Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 2.pdf/25

514 "The subject has a nose. The restored organ looks enough like a nose not to attract attention. It is symmetrical, regular, and its possessor is perfectly content. And it is suitable here to emphasize the profound psychological change undergone by the wounded man. At first somber, tociturntaciturn [sic], melancholymelancholic [sic], and discouraged, he has become, as his nose improved, gay, active, animated, and happy."—The Literary Digest.

PURBA had got his B. A. degree and was coming back home to his village. The river, which flowed past it, was a small one. It became dried up during the hot weather, but now in the July monsoon the heavy rains had swollen its current and it was full up to the brim.

The boat, which carried Apurba, reached the ghat whence the roof of his home could be seen through the dense foliage of the trees. Nobody knew that he was coming and therefore there was no one to receive him at the landing. The boatman offered to carry his bag, but Apurba picked it up himself, and took a leap from the boat. The bank was slippery, and he fell flat upon the muddy stair, bag and all.

As he did so, peal after peal of very sweet laughter rose in the sky, and startled the birds in the neighbouring trees. Apurba got up and tried to regain his composure as best as he could. When he sought for the source of his discomfiture, he found, sitting upon a heap of bricks lately unloaded from some cargo boat, a girl shaking her sides with laughter. Apurba recognised her as Mrinmayi, the daughter of their neighbour. This family had built their former house some distance away, but the river shifted its course cutting away into the land; and they had been obliged to change their quarter and settle down in the village only about two years ago.

Mrinmayi was the talk of all the village. The men called her 'madcap,' but the village matrons were in a state of perpetual anxiety because of her untractable wildness. All her games were with the boys of the place, and she had the utmost ontemptcontempt [sic] for the girls of her own age. The favourite child of her father, she had got into these unmanageable ways. Her mother would often complain to her friends of her husband's spoiling the child. But, because she was well aware that the father would be cut to the quick if he saw his daughter in tears, the mother had not the heart to punish the girl herself.

Mrinmayi's face was more like that of a boy than a girl. Her short crop of curly hair reached down to her shoulders, and her big dark eyes showed no sign of fear or shyness. When the boat, carrying the absentee landlord of the village, was moored at the landing stage, she did not share the feeling of awe which possessed the neighbourhood, but shook her curly mane and took up a naked child in her arms and was the first to come and take her observation of the habits of this strange creature.

Apurba had come in touch with this girl on former occasions, and he had got into the habit of thinking about her from time to time during his leisure, and even while at work. Naturally, therefore, this laughter, with which she greeted his arrival, did not please him, in spite of its musical quality. He gave up his bag to the boatman and almost ran away towards his house. The whole setting of things was romantic,—the river bank, the shade of the trees, the morning sunshine with birds' songs, and his youth of twenty years. The brick heaps hardly fitted in with the picture, but the girl who sat on the top of them made up for all deficiencies.

The widowed mother was beside herself with joy when her son returned unexpectedly. She at once sent her men to all parts