Stories from Tagore
only made Adharlal all the more furious.
"What's all this?" he shouted, "I'll call for the police! My son has not
yet come of age,--and _you_ have smuggled him out of the country! I'll
bet my soul you've lent him a few hundred rupees, and then taken a note
of hand for three thousand! But I am not going to be bound by _this_!"
"I never advanced him any money at all," said Haralal.
"Then how did he find it?" said Adharlal, "Do you mean to tell me he
broke open your safe and stole it?"
Haralal stood silent.
Ratikanta sarcastically remarked: "I don't believe this fellow ever set
hands on as much as three thousand rupees in his life."
When Haralal left the house he seemed to have lost the power of dreading
anything, or even of being anxious. His mind seemed to refuse to work.
Directly he entered the lane he saw a carriage waiting before his own
lodging. For a moment he felt certain that it was Venu's. It was
impossible to believe that his calamity could be so hopelessly final.
Haralal went up quickly, but found an English assistant from the firm
sitting inside the carriage. The man came out when he saw Haralal and
took him by the hand and asked him: "Why didn't you go out by train this
morning?" The servant had told the Manager his suspicions and he had
sent this man to find out.
Haralal answered: "Notes to the amount of three thousand rupees are
missing."
The man asked how that could have happened.
Haralal remained silent.
The man said to Haralal: "Let us go upstairs together and see where you
keep your money." They went up to the room and counted the money and
made a thorough search of the house.
When the mother saw this she could not contain herself any longer. She
came out before the stranger and said: "Baba, what has happened?" He
answered in broken Hindustani that some money had been stolen.
"Stolen!" the mother cried, "Why! How could it be stolen? Who could do
such a dastardly thing?" Haralal said to her: "Mother, don't say a
word."
The man collected the remainder of the money and told Haralal to come
with him to the Manager. The mother barred the way and said:
"Sir, where are you taking my son? I have brought him up, starving and
straining to do honest work. My son would never touch money belonging to
others."
The Englishman, not knowing Bengali, said, "Achcha! Achcha!" Haralal
told his mother not to be anxious; he would explain it all to the
Manager and soon be back again. The mother entreated him, with a
distressed voice,
"Baba, you haven't taken a morsel of food all morning." Haralal stepped
into the carriage and drove away, and the mother sank to the ground in
the anguish of her heart.
The Manager said to Haralal: "Tell me the truth. What did happen?"
Haralal said to him, "I haven't taken any money."
"I fully believe it," said the Manager, "but surely you know who has
taken it."
Haralal looked on the ground and remained silent.
"Somebody," said the Manager, "must have taken it away with your
connivance."
"Nobody," replied Haralal, "could take it away with my knowledge without
taking first my life."
"Look here, Haralal," said the Manager, "I trusted you completely. I
took no security. I employed you in a post of great responsibility.
Every one in the office was against me for doing so. The three thousand
rupees is a small matter, but the shame of all this to me is a great
matter. I will do one thing. I will give you the whole day to bring back
this money. If you do so, I shall say nothing about it and I will keep
you on in your post."
It was now eleven o'clock. Haralal with bent head went out of the
office. The clerks began to discuss the affair with exultation.
"What can I _do_? What can I _do_?" Haralal repeated to himself, as he
walked along like one dazed, the sun's heat pouring down upon him. At
last his mind ceased to think at all about what could be done, but the
mechanical walk went on without ceasing.
This city of Calcutta, which offered its shelter to thousands and
thousands of men had become like a steel trap. He could see no way out.
The whole body of people were conspiring to surround and hold him
captive--this most insignificant of men, whom no one knew. Nobody had
any special grudge against him, yet everybody was his enemy. The crowd
passed by, brushing against him: the clerks of the offices were eating
their lunch on the road side from their plates made of leaves: a tired
wayfarer on the Maidan, under the shade of a tree, was lying with one
hand beneath his head and one leg upraised over the other: The
up-country women, crowded into hackney carriages, were wending their way
to the temple: a chuprassie came up with a letter and asked him the
address on the envelope,--so the afternoon went by.
Then came the time when the offices were all about to close. Carriages
started off in all directions, carrying people back to their homes. The
clerks, packed tightly on the seats of the trams, looked at the theatre
advertisements as they returned to their lodgings. From to-day, Haralal
had neither his work in the office, nor release from work in the
evening. He had no need to hurry to catch the tram to take him to his
home. All the busy occupations of the city--the buildings--the horses
and carriages--the incessant traffic--seemed, now at one time, to swell
into dreadful reality, and at another time, to subside into the shadowy
unreal.
Haralal had taken neither food, nor rest, nor shelter all that day.
The street lamps were lighted from one road to another and it seemed to
him that a watchful darkness, like some demon, was keeping its eyes wide
open to guard every movement of its victim. Haralal did not even have
the energy to enquire how late it was. The veins on his forehead
throbbed, and he felt as if his head would burst. Through the paroxysms
of pain, which alternated with the apathy of dejection, only one thought
came again and again to his mind; among the innumerable multitudes in
that vast city, only one name found its way through his dry
throat,--"Mother!"
