48

Sucharita began to wonder what calamity Lalita had now stirred up. After a brief silence, she took Lalita by the throat and said, “I am afraid, dear sister.”

Lalita asked, “Afraid of what?”

Sucharita said, “All around the Brahmo Samaj there is a great uproar — but in the end, if Binoybabu does not consent?”

Lalita lowered her face and said in a firm voice, “He will consent.”

Sucharita said, “You know that Panubabu has gone away giving Mother the assurance that Binoy will never agree to abandon his own society and marry you. Lalita, why did you blurt out the matter to Panubabu in that manner without thinking things through from every side?”

Lalita said, “Having said it, I feel no remorse even now. Panubabu had supposed that he and his society had driven me like hunted quarry right to the edge of a bottomless sea, and that I must surrender here — he does not know that I have no fear of leaping into that sea — it is into the cage of his hunters that I dread to enter.”

Sucharita said, “Let me go and consult Baba once.”

Lalita said, “Baba will never join the hunting party — of that I assure you. He has never wished to bind us in chains. When at any time there has been some disagreement between our views and his, has he ever shown the slightest anger, or tried to silence us by invoking the name of the Brahmo Samaj? Mother has been displeased many times over this, but Baba had but one single fear — lest we lose the courage to think for ourselves. Having raised us in this manner, would he in the end hand me over to the prison-warders of society like Panubabu?”

Sucharita said, “Very well — suppose Baba offers no objection whatsoever — what is to be done then, say?”

Lalita said, “If you all do nothing, then I myself —”

Sucharita jumped up in agitation and said, “No, no, you need do nothing yourself, dear! I shall find a way.”

Sucharita had been preparing to go to Pareshbabu, when Pareshbabu himself came and stood before her at evening time. At this hour Pareshbabu would daily pace up and down alone in the garden of his house, head bowed in his own thoughts — he would slowly pass the sacred darkness of evening over his mind, wiping away as it were all the marks left by the labours of the day, and quietly gather within himself a pure tranquillity in preparation for the night’s repose. Today, when Pareshbabu had forsaken the solitary contemplative peace of his evening meditation and stood at Sucharita’s door with a troubled face, Sucharita’s tender heart was stricken with a pain akin to that of a mother whose child — who should have been at play — has fallen ill and lies still and silent.

Pareshbabu said softly, “Radhe, you have heard everything?”

Sucharita said, “Yes, Father, I have heard everything — but why do you worry so?”

Pareshbabu said, “I am not troubled by anything else in particular. My concern is this: will Lalita be able to bear all the blows of the storm she has stirred up? In the heat of excitement, a blind audacity often rises within us — but when its consequences begin to fall one by one, the strength to carry that burden forsakes us. Has Lalita thought through all the consequences carefully and settled upon what is truly best for her?”

Sucharita said, “No persecution from society can ever defeat Lalita — that I can tell you with certainty.”

Paresh said, “What I wish to know with absolute assurance is this: that Lalita is not merely rebelling in a fit of anger and displaying defiance.”

Sucharita lowered her face and said, “No, Father — had it been so, I would not have listened to her at all. What lay deep within her heart came bursting out all at once when it was suddenly struck. To suppress it now in any way would not be good for a girl of Lalita’s nature. Father, Binoybabu is a very fine man.”

Pareshbabu said, “Very well — but would Binoy be willing to come to the Brahmo Samaj?”

Sucharita said, “That I cannot say for certain. Father, shall we go once to Gourababu’s mother?”

Pareshbabu said, “I had been thinking the same — it would be well if you went.”