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.

The poet Kabîr, a selection from whose songs is here for the
first time offered to English readers, is one of the most
interesting personalities in the history of Indian mysticism.
Born in or near Benares, of Mohammedan parents, and probably
about the year 1440, be became in early life a disciple of the
celebrated Hindu ascetic Râmânanda.  Râmânanda had brought to
Northern India the religious revival which Râmânuja, the great
twelfth-century reformer of Brâhmanism, had initiated in the
South.  This revival was in part a reaction against the
increasing formalism of the orthodox cult, in part an assertion
of the demands of the heart as against the intense
intellectualism of the Vedânta philosophy, the exaggerated monism
which that philosophy proclaimed.  It took in Râmânuja's
preaching the form of an ardent personal devotion to the God
Vishnu, as representing the personal aspect of the Divine Nature:
that mystical "religion of love" which everywhere makes its
appearance at a certain level of spiritual culture, and which
creeds and philosophies are powerless to kill.

Though such a devotion is indigenous in Hinduism, and finds
expression in many passages of the Bhagavad Gîtâ, there was in
its mediæval revival a large element of syncretism.  Râmânanda,
through whom its spirit is said to have reached Kabîr, appears to
have been a man of wide religious culture, and full of missionary
enthusiasm.  Living at the moment in which the impassioned poetry
and deep philosophy of the great Persian mystics, Attâr, Sâdî,
Jalâlu'ddîn Rûmî, and Hâfiz, were exercising a powerful influence
on the religious thought of India, he dreamed of reconciling this
intense and personal Mohammedan mysticism with the traditional
theology of Brâhmanism.  Some have regarded both these great
religious leaders as influenced also by Christian thought and
life: but as this is a point upon which competent authorities
hold widely divergent views, its discussion is not attempted here.
We may safely assert, however, that in their teachings, two--
perhaps three--apparently antagonistic streams of intense
spiritual culture met, as Jewish and Hellenistic thought met in
the early Christian Church: and it is one of the outstanding
characteristics of Kabîr's genius that he was able in his poems
to fuse them into one.

A great religious reformer, the founder of a sect to which nearly
a million northern Hindus still belong, it is yet supremely as a
mystical poet that Kabîr lives for us.  His fate has been that of
many revealers of Reality.  A hater of religious exclusivism, and
seeking above all things to initiate men into the liberty of the
children of God, his followers have honoured his memory by
re-erecting in a new place the barriers which he laboured to cast
down.  But his wonderful songs survive, the spontaneous
expressions of his vision and his love; and it is by these, not
by the didactic teachings associated with his name, that he makes
his immortal appeal to the heart.  In these poems a wide range of
mystical emotion is brought into play: from the loftiest
abstractions, the most otherworldly passion for the Infinite, to
the most intimate and personal realization of God, expressed in
homely metaphors and religious symbols drawn indifferently from
Hindu and Mohammedan belief.  It is impossible to say of their
author that he was Brâhman or Sûfî, Vedântist or Vaishnavite.
He is, as he says himself, "at once the child of Allah and of Râm."
That Supreme Spirit Whom he knew and adored, and to Whose joyous
friendship he sought to induct the souls of other men, transcended
whilst He included all metaphysical categories, all credal
definitions; yet each contributed something to the description of
that Infinite and Simple Totality Who revealed Himself, according
to their measure, to the faithful lovers of all creeds.

Kabîr's story is surrounded by contradictory legends, on none of
which reliance can be placed.  Some of these emanate from a Hindu,
some from a Mohammedan source, and claim him by turns as a Sûfî
and a Brâhman saint.  His name, however, is practically a
conclusive proof of Moslem ancestry: and the most probable tale is
that which represents him as the actual or adopted child of a
Mohammedan weaver of Benares, the city in which the chief events
of his life took place.

