If you wish to hear of days gone by, sit on this step of mine, and lend
your ears to the murmur of the rippling water.
The month of _Ashwin_ (September) was about to begin. The river was in
full flood. Only four of my steps peeped above the surface. The water
had crept up to the low-lying parts of the bank, where the _kachu_
plant grew dense beneath the branches of the mango grove. At that
bend of the river, three old brick-heaps towered above the water around
them. The fishing-boats, moored to the trunks of the _bâbla_ trees on
the bank, rocked on the heaving flow-tide at dawn. The path of tall
grasses on the sandbank had caught the newly risen sun; they had just
begun to flower, and were not yet in full bloom.
The little boats puffed out their tiny sails on the sunlit river. The
Brahmin priest had come to bathe with his ritual vessels. The women
arrived in twos and threes to draw water. I knew this was the time of
Kusum's coming to the bathing-stairs.
But that morning I missed her. Bhuban and Swarno mourned at the
_ghât_.[41] They said that their friend had been led away to her
husband's house, which was a place far away from the river, with
strange people, strange houses, and strange roads.
[41] Bathing-place.
In time she almost faded out of my mind. A year passed. The women at
the _ghât_ now rarely talked of Kusum. But one evening I was startled
by the touch of the long familiar feet. Ah, yes, but those feet were
now without anklets, they had lost their old music.
Kusum had become a widow. They said that her husband had worked in
some far-off place, and that she had met him only once or twice. A
letter brought her the news of his death. A widow at eight years old,
she had rubbed out the wife's red mark from her forehead, stripped
off her bangles, and come back to her old home by the Ganges. But she
found few of her old playmates there. Of them, Bhuban, Swarno, and
Amala were married, and gone away; only Sarat remained, and she too,
they said, would be wed in December next.
As the Ganges rapidly grows to fulness with the coming of the rains,
even so did Kusum day by day grow to the fulness of beauty and youth.
But her dull-coloured robe, her pensive face, and quiet manners drew
a veil over her youth, and hid it from men's eyes as in a mist. Ten
years slipped away, and none seemed to have noticed that Kusum had
grown up.
One morning such as this, at the end of a far-off September, a tall,
young, fair-skinned Sanyasi, coming I know not whence, took shelter
in the Shiva temple, in front of me. His arrival was noised abroad in
the village. The women left their pitchers behind, and crowded into
the temple to bow to the holy man.
The crowd increased day by day. The Sanyasi's fame rapidly spread among
the womenkind. One day he would recite the _Bhágbat_, another day he
would expound the _Gita_, or hold forth upon a holy book in the temple.
Some sought him for counsel, some for spells, some for medicines.
So months passed away. In April, at the time of the solar eclipse,
vast crowds came here to bathe in the Ganges. A fair was held under
the _bâbla_ tree. Many of the pilgrims went to visit the Sanyasi, and
among them were a party of women from the village where Kusum had been
married.
It was morning. The Sanyasi was counting his beads on my steps, when
all of a sudden one of the women pilgrims nudged another, and said:
'Why! He is our Kusum's husband!' Another parted her veil a little
in the middle with two fingers and cried out: 'Oh dear me! So it is!
He is the younger son of the Chattergu family of our village!' Said a
third, who made little parade of her veil: 'Ah! he has got exactly
the same brow, nose, and eyes!' Yet another woman, without turning
to the Sanyasi, stirred the water with her pitcher, and sighed:
'Alas! That young man is no more; he will not come back. Bad luck
to Kusum!'
But, objected one, 'He had not such a big beard'; and another,
'He was not so thin'; or 'He was most probably not so tall.' That
settled the question for the time, and the matter spread no further.
One evening, as the full moon arose, Kusum came and sat upon my last
step above the water, and cast her shadow upon me.
There was no other at the _ghât_ just then. The crickets were
chirping about me. The din of brass gongs and bells had ceased in
the temple--the last wave of sound grew fainter and fainter, until it
merged like the shade of a sound in the dim groves of the farther
bank. On the dark water of the Ganges lay a line of glistening
moonlight. On the bank above, in bush and hedge, under the porch of
the temple, in the base of ruined houses, by the side of the tank,
in the palm grove, gathered shadows of fantastic shape. The bats
swung from the _chhatim_ boughs. Near the houses the loud clamour
of the jackals rose and sank into silence.
Slowly the Sanyasi came out of the temple. Descending a few steps of
the _ghât_ he saw a woman sitting alone, and was about to go back,
when suddenly Kusum raised her head, and looked behind her. The veil
slipped away from her. The moonlight fell upon her face, as she looked
up.
The owl flew away hooting over their heads. Starting at the sound,
Kusum came to herself and put the veil back on her head. Then she bowed
low at the Sanyasi's feet.