Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/87

 memories—places like Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's hall in, Balzac's Flemish house of mystery, Scott's "House of Lammermoor," Edgar Poe's "House of Usher," or Childe Roland's "Dark Tower"—we shall feel tempted, after reading the story of "The Hungry Stones," to add the Palace of Barich to their number.

Rabindranath Tagore indeed is a place-charmer in his tales. For him, houses have souls, old ruins may be powerful as witches in their sorcery, a river-stair can count the footfalls of ages, and a door can remember its dead.

This is only part of his tale-teller's equipment; for he is very tender to his human folk, especially to his women of sorrow and children, and, what is perhaps his favourite among them all, the child of nature—what the Bengali calls sometimes a "mad Chandi," a possessed one, with a certain tenderness as for a creature held by a spirit beyond the common. His page often tells of the unconscious creature that is very near the sources of nature, drinking her clear dew and becoming one with her in her play of life and death.

His stories, finally, if we can judge by the imperfect English versions we have, are written