In fifteenth-century Benares the syncretistic tendencies of
Bhakti religion had reached full development.  Sûfîs and Brâhmans
appear to have met in disputation: the most spiritual members of
both creeds frequenting the teachings of Râmânanda, whose
reputation was then at its height.  The boy Kabîr, in whom the
religious passion was innate, saw in Râmânanda his destined
teacher; but knew how slight were the chances that a Hindu guru
would accept a Mohammedan as disciple.  He therefore hid upon the
steps of the river Ganges, where Râmânanda was accustomed to
bathe; with the result that the master, coming down to the water,
trod upon his body unexpectedly, and exclaimed in his
astonishment, "Ram!  Ram!"--the name of the incarnation under
which he worshipped God.  Kabîr then declared that he had
received the mantra of initiation from Râmânanda's lips, and was
by it admitted to discipleship.  In spite of the protests of
orthodox Brâhmans and Mohammedans, both equally annoyed by this
contempt of theological landmarks, he persisted in his claim;
thus exhibiting in action that very principle of religious
synthesis which Râmânanda had sought to establish in thought.
Râmânanda appears to have accepted him, and though Mohammedan
legends speak of the famous Sûfî Pîr, Takkî of Jhansî, as Kabîr's
master in later life, the Hindu saint is the only human teacher
to whom in his songs he acknowledges indebtedness.

The little that we know of Kabîr's life contradicts many current
ideas concerning the Oriental mystic.  Of the stages of
discipline through which he passed, the manner in which his
spiritual genius developed, we are completely ignorant.  He seems
to have remained for years the disciple of Râmânanda, joining in
the theological and philosophical arguments which his master held
with all the great Mullahs and Brâhmans of his day; and to this
source we may perhaps trace his acquaintance with the terms of
Hindu and Sûfî philosophy.  He may or may not have submitted to
the traditional education of the Hindu or the Sûfî contemplative:
it is clear, at any rate, that he never adopted the life of the
professional ascetic, or retired from the world in order to
devote himself to bodily mortifications and the exclusive pursuit
of the contemplative life.  Side by side with his interior life
of adoration, its artistic expression in music and words--for he
was a skilled musician as well as a poet--he lived the sane and
diligent life of the Oriental craftsman.  All the legends agree
on this point: that Kabîr was a weaver, a simple and unlettered
man, who earned his living at the loom.  Like Paul the tentmaker,
Boehme the cobbler, Bunyan the tinker, Tersteegen the
ribbon-maker, he knew how to combine vision and industry; the
work of his hands helped rather than hindered the impassioned
meditation of his heart.  Hating mere bodily austerities, he was
no ascetic, but a married man, the father of a family--a
circumstance which Hindu legends of the monastic type vainly
attempt to conceal or explain--and it was from out of the heart
of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine
love.  Here his works corroborate the traditional story of his
life.  Again and again he extols the life of home, the value and
reality of diurnal existence, with its opportunities for love and
renunciation; pouring contempt--upon the professional sanctity of
the Yogi, who "has a great beard and matted locks, and looks like
a goat," and on all who think it necessary to flee a world
pervaded by love, joy, and beauty--the proper theatre of man's
quest--in order to find that One Reality Who has "spread His form
of love throughout all the world." [Footnote: Cf. Poems Nos. XXI,
XL, XLIII, LXVI, LXXVI.]

It does not need much experience of ascetic literature to
recognize the boldness and originality of this attitude in such a
time and place.  From the point of view of orthodox sanctity,
whether Hindu or Mohammedan, Kabîr was plainly a heretic; and his
frank dislike of all institutional religion, all external
observance--which was as thorough and as intense as that of the
Quakers themselves--completed, so far as ecclesiastical opinion
was concerned, his reputation as a dangerous man.  The "simple
union" with Divine Reality which he perpetually extolled, as alike
the duty and the joy of every soul, was independent both of ritual
and of bodily austerities; the God whom he proclaimed was "neither
in Kaaba nor in Kailâsh."  Those who sought Him needed not to go
far; for He awaited discovery everywhere, more accessible to "the
washerwoman and the carpenter" than to the self--righteous holy man.
[Footnote: Poems I, II, XLI.]  Therefore the whole apparatus of
piety, Hindu and Moslem alike--the temple and mosque, idol and holy
water, scriptures and priests--were denounced by this inconveniently
clear-sighted poet as mere substitutes for reality; dead things
intervening between the soul and its love--

/*
  The images are all lifeless, they cannot speak:
    I know, for I have cried aloud to them.
  The Purâna and the Koran are mere words:
    lifting up the curtain, I have seen.
*/
[Footnote: Poems XLII, LXV, LXVII.]

