Page:Krishnakanta's Will (Chatterjee, Roy).pdf/14

Rh building most fearsomely, so that men and brickwork got mixed up, bodies inside walls and only head and shoulders sticking out!

It had altogether the look of a thoroughly devilish business and so I told my eldest brother. "You see," said I, "the kind of thing it is. We had better call upon God to help us!" But try as I might to anathematise them in the name of God, my heart felt like breaking and no words would come. Then I awoke.

A curious dream, was it not? Calcutta in the hands of Satan and growing diabolically, within the darkness of an unholy mist! There was also a touch of humour, that the Jesuit's school should have been the first to enjoy the devil's favours.

The schoolmasters of this place paid me a visit yesterday.

They stayed on and on, while for the life of me I could not find a word of conversation. I managed a question or so every five minutes, to which they offered the briefest replies; and then I sat vacantly, twirling my pen and scratching my head.

At last I ventured on a question about the crops, but being schoolmasters they knew nothing whatever about crops.

About their pupils I had already asked them everything I could think of, so I had to start over again: How many boys had they in the school? One said eighty, another said a hundred and seventy-five. I hoped that this might lead to an argument, but no, they made up their difference.

Why, after an hour and a half, they should have thought of taking their leave, I cannot tell. They might have done so with as good a reason an hour earlier, or for the matter of that, twelve hours later! It was clearly arrived at empirically, entirely without method. Translated by



Coming away Gobindalal walked to the office. Krishnakanta's office was on the ground-floor in the outer division of his house. It was a spacious room, the carpeted floor of which was covered with a clean sheet. In the office there were racks for holding account books and records, and there were boxes in which cash and documents and other important papers were kept.

At the usual time in the morning Krishnakanta was in his office. He was seated, as usual, on a bed, his back resting on a bolster, at a little distance from where his clerks were at their work, and smoking his curly pipe. Near by outside the office was standing Rohini. Her face was partially veiled, and her eyes were bent to the ground. Gobindalal was the pet of his uncle. He looked at Rohini; and she at him through her veil as if she wished to remind him of the kind promise he had made to her. "What's the matter, uncle?" he asked as he entered the office.

Krishnakanta detailed the matter, and concluded by saying that he was determined not to let her go unpunished. But while his uncle was speaking Gobindalal was not listening. He was in brown-study. Evidently he was thinking of Rohini, and the promise he had recently made to her on the landing stairs of the Baruni tank. So he said again, "What has she done, uncle?"

"Ah!" he thought to himself, "I wonder what has come over the boy. The girl, it seems, has cast a spell over him, and he has been thinking of her pretty face."

"Why," said he, "where has your mind