Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/256

388 dilated eyes said "The old trouble again to-night. Your medicine has had no effect."

I gave him a delicate hint that perhaps he had again been taking a rather liberal dose of wine.

He felt nettled and retorted—"There you are mistaken. It is not wine. You won't be able to guess at the real cause without hearing my whole story out."

I turned up the wick of the small kerosene lamp dimly burning in a recess in the wall. The flame brightened up a little and a large volume of smoke came out. Drawing the end of my dhotie round my body, I took my seat on a packing-box covered with a newspaper. Dakshiná Babu began his story:—

"A notable housewife of the type of my first wife—it is very difficult to find the like of her. But I was then a young man and 'a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love' and kindred sentiments; moreover I had given my days and nights to the study of poetry. Her unalloyed housewifery, therefore, was not quite up to my heart. I often remembered the couplet of Kálidás that "a wife is a housewife, a counsellor, a companion in private, a favourite disciple in the fine arts." But on my wife lectures on aesthetics produced no perceptible effect. She would laugh outright if I addressed words of love to her as my sweetheart in a spirit of gallantry. Choice phrases culled from noble poems and fond terms of endearment met with the same ignominious fate before her laughter, as Indra's elephant did before the current of the Ganges. She had a wonderful gift of laughing.

Four years ago, I had an attack of a serious disease. I had a malignant pustule on my upper lip and was in the very jaws of death. There was no hope of life. One day, the disease took such a bad turn, that the doctor gave up the case as hopeless. At this crisis a relative of mine brought a Sannyásee—from goodness knows where—who made me swallow a certain root pounded and mixed with ghee. I had a narrow escape for the nonce. It might be the effect of the drug or mere luck.

During my illness, my wife did not rest for a single moment. She—weak woman as she was—with the poor strength of a mortal creature fought incessantly and unweariedly with the hovering myrmidons of death. Asa mother covers the child at her breast with her protecting hands, she zealously guarded this my unworthy life with her whole love, heart, and care. She had no food and no sleep nor did she attend to anything else in this world. Death, then, like a baffled tiger balked of his prey released me from his claws but gave my wife a smart slap in the act of leaving me.

She was then enciente. Soon after she brought forth a still-born child. From that time forth, there were the beginnings of various complicated diseases to which she became a prey. Then I began to nurse her but she felt embarrassed at this. She would say "what are you at? What would people say? Please do not come to my room in such a fashion day and night."

If I would fan her in her fever, pretending that 1 was fanning myself, there would ensue a scene; if in the course of nursing her my usual dinner-time was delayed even by 10 minutes, that, too, would cause ceaseless requests, entreaties and complaints on her part. All went contrary if I attempted to tend her even in the slightest degree. She used to say that so much fuss did not look well in one of the sterner sex.

You have perhaps seen our house at Baranagore. There is a garden in front of the house and the Ganges flows past the garden. Right under our bedroom, towards the south my wife turned a plot into a small garden after her own heart, hedging it in with Mehdi. That spot in the garden was of the simplest pattern and of a thoroughly indigenous type. There was no predominance of colour over odour, nor of variegated leaves over flowers; nor were there any useless plants growing in small jars with their Latin names written on paper wrapped round sticks and waving high in the air like so many triumphal banners. The Belá, the Jessamine, the Gandharaj, the Rose, the Karavi, the Rajanigandha reigned there. There was also a big Bokul tree with its base paved with white marble.

On summer evenings, during intervals of household work, this was her favourite seat, whence she could have a view of the Ganges, but the office-clerks. passing by in the sailing boats could not see her.

After a long confinement to bed, on a moon-lit spring evening, she said that she felt stifled by lying indoors and that she