This sort of thing cannot be tolerated by any organized church;
and it is not surprising that Kabîr, having his head-quarters in
Benares, the very centre of priestly influence, was subjected to
considerable persecution.  The well-known legend of the beautiful
courtesan sent by Brâhmans to tempt his virtue, and converted,
like the Magdalen, by her sudden encounter with the initiate of a
higher love, pre serves the memory of the fear and dislike with
which he was regarded by the ecclesiastical powers.  Once at
least, after the performance of a supposed miracle of healing, he
was brought before the Emperor Sikandar Lodi, and charged with
claiming the possession of divine powers.  But Sikandar Lodi, a
ruler of considerable culture, was tolerant of the eccentricities
of saintly persons belonging to his own faith.  Kabîr, being of
Mohammedan birth, was outside the authority of the Brâhmans, and
technically classed with the Sûfîs, to whom great theological
latitude was allowed.  Therefore, though he was banished in the
interests of peace from Benares, his life was spared.  This seems
to have happened in 1495, when he was nearly sixty years of age;
it is the last event in his career of which we have definite
knowledge.  Thenceforth he appears to have moved about amongst
various cities of northern India, the centre of a group of
disciples; continuing in exile that life of apostle and poet of
love to which, as he declares in one of his songs, he was destined
"from the beginning of time."  In 1518, an old man, broken in
health, and with hands so feeble that he could no longer make the
music which he loved, he died at Maghar near Gorakhpur.

A beautiful legend tells us that after his death his
Mohammedan and Hindu disciples disputed the possession of his
body; which the Mohammedans wished to bury, the Hindus to burn.
As they argued together, Kabîr appeared before them, and told
them to lift the shroud and look at that which lay beneath.  They
did so, and found in the place of the corpse a heap of flowers;
half of which were buried by the Mohammedans at Maghar, and half
carried by the Hindus to the holy city of Benares to be burned--
fitting conclusion to a life which had made fragrant the most
beautiful doctrines of two great creeds.

II


The poetry of mysticism might be defined on the one hand as a
temperamental reaction to the vision of Reality: on the other, as
a form of prophecy.  As it is the special vocation of the
mystical consciousness to mediate between two orders, going out
in loving adoration towards God and coming home to tell the
secrets of Eternity to other men; so the artistic self-expression
of this consciousness has also a double character.  It is love-
poetry, but love-poetry which is often written with a missionary
intention.

Kabîr's songs are of this kind: out-births at once of rapture and
of charity.  Written in the popular Hindi, not in the literary
tongue, they were deliberately addressed--like the vernacular
poetry of Jacopone da Todì and Richard Rolle--to the people rather
than to the professionally religious class; and all must be struck
by the constant employment in them of imagery drawn from the
common life, the universal experience.  It is by the simplest
metaphors, by constant appeals to needs, passions, relations which
all men understand--the bridegroom and bride, the guru and
disciple, the pilgrim, the farmer, the migrant bird-- that he
drives home his intense conviction of the reality of the soul's
intercourse with the Transcendent.  There are in his universe no
fences between the "natural" and "supernatural" worlds; everything
is a part of the creative Play of God, and therefore--even in its
humblest details--capable of revealing the Player's mind.

This willing acceptance of the here-and-now as a means of
representing supernal realities is a trait common to the greatest
mystics.  For them, when they have achieved at last the true
theopathetic state, all aspects of the universe possess equal
authority as sacramental declarations of the Presence of God; and
their fearless employment of homely and physical symbols--often
startling and even revolting to the unaccustomed taste--is in
direct proportion to the exaltation of their spiritual life.  The
works of the great Sûfîs, and amongst the Christians of Jacopone
da Todì, Ruysbroeck, Boehme, abound in illustrations of this law.
Therefore we must not be surprised to find in Kabîr's songs--his
desperate attempts to communicate his ecstasy and persuade other
men to share it--a constant juxtaposition of concrete and
metaphysical language; swift alternations between the most
intensely anthropomorphic, the most subtly philosophical, ways of
apprehending man's communion with the Divine.  The need for this
alternation, and its entire naturalness for the mind which
employs it, is rooted in his concept, or vision, of the Nature of
God; and unless we make some attempt to grasp this, we shall not
go far in our understanding of his poems.

