The Dangerous Age

THE DANGEROUS AGE
(A Short Story)

(1)

It was really the hospitality of the Dutts that started the trouble for the Sens. Judge Dutt was recently transferred to Banaras, and his wife Nandita had thrown a house-warming party. As Charulata, Professor Sen’s wife, was her old friend, a special invitation was sent for both. Being confined to personal friends it proved to be a delightful function.. Prof. Sen enjoyed it thoroughly and was all admiration for Mrs. Dutt’s charm and taste, her liveliness and efficiency.

At the same time, the seed of a vague discontent took root in his heart since that day. He was not envious by nature, and did not grudge Judge Dutt his official prestige or his financial superiority. But since meeting Mrs. Dutt he couldn’t help wishing that his own wife were less dowdy and their house better kept. From the very next day he started grumbling of things he scarcely noticed before.

‘What is Pappo’s frock doing on my table, Charu?’ he would demand, ‘and Bablu’s bat and Chinu’s bugle on the bookshelf? Did you notice how wonderfully neat Judge Dutt’s study was kept?’

Another day it would be the haphazard display of photographs on the wall. ‘Why can’t we consign this illustrated family history to the privacy of an album?’ he would ask. ‘That would leave the wall free for a picture or two by Haldar or Ukil, as in Mrs. Dutt’s drawing-room.’

Or he would turn to the mantel-piece. ‘Look, Charu, is this a dispensary or a drawing-room? Let’s sweep these bottles and jars away, and make room for a bust of Rabindranath and a Chinese vase. How attractive Mrs. Dutt makes her home!’

‘She has no children needing first-aid every quarter of an hour,’ Charu would answer with a smile. He would curse their furniture and remind her of the smart sofa set and leather chairs and decorative table-lamps at Mrs. Dutt’s. ‘Let’s get rid of this rickety junk and buy something decent,’ he would declare. ‘How tastefully she arranges her drawing-room!’ he would sigh again and again.

‘But where have I the peace for all this elegance?’ Charu would argue. ‘Let her raise a family and run the house with two servants, and then I’ll listen to her praise.’ There was always an implied disparagement of his wife whenever he paid a tribute to Mrs. Dutt.

‘At Allahabad she won a medal for her chrysanthemums and another for her Persian cat, I hear.’

‘What of my three medals?’ Charu would retort in good humour, pointing to the three children romping on the lawn.

‘Oh, those...but really, you ought to take more interest in the house, Charu. It’s not just leisure,’ he would object. ‘You’ve also to have an artistic eye.’

‘Oh yes, of course. She has the artistic eye add the artistic face and the artistic figure,’ she would laugh. ‘It’s that more than anything else that counts with you–men.’

‘But you had all that yourself not very long ago,’ he would insist. ‘Why don’t you pull yourself together and be smart once again? Buy new saris, go into society, entertain friends. Do I stint you?’

‘Of course you don’t’ she would agree. ‘But I can’t go gadding about, all dolled up at my age. Pappo is nearly twelve and will soon be a bride.’

And so it would go on every day. The burden of his song would be the same: Mrs. Dutt’s taste, her accomplishments, her popularity. As dissatisfaction with home seemed to swell and a new peevishness crept into his intercourse. Mrs. Sen might be placid and easy-going, but she was lacking neither in sensitiveness nor intelligence. Her wifely pride began to get the better of her good-natured tolerance and her resentment grew at her husband’s open admiration for another woman. In this frame of mind it was easy for her to ‘detect’ in him the beginnings of ‘male infidelity’. She remembered that the more sophisticated of the ladies’ journals she read had often warned wives against their husbands’ succumbing to what they called ‘the dangerous age.’ She recalled that one of the remedies usually recommended was a temporary separation.

While she was still searching for a pretext for what the all-knowing journals called ‘a conjugal holiday’, her elder brother, a flourishing lawyer at Patna, came to her rescue. He reminded her of her promised visit, and wrote that their mother had not been keeping too well, and that it was time his new-born son had his auntie’s blessings in person.

When, seizing this chance, Charulata broached the topic to her husband, his immediate reaction was vexation. ‘What about the children?’ he exclaimed. ‘They can’t miss their school.’

‘No, of course not’, she agreed. ‘I was not proposing anything of the kind. You will be here. You have often said that looking after them was nothing to make such a fuss about. I’m sure you can manage it easily. And while I’m away you could also get the drawing-room done up as you want it, and make a fewother alterations to brighten the place.’

The hidden challenge nearly touched off his resentment at first, but it quickly yielded place to a subconscious lure of freedom in the offing. He fell into the trap. ‘But you mustn’t stay longer than a month”, he said more for good form than as a stipulation.

‘I hope it won’t be necessary’, she replied casually, though secretly jubilant that her point was conceded. ‘It depends ‘naturally upon Mother’s health and Dada’s permission. Besides, there is really no hurry. Chandi is there to see to the children’s routine.’

