We passed a few happy months together. My husband gained some reputation
in his profession as a doctor. And money came with it.
But there is a mischief in money. I cannot point to any one event; but,
because the blind have keener perceptions than other people, I could
discern the change which came over my husband along with the increase of
wealth.
He had a keen sense of justice when he was younger, and had often told
me of his great desire to help the poor when once he obtained a practice
of his own. He had a noble contempt far those in his profession who
would not feel the pulse of a poor patient before collecting his fee.
But now I noticed a difference. He had become strangely hard. Once when
a poor woman came, and begged him, out of charity, to save the life of
her only child, he bluntly refused. And when I implored him myself to
help her, he did his work perfunctorily.
While we were less rich my husband disliked sharp practice in money
matters. He was scrupulously honourable in such things. But since he
had got a large account at the bank he was often closeted for hours with
some scamp of a landlord's agent, for purposes which clearly boded no
good.
Where has he drifted? What has become of this husband of mine,--the
husband I knew before I was blind; the husband who kissed me that day
between my brows, and enshrined me on the throne of a Goddess? Those
whom a sudden gust of passion brings down to the dust can rise up again
with a new strong impulse of goodness. But those who, day by day, become
dried up in the very fibre of their moral being; those who by some outer
parasitic growth choke the inner life by slow degrees,--such wench one
day a deadness which knows no healing.
The separation caused by blindness is the merest physical trifle. But,
ah! it suffocates me to find that he is no longer with me, where he
stood with me in that hour when we both knew that I was blind. That is a
separation indeed!
I, with my love fresh and my faith unbroken, have kept to the shelter of
my heart's inner shrine. But my husband has left the cool shade of those
things that are ageless and unfading. He is fast disappearing into the
barren, waterless waste in his mad thirst for gold.
Sometimes the suspicion comes to me that things not so bad as they seem:
that perhaps I exaggerate because I am blind. It may be that, if my
eyesight were unimpaired, I should have accepted world as I found it.
This, at any rate, was the light in which my husband looked at all my
moods and fancies.
One day an old Musalman came to the house. He asked my husband to visit
his little grand-daughter. I could hear the old man say: "Baba, I am
a poor man; but come with me, and Allah will do you good." My husband
answered coldly: "What Allah will do won't help matters; I want to know
what you can do for me."
When I heard it, I wondered in my mind why God had not made me deaf as
well as blind. The old man heaved a deep sigh, and departed. I sent
my maid to fetch him to my room. I met him at the door of the inner
apartment, and put some money into his hand.
"Please take this from me," said I, "for your little grand-daughter, and
get a trustworthy doctor to look after her. And-pray for my husband."
But the whole of that day I could take no food at all. In the afternoon,
when my husband got up from sleep, he asked me: "Why do you look so
pale?"
I was about to say, as I used to do in the past: "Oh! It's nothing ";
but those days of deception were over, and I spoke to him plainly.
"I have been hesitating," I said, "for days together to tell you
something. It has been hard to think out what exactly it was I wanted to
say. Even now I may not be able to explain what I had in my mind. But I
am sure you know what has happened. Our lives have drifted apart."
My husband laughed in a forced manner, and said: "Change is the law of
nature."
I said to him: "I know that. But there are some things that are
eternal."
Then he became serious.
"There are many women," said he, "who have a real cause for sorrow.
There are some whose husbands do not earn money. There are others whose
husbands do not love them. But you are making yourself wretched about
nothing at all."
Then it became clear to me that my very blindness had conferred on me
the power of seeing a world which is beyond all change. Yes! It is true.
I am not like other women. And my husband will never understand me.