Sandip

“ My master has just had a passage at arms with Sandip over this. 'Evolution is at work amongst the gods as well,' says Sandip. 'The grandson has to remodel the gods created by the grandfather to suit his own taste, or else he is left an atheist. It is my mission to modernize the ancient deities. I am born the saviour of the gods, to emancipate them from the thraldom of the past.'
I have seen from our boyhood what a juggler with ideas is Sandip. He has no interest in discovering truth, but to make a quizzical display of it rejoices his heart. ”

“ Sandip glanced enquiringly at me.
'No, no,' I exclaimed. 'I shall never touch that money again. Do with it as you will.'
'Can man ever give as woman can?' said Sandip, looking towards Amulya.
'They are goddesses!' agreed Amulya with enthusiasm.
'We men can at best give of our power,' continued Sandip. 'But women give themselves. Out of their own life they give birth, out of their own life they give sustenance. Such gifts are the only true gifts.' Then turning to me, 'Queen!' said he, 'if what you have given us had been only money I would not have touched it. ”

“ It was still early when I got word that Sandip was awaiting me. Today I had no thought of adornment. Wrapped as I was in my shawl, I went off to the outer apartments. As I entered the sitting-room I saw Sandip and Amulya there, together. All my dignity, all my honour, seemed to run tingling through my body from head to foot and vanish into the ground. I should have to lay bare a woman's uttermost shame in sight of this boy! Could they have been discussing my deed in their meeting place? Had any vestige of a veil of decency been left for me?
We women shall never understand men. ”

“ I went again to the sitting-room to find Sandip there. A feeling of disgust seemed to poison my very blood. The face of his, which I saw in the morning light, had nothing of the magic radiance of genius.
"Will you leave the room," I blurted out.
Sandip smiled. "Since Amulya is not here," he remarked, "I should think my turn had come for a special talk."
My fate was coming back upon me. How was Ito take away the right I myself had given. "I would be alone," I repeated.
"Queen," he said, "the presence of another person does not prevent your being alone. Do not mistake me for one of the crowd. ”

“ Sandip had impressed it on me that hesitation is not in the nature of woman. For her, neither right nor left has any existence,—she only moves forward. When the women of our country wake up, he repeatedly insisted, their voice will be unmistakably confident in its utterance of the cry: 'I want.'
'I want!' Sandip went on one day,—this was the primal word at the root of all creation. ”

“ Sandip's eyes took fire as he went on, but whether it was the fire of worship, or of passion, I could not tell. I was reminded of the day on which I first heard him speak, when I could not be sure whether he was a person, or just a living flame.
I had not the power to utter a word. You cannot take shelter behind the walls of decorum when in a moment the fire leaps up and, with the flash of its sword and the roar of its laughter, destroys all the miser's stores. ”

“ Sandip went on. "Finish your special talk with Amulya. But then you must give me a special talk all to myself too, or it will mean a defeat for me. I can stand everything, but not defeat. My share must always be the lion's share. This has been my constant quarrel with Providence. I will defeat the Dispenser of my fate, but not take defeat at his hands." ”

“ He stared at me, open-mouthed, as if he thought I knew magic.
'All the fights in the world, Queen Bee,' Sandip rambled on, 'are really fights between hypnotic forces. Spell cast against spell,—noiseless weapons which reach even invisible targets. At last I have met in you my match. Your quiver is full, I know, you artful warrior Queen! You are the only one in the world who has been able to turn Sandip out and call Sandip back, at your sweet will. ”

“ Sandip again affected surprise as he said: "Must there always be some matter? Is friendship by itself a crime? Oh, Queen Bee, to think that you should make so light of the greatest thing on earth! Is the heart's worship to be shut out like a stray cur?" ”

