Hemangini burst out laughing.
+
+"You still call him elder brother?" she asked. "What nonsense!  Call him
+younger brother now, and pull his ears and cease him, for he has married
+me, your younger sister."
+
+Then I understood.  My husband had been saved from that great sin.  He
+had not fallen.
+
+I knew my Dada had determined never to marry.  And, since my mother had
+died, there was no sacred wish of hers to implore him to wedlock.  But
+I, his sister, by my sore need bad brought it to pass.  He had married
+for my sake.
+
+Tears of joy gushed from my eyes, and poured down my cheeks.  I tried,
+but I could not stop them.  Dada slowly passed his fingers through my
+hair.  Hemangini clung to me, and went on laughing.
+
+I was lying awake in my bed for the best part of the night, waiting with
+straining anxiety for my husband's return.  I could not imagine how he
+would bear the shock of shame and disappointment.
+
+When it was long past the hour of midnight, slowly my door opened.  I
+sat up on my bed, and listened.  They were the footsteps of my husband.
+My heart began to beat wildly.  He came up to my bed, held my band in
+his.
+
+"Your Dada," said he, "has saved me from destruction.  I was being
+dragged down and down by a moments madness.  An infatuation had seized
+me, from which I seemed unable to escape.  God alone knows what a load I
+was carrying on that day when I entered the boat.  The storm came down
+on river, and covered the sky.  In the midst of all fears I had a secret
+wish in my heart to be drowned, and so disentangle my life from the knot
+which I had tied it.  I reached Mathurganj. There I heard the news which
+set me free.  Your brother had married Hemangini.  I cannot tell you
+with what joy and shame I heard it.  I hastened on board the boat again.
+In that moment of self-revelation I knew that I could have no happiness
+except with you.  You are a Goddess."
+
+I laughed and cried at the same time, and said: "No, no, no!  I am not
+going to be a Goddess any longer I am simply your own little wife.  I am
+an ordinary woman."
+
+"Dearest," he replied, "I have also something I want to say to you.
+Never again put me to shame by calling me your God."
+
+On the next day the little town became joyous with sound of conch
+shells.  But nobody made any reference to that night of madness, when
+all was so nearly lost.
+
+
+
+
+THE BABUS OF NAYANJORE
+
+I
+
+Once upon a time the Babus of Nayanjore were famous landholders. They
+were noted for their princely extravagance. They would tear off the
+rough border of their Dacca muslin, because it rubbed against their
+skin. They could spend many thousands of rupees over the wedding of a
+kitten. On a certain grand occasion it is alleged that in order to
+turn night into day they lighted numberless lamps and showered silver
+threads from the sky to imitate sunlight. Those were the days before the
+flood. The flood came. The line of succession among these old-world
+Babus, with their lordly habits, could not continue for long. Like a
+lamp with too many wicks burning, the oil flared away quickly, and the
+light went out.
+
+Kailas Babu, our neighbour, is the last relic of this extinct
+magnificence. Before he grew up, his family had very nearly reached its
+lowest ebb. When his father died, there was one dazzling outburst of
+funeral extravagance, and then insolvency. The property was sold to
+liquidate the debt. What little ready money was left over was altogether
+insufficient to keep up the past ancestral splendours.
+
+Kailas Babu left Nayanjore, and came to Calcutta. His son did not remain
+long in this world of faded glory. He died, leaving behind him an only
+daughter.
+
+In Calcutta we are Kailas Baba's neighbours. Curiously enough our own
+family history is just the opposite to his. My father got his money by
+his own exertions, and prided himself on never spending a penny more
+than was needed. His clothes were those of a working man, and his hands
+also. He never had any inclination to earn the title of Baba by
+extravagant display, and I myself his only son, owe him gratitude for
+that. He gave me the very best education, and I was able to make my way
+in the world. I am not ashamed of the fact that I am a self-made man.
+Crisp bank-notes in my safe are dearer to me than a long pedigree in an
+empty family chest.
+
+I believe this was why I disliked seeing Kailas Baba drawing his heavy
+cheques on the public credit from the bankrupt bank of his ancient Babu
+reputation I used to fancy that he looked down on me, because my father
+had earned money with his own hands.
+
+I ought to have noticed that no one showed any vexation towards Kailas
+Babu except myself. Indeed it would have been difficult to find an old
+man who did less harm than he. He was always ready with his kindly
+little acts of courtesy in times of sorrow and joy. He would join in all
+the ceremonies and religious observances of his neighbours. His familiar
+smile would greet young and old alike. His politeness in asking details
+about domestic affairs was untiring. The friends who met him in the
+street were perforce ready to be button-holed, while a long string of
+questions of this kind followed one another from his lips:
+
+"My dear friend, I am delighted to see you. Are quite well? How is
+Shashi? and Dada—is he all right? Do you know, I've only just heard that
+Madhu's son has got fever. How is he? Have you heard? And Hari Charan
+Babu—I've not seen him for a long time--I hope he is not ill. What's the
+matter with Rakkhal? And, er--er, how are the ladies of your family?"
+
+Kailas Balm was spotlessly neat in his dress on all occasions, though
+his supply of clothes was sorely limited. Every day he used to air his
+shirts and vests and coats and trousers carefully, and put them out in
+the sun, along with his bed-quilt, his pillowcase, and the small carpet
+on which he always sat. After airing them he would shake them, and brush
+them, and put them on the rock. His little bits of furniture made his
+small room decent, and hinted that there was more in reserve if needed.
+Very often, for want of a servant, he would shut up his house for a
+while. Then he would iron out his shirts and linen with his own hands,
+and do other little menial tasks. After this he would open his door and
+receive his friends again.
+
+Though Kailas Balm, as I have said, had lost all his landed property, he
+had still same family heirlooms left. There was a silver cruet for
+sprinkling scented water, a filigree box for otto-of-roses, a small gold
+salver, a costly ancient shawl, and the old-fashioned ceremonial dress
+and ancestral turban. These he had rescued with the greatest difficulty
+from the money-lenders' clutches. On every suitable occasion he would
+bring them out in state, and thus try to save the world-famed
+dignity of the Babus of Nayanjore. At heart the most modest of men, in
+his daily speech he regarded it as a sacred duty, owed to his rank, to
+give free play to his family pride. His friends would encourage this
+trait in his character with kindly good-humour, and it gave them great
+amusement.
+
+The neighbourhood soon learnt to call him their Thakur Dada
+(Grandfather). They would flock to his house, and sit with him for hours
+together. To prevent his incurring any expense, one or other of his
+friends would bring him tobacco, and say: " Thakur Dada, this morning
+some tobacco was sent to me from Gaya. Do take it, and see how you like
+it"
+
+Thakur Dada would take it, and say it was excellent. He would then go on
+to tell of a certain exquisite tobacco which they once smoked in the old
+days at Nayanjore at the cost of a guinea an ounce.
+
+"I wonder," he used to say, "I wonder if any one would like to try it
+now. I have some left, and can get it at once"
+
+Every one knew, that, if they asked for it, then somehow or other the
+key of the cupboard would he missing; or else Ganesh, his old family
+servant, had put it away somewhere.
+
+"You never can be sure," he would add, " where things go to when
+servants are about. Now, this Ganesh of mine,- I can't tell you what a
+fool he is, but I haven't the heart to dismiss him."
+
+Ganesh, for the credit of the family, was quite ready to bear all the
+blame without a word.
+
+One of the company usually said at this point: "Never mind, Thakur Dada.
+Please don't trouble to look for it. This tobacco we're smoking will do
+quite well. The other would be too strong."
+
+Then Thakur Dada would be relieved, and settle down again, and the talk
+would go on.
+
+When his guests got up to go away, Thakur Dada would accompany them to
+the door, and say to them on the door-step: "Oh, by the way, when are
+you all coming to dine with me?"
+
+One or other of us would answer: "Not just yet, Thakur Dada, not just
+yet. We'll fix a day later."
+
+"Quite right," he would answer. "Quite right. We had much better wait
+till the rains come. It's too hot now. And a grand rich dinner such as I
+should want to give you would upset us in weather like this."
+
+But when the rains did come, every one careful not to remind him of his
+promise. If the subject was brought up, some friend would suggest gently
+that it was very inconvenient to get about when the rains were so
+severe, that it would be much better to wait till they were over. And so
+the game went on.
+
+His poor lodging was much too small for his position, and we used to
+condole with him about it. His friends would assure him they quite
+understood his difficulties: it was next to impossible to get a decent
+house in Calcutta. Indeed, they had all been looking out for years for a
+house to suit him, but, I need hardly add, no friend had been foolish
+enough to find one. Thakur Dada used to say, after a long sigh of
+resignation: " Well, well, I suppose I shall have to put up with this
+house after all." Then he would add with a genial smile: "But, you know,
+I could never bear to he away from my friends. I must be near you. That
+really compensates for everything."
+
+Somehow I felt all this very deeply indeed. I suppose the real reason
+was, that when a man is young stupidity appears to him the worst of
+crimes. Kailas Babu was not really stupid. In ordinary business matters
+every one was ready to consult him.
+
+But with regard to Nayanjore his utterances were certainly void of
+common sense. Because, out of amused affection for him, no one
+contradicted his impossible statements, he refused to keep them in
+bounds. When people recounted in his hearing the glorious history of
+Nayanjore with absurd exaggerations he would accept all they said with
+the utmost gravity, and never doubted, even in his dreams, that any one
+could disbelieve it.
+
+II
+
+When I sit down and try to analyse the thoughts and feelings that I had
+towards Kailas Babu I see that there was a still deeper reason for my
+dislike. I will now explain.
+
+Though I am the son of a rich man, and might have wasted time at
+college, my industry was such that I took my M.A. degree in Calcutta
+University when quite young. My moral character was flawless. In
+addition, my outward appearance was so handsome, that if I were to call
+myself beautiful, it might be thought a mark of self-estimation, but
+could not be considered an untruth.
+
+There could be no question that among the young men of Bengal I was
+regarded by parents generally as a very eligible match. I was myself
+quite clear on the point, and had determined to obtain my full value in
+the marriage market. When I pictured my choice, I had before my mind's
+eye a wealthy father's only daughter, extremely beautiful and highly
+educated. Proposals came pouring in to me from far and near; large sums
+in cash were offered. I weighed these offers with rigid impartiality, in
+the delicate scales of my own estimation. But there was no one fit to be
+my partner. I became convinced, with the poet Bhabavuti, that
+
+In this worlds endless time and boundless space
+One may be born at last to match my sovereign grace.
+
+But in this puny modern age, and this contracted space of modern Bengal,
+it was doubtful if the peerless creature existed as yet.
+
+Meanwhile my praises were sung in many tunes, and in different metres,
+by designing parents.
+
+Whether I was pleased with their daughters or not, this worship which
+they offered was never unpleasing. I used to regard it as my proper due,
+because I was so good. We are told that when the gods withhold their
+boons from mortals they still expect their worshippers to pay them
+fervent honour, and are angry if it is withheld. I had that divine
+expectance strongly developed in myself.
+
+I have already mentioned that Thakur Dada had an only grand-daughter. I
+had seen her many times, but had never mistaken her for beautiful. No
+thought had ever entered my mind that she would be a possible partner
+for myself. All the same, it seemed quite certain to me that some day
+ox other Kailas Babu would offer her, with all due worship, as an
+oblation at my shrine. Indeed-this was the secret of my dislike-I was
+thoroughly annoyed that he had not done it already.
