manner. I had left it lying in the sitting-room. As I went there the next afternoon, for something or other, I found Bee seated with this book in her hand. When she heard my footsteps she hurriedly put it down and placed another book over it--a volume of Mrs Hemans's poems.
'I have never been able to make out,' I began, 'why women are so shy about being caught reading poetry. We men,—lawyers, mechanics, or what not,—may well feel ashamed. If we must read poetry, it should be at dead of night, within closed doors. But you women are so akin to poesy. The Creator Himself is a lyric poet, and Jayadeva14 must have practised the divine art seated at His feet.'
Bee made no reply, but only blushed uncomfortably. She made as if she would leave the room. Whereupon I protested: 'No, no, pray read on. I will just take a book I left here, and run away.' With which I took up my book from the table. 'Lucky you did not think of glancing over its pages,' I continued, 'or you would have wanted to chastise me.'
'Indeed! Why?' asked Bee.
'Because it is not poetry,' said I. 'Only blunt things, bluntly put, without any finicking niceness. I wish Nikhil would read it.'
Bee frowned a little as she murmured: 'What makes you wish that?'
'He is a man, you see, one of us. My only quarrel with him is that he delights in a misty vision of this world. Have you not observed how this trait of his makes him look on Swadeshi as if it was some poem of which the metre must be kept correct at every step? We, with the clubs of our prose, are the iconoclasts of metre.'
'What has your book to do with Swadeshi?'
'You would know if you only read it. Nikhil wants to go by made-up maxims, in Swadeshi as in everything else; so he knocks up against human nature at every turn, and then falls to abusing it. He never will realize that human nature was created long before phrases were, and will survive them too.'
Bee was silent for a while and then gravely said: 'Is it not a part of human nature to try and rise superior to itself?'
I smiled inwardly. 'These are not your words,' I thought to myself. 'You have learnt them from Nikhil. You are a healthy human being. Your flesh and blood have responded to the call of reality. You are burning in every vein with life-fire,—do I not know it? How long should they keep you cool with the wet towel of moral precepts?'
'The weak are in the majority,' I said aloud. 'They are continually poisoning the ears of men by repeating these shibboleths. Nature has denied them strength,—it is thus that they try to enfeeble others.'
'We women are weak,' replied Bimala. 'So I suppose we must join in the conspiracy of the weak.'
'Women weak!' I exclaimed with a laugh. 'Men belaud you as delicate and fragile, so as to delude you into thinking yourselves weak. But it is you women who are strong. Men make a great outward show of their so-called freedom, but those who know their inner minds are aware of their bondage. They have manufactured scriptures with their own hands to bind themselves; with their very idealism they have made golden fetters of women to wind round their body and mind. If men had not that extraordinary faculty of entangling themselves in meshes of their own contriving, nothing could have kept them bound. But as for you women, you have desired to conceive reality with body and soul. You have given birth to reality. You have suckled reality at your breasts.'
Bee was well read for a woman, and would not easily give in to my arguments. 'If that were true,' she objected, 'men would not have found women attractive.'
'Women realize the danger,' I replied. 'They know that men love delusions, so they give them full measure by borrowing their own phrases. They know that man, the drunkard, values intoxication more than food, and so they try to pass themselves off as an intoxicant. As a matter of fact, but for the sake of man, woman has no need for any makebelieve.'
'Why, then, are you troubling to destroy the illusion?'
'For freedom. I want the country to be free. I want human relations to be free.'
III
I was aware that it is unsafe suddenly to awake a sleep-walker. But I am so impetuous by nature, a halting gait does not suit me. I knew I was overbold that day. I knew that the first shock of such ideas is apt to be almost intolerable. But with women it is always audacity that wins.
Just as we were getting on nicely, who should walk in but Nikhil's old tutor Chandranath Babu. The world would have been not half a bad place to live in but for these schoolmasters, who make one want to quit in disgust. The Nikhil type wants to keep the world always a school. This incarnation of a school turned up that afternoon at the psychological moment.
We all remain schoolboys in some corner of our hearts, and I, even I, felt somewhat pulled up. As for poor Bee, she at once took her place solemnly, like the topmost girl of the class on the front bench. All of a sudden she seemed to remember that she had to face her examination.
Some people are so like eternal pointsmen lying in wait by the line, to shunt one's train of thought from one rail to another.
Chandranath Babu had no sooner come in than he cast about for some excuse to retire, mumbling: 'I beg your pardon, I...'
Before he could finish, Bee went up to him and made a profound obeisance, saying: 'Pray do not leave us, sir. Will you not take a seat?' She looked like a drowning person clutching at him for support,—the little coward!
But possibly I was mistaken. It is quite likely that there was a touch of womanly wile in it. She wanted, perhaps, to raise her value in my eyes. She might have been pointedly saying to me: 'Please don't imagine for a moment that I am entirely overcome by you. My respect for Chandranath Babu is even greater.'
Well, indulge in your respect by all means! Schoolmasters thrive on it. But not being one of them, I have no use for that empty compliment.
Chandranath Babu began to talk about Swadeshi. I thought I would let him go on with his monologues. There is nothing like letting an old man talk himself out. It makes him feel that he is winding up the world, forgetting all the while how far away the real world is from his wagging tongue.
But even my worst enemy would not accuse me of patience. And when Chandranath Babu went on to say: 'If we expect to gather fruit where we have sown no seed, then we ...' I had to interrupt him.
'Who wants fruit?' I cried. 'We go by the Author of the Gita who says that we are concerned only with the doing, not with the fruit of our deeds.'
'What is it then that you do want?' asked Chandranath Babu.
'Thorns!' I exclaimed, 'which cost nothing to plant.'
'Thorns do not obstruct others only,' he replied. 'They have a way of hurting one's own feet.'
'That is all right for a copy-book,' I retorted. 'But the real thing is that we have this burning at heart. Now we have only to cultivate thorns for other's soles; afterwards when they hurt us we shall find leisure to repent. But why be frightened even of that? When at last we have to die it will be time enough to get cold. While we are on fire let us seethe and boil.'
Chandranath Babu smiled. 'Seethe by all means," he said, "but do not mistake it for work, or heroism.
