Chapter X.

IN the evening the crowds began to disperse. Kamala saw men, women, and children struggling against the wind on the wide breezy plain on the way to their village homes. Her heart went out towards them. There was an elderly man in front of her with a basket swung behind him in which were snugly seated two children. A woman by him carried new pots on her head and a piece of sugarcane and a bunch of green vegetables in her hand. Her joy was great; the greens, which were a great luxury, were for the evening meal. The child that walked by her side tried to hold the end of the sugarcane and was delighted. But the journey was long and the child clutched at the sugarcane and said: “How far, mother?” Kamala’s heart went out to the little girl and she thought of other little children in her hilly home whom she used to see under the trees and whom she would hush to sleep with melodies of her own making. Brought up in the innocent freedom of her mountain home she felt free like the air around her, and, untrammelled by caste superstition and fear, she entered joyously into the spirit of the rural diversions, taking an interest in the simple rustic souls around her, hugging their little black babies when they ran to her and joyously clung to her feet. She would forget to bathe after touching the Sudra and other low caste children, and no one found fault with the lovely sanyasi’s daughter. But now how different everything was, how the artificial barriers of custom and caste separated her from all these people! What a contrast everything was! It took a long time for her to understand the meaning of the things that were open as daylight to her city bred sisters. They knew nothing of the freedom of hills and valleys and wide fields, the innocence and joy of country homes. Their precocious and artificial childhood ended in a premature and forced womanhood, and there were no gradations of feelings or thoughts for them. Just as the door of a city house leads abruptly into the street where everything is open and glaring, so the threshhold of their childhood opened suddenly into womanhood. Kamala often found it hard to realize things which the others took as a matter of course. The child who was walking in front of her had complained of cold, and the mother had put her padur over the child as a protection from the wind and had drawn her in a caressing way towards herself. Kamala felt that the child that she had just been pitying was rich indeed compared to herself, for where was her own mother? How she would have liked to walk by her side, free and happy, though going to a poor village hut!

As Kamala and Bhagirathi approached their homes they went to their favourite place on the river bank near a large clump of trees. The waters, interrupted by the entangled roots of trees, here formed numerous eddies and pools. “Come, come, Kamala,” said Bhagirathi, breathlessly, pulling her companion, who was dropping stones into the pool in front, “come behind this tree. I would not be seen here for all the world.” They both tucked their sarees and hid themselves behind a huge tree. “Do you know who it is that is coming in this direction with your husband?” asked Bhagirathi excitedly. Kamala shook her head, and her heart beat wildly at the sight of her husband. Was she doing something wrong in hiding herself, she thought, and more than once she entreated Bhagirathi to let her go out.

“I won’t budge an inch. I don’t want your husband’s companion to see me.”

“Why, Bhagirathi, why? He is no relative of yours and if he were, he would not be angry at seeing us here.”

Bhagirathi looked down into Kamala’s eyes and said: “Don’t you know why? Who told me that your husband had been visiting a person called Sai? It was he, Krishnan,” and then clasping Kamala’s hand to her bosom in a sudden paroxysm of grief she exclaimed: “Oh, Kamala, how can it be all nothing when I can’t even tell you, my bosom friend, all that he has said to me?”

“He spoke to you?”

“Yes! Kamala. He had the audacity to do so, and in such terms, too. Ah! how can I tell you? Your innocence rebukes me. Enough! I shall have nothing to say to him. It is wrong, it must be wrong. Say you won’t tell anyone.”

“No! but why such ado?” said Kamala. “If he is your relative you may speak to him. There is nothing wrong.”

“Ah! Kamala! Do you know what he said? It is all due to my husband. The whole world knows that he cares not for me, and this man took the liberty of speaking to me. It was a place near the temple and he was behind a bush. Akabai was making her poojah, and the man gave me such a shock, for he came right up to me and thrust a letter into my hand.” She took the letter out from her choli and showed it to Kamala, first looking all round to see that no one was observing them. “That night I could not sleep. What could I do? It was not my fault. Oh, I wish I could die. How I despise myself for all this. Don’t look like that, Kamala. That night the thought came to me to run away with this man as he had proposed. He offered me his love. How guilty I feel now when I speak. I thought nothing of it then. I persuaded myself that it was natural for me to feel like that, and he said so in his letter. But I cannot write to him. I was so ashamed of it all in the morning and felt so angry with my husband, who by his conduct and treatment of me had given others a right to say such things to me. Then the revulsion of feeling would come now and then and I would say to myself, “It would serve my husband right if I ran away.’ The man had appointed this very spot for me to meet him, but I never went out of the house for a whole fortnight, and one day, Kamala, do you know, you were the means of preserving me. I saw him accidentally alone, but I seemed to hear your voice. I was at the place where we generally meet when going to Kashi’s house, near the bend of the road, and your voice gave me such a start that I turned away from the man and Aled, saying you were coming. “Who? Ganesh’s wife?” he asked. “By the bye, I saw Ganesh at Sai’s to-day.’ This was said just to detain me. But the start your voice gave me seemed as it were to open my eyes. I felt I was doing a dreadful wrong by meeting that man there and I drew my saree over my face and walked quickly away with my water vessel tightly held in my hand. Akabai was just in front of me and I joined her, but my heart beat fast all the way and now I feel so afraid of myself, for my thoughts wander, oh! so much, and the words he used in his letter tempt me in my weak moments.”