Kabîr belongs to that small group of supreme mystics--amongst
whom St.  Augustine, Ruysbroeck, and the Sûfî poet Jalâlu'ddîn
Rûmî are perhaps the chief--who have achieved that which we might
call the synthetic vision of God.  These have resolved the
perpetual opposition between the personal and impersonal, the
transcendent and immanent, static and dynamic aspects of the
Divine Nature; between the Absolute of philosophy and the "sure
true Friend" of devotional religion.  They have done this, not by
taking these apparently incompatible concepts one after the
other; but by ascending to a height of spiritual intuition at
which they are, as Ruysbroeck said, "melted and merged in the
Unity," and perceived as the completing opposites of a perfect
Whole.  This proceeding entails for them--and both Kabîr and
Ruysbroeck expressly acknowledge it--a universe of three orders:
Becoming, Being, and that which is "More than Being," i.e., God.
[Footnote: Nos. VII and XLIX.]  God is here felt to be not the
final abstraction, but the one actuality.  He inspires, supports,
indeed inhabits, both the durational, conditioned, finite world
of Becoming and the unconditioned, non-successional, infinite
world of Being; yet utterly transcends them both.  He is the
omnipresent Reality, the "All-pervading" within Whom "the worlds
are being told like beads."  In His personal aspect He is the
"beloved Fakir," teaching and companioning each soul.  Considered
as Immanent Spirit, He is "the Mind within the mind."  But all
these are at best partial aspects of His nature, mutually
corrective: as the Persons in the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity--to which this theological diagram bears a striking
resemblance--represent different and compensating experiences of
the Divine Unity within which they are resumed.  As Ruysbroeck
discerned a plane of reality upon which "we can speak no more of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but only of One Being, the very
substance of the Divine Persons"; so Kabîr says that "beyond both
the limited and the limitless is He, the Pure Being."  [Footnote:
No. VII.]

Brahma, then, is the Ineffable Fact compared with which "the
distinction of the Conditioned from the Unconditioned is but a
word": at once the utterly transcendent One of Absolutist
philosophy, and the personal Lover of the individual soul--
"common to all and special to each," as one Christian mystic has
it.  The need felt by Kabîr for both these ways of describing
Reality is a proof of the richness and balance of his spiritual
experience; which neither cosmic nor anthropomorphic symbols,
taken alone, could express.  More absolute than the Absolute,
more personal than the human mind, Brahma therefore exceeds
whilst He includes all the concepts of philosophy, all the
passionate intuitions of the heart.  He is the Great Affirmation,
the font of energy, the source of life and love, the unique
satisfaction of desire.  His creative word is the <i>Om</i> or
"Everlasting Yea."  The negative philosophy which strips from the
Divine Nature all Its attributes and defining Him only by that
which He is not--reduces Him to an "Emptiness," is abhorrent to
this most vital of poets.--Brahma, he says, "may never be found
in abstractions."  He is the One Love who Pervades the world.,
discerned in His fullness only by the eyes of love; and those who
know Him thus share, though they may never tell, the joyous and
ineffable secret of the universe.  [Footnote: Nos. VII, XXVI,
LXXVI, XC.]

Now Kabîr, achieving this synthesis between the personal and
cosmic aspects of the Divine Nature, eludes the three great
dangers which threaten mystical religion.


First, he escapes the excessive emotionalism, the tendency to
an exclusively anthropomorphic devotion, which results from an
unrestricted cult of Divine Personality, especially under an
incarnational form; seen in India in the exaggerations of
Krishna worship, in Europe in the sentimental extravagances of
certain Christian saints.

Next, he is protected from the soul-destroying conclusions of
pure monism, inevitable if its logical implications are pressed
home: that is, the identity of substance between God and the
soul, with its corollary of the total absorption of that soul in
the Being of God as the goal of the spiritual life.  For the
thorough-going monist the soul, in so far as it is real, is
substantially identical with God; and the true object of
existence is the making patent of this latent identity, the
realization which finds expression in the Vedântist formula "That
art thou."  But Kabîr says that Brahma and the creature are "ever
distinct, yet ever united"; that the wise man knows the spiritual
as well as the material world to "be no more than His footstool."
[Footnote: Nos. VII and IX.]  The soul's union with Him is a love
union, a mutual inhabitation; that essentially dualistic relation
which all mystical religion expresses, not a self-mergence which
leaves no place for personality.  This eternal distinction, the
mysterious union-in-separateness of God and the soul, is a
necessary doctrine of all sane mysticism; for no scheme which
fails to find a place for it can represent more than a fragment of
that soul's intercourse with the spiritual world.  Its affirmation
was one of the distinguishing features of the Vaishnavite
reformation preached by Râmânuja; the principle of which had
descended through Râmânanda to Kabîr.

