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Do you imagine, child, that I am capable of committing a girl-murder and a Brahmin-murder at my age? "Eventually the happy marriage was celebrated at the auspicious moment, and I felt relieved of a burdensome duty which I owed to myself. What happened afterwards you know best." "Couldn't you stop after having done us an irreparable injury?" burst out Hemanta after a short silence.
Kusum, as she heard this, embraced her husband's feet with all the ardour of a lifetime, covered them with kisses, and touching her forehead to them reverentially, withdrew herself. Hemanta rose, and walking to the door, said: "Father, I won't forsake my wife." "What!" roared out Harihar, "would you lose your caste, sir?" "I don't care for caste," was Hemanta's calm reply.
But Kusum sat motionless, looking out of the open window, with eyes immersed in the moonlit depth of never-ending space beyond. Her husband's caresses were lost on her. At last Hemanta clasped both the hands of his wife, and, shaking them gently, said: "Kusum, where are you? A patient search through a big telescope would reveal you only as a small speck-you seem to have receded so far away.
"Did I ever do you any harm?" demanded Hemanta in a broken voice. "Let me ask you one question," said Peari Sankar. "My daughter my only child-what harm had she done your father? You were very young then, and probably never heard. Listen, then. Now, don't you excite yourself. There is much humour in what I am going to relate.
O, do come closer to me, dear. See how beautiful the night is." "If you do," laughed Hemanta, "pray don't utter it. If any mantra of yours could bring three or four Saturdays during the week, and prolong the nights till 5 P.M. the next day, say it by all means." Saying this, he tried to draw his wife a little closer to him.
Returning from without, Hemanta asked his wife: "Is it true?" "It is," replied Kusum. "Why didn't you tell me long ago?" "I did try many a time, and I always failed. I am a wretched woman." "Then tell me everything now." Kusum gravely told her story in a firm unshaken voice. She waded barefooted through fire, as it were, with slow unflinching steps, and nobody knew how much she was scorched.
So feeble was its support! No sooner does the priesthood touch it than your "eternal" love crumbles into a handful of dust! Only a short while ago Hemanta had whispered to her: "What a beautiful night!"
"And you have preserved my caste, presented my ostracism from the community, and patted me on the back affectionately!" said Peari Sankar with a slight sarcastic smile. Hemanta wished that his Brahmin-fury could reduce Peari Sankar to ashes in a moment, but his rage burnt only himself. Peari Sankar sat before him unscathed, and in the best of health.
Here, another Brahmin's caste is imperilled, and this time it is my plain duty to prevent it. So I wrote to them saying that I was in a position to prove that you had taken the daughter of a sudra to wife." Controlling himself with a gigantic effort, Hemanta said: "What will become of this girl whom I shall abandon now? Would you give her food and shelter?"
The next morning Hemanta, fagged after a sleepless night, and looking like one distracted, called at the house of Peari Sankar Ghosal. "What news, my son?" Peari Sankar greeted him. Hemanta, flaring up like a big fire, said in a trembling voice: "You have defiled our caste. You have brought destruction upon us. And you will have to pay for it." He could say no more; he felt choked.
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