+
+I heard he had told his friends that the Babus of Nayanjore never craved
+a boon. Even if the girl remained unmarried, he would not break the
+family tradition. It was this arrogance of his that made me angry. My
+indignation smouldered for some time. But I remained perfectly silent,
+and bore it with the utmost patience, because I was so good.
+
+As lightning accompanies thunder, so in my character a flash of humour
+was mingled with the mutterings of my wrath. It was, of course,
+impossible for me to punish the old man merely to give vent to my rage;
+and for a long time I did nothing at all. But suddenly one day such an
+amusing plan came into my head, that I could not resist the temptation
+of carrying it into effect.
+
+I have already said that many of Kailas Babu's friends used to flatter
+the old man's vanity to the full. One, who was a retired Government
+servant, had told him that whenever he saw the Chota Lord Sahib he
+always asked for the latest news about the Babus of Nayanjore, and the
+Chota Lard had been heard to say that in all Bengal the only really
+respectable families were those of the Maharaja of Burdwan and the Babus
+of Nayanjore. When this monstrous falsehood was told to Kailas Balm he
+was extremely gratified, and often repeated the story. And
+wherever after that he met this Government servant in company he would
+ask, along with other questions:
+
+"Oh! er--by the way, how is the Chota Lord Sahib? Quite well, did you
+say? Ah, yes, I am so delighted to hear it I And the dear Mem Sahib, is
+she quite well too? Ah, yes! and the little children-are they quite well
+also? Ah, yes I that's very goad news! Be sure and give them my
+compliments when you see them."
+
+Kailas Balm would constantly express his intention of going some day and
+paying a visit to the Sahib.
+
+But it may be taken for granted that many Chota Lords and Burro Lords
+also would come and go, and much water would pass down the Hoogly,
+before the family coach of Nayanjore would be furnished up to pay a
+visit to Government House.
+
+One day I took Kailas Babu aside, and told him in a whisper: "Thakur
+Dada, I was at the Levee yesterday, and the Chota Lord happened to
+mention the Babes of Nayanjore. I told him that Kailas Balm had come to
+town. Do you know, he was terribly hurt because you hadn't called. He
+told me he was going to put etiquette on one side, and pay you a private
+visit himself this very afternoon."
+
+Anybody else could have seen through this plot of mine in a moment. And,
+if it had been directed against another person, Kailas Balm would have
+understood the joke. But after all he had heard from his friend the
+Government servant, and after all his own exaggerations, a visit from
+the Lieutenant-Governor seemed the most natural thing in the world. He
+became highly nervous and excited at my news. Each detail of the coming
+visit exercised him greatly -most of all his own ignorance of English.
+How on earth was that difficulty to be met? I told him
+there was no difficulty at all: it was aristocratic not to know English:
+and, besides, the Lieutenant-Governor always brought an interpreter with
+him, and he had expressly mentioned that this visit was to be private.
+
+About mid-day, when most of our neighbours are at work, and the rest are
+asleep, a carriage and pair stopped before the lodging of Kailas Babu.
+Two flunkeys in livery came up the stairs, and announced in a loud
+voice, "The Chota Lord Sahib hoe arrived." Kailas Babu was ready,
+waiting for him, in his old-fashioned ceremonial robes and ancestral
+turban, and Ganesh was by his side, dressed in his master's best suit of
+clothes for the occasion. When the Chota Lord Sahib was announced,
+Kailas Balm ran panting and puffing and trembling to the door, and led
+in a friend of mine, in disguise, with repeated salaams, bowing low at
+each step, and walking backward as best he could. He had his old family
+shawl spread over a hard wooden chair, and he asked the Lord Sahib to be
+seated. He then made a high. flown speech in Urdu, the ancient Court
+language of the Sahibs, and presented on the golden salver a string of
+gold mohurs, the last relics of his broken fortune. The old family
+servant Ganesh, with an expression of awe bordering on terror, stood
+behind with the scent-sprinkler, drenching the Lord Sahib, touching him
+gingerly from time to time with the otto-of-roses from the filigree box.
+
+Kailas Babu repeatedly expressed his regret at not being able to receive
+His Honour Bahadur with all the ancestral magnificence of his own family
+estate at Nayanjore. There he could have welcomed him properly with due
+ceremonial. But in Calcutta he was a mere stranger and sojourner-in fact
+a fish out of water.
+
+My friend, with his tall silk hat on, very gravely nodded. I need hardly
+say that according to English custom the hat ought to have been removed
+inside the room. But my friend did not dare to take it off for fear of
+detection; and Kailas Balm and his old servant Ganesh were sublimely
+unconscious of the breach of etiquette.
+
+After a ten minutes' interview, which consisted chiefly of nodding the
+head, my friend rose to his feet to depart. The two flunkeys in livery,
+as had been planned beforehand, carried off in state the string of gold
+mohurs, the gold salver, the old ancestral shawl, the silver scent-
+sprinkler, and the otto-of-roses filigree box; they placed them
+ceremoniously in the carriage. Kailas Babu regarded this as the usual
+habit of Chota Lard Sahibs.
+
+I was watching all the while from the next room. My sides were aching
+with suppressed laughter. When I could hold myself in no longer, I
+rushed into a further room, suddenly to discover, in a corner, a young
+girl sobbing as if her heart would break. When she saw my uproarious
+laughter she stood upright in passion, flashing the lightning of her big
+dark eyes in mine, and said with a tear-choked voice:
+
+"Tell me!  What harm has my grandfather done to you? Why have you come
+to deceive him? Why have you come here? Why--"
+
+She could say no more. She covered her face with her hands, and broke
+into sobs.
+
+My laughter vanished in a moment. It had never occurred to me that there
+was anything but a supremely funny joke in this act of mine, and here I
+discovered that I had given the cruelest pain to this tenderest little
+heart. All the ugliness of my cruelty rose up to condemn me. I slunk out
+of the room in silence, like a kicked dog.
+
+Hitherto I had only looked upon Kusum, the grand-daughter of Kailas
+Babu, as a somewhat worthless commodity in the marriage market, waiting
+in vain to attract a husband. But now I found, with a shock of surprise,
+that in the corner of that room a human heart was beating.
+
+The whole night through I had very little sleep. My mind was in a
+tumult. On the next day, very early in the morning, I took all those
+stolen goods back to Kailas Babe's lodgings, wishing to hand them over
+in secret to the servant Ganesh. I waited outside the door, and, not
+finding any one, went upstairs to Kailas Babu's room. I heard from the
+passage Kusum asking her grandfather in the most winning voice: "Dada,
+dearest, do tell me all that the Chota Lord Sahib said to you yesterday.
+Don't leave out a single word. I am dying to hear it all over again."
+
+And Dada needed no encouragement. His face beamed over with pride as he
+related all manner of praises, which the Lard Sahib had been good enough
+to utter concerning the ancient families of Nayanjore. The girl was
+seated before him, looking up into his face, and listening with rapt
+attention. She was determined, out of love for the old man, to play her
+part to the full.
+
+My heart was deeply touched, and tears came to my eyes. I stood there in
+silence in the passage, while Thakur Dada finished all his
+embellishments of the Chota Lord Sahib's wonderful visit. When he left
+the room at last, I took the stolen goods and laid them at the feet of
+the girl and came away without a word.
+
+Later in the day I called again to see Kailas Balm himself. According to
+our ugly modern custom, I had been in the habit of making no greeting at
+all to this old man when I came into the room. But on this day I made a
+low bow, and touched his feet. I am convinced the old man
+thought that the coming of the Chota Lord Sahib to his house was the
+cause of my new politeness. He was highly gratified by it, and an air of
+benign severity shone from his eyes. His friends had flocked in, and he
+had already begun to tell again at full length the story of the
+Lieutenant-Governor's visit with still further adornments of a most
+fantastic kind. The interview was already becoming an epic, both in
+quality and in length.
+
+When the other visitors had taken their leave, I made my proposal to the
+old man in a humble manner. I told him that, " though I could never for
+a moment hope to be worthy of marriage connection with such an
+illustrious family, yet . . . etc. etc."
+
+When I made clear my proposal of marriage, the old man embraced me, and
+broke out in a tumult of joy: " I am a poor man, and could never have
+expected such great good fortune."
+
+That was the first and last time in his life that Kailas Babu confessed
+to being poor. It was also the first and last time in his life that he
+forgot, if only for a single moment, the ancestral dignity that belongs
+to the Babus of Nayanjore.
+
+
+
+LIVING OR DEAD?
+
+I
+
+The widow in the house of Saradasankar, the Ranihat zemindar, had no
+kinsmen of her father's family. One after another all had died. Nor had
+she in her husband's family any one she could call her own, neither
+husband nor son. The child of her brother-in-law Saradasankar was her
+darling. Far a long time after his birth, his mother had been very ill,
+and the widow, his aunt Kadambini, had fostered him. If a woman fosters
+another's child, her love for him is all the stronger because she has
+no claim upon him-no claim of kinship, that is, but simply the claim of
+love. Love cannot prove its claim by any document which society accepts,
+and does not wish to prove it; it merely worships with double passion
+its life's uncertain treasure. Thus all the widow's thwarted love went
+out to wards this little child. One night in Sraban Kadambini died
+suddenly. For some reason her heart stopped beating. Everywhere else the
+world held on its course; only m this gentle little breast,
+suffering with love, the watch of time stood still for ever.
+
+Lest they should be harassed by the poike, four of the zemindar's
+Brahmin servants took away the body, without ceremony, to be burned.
+The burning-ground of Ranihat was very far from the village.  There was
+a hut beside a tank, a huge banian near it, and nothing more.  Formerly
+a river, now completely dried up, ran through the ground, and part of
+the watercourse had been dug out to make a tank for the performance of
+funeral rites.  The people considered the tank as part of the river and
+reverenced it as such.
+
+Taking the body into the hut, the four men sat down to wait for the
+wood.  The time seemed so long that two of the four grew restless, and
+went to see why it did not come.  Nitai and Gurucharan being gone, Bidhu
+and Banamali remained to watch over the body.
+
+It was a dark night of Sraban.  Heavy clouds hung In a starless sky.
+The two men sat silent in the dark room.  Their matches and lamp were
+useless.   The matches were damp, and would not light, for all their
+efforts, and the lantern went out.
+
+After a long silence, one said:  "Brother, it would be good if we had a
+bowl of tobacco.  In our hurry we brought none."
+
+The other answered:  "I can run and bring all we want."
+
+Understanding why Banarnali wanted to go (From fear of ghosts, the
+burning-ground being  considered haunted.), Bidhu said:  "I daresay!
+Meanwhile, I suppose I am to sit here alone!"
+
+Conversation ceased again.  Five minutes seemed like an hour.   In their
+minds they cursed the two, who had gone to fetch the wood, and they
+began to suspect that they sat gossiping in some pleasant nook.  There
+was no sound anywhere, except the incessant noise of frogs and crickets
+from the tank.  Then suddenly they fancied that the bed
+shook slightly, as if the dead body had turned on its side.   Bidhu and
+Banamali trembled, and began muttering:  "Ram, Ram."  A deep sigh was
+heard in the room.   In a moment the watchers leapt out of the hut, and
+raced for the village.
+
+After running aboat three miles, they met their colleagues coming back
+with a lantern.  As a matter of fact, they had gone to smoke, and knew
+nothing about the wood. But they declared that a tree had been cut down,
+and that, when it was split up, it would be brought along at once. Then
+Bidhu and Banamali told them what had happened in the hut. Nitai and
+Gurucharan scoffed at the story, and abused Bidhu and Banamali angrily
+for leaving their duty.
