The Home and the World eBook

It was still early when I got word that Sandip was awaiting me.  Today I had no thought of adornment.  Wrapped as I was in my shawl, I went off to the outer apartments.  As I entered the sitting-room I saw Sandip and Amulya there, together.  All my dignity, all my honour, seemed to run tingling through my body from head to foot and vanish into the ground.  I should have to lay bare a woman’s uttermost shame in sight of this boy!  Could they have been discussing my deed in their meeting place?  Had any vestige of a veil of decency been left for me?

We women shall never understand men.  When they are bent on making a road for some achievement, they think nothing of breaking the heart of the world into pieces to pave it for the progress of their chariot.  When they are mad with the intoxication of creating, they rejoice in destroying the creation of the Creator.  This heart-breaking shame of mine will not attract even a glance from their eyes.  They have no feeling for life itself—­all their eagerness is for their object.  What am I to them but a meadow flower in the path of a torrent in flood?

What good will this extinction of me be to Sandip?  Only five thousand rupees?  Was not I good for something more than only five thousand rupees?  Yes, indeed!  Did I not learn that from Sandip himself, and was I not able in the light of this knowledge to despise all else in my world?  I was the giver of light, of life, of __Shakti__, of immortality—­in that belief, in that joy, I had burst all my bounds and come into the open.  Had anyone then fulfilled for me that joy, I should have lived in my death.  I should have lost nothing in the loss of my all.  Do they want to tell me now that all this was false?  The psalm of my praise which was sung so devotedly, did it bring me down from my heaven, not to make heaven of earth, but only to level heaven itself with the dust?

XVI

“The money, Queen?” said Sandip with his keen glance full on my face.

Amulya also fixed his gaze on me.  Though not my own mother’s child, yet the dear lad is brother to me; for mother is mother all the world over.  With his guileless face, his gentle eyes, his innocent youth, he looked at me.  And I, a woman—­of his mother’s sex—­how could I hand him poison, just because he asked for it?

“The money, Queen!” Sandip’s insolent demand rang in my ears.  For very shame and vexation I felt I wanted to fling that gold at Sandip’s head.  I could hardly undo the knot of my __sari__, my fingers trembled so.  At last the paper rolls dropped on the table.

Sandip’s face grew black ...  He must have thought that the rolls were of silver ...  What contempt was in his looks.  What utter disgust at incapacity.  It was almost as if he could have struck me!  He must have suspected that I had come to parley with him, to offer to compound his claim for five thousand rupees with a few hundreds.  There was a moment when I thought he would snatch up the rolls and throw them out of the window, declaring that he was no beggar, but a king claiming tribute.