Hari Babu shook his head sadly. “Yes,” he said, “I am afraid there is some truth in it. Gopál is in temporary difficulties; but you need not be anxious. I will get him to give you a mortgage on landed property worth much more than his debt to you.”
Shám Babu felt somewhat reassured, but there was a point to be cleared up.
“One word more,” he said, “have you called in your loan of Rs. 20,000?”
Hari Babu looked at him suspiciously. “Who told you so?”
“I heard it from a reliable source.”
“It must have been Rámanáth, who is always seeking to make mischief. Well, yes, I did ask Gopál to repay me, not that I distrusted him but because I wanted to invest the money in land.”
Shám Babu felt indignant at the man’s gross selfishness, but he concealed his feelings and merely remarked that he would not leave Calcutta till the mortgage was settled. Next morning he insisted on Hari Babu accompanying him to Gopál’s house at Entally. They found the debtor apparently in high spirits, although he admitted that certain speculations had turned out badly. When pressed by Shám Babu to repay the loan, he asked for time, pleading that his whole capital was locked up. Shám Babu, however, was obdurate, and with his brother-in-law’s help he brought such pressure to bear on Gopál that the latter sulkily agreed to give him a mortgage on an ancestral estate in the Mufassil (interior of Bengal). Shám Babu stuck closely to him until the bargain had been fulfilled, and managed matters so expeditiously that the mortgage deed was drawn up, executed, and registered in a week. Though he had now something tangible to rely on in case of accidents still he was not happy, for Gopál discontinued paying interest on the loan and he did not dare to press him, lest he should precipitate a crash.
Misfortunes never come singly. Soon after settling this unpleasant affair, Shám Babu was laid low by fever; and doctor’s bills trenched sadly on his slender resources. Susil, too, the hope of the family, caught a mysterious disease and was absent from office so long that his employers were obliged to replace him. For the first time in his life, the poor old father felt the pinch of want, but he bore up bravely hoping for better times. When he was able to crawl about again, he applied to his old employers for work of any kind, but learnt to his sorrow that they intended winding up the business and were not able to increase their establishment. Shám Babu scanned the advertisement columns of the daily paper and answered many offers of employment, learning, on each occasion, that he was far too old to fill the coveted post.
One evening he sat in his parlour brooding over the many misfortunes which encompassed him. A distant connection named Srish Babu came in and, hearing that his host sorely needed work, said:—
“I am going to start a business in country produce and shall want several experienced clerks. I must provide for relatives first and strangers afterwards. Now, would you be inclined to come to me as manager, on Rs. 75 a month to begin with?”