+
+Without delay all four returned to the hut. As they entered, they saw at
+once that the body was gone; nothing but an empty bed remained. They
+stared at one another. Could a jackal have taken it? But there was no
+scrap of clothing anywhere. Going outside, they saw that on the mud
+that had collected at the door of the but there were a woman's tiny
+footprints, newly made. Saradasankar was no fool, and they could hardly
+persuade him to believe in this ghost story. So after much discussion
+the four decided that it would be best to say that the body had been
+burnt.
+
+Towards dawn, when the men with the wood arrived they were told that,
+owing to their delay, the work had been done without them; there had
+been some wood in the but after all. No one was likely to question this,
+since a dead body is not such a valuable property that any one
+would steal it.
+
+
+II
+
+Every one knows that, even when there is no sign, life is often secretly
+present, and may begin again in an apparently dead body. Kadambini was
+not dead; only the machine of her life had for some reason suddenly
+stopped.
+
+When consciousness returned, she saw dense darkness on all sides. It
+occurred to her that she was not lying in her usual place. She called
+out " Sister," but no answer came from the darkness. As she sat up,
+terror-stricken, she remembered her death-bed, the sudden pain at her
+breast, the beginning of a choking sensation. Her elder sister-in-law
+was warming some milk for the child, when Kadambini became faint, and
+fell on the bed, saying with a choking voice: "Sister, bring the child
+here. I am worried." After that everything was black, as when an inkpot
+is upset over an exercise-book. Kadambini's memory and consciousness,
+all the letters of the world's book, in a moment became formless. The
+widow could not remember whether the child, in the sweet voice of love,
+called her " Auntie," as if for the last time, or not; she could not
+remember whether, as she left the world she knew for death's endless
+unknown journey, she had received a parting gift of affection, love's
+passage-money for the silent land. At first, I fancy, she thought the
+lonely dark place was the House of Yama, where there is nothing to see,
+nothing to hear, nothing to do, only an eternal watch. But when a cold
+damp wind drove through the open door, and she heard the croaking of
+frogs, she remembered vividly and in a moment all the rains of her short
+life, and could feel her kinship with the earth. Then came a
+flash of lightning, and she saw the tank, the banian, the great plain,
+the far-off trees. She remembered how at full moon she had sometimes
+come to bathe in this tank, and how dreadful death had seemed when she
+saw a corpse on the burning-ground.
+
+Her first thought was to return home. But then she reflected: "I am
+dead. How can I return home? That would bring disaster on them. I have
+left the kingdom of the living; I am my own ghost!" If this were not so,
+she reasoned, how could she have got out of Saradasankar's well-guarded
+zenana, and come to this distant burningground at midnight? Also, if her
+funeral rites had not been finished, where had the men gone who should
+burn her? Recalling her death-moment in Saradasankar's brightly-lit
+house, she now found herself alone in a distant, deserted, dark burning.
+ground. Surely she was no member of earthly society! Surely she was a
+creature of horror, of ill-omen, her own ghost!
+
+At this thought, all the bonds were snapped which bound her to the
+world. She felt that she had marvellous strength, endless freedom. She
+could do what she liked, go where she pleased. Mad with the inspiration
+of this new idea, she rushed from the but like a gust of wind, and stood
+upon the burning. ground. All trace of shame or fear had left her.
+
+But as she walked on and on, her feet grew tired, her body weak. The
+plain stretched on endlessly; here and there were paddy-fields;
+sometimes she found herself standing knee-deep in water.
+
+At the first glimmer of dawn she heard one or two birds cry from the
+bamboo-clumps 6y the distant houses. Then terror seized her. She could
+not tell in what new relation she stood to the earth and to living folk.
+So long as she had been on the plain, on the burning-ground,
+covered by the dark night of Sraban, so long she had been fearless, a
+denizen of her own kingdom. By daylight the homes of men filled her with
+fear. Men and ghosts dread each other, for their tribes inhabit
+different banks of the river of death.
+
+III
+
+Her clothes were clotted in the mud; strange thoughts and walking by
+night had given her the aspect of a madwoman; truly, her apparition was
+such that folk might have been afraid of her, and children might have
+stoned her or run away. Luckily, the first to catch sight of her was a
+traveller. He came up, and said: "Mother, you look a respectable woman.
+Wherever are you going, alone and in this guise?"
+
+Kadambini, unable to collect her thoughts, stared at him in silence. She
+could not think that she was still in touch with the world, that she
+looked like a respectable woman, that a traveller was asking her
+questions.
+
+Again the min said: "Come, mother, I will see you home. Tell me where
+you live."
+
+Kadambini thought. To return to her father-in-law's house would be
+absurd, and she had no father's house. Then she remembered the friend of
+her childhood. She had not seen Jogmaya since the days of her youth, but
+from time to time they had exchanged letters. Occasionally there had
+been quarrels between them, as was only right, since Kadambini wished to
+make it dear that her love for Jogmaya was unbounded, while her friend
+complained that Kadambini did not return a love equal to her own. They
+were both sure that, if they once met, they would be inseparable.
+
+Kadambini said to the traveller: "I will go to Sripati's house at
+Nisindapur."
+
+As he was going to Calcutta, Nisindapur, though not near, was on his
+way. So he took Kadambini to Sripati s house, and the friends met again.
+At first they did not recognise one another, but gradually each
+recognised the features of the other's childhood.
+
+"What luck!" said Jogmaya. "I never dreamt that I should see you again.
+But how hate you come here, sister? Your father-in-law's folk surely
+didn't let you go!"
+
+Kadambini remained silent, and at last said: "Sister, do not ask about
+my father-in-law. Give me a corner, and treat me as a servant: I will do
+your work."
+
+"What?" cried Jogmaya. "Keep you like a servant! Why, you are my closest
+friend, you are my –" and so on and so on.
+
+Just then Sripati came in. Kadambini stared at him for some time, and
+then went out very slowly. She kept her head uncovered, and showed not
+the slightest modesty or respect. Jogmaya, fearing that Sripati would be
+prejudiced against her friend, began an elaborate explanation. But
+Sripati, who readily agreed to anything Jogmaya said, cut short her
+story, and left his wife uneasy in her mind.
+
+Kadambini had come, but she was not at one with her friend: death was
+between them. She could feel no intimacy for others so long as her
+existence perplexed her and consciousness remained. Kadambini would look
+at Jogmaya, and brood. She would think: " She has her husband and her
+work, she lives in a world far away from mine. She shares affection and
+duty with the people of the world; I am an empty shadow. She is among
+the living; I am in eternity."
+
+Jogmaya also was uneasy, but could not explain why. Women do not love
+mystery, because, though uncertainty may be transmuted into poetry, into
+heroism, into scholarship, it cannot be turned to account in household
+work. So, when a woman cannot understand a thing, she either destroys
+and forgets it, or she shapes it anew for her own use; if
+she fails to deal with it in one of these ways, she loses her temper
+with it. The greater Kadambini's abstraction became, the more impatient
+was Jogmaya with her, wondering what trouble weighed upon her mind.
+
+Then a new danger arose. Kadambini was afraid of herself; yet she could
+not flee from herself. Those who fear ghosts fear those who are behind
+them; wherever they cannot see there is fear. But Kadambini's chief
+terror lay in herself, for she dreaded nothing external. At the dead of
+night, when alone in her room, she screamed; in the evening, when she
+saw her shadow in the lamp-light, her whole body shook. Watching her
+fearfulness, the rest of the house fell into a sort of terror. The
+servants and Jogmaya herself began to see ghosts.
+
+One midnight, Kadambini came out from her bedroom weeping, and wailed at
+Jogmaya's door: "Sister, sister, let me lie at your feet! Do not put me
+by myself!"
+
+Jogmaya's anger was no less than her fear. She would have liked to drive
+Kadambini from the house that very second. The good-natured Sripati,
+after much effort, succeeded in quieting their guest, and put her in the
+next room.
+
+Next day Sripati was unexpectedly summoned to his wife's apartments. She
+began to upbraid him: " You, do you call yourself a man? A woman runs
+away from her father-in-law, and enters your house; a month passes, and
+you haven't hinted that she should go away, nor have I heard the
+slightest protest from you. I should cake it as a favour if you would
+explain yourself. You men are all alike."
+
+Men, as a race, have a natural partiality for womankind in general, foe
+which women themselves hold them accountable.	Although Sripati was
+prepared to touch Jogmaya's body, and swear that his kind feeling
+towards the helpless but beautiful Kadambini was no whit greater than it
+should be, he could not prove it by his behaviour. He thought that her
+father-in-law's people must have treated this forlorn widow abominably,
+if she could bear it no longer, and was driven to take refuge with him.
+As she had neither father nor mother, how could he desert her? So
+saying, he let the matter drop, far he had no mind to distress Kadambini
+by asking her unpleasant questions.
+
+His wife, then, tried other means of her sluggish lord, until at last he
+saw that for the sake of peace he must send word to Kadambini's
+father-in-law.  The result of a letter, he thought, might not be
+satisfactory; so he resolved to go to Ranihat, and act on what he
+learnt.
+
+So Sripati went, and Jogmaya on her part said to Kadambini "Friend, it
+hardly seems proper for you to stop here any longer. What will people
+say? "
+
+Kadambini stared solemnly at Jogmaya, and said: "What have I to do with
+people?"
+
+Jogmaya was astounded. Then she said sharply: "If you have nothing to do
+with people, we have. How can we explain the detention of a woman
+belonging to another house?"
+
+Kadambini said: "Where is my father-in-law's house?"
+
+"Confound it!" thought Jogmaya. "What will the wretched woman say next?"
+
+Very slowly Kadambini said: "What have I to do with you? Am I of the
+earth? You laugh, weep, love; each grips and holds his own; I merely
+look. You are human, I a shadow. I cannot understand why God has kept me
+in this world of yours."
+
+So strange were her look and speech that Jogmaya understood something of
+her drift, though not all. Unable either to dismiss her, or to ask her
+any more questions, she went away, oppressed with thought.
+
+IV
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock at night when Sripati returned from Ranihat.
+The earth was drowned in torrents of rain. It seemed that the downpour
+would never stop, that the night would never end.
+
+Jogmaya asked: "Well?"
+
+"I've lots to say, presently."
+
+So saying, Sripati changed his clothes, and sat down to supper; then he
+lay dawn for a smoke. His mind was perplexed.
+
+His wife stilled her curiosity for a long time; then she came to his
+couch and demanded: "What did you hear?"
+
+"That you have certainly made a mistake."
+
+Jogmaya was nettled. Women never make mistakes, or, if they do, a
+sensible man never mentions them; it is better to take them on his own
+shoulders. Jogmaya snapped: "May I be permitted to hear how?"
+
+Sripati replied: "The woman you have taken into your house is not your
+Kadambini."
+
+Hearing this, she was greatly annoyed, especially since it was her
+husband who said it. "What! I don't know my own friend? I must come to
+you to recognise her! You are clever, indeed!"
+
+Sripati explained that there was no need to quarrel about his
+cleverness. He could prove what he said. There was no doubt that
+Jogmaya's Kadambini was dead.
+
+Jogmaya replied: "Listen! You've certainly made some huge mistake.
+You've been to the wrong house, or are confused as to what you have
+heard. Who told you to go yourself? Write a letter, and everything will
+be cleared up."