“ That in which you find greater satisfaction is the way for you."
"Then let me speak out my mind," said Sandip. "I have never yet found any one source of inspiration suffice me for good. That is why I have been constantly moving about, rousing enthusiasm in the people, from which in turn I draw my own store of energy. Today you have given me the message of my country. Such fire I have never beheld in any man. I shall be able to spread the fire of enthusiasm in my country by borrowing it from you. No, do not be ashamed. You are far above all modesty and diffidence. ”

“ Cast away all false shame, I pray you; snap your fingers at the whispering around. Take your plunge to-day into the freedom of the outer world.'
When, in Sandip's appeals, his worship of the country gets to be subtly interwoven with his worship of me, then does my blood dance, indeed, and the barriers of my hesitation totter. ”

“ It had not been my husband's habit to speak cuttingly, but latterly there has been a change and he never spares Sandip.
"What makes you suppose that artists need no teachers?" Sandip retorted.
"Art is a creation," my husband replied. "So we should humbly be content to receive our lessons about Art from the work of the artist."
Sandip laughed at this modesty, saying: "You think that meekness is a kind of capital which increases your wealth the more you use it. It is my conviction that those who lack pride only float about like water reeds which have no roots in the soil." ”

“ He had no hesitation and seemed to be accustomed to occupy, unchallenged, his chosen seat. He claimed the right to intimacy so confidently, that the blame would seem to belong to those who should dispute it.
I was in terror lest Sandip Babu should take me for a shrinking, old-fashioned bundle of inanity. But, for the life of me, I could not sparkle in repartees such as might charm or dazzle him. What could have possessed me, I angrily wondered, to appear before him in such an absurd way?
I was about to retire when dinner was over, but Sandip Babu, as bold as ever, placed himself in my way. ”

“ After a pause Sandip addressed me again: 'Goddess, the time has come for me to leave you. It is well. The work of your nearness has been done. By lingering longer it would only become undone again, little by little. All is lost, if in our greed we try to cheapen that which is the greatest thing on earth. That which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time. ”

“ Goddess! From you, alone, of all the world, I shall not be able to take away anything. I shall not be rid of you till I am destitute. Take these back!"
He took out at the same time the jewel-casket from under his tunic and put it down, and then left us with hasty steps.
"Listen to me, Sandip," my husband called after him.
"I have not the time, Nikhil," said Sandip as he paused near the door. "The Mussulmans, I am told, have taken me for an invaluable gem, and are conspiring to loot me and hide me away in their graveyard. But I feel that it is necessary that I should live. ”

“ The moment I had stolen my husband's money and paid it to Sandip, the music that was in our relations stopped. Not only did I destroy all my own value by making myself cheap, but Sandip's powers, too, lost scope for their full play. You cannot employ your marksmanship against a thing which is right in your grasp. So Sandip has lost his aspect of the hero ”

“ But the world is not divided between Calcutta and your estates. There are other places on the map."
"From the way you have been going on, one would hardly have thought that there was any other place in the world except my estates."
Sandip stood up. "It does happen at times," he said, "that a man's whole world is reduced to a single spot. I have realized my universe in this sitting-room of yours, that is why I have been a fixture here."
Then he turned to me. "None but you, Queen Bee," he said, "will understand my words—perhaps not even you. I salute you. With worship in my heart I leave you. ”

“ When I had arrived at a state of utter bewilderment, wondering whether anything true was left in my life, and whereabouts it could be, I happened to meet Sandip again. Then life struck against life, and the sparks flew in the same old way. ”

“ My husband was not altogether unmoved, but through all our excitement it was the strain of sadness in him which deepened and deepened. He seemed to have a vision of something beyond the surging present.
I remember one day, in the course of the arguments he continually had with Sandip, he said: 'Good fortune comes to our gate and announces itself, only to prove that we have not the power to receive it,—that we have not kept things ready to be able to invite it into our house.'
'No,' was Sandip's answer. 'You talk like an atheist because you do not believe in our gods. ”

