Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/41

Rh two human beings are divided, after a long separation, they never re-unite at the same place, and to the same time; for the mind is a living thing, and moment by moment it develops and changes.

For Sosi, this new union stirred a new emotion in her. The numbness of age-long habit in their old conjugality was entirely removed by the longing born of separation, and she seemed to get her husband much more completely than before, and she vowed in her mind that whatever days might come and how long soever they might be, she would never allow the brightness of this glowing love to her husband to be dimmed.

At this new union, however, Joygopal felt differently. When before they were unremittingly together he had a bond of union with his wife through all his interests and idiosyncrasies, the wife was then a living truth in his life,—and there would, on a sudden, be a great rent in the web of his daily habit if she were left out. Consequently Joygopal found himself in deep waters at first when he went abroad. But in time this breach in habit was patched up by a new habit.

And this was not all. Formerly his days went by in the most indolent and careless fashion. Latterly, for two years, the stimulus of bettering his condition had stirred so powerfully in his breast that he had nothing else in his thoughts. As compared to the intensity of this new passion, his old life looked like an un-substantial shadow. The greatest changes in a woman's nature are wrought by love; in a man's, by ambition.

Joygopal when he returned after two years did not get back his wife quite the same as of old. To his wife's life his infant brother-in-law had added a new breadth. This part of her life was wholly unfamiliar to herhim [sic]—here he had no community with his wife. The wife tried hard to share this love for the child with him, but it cannot be said that she succeeded. Sosi would come with the child in her arms and hold him before her husband with a smiling face—Nilmani would clasp Sosi's neck for all he was worth and hide his face on her shoulder and admit no obligations of kindred. Sosi wished that her little brother might show Joygopal all the arts he had learnt to capture a man's mind. But Joygopal was not particularly keen about it, how would the child show any enthusiasm. Joygopal could not at all understand what there was in the heavy-pated, grave-faced, dusky child that so much love should be wasted on him.

Women quickly understand the ways of love. Sosi at once understood that Joygopal was not particularly attached to Nilmani. Henceforth she used to screen her brother with the greatest care—to keep him away from the unloving, repelling look of her husband. Thus the child came to be the treasure of her secret care, the object of her isolated love.

Joygopal was greatly annoyed when Nilmani cried, so Sosi would quickly press the child to her breast and, with her whole heart and soul, try to soothe him; specially, when Nilmani's cry happened to disturb Joygopal's sleep at night, and the latter would, with an expression of the most sinister hate, and in a tortured spirit, growl at the brat, Sosi felt humbled and fluttered like a guilty thing, and instantly taking up the child in her lap, she would retire to a distance, and in a voice of the most pleading love, and with such endearments as my gold, by treasure, by jewel, lull him to sleep.

Children will fall out for a hundred things. Formerly in such cases, Sosi would punish her children and side with her brother, for he was motherless. Now the law changed with the judge. Now Nilmani had often to bear heavy punishment without fault and without inquiry. This wrong went like daggers to Sosi's heart; so she would take her punished brother into her room, and with sweets and toys, and by caressing and kissing him, solace as much as she could, the child's stricken heart.

So it appeared that more Sosi loved Nilmani, the more was Joygopal annoyed with him. On the other hand, the more Joygopal showed his contempt for Nilmani, the more would Sosi bathe the child with the nectar of her love.

The fellow Joygopal would ever behave harshly to his wife, and Sosi would minister to her husband silently, meekly, and with loving kindness, only, inwardly, they hurt each other, moment by moment, about this Nilmani.