On returning home I asked my master to come over. He shook his
head gravely. "I see no good in this," said he--"this setting
aside of conscience and putting the country in its place. All
the sins of the country will now break out, hideous and
unashamed."
"Who do you think could have ..."
"Don't ask me. But sin is rampant. Send them all away, right
away from here."
"I have given them one more day. They will be leaving the day
after tomorrow."
"And another thing. Take Bimala away to Calcutta. She is
getting too narrow a view of the outside world from here, she
cannot see men and things in their true proportions. Let her see
the world--men and their work--give her abroad vision."
"That is exactly what I was thinking."
"Well, don't make any delay about it. I tell you, Nikhil, man's
history has to be built by the united effort of all the races in
the world, and therefore this selling of conscience for political
reasons--this making a fetish of one's country, won't do. I know
that Europe does not at heart admit this, but there she has not
the right to pose as our teacher. Men who die for the truth
become immortal: and, if a whole people can die for the truth, it
will also achieve immortality in the history of humanity. Here,
in this land of India, amid the mocking laughter of Satan
piercing the sky, may the feeling for this truth become real!
What a terrible epidemic of sin has been brought into our country
from foreign lands..."
The whole day passed in the turmoil of investigation. I was
tired out when I retired for the night. I left over sending my
sister-in-law's money to the treasury till next morning.
I woke up from my sleep at dead of night. The room was dark. I
thought I heard a moaning somewhere. Somebody must have been
crying. Sounds of sobbing came heavy with tears like fitful
gusts of wind in the rainy night. It seemed to me that the cry
rose from the heart of my room itself. I was alone. For some
days Bimala had her bed in another room adjoining mine. I rose
up and when I went out I found her in the balcony lying prone
upon her face on the bare floor.
This is something that cannot be written in words. He only knows
it who sits in the bosom of the world and receives all its pangs
in His own heart. The sky is dumb, the stars are mute, the night
is still, and in the midst of it all that one sleepless cry!
We give these sufferings names, bad or good, according to the
classifications of the books, but this agony which is welling up
from a torn heart, pouring into the fathomless dark, has it any
name? When in that midnight, standing under the silent stars, I
looked upon that figure, my mind was struck with awe, and I said
to myself: "Who am Ito judge her?" O life, O death, O God of the
infinite existence, I bow my head in silence to the mystery which
is in you.
Once I thought I should turn back. But I could not. I sat down
on the ground near Bimala and placed my hand on her head. At the
first touch her whole body seemed to stiffen, but the next moment
the hardness gave way, and the tears burst out. I gently passed
my fingers over her forehead. Suddenly her hands groping for my
feet grasped them and drew them to herself, pressing them against
her breast with such force that I thought her heart would break.