My heart rejoined: 'To-day Surabala is nobody to you. But what might
she not have been to you?'
Ah! that's true. _What_ might she not have been to me? Dearest to me
of all things, closer to me than the world besides, the sharer of all
my life's joys and sorrows,--she might have been. And now, she is so
distant, so much of a stranger, that to look on her is forbidden,
to talk with her is improper, and to think of her is a sin!--while
this Ram Lochan, coming suddenly from nowhere, has muttered a few set
religious texts, and in one swoop has carried off Surabala from the
rest of mankind!
I have not come to preach a new ethical code, or to revolutionise
society; I have no wish to tear asunder domestic ties. I am only
expressing the exact working of my mind, though it may not be
reasonable. I could not by any means banish from my mind the sense
that Surabala, reigning there within shelter of Ram Lochan's home,
was mine far more than his. The thought was, I admit, unreasonable
and improper,--but it was not unnatural.
Thereafter I could not set my mind to any kind of work. At noon when
the boys in my class hummed, when Nature outside simmered in the sun,
when the sweet scent of the _nim_ blossoms entered the room on the
tepid breeze, I then wished,--I know not what I wished for; but this
I can say, that I did not wish to pass all my life in correcting the
grammar exercises of those future hopes of India.
When school was over, I could not bear to live in my large lonely
house; and yet, if any one paid me a visit, it bored me. In the
gloaming as I sat by the tank and listened to the meaningless breeze
sighing through the betel- and cocoa-nut palms, I used to muse that
human society is a web of mistakes; nobody has the sense to do the
right thing at the right time, and when the chance is gone we break
our hearts over vain longings.
I could have married Surabala and lived happily. But I must be a
Garibaldi,--and I ended by becoming the second master of a village
school! And pleader Ram Lochan Ray, who had no special call to be
Surabala's husband,--to whom, before his marriage, Surabala was no
wise different from a hundred other maidens,--has very quietly married
her, and is earning lots of money as Government pleader; when his
dinner is badly cooked he scolds Surabala, and when he is in good
humour he gives her a bangle! He is sleek and fat, tidily dressed,
free from every kind of worry; _he_ never passes his evenings by the
tank gazing at the stars and sighing.
Ram Lochan was called away from our town for a few days by a big case
elsewhere. Surabala in her house was as lonely as I was in my school
building.
I remember it was a Monday. The sky was overcast with clouds from the
morning. It began to drizzle at ten o'clock. At the aspect of the
heavens our headmaster closed the school early. All day the black
detached clouds began to run about in the sky as if making ready for
some grand display. Next day, towards afternoon, the rain descended
in torrents, accompanied by storm. As the night advanced the fury of
wind and water increased. At first the wind was easterly; gradually
it veered, and blew towards the south and south-west.
It was idle to try to sleep on such a night. I remembered that in this
terrible weather Surabala was alone in her house. Our school was much
more strongly built than her bungalow. Often and often did I plan to
invite her to the school-house, while I meant to pass the night alone
by the tank. But I could not summon up courage for it.
When it was half-past one in the morning, the roar of the tidal wave
was suddenly heard,--the sea was rushing on us! I left my room and ran
towards Surabala's house. In the way stood one embankment of our tank,
and as I was wading to it the flood already reached my knees. When I
mounted the bank, a second wave broke on it. The highest part of the
bank was more than seventeen feet above the plain.
As I climbed up the bank, another person reached it from the opposite
side. Who she was, every fibre of my body knew at once, and my whole
soul was thrilled with the consciousness. I had no doubt that she, too,
had recognised me.
On an island some three yards in area stood we two; all else was
covered with water.
It was a time of cataclysm; the stars had been blotted out of the
sky; all the lights of the earth had been darkened; there would have
been no harm if we had held converse _then_. But we could not bring
ourselves to utter a word; neither of us made even a formal inquiry
after the other's health. Only we stood gazing at the darkness. At our
feet swirled the dense, black, wild, roaring torrent of death.
To-day Surabala has come to _my_ side, leaving the whole world. To-day
she has none besides _me_. In our far-off childhood this Surabala
had come from some dark primeval realm of mystery, from a life in
another orb, and stood by my side on this luminous peopled earth; and
to-day, after a wide span of time, she has left that earth, so full
of light and human beings, to stand alone by _my_ side amidst this
terrible desolate gloom of Nature's death-convulsion. The stream of
birth had flung that tender bud before me, and the flood of death had
wafted the same flower, now in full bloom, to _me_ and to none else.
One more wave and we shall be swept away from this extreme point of the
earth, torn from the stalks on which we now sit apart, and made one
in death.
May that wave never come! May Surabala live long and happily, girt
round by husband and children, household and kinsfolk! This one night,
standing on the brink of Nature's destruction, I have tasted eternal
bliss.
The night wore out, the tempest ceased, the flood abated; without a
word spoken, Surabala went back to her house, and I, too, returned to
my shed without having uttered a word.
I reflected: True, I have become no _Nazir_ or Head Clerk, nor a
Garibaldi; I am only the second master of a beggarly school. But one
night had for its brief space beamed upon my whole life's course.
That one night, out of all the days and nights of my allotted span,
has been the supreme glory of my humble existence.