Ramesh was not long gone when Akshay arrived. When Jogendra left Calcutta he had requested Akshay to visit the house occasionally during the family's absence.
Akshay never neglected a duty that he had undertaken, and he made a practice of dropping in at odd times to see that one or other of the two bearers was duly guarding the premises.
When Akshay made a visit there Chandra Mohan informed him that Ramesh Babu was there a few minutes ago. Chandra also gave him whatever information that he had gathered about Ramesh.
Ramesh returned to his lodgings, musing as he went :
"Fate continues to make terrible game of me ! My relations with Kamala on the one hand and Nalinaksha's with Hemamalini 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 extraordinary 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 living in a house near the landowner's residence, on one Sunday morning, found a man from the bazar brought him a note. Opening it, he found that Ramsh had written to say that he was waiting in a shop at Bisaipur and he had something important to communicate.
Jogendra dashed up to the shop to find Ramesh. 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 Hemamalini was far away.
He found Ramesh sitting alone on an upturned kerosene tin in a grocer's shop. Jogendra went forward at once, grasped Ramesh by hand and drew him to his feet.
"I really can't cope with you !" he cried, "you are as diffident as ever. Why couldn't you come straight to my quarters instead of sticking in a grocers shop half-way ? One would think you enjoyed the aroma of treacle and the perfume of fried rice !"
Taken aback by this greeting, Ramesh merely smiled. Jogendra hurried him off, keeping up an incessant flow of talk.
"The theologians may preach what they like," he said, "but to me the workings of Providence are inscrutable. Look at me ! I was brought up in a city to be a thorough townsman, and now I'm cast into this howling wilderness to starve my soul among the clods !"
"It's not a bad place at all," remarked Ramesh, looking round.
Jogendra expressed his dissatisfaction expressing, "I'm trying hard to intensify the solitude by driving away the only companionable soul in the place ! For a time I was absolutely stifled with excessive peace of mind here. But at present I'm at daggers drawn with the secretary of the school committee, and after the sample of my temper that I've given the landlord he won't be in a hurry to attack me again. He wanted to employ me as his trumpeter in the English newspapers, but I made it quite plain to him that I'm my own master. It's not my virtues that keep me on here. The Joint Magistrate thinks a lot of me, so the landlord is afraid to turn me out. Some day I'll see in the Gazette that the Joint has been transferred to some other district. Then I'll know that my sun has set and that the days of my headmastership at Bisaipur are numbered. "
They reached Jogendra's quarters, where Ramesh at once subsided in to a chair.
"Don't sit down yet," said Jogendra. "I haven't forgotten your prejudice in favor of a morning bath. Go and have your tub now. Meanwhile I'll prepare fresh tea as an excuse to indulge in a second brew of tea."
The whole day passed in eating, talking, and resting, and Jogendra never gave Ramesh a chance to mention the important business which had brought him to Bisaipur.
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