Page:The Wreck.djvu/238

234 THE WRECK

"Fate continues to make terrible game of me! My relations with Kamala on the one hand and Nalin- aksha's with Hemnalini on the other would make a

plot for a novel — and a crude one at that! Such a mix-up is worthy of an author like Fate, who will stick at nothing! It is in real life that the most extraordi- nary things happen — things that the most hardened novelist would never dare to spring on the public as his own invention!" Nevertheless he now felt himself free from the worst of his entanglement When it came to composing a finale to the last chapter of his intricate life's history Fate would surely not be too hard on him !

Jogendra lived in a one-storied house near the land- owner's residence. He was reading the newspaper there one Sunday morning when a man from the bazar brought him a note. He rubbed his eyes when he saw the handwriting on the envelope. Opening it, he found that Ramesh had written to say that he was waiting in a shop at Bisaipur and had something important to communicate.

Jogendra leapt up from his chair. He had parted from Ramesh in anger after a stormy scene, but that was long ago, and when the friend of his boyhood suddenly appeared in these wilds he could not send him abruptly to the right-about. Jogendra was actually pleased at the thought of meeting Ramesh, nor was his mind free from curiosity. It would do no harm to see him, especially as Hemnalini was far away.

Taking the bearer of the note with him, Jogendra set off himself in quest of Ramesh. He found him sitting alone on an upturned kerosene tin in a grocer's shop. The grocer had offered him tobacco in the hookah reserved for Brahmans, but when he learned the spectacled gentleman was no smoker, the worthy tradesman had classed him as some unaccountable product of city life and had made no further attempt to

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