+
+Sripati was hurt by his wife's lack of faith in his executive ability;
+he produced all sorts of proof, without result. Midnight found them
+still asserting and contradicting. Although they were both agreed now
+that Kadambini should be got out of the house, although Sripati believed
+that their guest had deceived his wife all the time by a pretended
+acquaintance, and Jogmaya that she was a prostitute, yet in the present
+discussion neither would acknowledge defeat. By degrees their voices
+became so loud that they forgot that Kadambini was sleeping in the next
+room.
+
+The one said: "We're in a nice fix! I tell you, I heard it with my own
+ears!" And the other answered angrily: "What do I care about that? I can
+see with my own eyes, surely."
+
+At length Jogmaya said: "Very well. Tell me when Kadambini died." She
+thought that if she could find a discrepancy between the day of death
+and the date of some letter from Kadambini, she could prove that Sripati
+erred.
+
+He told her the date of Kadambini's death, and they both saw that it
+fell on the very day before she came to their house. Jogmaya's heart
+trembled, even Sripati was not unmoved.
+
+Just then the door flew open; a damp wind swept in and blew the lamp
+out. The darkness rushed after it, and filled the whole house. Kadambini
+stood in the room. It was nearly one o'clock, the rain was pelting
+outside.
+
+Kadambini spoke: "Friend, I am your Kadambini, but I am no longer
+living. I am dead."
+
+Jogmaya screamed with terror; Sripati could speak.
+
+"But, save in being dead, I have done you no wrong. If I have no place
+among the living, I have none among the dead. Oh! whither shall I go?"
+
+Crying as if to wake the sleeping Creator in the dense night of rain,
+she asked again: " Oh! whither shall I go? "
+
+So saying Kadambini left her friend fainting in the dark house, and went
+out into the world, seeking her own place.
+
+V
+
+It is hard to say how Kadambini reached Ranihat. At first she showed
+herself to no one, but spent the whole day in a ruined temple, starving.
+When the untimely afternoon of the rains was pitch-black, and people
+huddled into their houses for fear of the impending storm, then
+Kadambini came forth. Her heart trembled as she reached her father-in-
+law's house; and when, drawing a thick veil over her face, she entered,
+none of the doorkeepers objected, since they took her for a servant. And
+the rain was pouring down, and the wind howled.
+
+The mistress, Saradasankar's wife, was playing cards with her widowed
+sister. A servant was in the kitchen, the sick child was sleeping in the
+bedroom. Kadambini, escaping every one's notice, entered this room. I do
+not know why she had come to her father-in-law's house; she herself did
+not know; she felt only that she wanted to see her child again. She had
+no thought where to go next, or what to do.
+
+In the lighted room she saw the child sleeping, his fists clenched, his
+body wasted with fever. At sight of him, her heart became parched and
+thirsty. If only she could press that tortured body to her breast!
+Immediately the thought followed: "I do not exist. Who would see it? His
+mother loves company, loves gossip and cards. All the time that she left
+me in charge, she was herself free from anxiety, nor was she troubled
+about him in the least. Who will look after him now as I did?"
+
+The child turned on his side, and cried, half-asleep: "Auntie, give me
+water." Her darling had not yet forgotten his auntie! In a fever of
+excitement, she poured out some water, and, taking him to her breast,
+she gave it him.
+
+As long as he was asleep, the child felt no strangeness in taking water
+from the accustomed hand. But when Kadambini satisfied her long-starved
+longing, and kissed him and began rocking him asleep again, he awoke and
+embraced her. "Did you die, Auntie?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, darling."
+
+"And you have come back? Do not die again."
+
+Before she could answer disaster overtook her. One of the maidservants
+coming in with a cup of sago dropped it, and fell down. At the crash the
+mistress left her cards, and entered the room. She stood like a pillar
+of wood, unable to flee or speak. Seeing all this, the child, too,
+became terrified, and burst out weeping: " Go away, Auntie," he said,
+"go away!"
+
+Now at last Kadambini understood that she had not died. The old room,
+the old things, the same child, the same love, all returned to their
+living state, without change or difference between her and them. In her
+friend's house she had felt that her childhood's companion was dead. In
+her child's room she knew that the boy's "Auntie" was not dead at all.
+In anguished tones she said: "Sister, why do you dread me? See, I am as
+you knew me."
+
+Her sister-in-law could endure no longer, and fell into a faint.
+Saradasankar himself entered the zenana. With folded hands, he said
+piteously: "Is this right? Satis is my only son. Why do you show
+yourself to him? Are we not your own kin? Since you went, he has wasted
+away daily; his fever has been incessant; day and night he cries:
+`Auntie, Auntie.' You have left the world; break these bonds of maya
+(Illusory affection binding a soul to the world). We will perform all
+funeral honours."
+
+Kadambini could bear no more. She said: "Oh, I am not dead, I am not
+dead. Oh, how can I persuade you that I am not dead? I am living,
+living!" She lifted a brass pot from the ground and dashed it against
+her forehead. The blood ran from her brow. "Look!" she cried, "I am
+living!" Saradasankar stood like an image; the child screamed with fear,
+the two fainting women lay still.
+
+Then Kadambini, shouting "I am not dead, I am not dead," went down the
+steps to the zenana well, and plunged in. From the upper storey
+Saradasankar heard the splash.
+
+All night the rain poured; it poured next day at dawn, was pouring still
+at noon. By dying, Kadambini had given proof that she was not dead.
+
+
+
+"WE CROWN THEE KING"
+
+When Nabendu Sekhar was wedded to Arunlekha, the God of marriage smiled
+from behind the sacrificial fire. Alas! what is sport for the gods is
+not always a joke to us poor mortals.
+
+Purnendu Sekhar, the father of Nabendu, was a man well known amongst the
+English officials of the Government. In the voyage of life he had
+arrived at the desert shores of Rai Bahadurship by diligently plying his
+oats of salaams. He held in reserve enough for further advancement, but
+at the age of fifty-five, his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peals
+of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a region where
+earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck
+found everlasting repose on the funeral pyre.
+
+According to modern science, force is not destroyed, but is merely
+converted to another form, and applied to another point. So Purnendu's
+salaam-force, constant handmaid of the fickle Goddess of Fortune,
+descended from the shoulder of the father to that of his worthy son; and
+the youthful head of Nabendu Sekhar began to move up and down, at the
+doors of high-placed Englishmen, like a pumpkin swayed by the wind.
+
+The traditions of the family into which he had married were entirely
+different. Its eldest son, Pramathanath, had won for himself the love of
+his kinsfolk and the regard of all who knew him. His kinsmen and his
+neighbours looked up to him as their ideal in all things.
+
+Pramathanath was a Bachelor of Arts, and in addition was gifted with
+common sense. But he held no high official position; he had no handsome
+salary; nor did he exert any influence with his pen. There was no one in
+power to lend him a helping hand, because he desired to keep away from
+Englishmen, as much as they desired to keep away from him. So it
+happened that he shone only within the sphere of his family and his
+friends, and excited no admiration beyond it.
+
+Yet this Pramathanath had once sojourned in England for some three
+years. The kindly treatment he received during his stay there
+overpowered him so much that he forgot the sorrow and the humiliation of
+his own country, and came back dressed in European clothes. This rather
+grieved his brothers and his sisters at first, but after a few days they
+began to think that European clothes suited nobody better, and gradually
+they came to share his pride and dignity.
+
+On his return from England, Pramathanath resolved that he would show the
+world how to associate with Anglo-Indians on terms of equality. Those of
+our countrymen who think that no such association is possible, unless we
+bend our knees to them, showed their utter lack of self-respect, and
+were also unjust to the English-so thought Pramathanath.
+
+He brought with him letters of introduction from many distinguished
+Englishmen at home, and these gave him some recognition in Anglo-Indian
+society. He and his wife occasionally enjoyed English hospitality at
+tea, dinner, sports and other entertainments. Such good luck intoxicated
+him, and began to produce a tingling sensation in every vein of his
+body.
+
+About this time, at the opening of a new railway line, many of the town,
+proud recipients of official favour, were invited by the
+Lieutenant-Governor to take the first trip. Pramathanath was among them.
+On the return journey, a European Sergeant of the Police expelled some
+Indian gentlemen from a railway-carriage with great insolence.
+Pramathanath, dressed in his European clothes, was there. He, too, was
+getting out, when the Sergeant said: " You needn't move, sir. Keep your
+seat, please."
+
+At first Pramathanath felt flattered at the special respect thus shown
+to him. When, however, the train went on, the dull rays of the setting
+sun, at the west of the fields, now ploughed up and stripped of green,
+seemed in his eyes to spread a glow of shame over the whole country.
+Sitting near the window of his lonely compartment, he seemed to catch a
+glimpse of the down-cast eyes of his Motherland, hidden behind the
+trees. As Pramathanath sat there, lost in reverie, burning tears flowed
+down his cheeks, and his heart burst with indignation.
+
+He now remembered the story of a donkey who was drawing the chariot of
+an idol along the street. The wayfarers bowed down to the idol, and
+touched the dusty ground with their foreheads. The foolish donkey
+imagined that all this reverence was being shown to him. "The only
+difference," said Pramathanath to himself, " between the donkey and
+myself is this: I understand to-day that the respect I receive is not
+given to me but to the burden on my back."
+
+Arriving home, Pramathanath called together all the children of the
+household, and lighting a big bonfire, threw all his European clothes
+into it one by one. The children danced round and round it, and the
+higher the flames shot up, the greater was their merriment. After that,
+Pramathanath gave up his sip of tea and bits of toast in Anglo-Indian
+houses, and once again sat inaccessible within the castle of his house,
+while his insulted friends went about from the door of one Englishman to
+that of another, bending their turbaned heads as before.
+
+By an irony of fate, poor Nabendu Sekhar married the second daughter of
+this house. His sisters-in-law were well educated and handsome. Nabendu
+considered he had made a lucky bargain. But he lost no time in trying to
+impress on the family that it was a rare bargain on their side also. As
+if by mistake, he would often hand to his sisters-in-law sundry letters
+that his late father had received from Europeans. And when the cherry
+lips of those young ladies smiled sarcastically, and the point of a
+shining dagger peeped out of its sheath of red velvet, the unfortunate
+man saw his folly, and regretted it.
+
+Labanyalekha, the eldest sister, surpassed the rest in beauty and
+cleverness. Finding an auspicious day, she put on the mantel-shelf of
+Nabendu's bedroom two pairs of English boots, daubed with vermilion, and
+arranged flowers, sandal-paste, incense and a couple of burning candles
+before them in true ceremonial fashion. When Nabendu came in, the two
+sisters-in-law stood on either side of him, and said with mock
+solemnity: "Bow down to your gods, and may you prosper through their
+blessings."
+
+The third sister Kiranlekha spent many days in embroidering with red
+silk one hundred common English names such as Jones, Smith, Brown,
+Thomson, etc., on a chadar. When it was ready, she presented this
+namavoli (A namavoli is a sheet of cloth printed all over with the names
+of Hindu gods and goddesses and worn by pious Hindus when engaged in
+devotional exercises.) to Nabendu Sekhar with great ceremony.
+
+The fourth, Sasankalekha, of tender age and therefore of no account,
+said: " I will make you a string of beads, brother, with which to tell
+the names of your gods-the sahibs." Her sisters reproved her, saying:
+"Run away, you saucy girl."
