The moment that she had read the letter, the heat of her grief was extinguished: she pondered long, and then exclaimed: “Can such a joyful destiny indeed befall so sorrowful a wretch as myself?” Even while she spoke, Baburam Babu arrived with his son and Thakchacha. Everywhere there was a great stir. The minds of all the members of the household had been shrouded in a mist of grief, and now the sun of joy had risen. As she gazed upon her husband and her son, holding her two daughters by the hand, the mistress of the house wept tears of joy. She had been intending to upbraid Matilall for his conduct, but now all was forgotten: the two girls, holding their brother’s hands, fell at their father’s feet and wept. Then the infant boy saw his father, it was as though he had found a treasure: he kept his arms tight round his neck, and for long refused to slacken his embrace: the women of the household too offered loud prayers for the welfare of their master, as though with pán and betel in hand, they were praying for the welfare of a bridegroom. Baburam Babu was for some time like a man in a trance, unable to utter a word. Matilall reflected to himself: “The sinking of the boat has been a piece of good luck for me: it has saved me from a good scolding from my mother.” As soon as the Brahmans in the outer apartments of the house saw Baburam Babu, they greeted him with vociferous blessings, saying in the Sanskrit tongue:— “Supreme over all is the might of the gods,” and adding: “How could any calamity befall you, sir, with your own merits on the one hand, and on the other the divine rites that have been performed on your behalf? If such can befall, then are we no Brahmans.”
Thakchacha rose up in great wrath when he heard this language, and said: “Sir, if it is by the influence of these men that calamity has been averted from you, is all my trouble on your behalf to go for nothing? do my prayers count for nothing?” The Brahmans at once humbly acquiesced saying: “Ah sir, just as the divine Krishna was once Arjuna’s charioteer, so you have been the master’s! all has happened by the might of your intelligence: you are a special incarnation: calamity flies far away from anyplace where you are, as from any place where we are.”
Bancharam Babu had been all this time like a serpent with its crest-jewel lost, depressed and sad. He shed a few sham tears, to show off before Baburam Baba (his eyes were always rather watery), and his breast heaved with emotion. Fish would fall to his bait, he was firmly persuaded, if now he only threw in sufficient. When he heard the Brahmans’ talk, he came up to them and with his favourite gesture, said: “I am no fool I can tell you: calamity could not possibly befall the master with me. Am I merely a Calcutta grasscutter that I could not have helped him?”
CHAPTER IX.
MATILALL AND HIS FRIENDS.
WHEN a child is once corrupted, it is hard to effect any improvement. Every means should be tried to instil good principles into the mind from childhood: the character may then ripen for good and the mind become more strongly bent towards the right than towards evil; but if a boy gets hold of bad companions or receives ill advice in his early boyhood, then, such is the unsteadiness natural to his age, all will probably go wrong with him thereafter. So long then as he remains still a boy, with the mind of a boy, he must be assiduously employed in a variety of good pursuits. If boys were to receive an education like this up to the age of twenty-five, there would be no probability of their following evil courses: their minds would by that time have become so elevated that the mere mention of evil would excite anger and loathing. But it is very difficult for children in this country to receive such a training, owing, in the first place, to the lack of good teachers, and in the second to the lack of good books. There is urgent need of works that will promote the growth of high principles and of sound judgment, but ordinary people are persuaded that a solid education consists in teaching the meaning of a number of sounds: then again, very few people seem to have any idea of the methods whereby good principles are implanted in the mind; and finally the nature of the home surroundings of children in this country is strongly against the implanting of such principles. One boy may have a drunkard or a gambler as his father, another may have as his uncles men of immoral life; the mother herself too, being unable to read or write, may not exert herself for her children’s education. A great deal of evil moreover is learnt from association with the different members of the household, the men and women servants; it may be also that from consorting with all kinds of boys in the village or at the village-school, children get to learn their evil ways and vicious habits, and so are ruined for life. Even where but one of the causes mentioned exists, the obstacle in the way of good education is grievous enough, but where they all exist in combination, there the drawbacks are simply terrible. It is like setting fire to straw: let a man only pour ghee where the fire is beginning to blaze, and within a very short space the flame is everywhere, and reduces to ashes whatever it finds in its way.
Many people thought that Matilall would have reformed after the affair of the police court; but the boy who is devoid of good qualities and high principles, and without any regard for honour or dishonour, has no particular feeling of abhorrence for punishments. Evil thoughts and good thoughts alike have their origin in the mind, and are therefore intimately bound up with the character: a mere physical affliction or trouble then cannot be expected to change the wind’s direction. Doubtless, when the sergeant of police was dragging Matilall along through the streets, he may have thought it at the actual time a trouble and a disgrace, but the feeling was only momentary: once in the guard-room, he seemed to have lost ail anxiety or fear or sense of dishonour and he was such a nuisance all that night and the whole of the next day to his neighbours, as he sang and imitated the cries of dogs and jackals, that they put their hands to their ears, and exclaiming “Ram, Ram!” said to each other: “Why, we are far worse off with this boy in our neighbourhood than if he were in prison.” When he stood before the magistrate next day, he kept his head bent down like Shishu Pal, of Mahabharata renown, but it was done to deceive his father. In reality he recked little whether he went to jail and was put in fetters, or what happened to him.
Boys absolutely devoid of respect, of fear, and of shame, and addicted to purely evil courses, are afflicted with no ordinary disease: their complaint is really mental, and if only the proper remedies are applied, a cure may in process of time be effected. But Baburam Babu had no ideas on the subject at all: he was firmly convinced that Matilall was a very good boy, and used at first to wax very wrath if he heard him abused. Though all sorts of people were continually telling him about his son, he was as one who heard not; and if afterwards from his own observations a doubt did arise in his mind, he kept his misgivings to himself, and for fear of being mortified before others, refrained from expressing them, but simply gave secret orders to the door-keeper not to let Matilall leave the house. This was no remedy: the disease had obtained too strong a hold upon the boy, and no possible good could result from simply keeping him a prisoner and constantly in his sight. You may put a bar of iron on a mind once corrupted, without making any impression: on the contrary, mere repression may only have the effect of intensifying the evil in the mind. At first Matilall used to get out of the house by jumping over the walk. On the release of his old companions of Bow Bazar from jail, they came to live at Vaidyabati, and some of the boys of the place having joined them, they formed themselves into a band. Matilall’s sense of respect and fear was soon destroyed altogether by his association with these young scamps, and he ended by paying no attention at all to his father.
Boys who have not been accustomed from their childhood to innocent and harmless amusements, are apt to take to diversions of a low kind. The children of Englishmen are instructed by their parents in a variety of innocent pastimes, in order that they may have sound minds and sound bodies: some draw and paint: some cultivate a taste for botany: some learn music: some devote themselves to sport and gymnastics: each takes up the form of harmless enjoyment most congenial to him. Boys in this country follow the example that is set them: their one wish is to be dressed in gorgeous attire, with a profusion of gold embroidery and jewels: to make up picnic parties of their chums and gay companions, and to live luxuriously in all a Babu’s style. Fondness for display and extravagance naturally characterizes the season of youth: if care is not very early exercised in this matter, the desire grows in intensity, and a variety of evils result, by which eventually body and mind alike may be irretrievably ruined.