Krishnakanta's Will (Chatterjee, Roy)/Part 1/Chapter 31
CHAPTER XXXI.
At one time when she was very happy with her husband, Bhramar had lost a child, a boy, at her lying-in, and now the reminiscence of that sad incident served to add fuel to the flame of her grief. She bolted herself into her room and bewailed the loss of her child, throwing herself down on the bare floor. "O my child, my baby," she wailed, "where are you gone? Had you been alive could your father have ever thought of leaving me? For your sake he would have borne with me even if I had been a bad and quarrelsome woman. He would have overlooked for your sake a hundred faults in me. Come, my sweet one, oh, come and be the comforter of your poor unhappy mother. Oh, pity and return! Cannot one, who is dead, be restored to his sorrowing mother?"
With bended knees and joined palms she implored God why He could be so cruel to her. "Say Thou, O God", she continued, "what I have done to deserve this punishment. My child I have lost, my husband has left me! Oh, why could his heart be turned against me who loved him better than life itself! How happy we were, how well we loved each other. His love had turned our home into an Eden, and I thought myself the happiest of women in the world. Oh, it is so hard!—so hard! To have won the greatest joy that life can give—and then to lose it all!"
It seemed to her that God was cruel, and she could do nothing but weep. So she wept and cried, and she prayed God to end her sorrows by putting an end to her existence.
Leaving his wife Gobindalal walked pensively to the outer house. He felt the sting of his conscience. How happy he had been with her! The thought of it was enough to draw a tear from his eye. He could not but feel that he was doing her a great wrong. Her unselfish love, which was ever eloquent in her eyes—eloquent equally in everything she did or said, he remembered. He could feel that what he was going to leave he could nowhere have again. He thought he would go back to her and tell her that he would soon return and that he was ashamed of his unjust behaviour to her and was sorry. But he lacked the moral courage to go back to her and say it. So he thought he must go now, for he was not going to leave her for good, and could come back whenever he liked. Thus thinking he mounted his horse which was just then brought in saddled, and was soon off. In a minute he dismissed all painful thoughts from his mind; and as he rode on he found himself thinking of Rohini whose beautiful face floated before his mind's eye.
End of Part I.
(To be continued)
Translated by D. C. Roy