+
+Feelings of shame and irritation assailed by turns the mind of Nabendu
+Sekhar. Still he could not forego the company of his sisters-in-law,
+especially as the eldest one was beautiful. Her honey was no less than
+her gall, and Nabendu's mind tasted at once the sweetness of the one and
+the bitterness of the other. The butterfly, with its bruised wings,
+buzzes round the flower in blind fury, unable to depart.
+
+The society of his sisters-in-Law so much infatuated him that at last
+Nabendu began to disavow his craving for European favours. When he went
+to salaam the Burra Sahib, he used to pretend that he was going to
+listen to a speech by Mr. Surendranath Banerjea. When he went to the
+railway station to pay respects to the Chota Sahib, returning from
+Darjeeling, he would tell his sisters-in-law that he expected his
+youngest uncle.
+
+It was a sore trial to the unhappy man placed between the cross-fires of
+his Sahibs and his sisters-in-law. The sisters-in-law, however, secretly
+vowed that they would not rest till the Sahibs had been put to rout.
+
+About this time it was rumoured that Nabendu's name would be included in
+the forthcoming list of Birthday honours, and that he would mount the
+first step of the ladder to Paradise by becoming a Rai Bahadur. The poor
+fellow had not the courage to break the joyful news to his
+sisters-in-law. One evening, however, when the autumn moon was flooding
+the earth with its mischievous beams, Nabendu's heart was so full that
+he could not contain himself any longer, and he told his wife. The next
+day, Mrs. Nabendu betook herself to her eldest sister's house in a
+palanquin, and in a voice choked with tears bewailed her lot.
+
+"He isn't going to grow a tail," said Labanya, "by becoming a Rai
+Bahadur, is he? Why should you feel so very humiliated? "
+
+"Oh, no, sister dear," replied Arunlekha, "I am prepared to be
+anything--but not a Rai-Baha-durni.'' The fact was that in her circle of
+acquaintances there was one Bhutnath Babu, who was a Rai Bahadur, and
+that explained her intense aversion to that title.
+
+Labanya said to her sister in soothing tones: " Don't be upset about it,
+dear; I will see what I can do to prevent it"
+
+Babu Nilratan, the husband of Labanya, was a pleader at Buxar. When the
+autumn was over, Nabendu received an invitation from Labanya to pay them
+a visit, and he started for Buxar greatly pleased.
+
+The early winter of the western province endowed Labanyalekha with new
+health and beauty, and brought a glowing colour to her pale cheeks, She
+looked like the flower-laden kasa reeds on a clear autumn day, growing
+by the lonely bank of a rivulet. To Nabendu's enchanted eyes she
+appeared like a malati plant in full blossom, showering dew-drops
+brilliant with the morning light.
+
+Nabendu had never felt better in his life. The exhilaration of his own
+health and the genial company of his pretty sister-in-law made him think
+himself light enough to tread on air. The Ganges in front of the garden
+seemed to him to be flowing ceaselessly to regions unknown, as though it
+gave shape to his own wild fantasies.
+
+As he returned in the early morning from his walk on the bank of the
+river, the mellow rays of the winter sun gave his whole frame that
+pleasing sensation of warmth which lovers feel in each other's arms.
+Coming home, he would now and then find his sister-in-Law amusing
+herself by cooking some dishes. He would offer his help, and display his
+want of skill and ignorance at every step. But Nabendu did not appear to
+be at all anxious to improve himself by practice and attention. On the
+contrary he thoroughly enjoyed the rebukes he received from his
+sister-in-law. He was at great pains to prove every day that he was
+inefficient and helpless as a new-born babe in mixing spices, handling
+the saucepan, and regulating the heat so as to
+prevent things getting burnt-and he was duly rewarded with pitiful
+smiles and scoldings.
+
+In the middle of the day he ate a great deal of the good food set before
+him, incited by his keen appetite and the coaxing of his sister-in-law.
+Later on, he would sit down to a game of cards--at
+which he betrayed the same lack of ability. He would cheat, pry into his
+adversary's hand, quarrel--but never did he win a single rubber, and
+worse still, he would not acknowledge defeat. This brought him abuse
+every day, and still he remained incorrigible.
+
+There was, however, one matter in which his reform was complete. For the
+time at least, he had forgotten that to win the smiles of Sahibs was the
+final goal of life. He was beginning to understand how happy and worthy
+we might feel by winning the affection and esteem of those near and dear
+to us.
+
+Besides, Nabendu was now moving in a new atmosphere. Labanya's husband,
+Babu Nilratan, a leader of the bar, was reproached by many, because
+he refused to pay his respects to European officials. To all such
+reproaches Nilratan would reply: "No, thank you, --if they are not
+polite enough to return my call, then the politeness I offer them is
+a loss that can never be made up for. The sands of the desert may be
+very white and shiny, but I would much rather sow my seeds in black
+soil, where I can expect a return."
+
+And Nabendu began to adopt similar ideas, all regardless of the future.
+His chance of Rai Bahadurship throve on the soil carefully prepared by
+his late father and also by himself in days gone by, nor was any fresh
+watering required. Had he not at great expense laid out a splendid
+race-course in a town, which was a fashionable resort of Europeans?
+
+When the time of Congress drew near, Nilratan received a request from
+head-quarters to collect subscriptions. Nabendu, free from anxiety, was
+merrily engaged in a game of cards with his sister-in. law, when
+Nilratan Babu came upon him with a subscription-book in his hand, and
+said: "Your signature, please."
+
+>From old habit Nabendu looked horrified. Labanya, assuming an air of
+great concern and anxiety, said: "Never do that. It would ruin your
+racecourse beyond repair."
+
+Nabendu blurted out: "Do you suppose I pass sleepless nights through
+fear of that?"
+
+"We won't publish your name in the papers," said Nilratan reassuringly.
+
+Labanya, looking grave and anxious, said: "Still, it wouldn't be safe.
+Things spread so, from mouth to mouth—"
+
+Nabendu replied with vehemence: "My name wouldn't suffer by appearing in
+the newspapers." So saying, he snatched the subscription list from
+Nilratan's hand, and signed away a thousand rupees. Secretly he hoped
+that the papers would not publish the news.
+
+Labanya struck her forehead with her palm and gasped out: What--have
+you--done?"
+
+"Nothing wrong," said Nabendu boastfully.
+
+"But—but--," drawled Labanya, "the Guard sahib of Sealdah Station, the
+shop-assistant at Whiteaway's, the syce-sahib of Hart Bros.--these
+gentlemen might be angry with you, and decline to come to your Poojah
+dinner to drink your champagne, you know. Just think, they mightn't pat
+you on the back, when you meet them again!"
+
+"It wouldn't break my heart," Nabendu snapped out.
+
+A few days passed. One morning Nabendu was sipping his tea, and glancing
+at a newspaper. Suddenly a letter signed "X" caught his eye. The writer
+thanked him profusely for his donation, and declared that the increase
+of strength the Congress had acquired by having such a man within its
+fold, was inestimable.
+
+Alas, father Purnendu Sekhar! Was it to increase the strength of the
+Congress, that you brought this wretch into the world?
+
+Put the cloud of misfortune had its silver lining. That he was not a
+mere cypher was clear from the fact that the Anglo-Indian community on
+the one side and the Congress on the other were each waiting patiently,
+eager to hook him, and land him on their own side. So Nabendu, beaming
+with pleasure took the paper to his sister-in-law, and showed her the
+letter. Looking as though she knew nothing about it, Labanya exclaimed
+in surprise: "Oh, what a pity! Everything has come out! Who bore you
+such ill-will? Oh, how cruel of him, how wicked of him!"
+
+Nabendu laughed out, saying: " Now--now—don't call him names, Labanya. I
+forgive him with all my heart, and bless him too."
+
+A couple of days after this, an anti-Congress Anglo-Indian paper
+reached Nabendu through the post. There was a letter in it, signed "One
+who knows," and contradicting the above report. "Those who have the
+pleasure of Babu Nabendu Sekhar's personal acquaintance," the writer
+went on, "cannot for a moment believe this absurd libel to be true. For
+him to turn a Congresswalla is as impossible as it is for the leopard to
+change his spots. He is a man of genuine worth, and neither a
+disappointed candidate for Government employ nor a briefless
+barrister. He is not one of those who, after a brief sojourn in England,
+return aping our dress and manners, audaciously try to thrust themselves
+on Anglo-Indian society, and finally go back in dejection. So there is
+absolutely no reason why Balm Nabendu Sekhar," etc., etc.
+
+Ah, father Purnendu Sekhar! What a reputation you had made with the
+Europeans before you died!
+
+This letter also was paraded before his sister-in-law, for did it not
+assert that he was no mean, contemptible scallywag, but a man of real
+worth?
+
+Labanya exclaimed again in feigned surprise: "Which of your friends
+wrote it now? Oh, come--is it the Ticket Collector, or the hide
+merchant, or is it the drum-major of the Fort? "
+
+"You ought to send in a contradiction, I think," said Nilratan.
+
+"Is it necessary?" said Nabendu loftily. Must I contradict every little
+thing they choose to say against me? "
+
+Labanya filled the room with a deluge of laughter. Nabendu felt a little
+disconcerted at this, and said: "Why? What's the matter?" She went on
+laughing, unable to check herself, and her youthful slender form waved
+to and fro. This torrent of merriment had the effect of overthrowing
+Nabendu completely, and he said in pitiable accents: "Do you imagine
+that I am afraid to contradict it?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no," said Labanya; "I was thinking that you haven't yet
+ceased trying to save that race-course of yours, so full of promise.
+While there is life, there is hope, you know."
+
+"That's what I am afraid of, you think, do you? Very well, you shall
+see," said Nabendu desperately, and forthwith sat down to write his
+contradiction. When he had finished, Labanya and Nilratan read it
+through, and said: "It isn't strong enough. We must give it them pretty
+hot, mustn't we?" And they kindly undertook to revise the composition.
+Thus it ran: "When one connected to us by ties of blood turns our enemy
+he becomes far more dangerous than any outsider. To the Government of
+India, the haughty Anglo-Indians are worse enemies than the
+Russians or the frontier Pathans themselves--they are the impenetrable
+barrier, forever hindering the growth of any bond of friendship between
+the Government and people of the country. It is the Congress which has
+opened up the royal road to a better understanding between the rulers
+and the ruled, and the Anglo-Indian papers have planted themselves like
+thorns across the whole breadth of that road," etc., etc.
+
+Nabendu had an inward fear as to the mischief this letter might do, but
+at the same time he felt elated at the excellence of its composition,
+which he fondly imagined to be his own. It was duly published, and for
+some days comments, replies, and rejoinders went on in various
+newspapers, and the air was full of trumpet-notes, proclaiming the fact
+that Nabendu had joined the Congress, and the amount of his
+subscription.
+
+Nabendu, now grown desperate, talked as though he was a patriot of the
+fiercest type. Labanya laughed inwardly, and said to herself: "Well—-
+well--you have to pass through the ordeal of fire yet."
+
+One morning when Nabendu, before his bath, had finished rubbing oil over
+his chest, and was trying various devices to reach the inaccessible
+portions of his back, the bearer brought in a card inscribed with the
+name of the District Magistrate himself! Good heavens!--What would he
+do? He could not possibly go, and receive the Magistrate Sahib, thus
+oil-besmeared. He shook and twitched like a koi-fish, ready dressed for
+the frying pan. He finished his bath in a great hurry, tugged on his
+clothes somehow, and ran breathlessly to the outer apartments. The
+bearer said that the Sahib had just left after waiting for a long time.