Last, the warmly human and direct apprehension of God as the
supreme Object of love, the soul's comrade, teacher, and
bridegroom, which is so passionately and frequently expressed in
Kabîr's poems, balances and controls those abstract tendencies
which are inherent in the metaphysical side of his vision of
Reality: and prevents it from degenerating into that sterile
worship of intellectual formulæ which became the curse of the
Vedântist school.  For the mere intellectualist, as for the mere
pietist, he has little approbation.  [Footnote: Cf. especially
Nos. LIX, LXVII, LXXV, XC, XCI.]  Love is throughout his
"absolute sole Lord": the unique source of the more abundant life
which he enjoys, and the common factor which unites the finite
and infinite worlds.  All is soaked in love: that love which he
described in almost Johannine language as the "Form of God."
The whole of creation is the Play of the Eternal Lover; the
living, changing, growing expression of Brahma's love and joy.
As these twin passions preside over the generation of human life,
so "beyond the mists of pleasure and pain" Kabîr finds them
governing the creative acts of God.  His manifestation is love;
His activity is joy.  Creation springs from one glad act of
affirmation: the Everlasting Yea, perpetually uttered within the
depths of the Divine Nature.  [Footnote: Nos. XVII, XXVI, LXXVI,
LXXXII.]  In accordance with this concept of the universe as a
Love-Game which eternally goes forward, a progressive
manifestation of Brahma--one of the many notions which he adopted
from the common stock of Hindu religious ideas, and illuminated
by his poetic genius--movement, rhythm, perpetual change, forms
an integral part of Kabîr's vision of Reality.  Though the
Eternal and Absolute is ever present to his consciousness, yet
his concept of the Divine Nature is essentially dynamic.  It is
by the symbols of motion that he most often tries to convey it to
us: as in his constant reference to dancing, or the strangely
modern picture of that Eternal Swing of the Universe which is
"held by the cords of love."  [Footnote: No. XVI.]

It is a marked characteristic of mystical literature that the
great contemplatives, in their effort to convey to us the nature
of their communion with the supersensuous, are inevitably driven
to employ some form of sensuous imagery: coarse and inaccurate as
they know such imagery to be, even at the best.  Our normal human
consciousness is so completely committed to dependence on the
senses, that the fruits of intuition itself are instinctively
referred to them.  In that intuition it seems to the mystics that
all the dim cravings and partial apprehensions of sense find
perfect fulfilment.  Hence their constant declaration that they
<i>see</i> the uncreated light, they <i>hear</i> the celestial
melody, they <i>taste</i> the sweetness of the Lord, they know an
ineffable fragrance, they feel the very contact of love.  "Him
verily seeing and fully feeling, Him spiritually hearing and Him
delectably smelling and sweetly swallowing," as Julian of Norwich
has it.  In those amongst them who develop psycho-sensorial
automatisms, these parallels between sense and spirit may present
themselves to consciousness in the form of hallucinations: as the
light seen by Suso, the music heard by Rolle, the celestial
perfumes which filled St.  Catherine of Siena's cell, the physical
wounds felt by St.  Francis and St. Teresa.  These are excessive
dramatizations of the symbolism under which the mystic tends
instinctively to represent his spiritual intuition to the surface
consciousness.  Here, in the special sense-perception which he
feels to be most expressive of Reality, his peculiar
idiosyncrasies come out.

