Page:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf/206

 ‘Modhu had written a letter to the chief steward to the effect that he had started to take his mistress to her father’s house. The steward was an ancient retainer of Bhusan’s father. He was furiously angry, and wrote a lengthy epistle, full of misspellings, to his master. Although the letter was weak in its grammar, yet it was forcible in its language, and clearly expressed the writer’s disapproval of giving too much indulgence to womankind. Bhusan on receiving it understood what was the motive of Mani’s secret departure. What hurt him most was the fact that, in spite of his having given way to the unwillingness of his wife to part with her jewels in this time of his desperate straits, his wife should still suspect him.

‘When he ought to have been angry, Bhusan was only distressed. Man is the rod of God’s justice, to him has been entrusted the thunderbolt of the divine wrath, and if at wrong done to himself or another it does not at once break out into fury, then it is a shame. God has so arranged it that man, for the most trifling reason, will burst forth in anger like a forest fire, and woman will burst into tears like a rain-cloud for no reason at all. But the cycle seems to have changed, and this appears no longer to hold good.