He said to himself, "At the deep of night, when no one is awake to
capture me--me, who am the least of all men,--I will silently creep to
my mother's arms and fall asleep, and may I never wake again!"
Haralal's one trouble was lest some police officer should molest him in
the presence of his mother, and this kept him back from going home. When
it became impossible for him at last to bear the weight of his own body,
he hailed a carriage. The driver asked him where he wanted to go. He
said: "Nowhere, I want to drive across the Maidan to get the fresh air."
The man at first did not believe him and was about to drive on, when
Haralal put a rupee into his hand as an advance payment. Thereupon the
driver crossed, and then re-crossed, the Maidan from one side to the
other, traversing the different roads.
Haralal laid his throbbing head on the side of the open window of the
carriage and closed his eyes. Slowly all the pain abated. His body
became cool. A deep and intense peace filled his heart and a supreme
deliverance seemed to embrace him on every side. It was _not_ true,--the
day's despair which threatened him with its grip of utter helplessness.
It was _not_ true, it was false. He knew now that it was only an empty
fear of the mind. Deliverance was in the infinite sky and there was no
end to peace. No king or emperor in the world had the power to keep
captive this nonentity, this Haralal. In the sky, surrounding his
emancipated heart on every side, he felt the presence of his mother,
that one poor woman. She seemed to grow and grow till she filled the
infinity of darkness. All the roads and buildings and shops of Calcutta
gradually became enveloped by her. In her presence vanished all the
aching pains and thoughts and consciousness of Haralal. It burst,--that
bubble filled with the hot vapour of pain. And now there was neither
darkness nor light, but only one tense fulness.
The Cathedral clock struck one. The driver called out impatiently:
"Babu, my horse can't go on any longer. Where do you want to go?"
There came no answer.
The driver came down and shook Haralal and asked him again where he
wanted to go.
There came no answer.
And the answer was never received from Haralal, where he wanted to go.
WORDS TO BE STUDIED
=broker.= This word meant originally a "broacher," one who broached
or made a hole in casks of wine to test their value for sale.
Then it came to mean a middleman in a sale.
=attorney.= This word comes from the Old French "tourner" meaning to
turn. The original sense of the word is "one who turns or
transfers (property)," and thus it comes to mean one who is
appointed to do legal business in the name of another. Compare the
phrase "_power of attorney_."
=mortgage.= This comes from the two words "mort-" meaning "death" and
"gage" meaning "pledge,"--a death pledge. It is used for the
transfer of property as a pledge or guarantee that the debt will
be paid. Compare _mortuary_, _mortal_, _mortify_, _mortmain_; also
compare _engage_, _disengage_, _wage_, _wager_.
=repulsed.= From the Latin "puls-" meaning "to drive." This Latin root
has another form "pel," also meaning "to drive." We have thus two
series of words:--
_repel_, _impel_, _compel_, _expel_, _dispel_, and
_repulse_, _impulse_ (noun), _compulsion_, _expulsion_.
=amiability.= This word comes from the Latin "amicus" friend and is
the same in origin as "amicability." Compare _amicable_ and
_amiable_.
=salary.= This originally meant "_salt_-money" from the Latin "sal"
meaning "salt." First, it meant the "salt-money" given to
soldiers, then it meant a fixed pay. Compare the use of _namak_ in
India,--_namak khAenAe_,--which is somewhat similar.
=liliputian.= This word has come into the English language from a
famous story book called "Gulliver's Travels." "Liliput" was a
place where tiny people lived and "Brobdingnag" was a place where
giants lived. These two words are therefore sometimes used, in an
amusing manner, to represent respectively the land of dwarfs and
the land of giants.
=B.A. degree.= These titles were originally used in the old medieval
universities of Europe. The word "bachelor" was taken from its use
in chivalry, where it meant a young knight not yet fully qualified
or equipped. Then came the "Master," or fully qualified person. A
secondary meaning of bachelor, which is now the most common, is
"an unmarried person,"--a man not being considered fully qualified
or equipped till he is married.
=romance.= This word has a very interesting history. The Latin
language was the literary language of the South of Europe for many
centuries and the vernacular languages were despised. The word for
"vernacular" was "romanicus" as contrasted with "Latinus," i.e.
Latin. The old folk stories of the Middle Ages were written in the
vernacular or "romance" languages, and as these stories were
strange and mysterious, the word romance became used for this kind
of literature.
=pathetic.= From the Greek word "pathos" meaning "suffering." Compare
_pathos_, _sympathy_, _pathology_, _electropathy_, _allopathy_,
_homA"opathy_.
=dilapidated.= From the Latin "lapis" meaning a "stone." It probably
means to separate stone from stone. Compare _lapidary_,
_dilapidation_.
=intermediate.= From the Latin "medius" meaning "middle." Compare
_mediate_, _immediate_, _medium_, _mediocrity_, _mediator._
=police.= From the Greek "polis" meaning a "city." Compare _politics_,