Now Kabîr, as we might expect in one whose reactions to the
spiritual order were so wide and various, uses by turn all the
symbols of sense.  He tells us that he has "seen without sight"
the effulgence of Brahma, tasted the divine nectar, felt the
ecstatic contact of Reality, smelt the fragrance of the heavenly
flowers.  But he was essentially a poet and musician: rhythm and
harmony were to him the garments of beauty and truth.  Hence in
his lyrics he shows himself to be, like Richard Rolle, above all
things a musical mystic.  Creation, he says again and again, is
full of music: it <i>is</i> music.  At the heart of the Universe
"white music is blossoming": love weaves the melody, whilst
renunciation beats the time.  It can be heard in the home as well
as in the heavens; discerned by the ears of common men as well as
by the trained senses of the ascetic.  Moreover, the body of
every man is a lyre on which Brahma, "the source of all music,"
plays.  Everywhere Kabîr discerns the "Unstruck Music of the
Infinite"--that celestial melody which the angel played to St.
Francis, that ghostly symphony which filled the soul of Rolle
with ecstatic joy.  [Footnote: Nos. XVII, XVIII, XXXIX, XLI, LIV,
LXXVI, LXXXIII, LXXXIX, XCVII.]  The one figure which he adopts
from the Hindu Pantheon and constantly uses, is that of Krishna
the Divine Flute Player.  [Footnote: Nos. L, LIII, LXVIII.]  He
sees the supernal music, too, in its visual embodiment, as
rhythmical movement: that mysterious dance of the universe before
the face of Brahma, which is at once an act of worship and an
expression of the infinite rapture of the Immanent God.'

Yet in this wide and rapturous vision of the universe Kabîr
never loses touch with diurnal existence, never forgets the
common life.  His feet are firmly planted upon earth; his lofty
and passionate apprehensions are perpetually controlled by the
activity of a sane and vigorous intellect, by the alert
commonsense so often found in persons of real mystical genius.
The constant insistence on simplicity and directness, the hatred
of all abstractions and philosophizings,[Footnote: Nos. XXVI,
XXXII, LXXVI] the ruthless criticism of external religion: these
are amongst his most marked characteristics.  God is the Root
whence all manifestations, "material" and "spiritual," alike
proceed; [Footnote: Nos. LXXV, LXXVIII, LXXX, XC.] and God is
the only need of man--"happiness shall be yours when you come to
the Root."  [Footnote: No. LXXX.]  Hence to those who keep their
eye on the "one thing needful," denominations, creeds, ceremonies,
the conclusions of philosophy, the disciplines of asceticism, are
matters of comparative indifference.  They represent merely the
different angles from which the soul may approach that simple
union with Brahma which is its goal; and are useful only in so
faras they contribute to this consummation.  So thorough-going is
Kabîr's eclecticism, that he seems by turns Vedântist and
Vaishnavite, Pantheist and Transcendentalist, Brâhman and Sûfî.
In the effort to tell the truth about that ineffable apprehension,
so vast and yet so near, which controls his life, he seizes and
twines together--as he might have woven together contrasting
threads upon his loom--symbols and ideas drawn from the most
violent and conflicting philosophies and faiths.  All are needed,
if he is ever to suggest the character of that One whom the
Upanishad called "the Sun-coloured Being who is beyond this
Darkness": as all the colours of the spectrum are needed if we
would demonstrate the simple richness of white light.  In thus
adapting traditional materials to his own use he follows a method
common amongst the mystics; who seldom exhibit any special love
for originality of form.  They will pour their wine into almost
any vessel that comes to hand: generally using by preference--and
lifting to new levels of beauty and significance--the religious or
philosophic formulæ current in their own day.  Thus we find that
some of Kabîr's finest poems have as their subjects the
commonplaces of Hindu philosophy and religion: the Lîlâ or Sport of
God, the Ocean of Bliss, the Bird of the Soul, Mâyâ, the Hundred-
petalled Lotus, and the "Formless Form."  Many, again, are soaked
in Sûfî imagery and feeling.  Others use as their material the
ordinary surroundings and incidents of Indian life: the temple bells,
the ceremony of the lamps, marriage, suttee, pilgrimage, the
characters of the seasons; all felt by him in their mystical aspect,
as sacraments of the soul's relation with Brahma.  In many of these
a particularly beautiful and intimate feeling for Nature is shown.
[Footnote: Nos. XV, XXIII, LXVII, LXXXVII, XCVII.]