+How much of the blame for concocting this drama of invented incidents
+may be set down to Labanya, and how much to the bearer is a nice problem
+for ethical mathematics to solve.
+
+Nabendu's heart was convulsed with pain within his breast, like the tail
+of a lizard just cut off. He moped like an owl all day long.
+
+Labanya banished all traces of inward merriment from her face, and kept
+on enquiring in anxious tones: "What has happened to you? You are not
+ill, I hope?"
+
+Nabendu made great efforts to smile, and find a humorous reply. "How can
+there be," he managed to say, "any illness within your jurisdiction,
+since you yourself are the Goddess of Health?"
+
+But the smile soon flickered out. His thoughts were: "I subscribed to
+the Congress fund to begin with, published a nasty letter in a
+newspaper, and on the top of that, when the Magistrate Sahib himself did
+me the honour to call on me, I kept him waiting. I wonder what he is
+thinking of me."
+
+Alas, father Purnendu Sekhar, by an irony of Fate I am made to appear
+what I am not.
+
+The next morning, Nabendu decked himself in his best clothes, wore his
+watch and chain, and put a big turban on his head.
+
+"Where are you off to?" enquired his sister-in-law.
+
+"Urgent business," Nabendu replied. Labanya kept quiet.
+
+Arriving at the Magistrate's gate, he took out his card-case.
+
+"You cannot see him now," said the orderly peon icily.
+
+Nabendu took out a couple of rupees from his pocket. The peon at once
+salaamed him and said: "There are five of us, sir." Immediately Nabendu
+pulled out a ten-rupee note, and handed it to him.
+
+He was sent for by the Magistrate, who was writing in his dressing-gown
+and bedroom slippers. Nabendu salaamed him. The Magistrate pointed to a
+chair with his finger, and without raising his eyes from the paper
+before him said: "What can I do for you, Babu?"
+
+Fingering his watch-chain nervously, Nabendu said is shaky tones:
+"Yesterday you were good enough to call at my place, sir—"
+
+The Sahib knitted his brows, and, lifting just one eye from his paper,
+said: "I called at your place! Babu, what nonsense are you talking?"
+
+"Beg your pardon, sir," faltered out Nabendu. There has been a mistake--
+some confusion," and wet with perspiration, he tumbled out of the room
+somehow. And that night, as he lay tossing on his bed, a distant
+dream-like voice came into his ear with a recurring persistency: "Babu,
+you are a howling idiot."
+
+On his way home, Nabendu came to the conclusion that the Magistrate
+denied having called, simply because he was highly offended.
+
+So he explained to Labanya that he had been out purchasing rose-water.
+No sooner had he uttered the words than half-a-dozen chuprassis wearing
+the Collectorate badge made their appearance, and after salaaming
+Nabendu, stood there grinning.
+
+"Have they come to arrest you because you subscribed to the Congress
+fund?" whispered Labanya with a smile.
+
+The six peons displayed a dozen rows of teeth and said: Bakshish--
+Babu-Sahib."
+
+>From a side room Nilratan came out, and said in an irritated manner:
+"Bakshish? What for?"
+
+The peons, grinning as before, answered: "The Babu-Sahib went to see the
+Magistrate--so we have come for bakshish"
+
+"I didn't know," laughed out Labanya, "that the Magistrate was selling
+rose-water nowadays. Coolness wasn't the special feature of his trade
+before."
+
+Nabendu in trying to reconcile the story of his purchase with his visit
+to the Magistrate, uttered some incoherent words, which nobody could
+make sense of.
+
+Nilratan spoke to the peons: "There has been no occasion for bakshish;
+you shan't have it."
+
+Nabendu said, feeling very small: "Oh, they are poor men--what's the
+harm of giving them something?" And he took out a currency note.
+Nilratan snatched it way from Nabendu's hand, remarking: "There are
+poorer men in the world--I will give it to them for you."
+
+Nabendu felt greatly distressed that he was not able to appease these
+ghostly retainers of the angry Siva. When the peons were leaving, with
+thunder in their eyes, he looked at them languishingly, as much as to
+say: "You know everything, gentlemen, it is not my fault."
+
+The Congress was to be held at Calcutta this year. Nilratan went down
+thither with his wife to attend the sittings. Nabendu accompanied them.
+
+As soon as they arrived at Calcutta, the Congress party surrounded
+Nabendu, and their delight and enthusiasm knew no bounds. They cheered
+him, honoured him, and extolled him up to the skies. Everybody said
+that, unless leading men like Nabendu devoted themselves to the Cause,
+there was no hope for the country. Nabendu was disposed to agree with
+them, and emerged out of the chaos of mistake and confusion as a leader
+of the country. When he entered the Congress Pavilion on the first
+day, everybody stood up, and shouted " Hip, hip, hurrah," in a loud
+outlandish voice, hearing which our Motherland reddened with shame to
+the root of her ears.
+
+In due time the Queen's birthday came, and Nabendu's name was not found
+in the list of Rai Bahadurs.
+
+He received an invitation from Labanya for that evening. When he arrived
+there, Labanya with great pomp and ceremony presented him with a robe of
+honour, and with her own hand put a mark of red sandal paste on the
+middle of his forehead. Each of the other sisters threw round his neck a
+garland of flowers woven by herself. Decked in a pink Sari and dazzling
+jewels, his wife Arunlekha was waiting in a side room, her face lit up
+with smiles and blushes. Her sisters rushed to her, and,
+placing another garland in her hand, insisted that she also should come,
+and do her part in the ceremony, but she would not listen to it; and
+that principal garland, cherishing a desire for Nabendu's
+neck, waited patiently for the still secrecy of midnight.
+
+The sisters said to Nabendu : "To-day we crown thee King. Such honour
+will not be done to any body else in Hindoostan."
+
+Whether Nabendu derived any consolation from this, he alone can tell;
+but we greatly doubt it. We believe, in fact, that he will become a Rai
+Bahadur before he has done, and the Englishman and the Pioneer will
+write heart-rending articles lamenting his demise at the proper time.
+So, in the meanwhile, Three Cheers for Babu Purnendu Sekhar! Hip,
+hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah.
+
+
+
+THE RENUNCIATION
+
+I
+
+It was a night of full moon early in the month of Phalgun. The youthful
+spring was everywhere sending forth its breeze laden with the fragrance
+of mango-blossoms. The melodious notes of an untiring papiya (One of the
+sweetest songsters in Bengal. Anglo-Indian writers have nicknamed it the
+"brain-fever bird," which is a sheer libel.), concealed within the thick
+foliage of an old lichi tree by the side of a tank, penetrated a
+sleepless bedroom of the Mukerji family. There Hemanta now restlessly
+twisted a lock of his wife's hair round his finger, now beat her churl
+against her wristlet until it tinkled, now pulled at the chaplet of
+flowers about her head, and left it hanging over hex face. His mood was
+that of as evening breeze which played about a favourite flowering
+shrub, gently shaking her now this side, now that, in the hope of
+rousing her to animation.
+
+But Kusum sat motionless, looking out of the open window, with eyes
+immersed in the moonlit depth of never-ending space beyond. Her
+husband's caresses were lost on her.
+
+At last Hemanta clasped both the hands of his wife, and, shaking them
+gently, said: "Kusum, where are you? A patient search through a big
+telescope would reveal you only as a small speck-you seem to have
+receded so far away. O, do come closer to me, dear. See how beautiful
+the night is."
+
+Kusum turned her eyes from the void of space towards her husband, and
+said slowly: "I know a mantra (A set of magic words.), which could in
+one moment shatter this spring night and the moon into pieces."
+
+"If you do," laughed Hemanta, "pray don't utter it. If any mantra of
+yours could bring three or four Saturdays during the week, and prolong
+the nights till 5 P.M. the next day, say it by all means."
+
+Saying this, he tried to draw his wife a little closer to him. Kusum,
+freeing herself from the embrace, said: "Do you know, to-night I feel a
+longing to tell you what I promised to reveal only on my death-bed.
+To-night I feel that I could endure whatever punishment you might
+inflict on me."
+
+Hemanta was on the point of making a jest about punishments by reciting
+a verse from Jayadeva, when the sound of an angry pair of slippers was
+heard approaching rapidly. They were the familiar footsteps of his
+father, Haribar Mukerji, and Hemanta, not knowing what it meant, was in
+a flutter of excitement.
+
+Standing outside the door Harihar roared out: "Hemanta, turn your wife
+out of the house immediately."
+
+Hemanta looked at his wife, and detected no trace of surprise in her
+features. She merely buried her face within the palms of her hands, and,
+with all the strength and intensity of her soul, wished that she could
+then and there melt into nothingness. It was the same papiya whose song
+floated into the room with the south breeze, and no one heard it.
+Endless are the beauties of the earth-but alas, how easily everything is
+twisted out of shape.
+
+II
+
+Returning from without, Hemanta asked his wife: "Is it true?"
+
+"It is," replied Kusum.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me long ago?"
+
+"I did try many a time, and I always failed. I am a wretched woman."
+
+"Then tell me everything now."
+
+Kusum gravely told her story in a firm unshaken voice. She waded
+barefooted through fire, as it were, with slow unflinching steps, and
+nobody knew how much she was scorched. Having heard her to the end,
+Hemanta rose and walked out.
+
+Kusum thought that her husband had gone, never to return to her again.
+It did not strike her as strange. She took it as naturally as any other
+incident of everyday life-so dry and apathetic had her mind become
+during the last few moments. Only the world and love seemed to her as a
+void and make-believe from beginning to end. Even the memory of the
+protestations of love, which her husband had made to her in days past,
+brought to her lips a dry, hard, joyless smile, like a sharp cruel knife
+which had cut through her heart. She was thinking, perhaps, that
+the love which seemed to fill so much of one's life, which brought in
+its train such fondness and depth of feeling, which made even the
+briefest separation so exquisitely painful and a moment's union so
+intensely sweet, which seemed boundless in its extent and eternal in its
+duration, the cessation of which could not be imagined even in births to
+come--that this was that love! So feeble was its support! No sooner does
+the priesthood touch it than your "eternal" love crumbles
+into a handful of dust! Only a short while ago Hemanta had whispered to
+her: "What a beautiful night!" The same night was not yet at an end, the
+same yapiya was still warbling, the same south breeze still blew into
+the roam, making the bed-curtain shiver; the same moonlight lay on the
+bed next the open window, sleeping like a beautiful heroine exhausted
+with gaiety. All this was unreal! Love was more falsely dissembling than
+she herself!
+
+III
+
+The next morning Hemanta, fagged after a sleepless night, and looking
+like one distracted, called at the house of Peari Sankar Ghosal. "What
+news, my son?" Peari Sankar greeted him.
+
+Hemanta, flaring up like a big fire, said in a trembling voice: "You
+have defiled our caste. You have brought destruction upon us. And you
+will have to pay for it." He could say no more; be felt choked.
+
+"And you have preserved my caste, presented my ostracism from the
+community, and patted me on the back affectionately!" said Peari Sankar
+with a slight sarcastic smile.
+
+Hemanta wished that his Brahmin-fury could reduce Peari Sankar to ashes
+in a moment, but his rage burnt only himself. Peari Sankar sat before
+him unscathed, and in the best of health.
+
+"Did I ever do you any harm?" demanded Hemanta in a broken voice.
+
+"Let me ask you one question," said Peari Sankar. "My daughter--my only
+child-what harm had she done your father? You were very young then, and
+probably never heard. Listen, then. Now, don't you excite yourself.
