Gouri was the beautiful, delicately nurtured child of an old and
wealthy family. Her husband, Paresh, had recently by his own efforts
improved his straitened circumstances. So long as he was poor, Gouri's
parents had kept their daughter at home, unwilling to surrender her
to privation; so she was no longer young when at last she went to her
husband's house. And Paresh never felt quite that she belonged to
him. He was an advocate in a small western town, and had no close
kinsman with him. All his thought was about his wife, so much so that
sometimes he would come home before the rising of the Court. At
first Gouri was at a loss to understand why he came back suddenly.
Sometimes, too, he would dismiss one of the servants without reason;
none of them ever suited him long. Especially if Gouri desired to
keep any particular servant because he was useful, that man was
sure to be got rid of forthwith. The high-spirited Gouri greatly
resented this, but her resentment only made her husband's behaviour
still stranger.
At last when Paresh, unable to contain himself any longer, began in
secret to cross-question the maid about her, the whole thing reached
his wife's ears. She was a woman of few words; but her pride raged
within like a wounded lioness at these insults, and this mad suspicion
swept like a destroyer's sword between them. Paresh, as soon as he saw
that his wife understood his motive, felt no more delicacy about
taxing Gouri to her face; and the more his wife treated it with silent
contempt, the more did the fire of his jealousy consume him.
Deprived of wedded happiness, the childless Gouri betook herself to the
consolations of religion. She sent for Paramananda Swami, the young
preacher of the Prayer-House hard by, and, formally acknowledging him
as her spiritual preceptor, asked him to expound the _Gita_ to her. All
the wasted love and affection of her woman's heart was poured out in
reverence at the feet of her Guru.
No one had any doubts about the purity of Paramananda's character.
All worshipped him. And because Paresh did not dare to hint at any
suspicion against him, his jealousy ate its way into his heart like a
hidden cancer.
One day some trifling circumstance made the poison overflow. Paresh
reviled Paramananda to his wife as a hypocrite, and said: 'Can you
swear that you are not in love with this crane that plays the ascetic?'
Gouri sprang up like a snake that has been trodden on, and, maddened
by his suspicion, said with bitter irony: 'And what if I am?' At
this Paresh forthwith went off to the Court-house, and locked the door
on her.
In a white heat of passion at this last outrage, Gouri got the door
open somehow, and left the house.
Paramananda was poring over the scriptures in his lonely room in
the silence of noon. All at once, like a flash of lightning out of a
cloudless sky, Gouri broke in upon his reading.
'You here?' questioned her Guru in surprise.
'Rescue me, O my lord Guru,' said she, 'from the insults of my home
life, and allow me to dedicate myself to the service of your feet.'
With a stern rebuke, Paramananda sent Gouri back home. But I wonder
whether he ever again took up the snapped thread of his reading.
Paresh, finding the door open, on his return home, asked: 'Who has
been here?'
'No one!' his wife replied. '_I_ have been to the house of my Guru.'
'Why?' asked Paresh, pale and red by turns.
'Because I wanted to.'
From that day Paresh had a guard kept over the house, and behaved so
absurdly that the tale of his jealousy was told all over the town.
The news of the shameful insults that were daily heaped on his disciple
disturbed the religious meditations of Paramananda. He felt he ought to
leave the place at once; at the same time he could not make up his
mind to forsake the tortured woman. Who can say how the poor ascetic
got through those terrible days and nights?
At last one day the imprisoned Gouri got a letter. 'My child,' it
ran, 'it is true that many holy women have left the world to devote
themselves to God. Should it happen that the trials of this world are
driving your thoughts away from God, I will with God's help rescue his
handmaid for the holy service of his feet. If you desire, you may meet
me by the tank in your garden at two o'clock to-morrow afternoon.'
Gouri hid the letter in the loops of her hair. At noon next day when
she was undoing her hair before her bath she found that the letter
was not there. Could it have fallen on to the bed and got into her
husband's hands, she wondered. At first, she felt a kind of fierce
pleasure in thinking that it would enrage him; and then she could not
bear to think that this letter, worn as a halo of deliverance on her
head, might be defiled by the touch of insolent hands.
With swift steps she hurried to her husband's room. He lay groaning on
the floor, with eyes rolled back and foaming mouth. She detached the
letter from his clenched fist, and sent quickly for a doctor.
The doctor said it was a case of apoplexy. The patient had died before
his arrival.
That very day, as it happened, Paresh had an important appointment away
from home. Paramananda had found this out, and accordingly had made
his appointment with Gouri. To such a depth had he fallen!
When the widowed Gouri caught sight from the window of her Guru
stealing like a thief to the side of the pool, she lowered her eyes
as at a lightning flash. And in that flash she saw clearly what a fall
his had been.