In the collection of songs here translated there will be found
examples which illustrate nearly every aspect of Kabîr's thought,
and all the fluctuations of the mystic's emotion: the ecstasy,
the despair, the still beatitude, the eager self-devotion, the
flashes of wide illumination, the moments of intimate love.  His
wide and deep vision of the universe, the "Eternal Sport" of
creation (LXXXII), the worlds being "told like beads" within the
Being of God (XIV, XVI, XVII, LXXVI), is here seen balanced by
his lovely and delicate sense of intimate communion with the
Divine Friend, Lover, Teacher of the soul (X, XI, XXIII, XXXV, LI,
LXXXV, LXXXVI, LXXXVIII, XCII, XCIII; above all, the beautiful
poem XXXIV).  As these apparently paradoxical views of Reality
are resolved in Brâhma, so all other opposites are reconciled in
Him: bondage and liberty, love and renunciation, pleasure and pain
(XVII, XXV, XL, LXXIX).  Union with Him is the one thing that
matters to the soul, its destiny and its need (LI, I, II, LIV, LXX,
LXXIV, XCIII, XCVI); and this union, this discovery of God, is the
simplest and most natural of all things, if we would but grasp it
(XLI, XLVI, LVI, LXXII, LXXVI, LXXVIII, XCVII).  The union, however,
is brought about by love, not by knowledge or ceremonial observances
(XXXVIII, LIV, LV, LIX, XCI); and the apprehension which that union
confers is ineffable--"neither This nor That," as Ruysbroeck has it
(IX, XLVI, LXXVI).  Real worship and communion is in Spirit and in
Truth (XL, XLI, LVI, LXIII, LXV, LXX), therefore idolatry is an
insult to the Divine Lover (XLII, LXIX) and the devices of
professional sanctity are useless apart from charity and purity
of soul (LIV, LXV, LXVI).  Since all things, and especially the
heart of man, are God-inhabited, God-possessed (XXVI, LVI, LXXVI,
LXXXIX, XCVII), He may best be found in the here-and-now: in the
normal.  human, bodily existence, the "mud" of material life (III,
IV, VI, XXI, XXXIX, XL, XLIII, XLVIII, LXXII).  "We can reach the
goal without crossing the road" (LXXVI)--not the cloister but the
home is the proper theatre of man's efforts: and if he cannot find
God there, he need not hope for success by going farther afield.
"In the home is reality."  There love and detachment, bondage and
freedom, joy and pain play by turns upon the soul; and it is from
their conflict that the Unstruck Music of the Infinite proceeds.
Kabîr says: "None but Brahma can evoke its melodies."

"This version of Kabîr's songs is chiefly the work of
Mr. Rabîndranâth Tagore, the trend of whose mystical genius makes
him--as all who read these poems will see--a peculiarly
sympathetic interpreter of Kabîr's vision and thought.  It has
been based upon the printed Hindî text with Bengali translation
of Mr. Kshiti Mohan Sen; who has gathered from many sources--
sometimes from books and manuscripts, sometimes from the lips of
wandering ascetics and minstrels--a large collection of poems
and hymns to which Kabîr's name is attached, and carefully
sifted the authentic songs from the many spurious works now
attributed to him.  These painstaking labours alone have made
the present undertaking possible.

We have also had before us a manuscript English translation of
116 songs made by Mr. Ajit Kumâr Chakravarty from Mr. Kshiti
Mohan Sen's text, and a prose essay upon Kabîr from the same
hand.  From these we have derived great assistance.  A
considerable number of readings from the translation have been
adopted by us; whilst several of the facts mentioned in the essay
have been incorporated into this introduction.  Our most grateful
thanks are due to Mr. Ajit Kumar Chakravarty for the extremely
generous and unselfish manner in which he has placed his work at
our disposal.

E.  U.

The reference of the headlines of the poems is to:

Sântiniketana; Kabîr by Srî Kshitimohan Sen, 4 parts,
Brahmacharyâsrama, Bolpur, 1910-1911.


For some assistance in normalizing the transliteration we are
indebted to Professor J. F. Blumhardt.

KABIR'S POEMS


I


I.  13.  <i>mo ko kahân dhûnro bande</i>

O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo!  I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I am neither in Kaaba nor
  in Kailash:
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and
  renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt
  meet Me in a moment of time.
Kabîr says, "O Sadhu!  God is the breath of all breath."

II


I. 16. <i>Santan jât na pûcho nirguniyân</i>

It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs;
For the priest, the warrior.  the tradesman, and all the
  thirty-six castes, alike are seeking for God.
It is but folly to ask what the caste of a saint may be;
The barber has sought God, the washerwoman, and the carpenter--
Even Raidas was a seeker after God.
The Rishi Swapacha was a tanner by caste.
Hindus and Moslems alike have achieved that End, where remains no
  mark of distinction.