‘Yes, there is good old Chandi’, he agreed. ‘And I’ll get a teacher for their lessons. So have a good time.’

And so one bright morning Mrs. Sen left for what was to be her first long holiday away from husband and children.

(3)

Though Prof. Sen taught Philosophy, he was not quite the apocryphal philosopher. He did not thrust his hat in the letter-box and clap the envelope on his head; nor did he place his umbrella on the chair and stand himself in the corner. But he was a good imitation of that type. He was mildly absent-minded, practically mirthless, and hopelessly clumsy with his fingers. This array of handicaps put him beyond the pale as children’s play-mate. But that was the one role he had set his heart upon as a reply to his wife’s subtle challenge What little success he came to achieve in this field now was due more to the children’s patience than to any adaptability he had acquired. There was one stratagem, however, which worked beyond his expectation, and that was his gift of rasagulla. It proved such a hit that he made it a daily ritual; and the children would run to the garden gate and escort him and the jar of sweets in a dancing procession.

The even tenor of his lot for years had kept Prof. Sen under a delusion. The poor man never realised that his life was being run for him by his capable wife; and that if it had the steady flow of a stream, downhill, the momentum was hers. Now that it was withdrawn, the stream became a trickle, the sport of every contour, the victim of every wind, devoid of initiative, lacking in decision. Blissfully ignorant of this, whatever he undertook on his own now proved beyond his competence. He began renovating the hall, but the workmen walked out one day, leaving a mess. He bought paintings and bric-a-bracs without any plan and had to dump them somewhere, heightening the present chaos.

He chafed that things were going all wrong and his annoyance grew at finding no scapegoat. His grouses passed over Chandi like water on a duck’s . There was tension in the air and even the children began to keep out of his way. He wrote to his wife once or twice, hinting at her duty to home, but could not bring himself to send a frank s.o.s.

(4)

Miss Renuka Gupta, the children’s new teacher, had braved forty winters, and had the needy person’s eagerness to please. It was this and no sinister design that moved her to compassion at the Professor’s helplessness, and to volunteer her assistance one day to put the household right. He promptly accepted the offer and was grateful at the end of the fortnight to find the home habitable once more.

It was unfortunate that, in spite of her cheerfulness and unsparing work, Miss Gupta failed to make a hit with her pupils. The cause lay partly in the subtle jealousy shared between them and old Chandi, and partly in the streak of juvenile cruelty which delights to torment. The Professor’s dependence upon her, however, grew steadily and her position as a member of the household was established.

(5)

Mrs. Sen was happy with her brother’s family. The health of the mother began to mend since her visit. The children were charmed with their Auntie, and their parents surrounded her with comfort and love. But after the first few weeks the holiday began to pall, and her thoughts began to hover round her husband and children more and more. While she was in this mood the postman delivered a letter from Pappo:
Darling Mother,

When are you returning? We miss you very much. Chinu cries for you at night. I take him now in my bed. Chandi bathes and feeds us. Father is getting the house painted. It is fun climbing furniture. It is heaped everywhere. Father is out all day. He says it is all your doing. Miss. Gupta, our teacher, is here from morning to even. She goes to your dressing table. I have emptied your powder box and filled it with flour. She calls me Pappo. I don’t like it. I told her my name was Snehalata. Bablu does not like her. Chinu bit her ear when she tried to hug him. Bablu has become a good boy. He listens to me. He put a frog in Miss Gupta’s shoe when I asked him. She is fat but jumps well. Father is very good to us. He brings rasagullas every day. But Chandi scolds him because Chinu gets sick. Father says it is all your doing. When the holidays begin we are to go to Dehri and bathe in the Sone and build castles in the sand, like last year. Come soon and join us.

Your loving daughter,
Pappo.”

(6)

Charu read her daughter’s letter again and again, and found herself yearning for home more than ever. She recalled the hints in her husband’s earlier letters suggesting her return, and wondered why she had brushed them aside so coldly.

One afternoon, while she was with her mother and sister-in-law, the brother came in from court, and handed a roll of banknotes to the mother. ‘Whom have you fleeced today, my dear? she fondly asked, passing the money to his wife, who put it in the safe behind her.

‘It is a hard-won fee, Mother and no extortion, he replied. ‘In fact the client said he wished it was twice as much. You see, I saved the poor fellow from a wife who was like the dog in the manger,–would neither live with him nor divorce him. You’ve no idea how mean some women can be.’

‘Why didn’t she want to go to him?’ asked Charu.

‘Some silly notion about incompatibility. A little learning is a dangerous thing.’

‘Perhaps there was some woman behind it,’ put in Charu.

‘On the contrary, there was a man, as it came out when we cornered her.’