+There is much humour in what I am going to relate.
+
+"You were quite small when my son-in-law Nabakanta ran away to England
+after stealing my daughter's jewels. You might truly remember the
+commotion in the village when he returned as a barrister five years
+later. Or, perhaps, you were unaware of it, as you were at school in
+Calcutta at the time. Your father, arrogating to himself the headship of
+the community, declared that if I sent my daughter to her husband's
+home, I must renounce her for good, and never again allow her to cross
+my threshold. I fell at your father's feet, and implored him, saying:
+'Brother, save me this once. I will make the boy swallow cow-dung, and
+go through the prayaschittam ceremony. Do take him back into caste.' But
+your father remained obdurate. For my part, I could not disown my only
+child, and, bidding good-bye to my village and my kinsmen, I betook
+myself to Calcutta. There, too, my troubles followed me. When I had made
+every arrangement for my nephew's marriage, your father stirred up the
+girl's people, and they broke the match off. Then I
+took a solemn vow that, if there was a drop of Brahmin blood flowing in
+my veins, I would avenge myself. You understand the business to some
+extent now, don't you? But wait a little longer. You will enjoy it, when
+I tell you the whole story; it is interesting.
+
+"When you were attending college, one Bipradas Chatterji used to live
+next door to your lodgings. The poor fellow is dead now. In his house
+lived a child-widow called Kusum, the destitute orphan of a Kayestha
+gentleman. The girl was very pretty, and the old Brahmin desired to
+shield her from the hungry gaze of college students. But for a young
+girl to throw dust in the eyes of her old guardian was not at all a
+difficult task. She often went to the top of the roof, to hang her
+washing out to dry, and, I believe, you found your own roof best suited
+for your studies. Whether you two spoke to each other, when on your
+respective roofs, I cannot tell, but the girl's behaviour excited
+suspicion in the old man's mind. She made frequent mistakes in her
+household duties, and, like Parbati (The wife of Shiva the Destroyer),
+engaged in her devotions, began gradually to renounce food and sleep.
+Some evenings she would burst into tears in the presence of the old
+gentleman, without any apparent reason.
+
+"At last he discovered that you two saw each other from the roofs pretty
+frequently, and that you even went the length of absenting yourself from
+college to sit on the roof at mid-day with a book in your hand, so fond
+had you grown suddenly of solitary study. Bipradas came to me for
+advice, and told me everything. 'Uncle,' said I to him, `for a long
+while you have cherished a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Benares. You
+had better do it now, and leave the girl in my charge. I will take care
+of her.'
+
+"So he went. I lodged the girl in the house of Sripati Chatterji,
+passing him off as her father. What happened next is known to you. I
+feel a great relief to-day, having told you everything from the
+beginning. It sounds like a romance, doesn't it? I think of turning it
+into a book, and getting it printed. But I am not a writing-man myself.
+They say my nephew has some aptitude that way--I will get him to write
+it for me. But the best thing would be, if you would collaborate with
+him, because the conclusion of the story is not known to me so well."
+
+Without paying much attention to the concluding remarks of Peari Sankar,
+Hemanta asked: "Did not Kusum object to this marriage?"
+
+"Well," said Peari Sankar, "it is very difficult to guess. You know, my
+boy, how women's minds are constituted. When they say 'no,' they mean
+'yes.' During the first few days after her removal to the new home, she
+went almost crazy at not seeing you. You, too, seemed to have discovered
+her new address somehow, as you used to lose your way after starting for
+college, and loiter about in front of Sripati's house. Your eyes did not
+appear to be exactly in search of the Presidency College, as they were
+directed towards the barred windows of a private house, through which
+nothing but insects and the hearts of moon-struck young men could obtain
+access. I felt very sorry for you both. I could see that your studies
+were being seriously interrupted, and that the plight of the girl was
+pitiable also.
+
+"One day I called Kusum to me, and said: 'Listen to me, my daughter. I
+am an old man, and you need feel no delicacy in my presence. I know whom
+you desire at heart. The young man's condition is hopeless too. I wish I
+could bring about your union.' At this Kusum suddenly melted into tears,
+and ran away. On several evenings after that, I visited Sripati's house,
+and, calling Kusum to me, discussed with her matters relating to you,
+and so I succeeded in gradually overcoming her shyness. At last, when I
+said that I would try to bring about a marriage, she asked me: 'How can
+it be?' 'Never mind,' I said, 'I would pass you off as a Brahmin
+maiden.' After a good deal of argument, she begged me to find out
+whether you would approve of it. 'What
+nonsense,' replied I, 'the boy is well-nigh mad as it were, what's the
+use of disclosing all these complications to him? Let the ceremony be
+over smoothly and then--all's well that ends well. Especially, as there
+is not the slightest risk of its ever leaking out, why go out of the way
+to make a fellow miserable for life?'
+
+"I do not know whether the plan had Kusum's assent or not. At times she
+wept, and at other times she remained silent. If I said, `Let us drop it
+then,' she would become very restless. When things were in this state, I
+sent Sripati to you with the proposal of marriage; you consented without
+a moment's hesitation. Everything was settled.
+
+"Shortly before the day fixed, Kusum became so obstinate that I had the
+greatest difficulty in bringing her round again. `Do let it drop,
+uncle,' she said to me constantly. 'What do you mean, you silly child,'
+I rebuked her,' how can we back out now, when everything has been
+settled?'
+
+"'Spread a rumour that I am dead,' she implored. 'Send me away
+somewhere.'
+
+"'What would happen to the young man then?' said I.' He is now in the
+seventh heaven of delight, expecting that his long cherished desire
+would be fulfilled to-morrow; and to-day you want me to send him the
+news of your death. The result would be that to-morrow I should have to
+bear the news of his death to you, and the same evening your death would
+be reported to me. Do you imagine, child, that I am capable of
+committing a girl-murder and a Brahmin-murder at my age?'
+
+"Eventually the happy marriage was celebrated at the auspicious moment,
+and I felt relieved of a burdensome duty which I owed to myself. What
+happened afterwards you know best."
+
+"Couldn't you stop after having done us an irreparable injury?" burst
+out Hemanta after a short silence. "Why have you told the secret now?"
+
+With the utmost composure, Peari Sankar replied: "When I saw that all
+arrangements had been made for the wedding of your sister, I said to
+myself: 'Well, I have fouled the caste of one Brahmin, but that was only
+from a sense of duty. Here, another Brahmin's caste is imperilled, and
+this time it is my plain duty to prevent it.' So I wrote to them saying
+that I was in a position to prove that you bad taken the daughter of a
+sudra to wife."
+
+Controlling himself with a gigantic effort, Hemanta said: "What will
+become of this girl whom I shall abandon now? Would you give her food
+and shelter?"
+
+"I have done what was mine to do," replied Peari Sankar calmly. "It is
+no part of my duty to look after the discarded wives of other people.
+Anybody there? Get a glass of cocoanut milk for Hemanta Babu with ice in
+it. And some pan too."
+
+Hemanta rose, and took his departure without waiting for this luxurious
+hospitality.
+
+IV
+
+It was the fifth night of the waning of the moon--and the night was
+dark. No birds were singing. The lichi tree by the tank looked like a
+smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was
+blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in
+the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the
+darkness, in their effort to fathom some profound mystery.
+
+No light shone in the bedroom. Hemanta was sitting on the side of the
+bed next the open window, gazing at the darkness in front of him. Kusum
+lay on the floor, clasping her husband's feet with both her arms, and
+her face resting on them. Time stood like an ocean hushed into
+stillness. On the background of eternal night, Fate seemed to have
+painted this one single picture for all time--annihilation on every
+side, the judge in the centre of it, and the guilty one at his feet.
+
+The sound of slippers was heard again. Approaching the door, Harihar
+Mukerji said: "You have had enough time, --I can't allow you more. Turn
+the girl out of the house."
+
+Kusum, as she heard this, embraced her husband's feet with all the
+ardour of a lifetime, covered them with kisses, and touching her
+forehead to them reverentially, withdrew herself.
+
+Hemanta rose, and walking to the door, said: "Father, I won't forsake my
+wife."
+
+"What!" roared out Harihar, "would you lose your caste, sir?"
+
+"I don't care for caste," was Hemanta's calm reply.
+
+"Then you too I renounce."
+
+
+
+THE CABULIWALLAH
+
+(THE FRUITSELLER FROM CABUL)
+
+
+My five years' old daughter Mini cannot live without chattering.  I
+really believe that in all her life she has not wasted a minute in
+silence.  Her mother is often vexed at this, and would stop her prattle,
+but I would not.  To see Mini quiet is unnatural, and I cannot bear it
+long.  And so my own talk with her is always lively.
+
+One morning, for instance, when I was in the midst of the seventeenth
+chapter of my new novel, my little Mini stole into the room, and putting
+her hand into mine, said: "Father!  Ramdayal the door-keeper calls a
+crow a krow!  He doesn't know anything, does he?"
+
+Before I could explain to her the differences of language in this world,
+she was embarked on the full tide of another subject.  "What do you
+think, Father?  Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing
+water out of his trunk, and that is why it rains!"
+
+And then, darting off anew, while I sat still making ready some reply to
+this last saying, "Father! what relation is Mother to you?"
+
+"My dear little sister in the law!"  I murmured involuntarily to myself,
+but with a grave face contrived to answer: "Go and play with Bhola,
+Mini!  I am busy!"
+
+The window of my room overlooks the road.  The child had seated herself
+at my feet near my table, and was playing softly, drumming on her knees.
+I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter, where Protrap Singh, the
+hero, had just caught Kanchanlata, the heroine, in his arms, and was
+about to escape with her by the third story window of the
+castle, when all of a sudden Mini left her play, and ran to the window,
+crying, "A Cabuliwallah! a Cabuliwallah!"  Sure enough in the street
+below was a Cabuliwallah, passing slowly along.  He wore the loose
+soiled clothing of his people, with a tall turban; there was a bag on
+his back, and he carried boxes of grapes in his hand.
+
+I cannot tell what were my daughter's feelings at the sight of this man,
+but she began to call him loudly.  "Ah!"  I thought, "he will come in,
+and my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!"  At which exact
+moment the Cabuliwallah turned, and looked up at the child.  When she
+saw this, overcome by terror, she fled to her mother's protection, and
+disappeared.  She had a blind belief that inside the bag, which the big
+man carried, there were perhaps two or three other children like
+herself.  The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway, and greeted me with a
+smiling face.
+
+So precarious was the position of my hero and my heroine, that my first
+impulse was to stop and buy something, since the man had been called.  I
+made some small purchases, and a conversation began about Abdurrahman,
+the Russians, she English, and the Frontier Policy.
+
+As he was about to leave, he asked: "And where is the little girl, sir?"
+
+And I, thinking that Mini must get rid of her false fear, had her
+brought out.
+
+She stood by my chair, and looked at the Cabuliwallah and his bag.  He
+offered her nuts and raisins, but she would not be tempted, and only
+clung the closer to me, with all her doubts increased.
+
+This was their first meeting.
+
+One morning, however, not many days later, as I was leaving the house, I
+was startled to find Mini, seated on a bench near the door, laughing and
+talking, with the great Cabuliwallah at her feet.  In all her life, it
+appeared; my small daughter had never found so patient a listener, save
+her father.  And already the corner of her little sari was
+stuffed with almonds and raisins, the gift of her visitor, "Why did you
+give her those?"  I said, and taking out an eight-anna bit, I handed it
+to him.  The man accepted the money without demur, and slipped it into
+his pocket.
