Srikanta
I went to the grocer's shop. When the grocer heard why I had come, he brought out a bundle wrapped up in a piece of cloth, and untying it showed me a pair of gold ear-rings and five rupees. He gave the rupees to me and said, 'She sold the ear-rings to me for twenty-one rupees, and after paying for Shahji's debts she went away, though I could not say where. After paying the debts she had only five and a half annas left to take with her.'
With this paltry sum as her only support, the helpless and lonely woman had started out on her wanderings!
Lest the two boys who had loved her so dearly should make futile attempts to help her, she had not let them know when she started on her journey. It grieved me that she had declined to take my five rupees. What pleasure and pride I had taken in the thought that my money had been useful to her! Now all that pride and pleasure vanished in a moment. In my wounded pride I could not help giving way to tears, to conceal which I had to leave the old grocer quickly. 'She has taken help from Indra again and again,' I said to myself, 'but from me she will take nothing: she has returned the only thing that I could give her.'
As I grew older my resentment faded, and I came to wonder how it was that I thought myself worthy of giving her anything. She was a burning flame reducing to ashes everything that was consigned to her, and that was why, perhaps, she thought it best to return my paltry gift. As for Indra, he was surely made of different stuff, and had the right to give where I had none. Besides, Didi had taken his money for the sake of one who at the time I made my offer needed gifts no longer.
74