“Oh, Bhagirathi! This is dreadful. Let us burn this letter, and come away from this place. We don’t want to see him, and don’t let him again talk to you. Why, Bhagirathi, surely some medicine has been given to you to bewilder you. You must try mantras and charms to free you from this influence.” And then turning round she saw the temple of Rohini in the distance, lit by the setting sun, and she clasped her hands and said: “Rohini mata, deliver my friend from this evil influence and I will make prostrations seven times seven on the great full moon day.”

“Grant this prayer,” said Bhagirathi, “and I will do so every month for one full year.” And both turned their faces towards the setting sun and bowed. As they were emerging from the grove Rukhma, the sastri’s daughter, burst on them, starting them with a wild exclamation. “Here you are, I knew I should find you here. Did I not say that we couldn’t do without one another? Three is the Tirkut and now we are four and that means devilry,” for Harni had slipped in behind Rukhma. “It is a bewitched number, girls, and four would frighten anybody. There are three apsaras, but what are four let me see.”

“Stop your nonsense, you are always making up something or other,” said Bhagirathi, shaking the dimpled, laughing girl. “With all your puranic reading in your house and your husband’s coaching you are a little stupid monkey, let me tell you, with nothing but fun and laughter in your heart.”

Rukhma pursed her lips and tried to look very dolorous, but changing her expression she said: “You need not think so now. There is something that I have got in my head that is really solid, for I have been thinking what is to be done. It is really getting unbearable, the way in which Harni’s mother-in-law is going on. The poor girl has not been out to-day, and I have just now brought her from her grumbling reluctant mother-in-law.”

The four girls formed a pretty contrast as they stood in the glow of the setting sun, the darkening grove behind them and the shining river flowing close by. Rukhma with her fat brown face, all dimples and laughter, her eyes sparkling with fun, standing in the centre, the tall stately Bhagirathi in front, one hand resting on Kamala’s shoulder and Kamala herself leaning on a stump of a tree close by, her soft fair face, looking softer and fairer in the evening light, and her dark dreamy eyes looking eagerly and wistfully now into one face, now into another, and Harni with her slight figure, her babyish face, sad and downcast, nestling by the side of Rukhma and holding one of her hands—the four formed a pretty picture. Rukhma was the only girl, besides Kashi, of Kamala’s friends, who had a happy home, and she had a joyous buoyancy of manner. She could always twist a tale so as to make it ridiculous and excite laughter, and she herself was wont to indulge in a ringing laugh which was most contagious. “Come,” she said, “mother-in-law is bad, that is a fact. What is to be done? Let us not make wry faces but put on a bold front—why can’t we cheat Harni’s mother-in-law and frighten her into good humour? I have a plan in view, if only you girls will listen to it. I can suggest a remedy for all your troubles, but we will take Harni’s case first. The cranky old woman deserves it too!” Here Rukhma laughed loudly and added: “Oh, how I should like to see her thoroughly frightened and cowed down. She is so superstitious, too.”

“But what is all this about, you mischiefmonger?” asked Bhagirathi.

“Wait! wait,” said Rukhma, “Hear me. We shall represent three apsaras or witches or devils or whatever else you may call them—hair down, faces whitened, eyes flaming, dresses long with black stripes all over. The men will be away to-morrow till very late on account of the great fireworks tamasha. The back door of my house opens right by the side of Harni’s yard, and we will pounce on the old woman as she comes out into the yard before retiring to bed, and if she screams we will frighten her more and escape. We will say: ‘We are the three sisters of pestilence and we have come from the gods. We have witnessed the mental anguish and the vanvasan of the poor suffering daughter-in-law and we will be revenged on her; and I will have my hair whitened to represent the eldest and most dreaded sister of cholera. I will wave my broomstick and my winnowing fan in her face, while you will merely point towards her and stay in the background and imitate the screeching of the owl just as I utter the words, ‘I will be revenged.’ Then you will slowly step back and disappear in the shadows and run home as fast as you can while I shall glide back waving my broomstick all the time. Let Harni go and sleep in her own place; so that when the old woman comes into the house gasping and frightened to death she may be ready there to sympathize with her. How I should like to see the old crone then. At this she laughed another twittering laugh and said: “Come, girls, don’t you see the fun? Why do you demur?”

“The fun we see,” said Bhagirathi, “but who is to bear the beating afterwards? We are sure to be discovered.”

“Beating! Pha! who will find us out? It will be such a lesson to the old tyrant who is sure to tell others of the visitation, and then the confidential whispers that will follow-Ha! Ha! Ha!-and the women gathering mysteriously around her, and the shaking of their wise heads—I see it all before me. Won’t there be fun? Harni will at least be free for a full year, I tell you.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Harni, who was listening with a solemn face and dilated eyes. “They are sure to put the blame of the whole visitation on me and my poor husband.” Hereupon the three girls shook the poor frightened Harni and laughed loudly. Thus ended in smoke Rukhma’s wild plan.