availed herself of Subha's cosy warm lap with the purpose of indulging in a sweet nap, and shewed by signs, that her sleep would be much expedited if Subha would smooth her neck and back with her soft delicate fingers.
(3)
Subha managed to pick up another companion from among creatures belonging to a higher scale in creation; but the exact nature of the relation between them is rather difficult to ascertain, for he was a creature gifted with the power of speech and so they had between them, no common language.
He was Protap, the youngest scion of the Goswami family. He was a hopeless ne'er-do-well. After many efforts his parents had given up the hope that he would ever exert himself to better the condition of the family by some work or other. Worthless people have this advantage that though their own kith and kin become disgusted with them, they become favourite with aliens, for being tied to nothing they become public property, so to say. As a few public parks not attached to dwelling-houses are necessary to a town, so a few men without occupation, who are a sort of public property, are absolutely necessary to a village. They always come handy whenever a hand falls short in a festivity or a ceremony.
Angling was Protap's main hobby. It easily killed a great deal of time. In the afternoon he was often found engaged in this occupation by the river-side, and on these occasions he often met Subha. In whatever work he might be engaged, Protap liked to have a companion; and a silent companion is the best during angling; hence Protap appreciated Subha's worth. For this reason, he called her Su with an extra dose of fondness, though everybody else called her Subha.
Subha sat under a tamarind tree, and near by, dropping the rod on the ground, Protap gazed at the water. He used to get regularly his daily allowance of pan her, which she prepared with her own hands. And I suppose, sitting there for long hours, she looked and looked and desired to be of some help to Protap, to be of any service to him, and to intimate to him that even she was not an insignificant creature after all in the world. But she had absolutely nothing to do. Then she inwardly prayed to Heaven for some supernatural power and she wished to perform by the power of mantras some marvellous feat, at which Protap would be astonished and would say "Ah! who knew that our Subhi possessed such marvellous powers?"
Suppose, Subha were a water-nymph; slowly emerging from her watery bed, she would place a jewel of the serpent's crown on the ghat. Leaving his contemptible occupation of angling, Protap with the jewel in his hand would dive into the water, and lo! there in the nether regions, his eyes would light upon—whom? seated on a golden bedstead in the silver palace—that dumb girl Su of our Banikantha's house—our Su, the sole princess of that deep, silent, diamond-illumined Patala. Could it not be so? Was it so very impossible? No, nothing is impossible in reality. But still Su was born in the house of Banikantha instead of in the royal family of the deserted Patala and could, by no means, astonish Protap, a scion of the Goswami family.
Subha was growing fast. By degrees, she could, as it were, realise her own self. As if, on a certain full-moon night a flood-tide from an unknown sea was filling her innermost self with a new unutterable sense of life. She looked to herself, thought, questioned, and could not understand.
It was on a bright full-moon night that she opened the door of her bed-room and timidly peeped outside. Nature, too, on that moon-light-night sat like her waking, companionless, brooding over the sleeping world—she had reached, as it were, the utmost limit of the illimitable stillness—nay beyond that—and was shimmering with the mystery of her youth, with mirth and pensiveness, and could not utter a single syllable. On the verge of this silent craving Nature, stood a craving mute maiden.
Meanwhile the parents burdened with this marriageable daughter grew anxious. People, too, had begun to talk. Even a rumour that they would be excommunicated, was afloat.[1] Banikantha was in easy
- ↑ In Hindu Society, every girl must be married, and married before she reaches the age of puberty. Otherwise there is strong social odium.
