Krishna Kanta's Will (Chatterjee, Knight)/Part 1/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV.
Do not let the object of your affections out of your sight. If you would make firm the bond of love let the cord be short. Keep the beloved one within sight. In absence how many poisonous fruits are grown. Him from whom you parted with tears, thinking, "How shall I live without him?" when you met again, some years later, you merely asked, "Are you well?" or perhaps said nothing to him, inwardly you are divided. Or it may be that in anger or in pride you see him no more. At any rate, if not so bad as that, after an absence things are not as they were before. What goes does not return. What breaks can never be reformed. Waters let loose, are they ever again confined?
Bhramar did not well in suffering Gobind Lâl to go to a distance. Had they been together at this time I think this misunderstanding would not have occurred. In discussion the truth must have appeared. Bhramar would not have been so much mistaken. She would not have been so angry, and the ruin arising out of this anger would not have befallen.
Gobind Lâl having set out for home, the Naib sent word of the fact to Krishna Kanta. This news, coming by post, reached the Kartâ four or five days before Gobind Lâl was due. Bhramar, hearing that her husband was returning, again sat down to write. She covered four or five sheets with ink, then tore them up, and after two or three hours succeeded in writing a letter. In it she said to her mother, "I am very unwell; if you can have me home for a bit I can return refreshed. Don’t delay, if the illness increases I shall not get better. Send to-morrow for me if you can. Don't say anything here about my being ill." This letter written, Bhramar secretly, through the agency of Khirodâ, dispatched a man with it to her father's house.
If instead of her mother others had read this letter they would have divined that some ruse lay concealed within it. But the mother, hearing of her child's illness, became very much distressed. She poured forth a torrent of abuse upon Bhramar's mother-in-law, a lesser amount upon her husband, and, weeping, determined that bearers should be sent the next day, with a palanquin and attendants, male and female, to bring Bhramar home. Artfully saying nothing of his daughter's illness, Bhramar's father wrote to Krishna Kanta, saying that her mother had become very ill, and begging him to send Bhramar to see her, instructing the servants to the same effect.
Krishna Kanta was placed in a difficulty. Gobind Lâl was coming, and it was not the thing to send Bhramar away, yet if her mother was ill it was impossible to refuse. After some consideration he sent Bhramar home, with the stipulation that she should be absent only four days.
On the fourth day Gobind Lâl arrived. He heard that Bhramar was at her father's house, and that a palanquin was to be sent for her that night. He understood it all, and felt deeply affronted. "So little faith," he thought. "She has thrown me over without consideration and without questioning. I will never see that Bhramar's face again. I am well able to exist even without Bhramar."
Thus thinking, Gobind Lâl requested his mother not to send a palanquin for Bhramar. He gave no reason for this prohibition. So, with the mother-in-law's assent, Krishna Kanta made no further attempts to recall Bhramar.