‘Oh you cornered her, did you? Now I understand why you lawyers are often dubbed ‘Devil’s Advocates’. Why didn’t you bring about a compromise?’

A compromise, my dear Charu, requires a reasonable frame of mind. The woman wants to eat her cake and have it too. My client offered generous terms, but she reacted like a end.

(7)

The week dragged heavily for Mrs. Sen. There was no letter from the Professor, though she was looking forward to his plea that the home needed her. Another week passed and still no opening for an honourable retreat. They must be getting on well enough without her. Perhaps he had taken to spending his leisure in the lively company of women like Mrs. Dutt. Even the children must have got over their antipathy to Miss Gupta. She thought of the Ladies’ Journals again and their counsel of perfection. Was she really getting slatternly? Perhaps there was something in her husband’s complaint. She must cease to be a frump and try to be house-proud.

Next morning she announced her decision to return home. ‘Why this sudden plan, Charu?’ asked her brother. ‘Are you not comfortable here?’

‘Don’t say that, Dada’, she replied distressed. ‘I’ve been very happy here. I won’t say anything of Mother or yourself. I’m flesh of your flesh. But even Bhabi and the darling children have been lavish in their love. And every time I watch their sweet little faces I think of the nestlings I’ve left behind. After all, they need me. They are about to start on their vacation and I had better be in time.’

Of course they all understood and could not detain her longer. And so one early morning after much leave-taking and many embraces, they put her in the train and bade her a tearful good-bye.

(8)

Prof. Sen’s holidays had begun and he was leaving with the children for Dehri-on-Sone within an hour. The methodical Miss Gupta had piled up the luggage in the hall and marshalled the children with their little kitbags. Suddenly there arose an excited cry, ‘Mother has come! Mother has come!’ And there was Mrs. Sen standing in their midst and no less excited.

‘Hallo!’ cried Prof. Sen. ‘I’ve just sent you a wire, asking whether you couldn’t join us at Dehri directly and soon.’

‘Telepathy evidently acts quicker than telegram’ she replied happily. ‘But let’s not miss the train since you’re all ready. Send for taxis.’ ‘But don’t you want to change and rest?’ he inquired. ‘We can take the next train.’ ‘I’m all for catching this train,’ she insisted. ‘I had a bath before starting and Mother has packed a big hamper. We’ll all have a hearty feed in the train.’ She gave Miss Gupta a charming smile and asked, ‘I hope the children haven’t been too trying.’

‘Oh no,’ she replied amiably. ‘It was a joy to be with them.’

‘Mother, is Miss Gupta...’ began Pappo. ‘Miss Gupta!’ cut in her mother sharply. ‘Is that the way to talk of members of the family? Chhi-chhi! You must call her Renu Di.’ ‘Yes, Mother’ agreed Pappo sweetly. ‘Will Renu Di take our lessons throughout the vacation?’

‘If you’re good she will let you have lots of time to play and ramble,’ the mother replied, petting Chinu who was clinging to her. ‘You must help her to keep the house too,’ she added. ‘Your father and I will only be your guests and Renu Di’s. He and I are going to have long lovely walks along the Sone beach, and perhaps Renu Di and you could join us sometimes.’

(9)

The train was swaying along the Gangetic plain with its accustomed rhythm, but to Prof. Sen and his wife it sounded like a happy tune. They were sitting side by side and looking out upon the waving corn, the fleeting cottages and the occasional palms with a new contentment. On the opposite bench the children were engrossed in ‘Snakes and Ladders’ with Miss Gupta, sitting on a box facing them.

‘Did I tell you of Judge Dutt’s visit to our place, Charu?’ asked the Professor. ‘No, tell me now,’ she begged him. ‘I was returning from college one afternoon,’ he began. ‘And he gave me a lift and was inquiring after you and the children. I pressed him to come in and Pappo gave him tea. He was quite taken up with her, and gathered Chinu in his lap and wouldn’t put him down even for tea. Looking guiltily at the chaos in our hall I mentioned how much we admired the beautiful way Mrs. Dutt kept their house. Do you know his reply? ‘To me our house is like the reception-room of an Art Emporium’, he said, ‘while yours has a remarkably soothing atmosphere. I suppose ’tis the patter of children’s feet and their laughter and bustle that makes all the difference.’ And he sighed so sadly. I wonder if they are half as happy as we.’

‘Now don’t start imagining things,’ laughed his wife. ‘Children are all right, but there are men and women–and quite nice ones too–who get along beautifully without themselves having them. I think I’ll make it a point to see more of Nandita when we come . There are lots of things I want to learn from her...though I don’t think I will go in for Persian cats….Ah, here we are! Here’s our station. Pappo! you carry Renu Di’s little bag. Bablu will carry mine and Chinu will hold my hand. Your father will help Chandi in the next compartment...Look ! Children...do you see the giant river? Isn’t that a glorious sight!’