Part 4 (1/2)
As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babble on, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a true contrast that _men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever_.
Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on, just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea of death;--two dark mysteries at either end, and between them various play and work and chatter unceasing.
Over there the cultivators sing in the fields: here the fis.h.i.+ng-boats float by. The day wears on and the heat of the sun increases. Some bathers are still in the river, others are finished and are taking home their filled water-vessels. Thus, past both banks of the river, hundreds of years have hummed their way, while the refrain rises in a mournful chorus: _I go on for ever!_
Amid the noonday silence some youthful cowherd is heard calling at the top of his voice for his companion; some boat splashes its way homewards; the ripples lap against the empty jar which some village woman rests on the water before dipping it; and with these mingle several other less definite sounds,--the twittering of birds, the humming of bees, the plaintive creaking of the house-boat as it gently swings to and fro,--the whole making a tender lullaby, as of a mother trying to quiet a suffering child.
”Fret not,” she sings, as she soothingly pats its fevered forehead. ”Worry not; weep no more. Let be your strugglings and grabbings and fightings; forget a while, sleep a while.”
SHELIDAH,
3_rd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.
It was the _Kojagar_ full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?
But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from away over there, where the farthest sh.o.r.e of the distant main stream is seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this sh.o.r.e, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat in sight; not a tree, nor blade of gra.s.s on the fresh-formed island sand-bank.
It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,--all the kings and the princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished, leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite sh.o.r.e--the sh.o.r.e of life--where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold sway, and tea and cigarettes.
SHELIDAH,
9_th January_ 1892.
For some days the weather here has been wavering between Winter and Spring. In the morning, perhaps, s.h.i.+vers will run over both land and water at the touch of the north wind; while the evening will thrill with the south breeze coming through the moonlight.
There is no doubt that Spring is well on its way. After a long interval the _papiya_ once more calls out from the groves on the opposite bank. The hearts of men too are stirred; and after evening falls, sounds of singing are heard in the village, showing that they are no longer in such a hurry to close doors and windows and cover themselves up snugly for the night.
To-night the moon is at its full, and its large, round face peers at me through the open window on my left, as if trying to make out whether I have anything to say against it in my letter,--it suspects, maybe, that we mortals concern ourselves more with its stains than its beams.
A bird is plaintively crying tee-tee on the sand-bank. The river seems not to move. There are no boats. The motionless groves on the bank cast an unquivering shadow on the waters. The haze over the sky makes the moon look like a sleepy eye kept open.
Henceforward the evenings will grow darker and darker; and when, to-morrow, I come over from the office, this moon, the favourite companion of my exile, will already have drifted a little farther from me, doubting whether she had been wise to lay her heart so completely bare last evening, and so covering it up again little by little.
Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. I have been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after the moon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more; feeling further and further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaits my return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have to come back through darkness.
Anyhow I put it on record that to-day is the full moon--the first full moon of this year's springtime. In years to come I may perchance be reminded of this night, with the tee-tee of the bird on the bank, the glimmer of the distant light on the boat off the other sh.o.r.e, the s.h.i.+ning expanse of river, the blur of shade thrown by the dark fringe of trees along its edge, and the white sky gleaming overhead in unconcerned aloofness.
SHELIDAH,
7_th April_ 1892.