“ Had not so tremendous a man as Sandip fallen helplessly at my feet, like a wave of the mighty sea breaking on the shore? Had I called him? No, it was the summons of that magic spell of mine. And Amulya, poor dear boy, when he first came to me—how the current of his life flushed with colour, like the river at dawn! Truly have I realized how a goddess feels when she looks upon the radiant face of her devotee. ”

“ Sandip is right when he suspects that though I, for myself, may be ready to die at his hands, this boy I shall wean from him and save.
'So the money is wanted for the use of your patriots?' I questioned with a smile.
'Of course it is!' said Amulya proudly. 'Are they not our kings? Poverty takes away from their regal power. Do you know, we always insist on Sandip Babu travelling First Class? He never shirks kingly honours,—he accepts them not for himself, but for the glory of us all. The greatest weapon of those who rule the world, Sandip Babu has told us, is the hypnotism of their display. ”

“ His intellect is keen, but his nature is coarse, and so he glorifies his selfish lusts under high-sounding names. The cheap consolations of hatred are as urgently necessary for him as the satisfaction of his appetites. Bimala has often warned me, in the old days, of his hankering after money. I understood this, but I could not bring myself to haggle with Sandip. I felt ashamed even to own to myself that he was trying to take advantage of me.
It will, however, be difficult to explain to Bimala today that Sandip's love of country is but a different phase of his covetous self-love. ”

“ He would assist to the bitter end of utter failure anyone who wanted to invent a new loom or rice-husking machine. But what annoyed me most was the way that Sandip Babu used to fleece him on the pretext of Swadeshi work. Whenever he wanted to start a newspaper, or travel about preaching the Cause, or take a change of air by the advice of his doctor, my husband would unquestioningly supply him with the money. This was over and above the regular living allowance which Sandip Babu also received from him. ”

“ Nikhil is the apostle of "self-realisation" as a moral force; Sandip believes in grabbing whatever you can. The latter first deifies his country (Bande Mataram, or "Hail, Mother!" is the Nationalist motto) and then identifies Bimala with the object of his worship, which seems a very convenient theory. As for Bimala, she wavers between the two. The romantic interest of the book (which is, by the way, a translation) breaks down rather badly when it becomes clear that Sandip is not really a big enough man to make a complete conquest of the Rani ”

“ I am not righteous. I have no beliefs, I only believe in her whom, above all else in the world, I have been able to realise.'
Wonderful! It was wonderful, indeed. Only a minute ago I had despised this man with all my heart. But what I had thought to be dead ashes now glowed with living fire. The fire in him is true, that is beyond doubt. Oh why has God made man such a mixed creature? Was it only to show his supernatural sleight of hand? Only a few minutes ago I had thought that Sandip, whom I had once taken to be a hero, was only the stage hero of melodrama. ”

“ Nothing could be held back any more, even in our corner of the country. In the beginning our district was backward, for my husband was unwilling to put any compulsion on the villagers. 'Those who make sacrifices for their country's sake are indeed her servants,' he would say, 'but those who compel others to make them in her name are her enemies. They would cut freedom at the root, to gain it at the top.'
But when Sandip came and settled here, and his followers began to move about the country, speaking in towns and market-places, waves of excitement came rolling up to us as well. ”

“ The two men advanced to meet each other, and, as the gong sounded and the seconds clattered out of the ring with the folding stools, they shook hands and instantly took their fighting attitudes. And instantly, like a mechanism of steel and springs balanced on a hair trigger, Sandel was in and out and in again, landing a left to the eyes, a right to the ribs, ducking a counter, dancing lightly away and dancing menacingly back again. ”

“ But while they were wondering about his absence, Sandy reappeared. What a change! Arrayed in all the bravery of a Scottish chieftain, old Sandy stood before them, a picture indeed.
Over a kilt of tartan he wore the red coat and plaid, and on his head, crowning his white locks, sat a genuine Scotch “bonnet,” with an eagle feather black as night. In his hands he carried the bagpipes, and while the children stared, open-mouthed, Sandy commenced to play. ”