+
+Alas, on my return an hour later, I found the unfortunate coin had made
+twice its own worth of trouble!  For the Cabuliwallah had given it to
+Mini, and her mother catching sight of the bright round object, had
+pounced on the child with: "Where did you get that eight-anna bit? "
+
+"The Cabuliwallah gave it me," said Mini cheerfully.
+
+"The Cabuliwallah gave it you!" cried her mother much shocked.  "Oh,
+Mini!  how could you take it from him?"
+
+I, entering at the moment, saved her from impending disaster, and
+proceeded to make my own inquiries.
+
+It was not the first or second time, I found, that the two had met.  The
+Cabuliwallah had overcome the child's first terror by a judicious
+bribery of nuts and almonds, and the two were now great friends.
+
+They had many quaint jokes, which afforded them much amusement.  Seated
+in front of him, looking down on his gigantic frame in all her tiny
+dignity, Mini would ripple her face with laughter, and begin: "O
+Cabuliwallah, Cabuliwallah, what have you got in your bag?"
+
+And he would reply, in the nasal accents of the mountaineer: "An
+elephant!"  Not much cause for merriment, perhaps; but how they both
+enjoyed the witticism!  And for me, this child's talk with a grown-up
+man had always in it something strangely fascinating.
+
+Then the Cabuliwallah, not to be behindhand, would take his turn: "Well,
+little one, and when are you going to the father-in-law's house?"
+
+Now most small Bengali maidens have heard long ago about the
+father-in-law's house; but we, being a little new-fangled, had kept
+these things from our child, and Mini at this question must have been a
+trifle bewildered.  But she would not show it, and with ready tact
+replied: "Are you going there?"
+
+Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah's class, however, it is well known that
+the words father-in-law's house have a double meaning.  It is a
+euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense
+to ourselves.  In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my
+daughter's question. "Ah," he would say, shaking his fist at an
+invisible policeman, "I will thrash my father-in-law!"  Hearing this,
+and picturing the poor discomfited relative, Mini would go off into
+peals of laughter, in which her formidable friend would join.
+
+These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went
+forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in
+Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world.  At the very
+name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight
+of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of
+dreams, --the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home,
+with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of
+far-away wilds.  Perhaps the scenes of travel conjure themselves up
+before me, and pass and repass in my imagination all the more vividly,
+because I lead such a vegetable existence, that a call to travel would
+fall upon me like a thunderbolt.  In the presence of this Cabuliwallah,
+I was immediately transported to the foot of arid
+mountain peaks, with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst
+their towering heights.  I could see the string of camels bearing the
+merchandise, and the company of turbaned merchants, carrying some of
+their queer old firearms, and some of their spears, journeying downward
+towards the plains.  I could see--but at some such point Mini's mother
+would intervene, imploring me to "beware of that man."
+
+Mini's mother is unfortunately a very timid lady.  Whenever she hears a
+noise in the street, or sees people coming towards the house, she always
+jumps to the conclusion that they are either thieves, or drunkards, or
+snakes, or tigers, or malaria or cockroaches, or caterpillars, or an
+English sailor.  Even after all these years of experience, she is not
+able to overcome her terror.  So she was full of doubts about the
+Cabuliwallah, and used to beg me to keep a watchful eye on him.
+
+I tried to laugh her fear gently away, but then she would turn round on
+me seriously, and ask me solemn questions.
+
+Were children never kidnapped?
+
+Was it, then, not true that there was slavery in Cabul?
+
+Was it so very absurd that this big man should be able to carry off a
+tiny child?
+
+I urged that, though not impossible, it was highly improbable.  But this
+was not enough, and her dread persisted.  As it was indefinite, however,
+it did not seem right to forbid the man the house, and the intimacy went
+on unchecked.
+
+Once a year in the middle of January Rahmun, the Cabuliwallah, was in
+the habit of returning to his country, and as the time approached he
+would be very busy, going from house to house collecting his debts.
+This year, however, he could always find time to come and see Mini.  It
+would have seemed to an outsider that there was some conspiracy between
+the two, for when he could not come in the morning, he would appear in
+the evening.
+
+Even to me it was a little startling now and then, in the corner of a
+dark room, suddenly to surprise this tall, loose-garmented, much
+bebagged man; but when Mini would run in smiling, with her, "O!
+Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!" and the two friends, so far apart in age,
+would subside into their old laughter and their old jokes, I felt
+reassured.
+
+One morning, a few days before he had made up his mind to go, I was
+correcting my proof sheets in my study.  It was chilly weather.  Through
+the window the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth
+was very welcome.  It was almost eight o'clock, and the early
+pedestrians were returning home, with their heads covered.  All at once,
+I heard an uproar in the street, and, looking out, saw Rahmun being led
+away bound between two policemen, and behind them a crowd of curious
+boys.  There were blood-stains on the clothes of the Cabuliwallah, and
+one of the policemen carried a knife.  Hurrying out, I stopped them, and
+enquired what it all meant.  Partly from one, partly from another, I
+gathered that a certain neighbour had owed the pedlar something for a
+Rampuri shawl, but had falsely denied having bought it, and that in the
+course of the quarrel, Rahmun had struck him.  Now in the heat of his
+excitement, the prisoner began calling his enemy all sorts of names,
+when suddenly in a verandah of my house appeared my little Mini, with
+her usual exclamation: "O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!"  Rahmun's face
+lighted up as he turned to her.  He had no bag under his arm today, so
+she could not discuss the elephant with him.  She at once therefore
+proceeded to the next question: "Are you going to the father-in-law's
+house?"  Rahmun laughed and said: "Just where I am going, little one!"
+Then seeing that the reply did not amuse the child, he held up his
+fettered hands.  " Ali," he said, " I would have thrashed that old
+father-in-law, but my hands are bound!"
+
+On a charge of murderous assault, Rahmun was sentenced to some years'
+imprisonment.
+
+Time passed away, and he was not remembered.  The accustomed work in the
+accustomed place was ours, and the thought of the once-free mountaineer
+spending his years in prison seldom or never occurred to us.  Even my
+light-hearted Mini, I am ashamed to say, forgot her old friend.  New
+companions filled her life.  As she grew older, she spent more of her
+time with girls.  So much time indeed did she spend with them that she
+came no more, as she used to do, to her father's room.  I was scarcely
+on speaking terms with her.
+
+Years had passed away.  It was once more autumn and we had made
+arrangements for our Mini's marriage.  It was to take place during the
+Puja Holidays.  With Durga returning to Kailas, the light of our home
+also was to depart to her husband's house, and leave her father's in the
+shadow.
+
+The morning was bright.  After the rains, there was a sense of ablution
+in the air, and the sun-rays looked like pure gold.  So bright were they
+that they gave a beautiful radiance even to the sordid brick walls of
+our Calcutta lanes.  Since early dawn to-day the wedding-pipes had been
+sounding, and at each beat my own heart throbbed.  The wail of the tune,
+Bhairavi, seemed to intensify my pain at the approaching separation.  My
+Mini was to be married to-night.
+
+>From early morning noise and bustle had pervaded the house.  In the
+courtyard the canopy had to be slung on its bamboo poles; the
+chandeliers with their tinkling sound must be hung in each room and
+verandah.  There was no end of hurry and excitement.  I was sitting in
+my study, looking through the accounts, when some one entered, saluting
+respectfully, and stood before me.  It was Rahmun the Cabuliwallah.  At
+first I did not recognise him.  He had no bag, nor the long hair, nor
+the same vigour that he used to have.  But he smiled, and I knew him
+again.
+
+"When did you come, Rahmun?"  I asked him.
+
+"Last evening," he said, "I was released from jail."
+
+The words struck harsh upon my ears.  I had never before talked with one
+who had wounded his fellow, and my heart shrank within itself, when I
+realised this, for I felt that the day would have been better-omened had
+he not turned up.
+
+"There are ceremonies going on," I said, "and I am busy.  Could you
+perhaps come another day?"
+
+At once he turned to go; but as he reached the door he hesitated, and
+said: "May I not see the little one, sir, for a moment?"  It was his
+belief that Mini was still the same.  He had pictured her running to him
+as she used, calling "O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!"  He had imagined
+too that they would laugh and talk together, just as of old.  In fact,
+in memory of former days he had brought, carefully wrapped up in paper,
+a few almonds and raisins and grapes, obtained somehow from a
+countryman, for his own little fund was dispersed.
+
+I said again: "There is a ceremony in the house, and you will not be
+able to see any one to-day."
+
+The man's face fell.  He looked wistfully at me for a moment, said "Good
+morning," and went out.  I felt a little sorry, and would have called
+him back, but I found he was returning of his own accord.  He came close
+up to me holding out his offerings and said: "I brought these few
+things, sir, for the little one.  Will you give them to her?"
+
+I took them and was going to pay him, but he caught my hand and said:
+"You are very kind, sir!  Keep me in your recollection.  Do not offer me
+money!--You have a little girl, I too have one like her in my own home.
+I think of her, and bring fruits to your child, not to make a profit for
+myself."
+
+Saying this, he put his hand inside his big loose robe, and brought out
+a small and dirty piece of paper.  With great care he unfolded this, and
+smoothed it out with both hands on my table.  It bore the impression of
+a little band.  Not a photograph.  Not a drawing.  The impression of an
+ink-smeared hand laid flat on the paper.  This touch of his own little
+daughter had been always on his heart, as he had come year after year to
+Calcutta, to sell his wares in the streets.
+
+Tears came to my eyes.  I forgot that he was a poor Cabuli fruit-seller,
+while I was--but no, what was I more than he?  He also was a father.
+That impression of the hand of his little Parbati in her distant
+mountain home reminded me of my own little Mini.
+
+I sent for Mini immediately from the inner apartment.  Many difficulties
+were raised, but I would not listen.  Clad in the red silk of her
+wedding-day, with the sandal paste on her forehead, and adorned as a
+young bride, Mini came, and stood bashfully before me.
+
+The Cabuliwallah looked a little staggered at the apparition.  He could
+not revive their old friendship.  At last he smiled and said: "Little
+one, are you going to your father-in-law's house?"
+
+But Mini now understood the meaning of the word "father-in-law," and she
+could not reply to him as of old.  She flushed up at the question, and
+stood before him with her bride-like face turned down.
+
+I remembered the day when the Cabuliwallah and my Mini had first met,
+and I felt sad.  When she had gone, Rahmun heaved a deep sigh, and sat
+down on the floor.  The idea had suddenly come to him that his daughter
+too must have grown in this long time, and that he would have to make
+friends with her anew.  Assuredly he would not find her, as he used to
+know her.  And besides, what might not have happened to her in these
+eight years?
+
+The marriage-pipes sounded, and the mild autumn sun streamed round us.
+But Rahmun sat in the little Calcutta lane, and saw before him the
+barren mountains of Afghanistan.
+
+I took out a bank-note, and gave it to him, saying: "Go back to your own
+daughter, Rahmun, in your own country, and may the happiness of your
+meeting bring good fortune to my child!"
+
+Having made this present, I had to curtail some of the festivities.  I
+could not have the electric lights I had intended, nor the military
+band, and the ladies of the house were despondent at it.  But to me the
+wedding feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant
+land a long-lost father met again with his only child.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Hungry Stones et. al., by Rabindranath Tagore
+
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