Eyesore/Chapter 6
VI
It was intolerable that this newly-arrived stranger should be established there with the assurance of longstanding habit. So Rajlakshmi proceeded to vent her heart-burnings upon Annapurna's devoted head. "Just go and have a look," said she, "at the sort of training your Nabob's daughter has brought with her from the house of her father, the Nabob."
"Sister, why speak thus to me?" pleaded Annapurna in great distress. "She's your daughter-in-law, train her, and if needful punish her, as you will."
Rajlakshmi's voice twanged forth like a smitten bowstring: "My daughter-in-law indeed! As if I am likely to have any voice while you are behind her."
Annapurna rushed into Mahendra's bedroom with loud footsteps, startling the wedded couple into a due consciousness of their surroundings. "You wretched girl," she said to Asha, "are you determined to put me to shame? Have you lost all sense of decency and propriety that you should be taking your comfort here, leaving the whole burden of household cares on your old mother-in-law? 'Twas my evil star which led me to bring you into this house!" And as she spoke she burst into tears.
Asha, standing with bowed head, kept fidgetting with the ends of her draperies, and wept silently.
Mahendra said, "Why are you scolding the wife, Kaki? 'Tis I who have kept her up here."
"A nice thing to have done to be sure!" cried Annapurna. "She's but a child and an orphan, what should she know of right and wrong? But what sort of training are you giving her?
"Well," rejoined Mahendra, "don't you see that I've got for her a slate and paper and books? I've made up my mind to teach her to read and write, and I don't care if people speak ill of me, or whether you get angry."
"But why need her lessons take up the whole day?" asked Annapurna. "It should be quite enough if you taught her for an hour or so in the evenings."
"It's not so easy as that," replied Mahendra, "these things take quite a lot of time."
Annapurna left the room thoroughly vexed. Asha was about to follow her, but Mahendra placed himself across the door, and paid no heed to the tearful pleading in her eyes. "Wait a bit," said he, "if I have· wasted my time in sleep, I must make up for it now."
As the days went by Annapurna had to say to Asha, "The sort of progress you are making with your lessons is clear enough, but are you also going to prevent Mahendra from getting through his medical examination?"
At this Asha determined to be absolutely firm, and said to Mahendra, "You aren't reading for your examination at all—so from to-day I'm going to stay downstairs in Kaki's room." . "As you please," said Mahendra; "let's stay in Kaki's room by all means, but then she'll have to come upstairs and stay in ours!"
A bantering reply to such a serious proposition touching so grave a matter made Asha highly indignant. But Mahendra went on, "Hadn't you better keep an eye on me, day and night, to see for yourself that I really do cram for my examination?"
The decision to adopt the latter course was arrived at with remarkable ease. It is needless to describe in detail in what manner the eyes appointed to keep this strict and constant watch performed their functions. Suffice it to say that Mahendra did not pass his examination that year, and that Asha's ignorance of the life-history of the Centipede did not suffer the least abatement, in spite of the exhaustive information on the subject furnished by her reading-book.
At the news of Mahendra's failure Rajlakshmi blazed up like a summer conflagration; but the brunt of all its heat and fury had to be borne by Annapurna. She could neither eat nor sleep.