Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/53

292 circumstances and had his two meals of rice and fish every day. —So he had many enemies.

After much laying of their heads together, the parents came to a definite point. Banikantha went abroad for some days.

Returning at last, he said "Come, let us repair to Calcutta."

Preparations were forward for the journey. Like a misty morning, Subha's whole heart was enshrouded, as it were, in the mist of her tears. For some days, she, like a dumb animal, persistently followed her parents with a vague sense of some uncertain dread. With her large, wide eyes she looked to their face and tried to understand she knew not what; but they did not tell her aught by way of explanation.

Meanwhile, one afternoon while angling, Protap laughingly said "Hey, Su, has a bridegroom at last been found for you?—and you are going to be married! Look here, don't forget us!" After which he directed his attention towards his fishing-rod.

As a deer pierced to the heart looks towards the hunter and seems to say in silent speech "What had I done to you!" thus did Subha cast her glance at Protap. That day she sat no more under the tree. She came where Banikantha was pulling at his hookah in his bed-room, after his mid-day siesta, and sitting near his feet she began to weep with her eyes fixed upon him. At last while he tried to console her, tears began to steal down his withered cheeks.

The day after had been fixed for their trip to Calcutta. Subha went to the cow-shed to bid adieu to the companions of her childhood. She fed them with her own hands and with arms round their necks she looked at their faces with her eyes eloquent with all the words that she could pack into them—tears trickling down the eye-lashes.

It was the 12th night of the waxing moon. Subha came out of her bed-room and rolled on the grassy bed on the ever-familiar river-side, and clasping, as it were, the earth,—this mighty mute Mother of Mankind—with her two hands, she would fain tell her "Don't you let me go, mother. Clasp thou too with thy two hands and keep me back."

One day, in a hired house in Calcutta, Subha's mother dressed her in a superb style. She did her hair tightly with gold lace round her chiquonchignon [sic], covered her whole body with articles of jewellery and thus obliterated her natural beauty as much as she could. Tears flowed fast from Subha's eyes and her mother sharply reprimanded her fearing lest the swollen eyes would make her look ugly, but the tears brooked not these accents of reproof.

The bridegroom came in person with a friend of his to see the bride. The parents grew anxious, afraid and uneasy, as if some god had himself camecome [sic] down to choose the animal to be sacrificed at his altar. The mother doubly increased the girl's torrents of tears by her rebukes and reproaches administered from behind the scenes and sent her to the examiner.

After protracted scrutiny the examiner gave in his verdict "So, so."

Specially, from the girl's tears he came to infer that she possessed a heart; and he counted that the heart which now wept at the sad prospect of separation from her parents, might but tomorrow come to his own use. Her tears only increased her worth like the pearl in the oyster-shell and did not plead a word in her behalf.

After a consultation of the almanac the ceremony was performed on a very auspicious day.

The parents gave away their dumb daughter to a stranger and returned home—thus their caste was preserved and the life after ensured.

The bridegroom served in the N. W. P. and very soon after the wedding he took his wife there.

Within a week or so, all came to see that the new bride was dumb. None understood that she was not to blame for it. She had not deceived any one. Her big pair of eyes had told everything but none could understand it. She looked in all directions but could find no language. She did not see the faces familiar to her from her birth, that understood the mute's language;—a never-ceasing incommunicable cry of