Chapter XIV.
“FATHER! My father! The night wind is cold, the moon is at its height. Do you see the waving shadows of the trees, the dark rocks there over the precipice, and the vast moonlit plain beyond? Oh, how silvery and shining everything looks!”
He was better but still very weak. Kamala’s mother-in-law had returned to Sivagunga, and the old dame was busy inside preparing gruel. Kamala was alone with her father. Her heart was full; it was so like the old days. The familiar murmur of the stream, the silent waving trees in front, and the rush and roar of the wind, all combined to recall the charm of those old days which were so precious to her. As she rested her head on her father’s shoulder Kamala felt young again. “Oh, father! How much I have had to learn and how little I knew of the world when I left you! Why, father, why are you so different from the people in the city? I like the old life, I like it very much. Father! Father! keep me near you here always, and there will be no heart-achings over what people think and what they say. Oh! why should one’s own people be against one? I am so afraid of offending and I do so offend everybody I come across. I don’t think I have succeeded in pleasing anyone. There is my father-in-law, for instance. How I wish to love and please him, but I have done something wrong, and he does not care for me in the least. I fell at his feet before I came away, and said:— Bless me Baba! I am going home,’ and expected that he would have said one kind word at least. But he was as hard as a stone, for after a time he calmly looked at me and turning his face aside said: “Why do you fall at my feet? Go! wish me well to the saniyasi.’ He must have been greatly disappointed with me, for I could see from the expression of pain and contempt in his face that I had done something to displease him. Oh, father! he was not like this before. He was so different.” Having said this, Kamala looked into her father’s eyes and was silent. Her father’s thoughts were evidently wandering, and he had not heard her. Just then a cloud covered the moon, and she felt a great hush in her soul as she also bowed her head in silent thought. It was some time before the silence was broken. Then Kamala spoke excitedly. “Oh, look there,” she said, “the moon is peeping through the clouds and how wonderful and bright everything looks.” “Do you know, father,” she added after a little while, “that whenever I look over those silent moonlit plains, my thoughts wander far? I seem to see scenes similar to these, but I cannot make out what they are. The pictures are dim and blurred. I seem to be journeying on and on and I feel some one near me soothing me with soft melodious words. It is not you, father, it must be someone else. Do you think it is mother; my mother? Oh, why do I not know anything of her? Tell me, father. The thought has crossed my mind that she may not have been what I should wish her to have been, and that is why you have been so silent abo