Part 2 (1/2)

He kept silent.

I talked to him wildly, and he went away sad at heart.

After a fit of weeping, I felt in a more reasonable mood when we met at night. ”I cannot,” my husband said, ”look upon Miss Gilby through a mist of abstraction, just because she is English.

Cannot you get over the barrier of her name after such a long acquaintance? Cannot you realize that she loves you?”

I felt a little ashamed and replied with some sharpness: ”Let her remain. I am not over anxious to send her away.” And Miss Gilby remained.

But one day I was told that she had been insulted by a young fellow on her way to church. This was a boy whom we were supporting. My husband turned him out of the house. There was not a single soul, that day, who could forgive my husband for that act--not even I. This time Miss Gilby left of her own accord. She shed tears when she came to say good-bye, but my mood would not melt. To slander the poor boy so--and such a fine boy, too, who would forget his daily bath and food in his enthusiasm for __Swades.h.i.+__.

My husband escorted Miss Gilby to the railway station in his own carriage. I was sure he was going too far. When exaggerated accounts of the incident gave rise to a public scandal, which found its way to the newspapers, I felt he had been rightly served.

I had often become anxious at my husband's doings, but had never before been ashamed; yet now I had to blush for him! I did not know exactly, nor did I care, what wrong poor Noren might, or might not, have done to Miss Gilby, but the idea of sitting in judgement on such a matter at such a time! I should have refused to damp the spirit which prompted young Noren to defy the Englishwoman. I could not but look upon it as a sign of cowardice in my husband, that he should fail to understand this simple thing. And so I blushed for him.

And yet it was not that my husband refused to support __Swades.h.i.+__, or was in any way against the Cause. Only he had not been able whole-heartedly to accept the spirit of __Bande Mataram__. [10]

”I am willing,” he said, ”to serve my country; but my wors.h.i.+p I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To wors.h.i.+p my country as a G.o.d is to bring a curse upon it.”

8. The Nationalist movement, which began more as an economic than a political one, having as its main object the encouragement of indigenous industries [Trans.].

9. ”Babu” is a term of respect, like ”Father” or ”Mister,” but has also meant in colonial days a person who understands some English. [on-line ed.]

10. Lit.: ”Hail Mother”; the opening words of a song by Bankim Chatterjee, the famous Bengali novelist. The song has now become the national anthem, and __Bande Mataram__ the national cry, since the days of the __Swades.h.i.+__ movement [Trans.].

Chapter Two

Bimala's Story

IV

THIS was the time when Sandip Babu with his followers came to our neighbourhood to preach __Swades.h.i.+__.

There is to be a big meeting in our temple pavilion. We women are sitting there, on one side, behind a screen. Triumphant shouts of __Bande Mataram__ come nearer: and to them I am thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted youths in turbans, clad in ascetic ochre, rushes into the quadrangle, like a silt-reddened freshet into a dry river-bed at the first burst of the rains. The whole place is filled with an immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in a big chair hoisted on the shoulders of ten or twelve of the youths.

__Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram__! It seems as though the skies would be rent and scattered into a thousand fragments.

I had seen Sandip Babu's photograph before. There was something in his features which I did not quite like. Not that he was bad- looking--far from it: he had a splendidly handsome face. Yet, I know not why, it seemed to me, in spite of all its brilliance, that too much of base alloy had gone into its making. The light in his eyes somehow did not s.h.i.+ne true. That was why I did not like it when my husband unquestioningly gave in to all his demands. I could bear the waste of money; but it vexed me to think that he was imposing on my husband, taking advantage of friends.h.i.+p. His bearing was not that of an ascetic, nor even of a person of moderate means, but foppish all over. Love of comfort seemed to ... any number of such reflections come back to me today, but let them be.

When, however, Sandip Babu began to speak that afternoon, and the hearts of the crowd swayed and surged to his words, as though they would break all bounds, I saw him wonderfully transformed.

Especially when his features were suddenly lit up by a shaft of light from the slowly setting sun, as it sunk below the roof-line of the pavilion, he seemed to me to be marked out by the G.o.ds as their messenger to mortal men and women.

From beginning to end of his speech, each one of his utterances was a stormy outburst. There was no limit to the confidence of his a.s.surance. I do not know how it happened, but I found I had impatiently pushed away the screen from before me and had fixed my gaze upon him. Yet there was none in that crowd who paid any heed to my doings. Only once, I noticed, his eyes, like stars in fateful Orion, flashed full on my face.

I was utterly unconscious of myself. I was no longer the lady of the Rajah's house, but the sole representative of Bengal's womanhood. And he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had shed its light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a woman's benediction ...

It seemed clear to me that, since he had caught sight of me, the fire in his words had flamed up more fiercely. Indra's [11]

steed refused to be reined in, and there came the roar of thunder and the flash of lightning. I said within myself that his language had caught fire from my eyes; for we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself.