XXX
Asha came back. Binodini took her severely to task. "You've been away all this time, and you haven't written me a single letter."
"Nor have you written either, my Eyesore," returned Asha.
Binodini,—"Why should I be the first to write? It was for you—"
Asha embraced Binodini and acknowledged her fault. "You know, my dear, that I can't write well," she said. "And then to be writing to such a clever person as you makes me feel so awkward."
Their little quarrel was over, love overflowed again.
"You've quite spoilt your husband," said Binodini, "by always keeping near him. Now he can't do without somebody to keep him company."
Asha.—"That's just why I left him to you. You know the art of keeping company much better than I do."
Binodini.—"During the day I had a fairly easy time after packing him off to college. But in the evening there was no escape. I must talk to him, I must read to him, his demands were endless."
Asha.—"Serve you right! since you are so artful in winning peoples' affections you must pay for it!"
Binodini.—"Be careful, my dear! From the way friend Mahin goes on, I'm sometimes afraid my art may turn out to be magical."
Asha.—"Of course it is. I wish I knew something of your magic."
Binodini.—"Whom d'you want to lure to destruction, friend? Take my advice, my Eyesore, be satisfied with the conquest you've made at home. Don't you go trying your charms on others, the result is never worth the trouble!"
"Don't be horrid!" said Asha reprovingly, shaking her finger at Binodini.
"You've been very well I see, you're actually stouter" was Mahendra's first greeting after Asha's arrival.
Asha felt ashamed. She ought not to have been in such rude health—how was it she would always be doing the wrong thing! She certainly had not been happy away from Mahendra, why then did her body play her this trick! It was difficult enough to find words to express what was in her mind, without her appearance bearing false witness against her. She shamefacedly asked in her turn: "I hope you also have been well!"
In the old days Mahendra would probably have facetiously replied, "I've been more dead than alive." But the banter which he essayed from force of habit died away in his throat. He simply said: "I've been all right, there's nothing the matter with me."
Asha looked hard at him. He certainly looked thinner—his face was pale, a sort of hungry fire shone in his eyes. She was cut to the quick at the thought that her husband had perhaps not been well, and she had been away from him at Benares! Her husband grown thinner and she to be looking stouter! She mentally cursed her own exuberant health.
Mahendra, casting about for some other subject of conversation, asked after a pause, "And how is Kaki?" and when reassured as to her well-being he could not think of anything else to say. He took up an old newspaper lying near, and absent-mindedly glanced over its columns.
Asha with bowed head anxiously pondered: "How's it that though we meet after a long time, my husband's not talking nicely to me, and doesn't even look me straight in the face? Can it be because I've not been writing to him these last few days, or is it that to please Kaki I stayed on too long at Benares?" Her wounded heart tried hard to discover through what loop-hole any fault could have gained an entrance.
Mahendra's afternoon refreshment was served on his return from college. Rajlakshmi sat by him. Asha, duly veiled, stood leaning against the open door. There was no one else in the room.
"Aren't you well Mahin?" asked his mother anxiously.
"Of course I am, why shouldn't I be?" was the irritable response.
"Then why aren't you eating anything?"
"But I am eating, don't you see!"
Mahendra after his meal, clad himself in the thinnest of muslin, and strolled on to the terrace to await the passing of the evening warmth. He was nursing a fervent hope that their daily reading would not be interrupted to-day. But the shades of evening merged into night, the usual time went past, and Mahendra, oppressed with a sense of hopelessness, retired to bed.
The blushing, faltering Asha, bedecked and adorned for the night,[1] came up with slow steps to their bed-room—only to find Mahendra in bed! She felt she could not advance a single step further. After a period of separation, comes a momentary sense of strangeness. The thread of companionship cannot be taken up exactly where it was severed,—a mutual introductory greeting is required afresh. How then could Asha accept the joy of re-union without an invitation? She stood for a while at the doorway, but there was no sound from Mahendra. With one hesitating step after another she guardedly made her way into the room, feeling as though she would die of shame if even one of her ornaments tinkled. When with fast-beating heart she reached the mosquito-curtain, she found Mahendra fast asleep. Each one of the touches she had given to her toilet, her draperies, seemed to deride her. For a moment she wanted to fly from the room, to spend the night anywhere else but there.
At last she crept into bed as noiselessly as she could. Nevertheless the unfastening and re-fastening of the mosquito-curtain and the creaking of the bed-stead would have been enough to waken Mahendra, had he been really sleeping. He did not stir, simply because he was not asleep. Mahendra was lying with his face turned the other way, so Asha lay behind him. But even so, Mahendra could feel that she was silently weeping. A sense of his own cruelty made his heart feel as if between two millstones,—but for the life of him he could not find a caress to offer, or a word to say. His conscience lashed him with scornful condemnation,—that gave him pain, but did not show the way out. "In the morning," thought he, "I can no longer pretend to be asleep. What am I to say or do then?"
Asha solved the problem for him. At the break of dawn she, with her slighted adornments, left the bed. She also knew not how to show her face to him in the morning,
- ↑ The night-dress is not essentially different from the day-dress. Dressing for the night implies only a fresh toilet and a change.