Eyesore/Chapter 22
XXII
Vihari went away. Mahendra remained rooted to his chair. Binodini with a fierce piercing glance at him through the open door went back to her room, where Asha was cowering in utter shame. After
the disclosure made by Mahendra that Vihari was in love with her, Asha felt she could look nobody in the face. But Binodini had no pity to spare for Asha. Had the latter raised her face then, she would have been scared! It seemed as if Binodini was about to run amok against the world.—So it was a lie, indeed! No one loved Binodini! Everybody was in love with this silly shamefaced wax-doll!
Mahendra was lost in thought. "I said it was false—that I did not love Binodini," he pondered. "That was a harsh thing to say. Of course I am not in love with her, but to say I do not love her is to put it very cruelly indeed. What woman would not feel hurt to hear such a thing! When can I get an opportunity of telling her my mind more tactfully, more delicately. It would be very wrong to leave poor Binodini with such a cruel impression."
Mahendra took out the three letters from his box and read them over again. That Binodini was in love with him he could not doubt. But why, then, had she so wildly rushed out after the retreating Vihari? That must have been intended as a protest. "Since," thought he, "I said in so many words that I did not love her, she had to take the earliest opportunity of appearing to take back what she had written to me. Perhaps her rude disillusionment about my feelings might t:eally turn her heart towards Vihari in the end."
Mahendra found himself getting so anxious that he felt both surprised and afraid. What, he asked himself, if Binodini had overheard him? What harm if that did result in turning away her heart elsewhere? As the boat in a storm keeps itself steady by straining at its anchor, so Mahendra in this time of stress tried to hold on all the faster to Asha.
That night with Asha's head on his breast he asked her: "Chuni, tell me truly how much you love me?"
What a question!—thought Asha. Had then the shameful mingling of her name with Vihari's cast any doubts on her love? She felt ready to die with shame as she pleaded: "For pity's sake don't ask me such questions. Tell me rather," she entreated, "without keeping anything back, have you ever found my love wanting?"
Mahendra, to extract all the sweetness from her love pressed her further: "Why then did you want to go to Benares?"
"I don't want to," said Asha. I don't want to go anywhere at all!"
"But you did, you know!"
"You know why," Asha exclaimed, much hurt.
"You'd have had such a pleasant time with Kaki, away from me."
"Never!" cried Asha. "'Twas not for my happiness that I wanted to go."
"I really do think, Chuni," muttered Mahendra, half to himself, "that you'd have been much happier married to somebody else!"
Asha shrank away from him, and hiding her face in the pillow lay stiff as a log. Her sobs would no longer he restrained. And Mahendra, whilst making ineffectual attempts to console her, felt himself in a whirl with a curious mixture of pride, pleasure, and qualms of conscience at the sensitive single-heartedness of this devoted woman.
Why had not Vihari repudiated the charge so openly brought by Mahendra?—was Binodini's thought. She would have been better pleased, she felt, if he had even untruly denied it. Well, it served him right, he deserved this blow at Mahendra's hands. Why should a man of Vihari's stamp stoop to love Asha at all? It was as well that this shock had taken him away from her—at this Binodini felt a certain relief.
But then Vihari's ashy-pale face, as of one who had received his death-wound, would every now and again obtrude itself on Binodini in the midst of her work. The ministering angel in her wept at the sight. She strained that picture of suffering to her heart as a mother an ailing child—she could not have any rest, she knew, till she could see the smile restored to those lips, the colour to those cheeks.
After thus absent-mindedly getting through her usual duties for some days, Binodini could bear it no longer. She wrote a letter:
Friend Vihari,—Ever since I saw your face that day, I have been longing to find you recovered, to see you yourself again. When shall I once more behold your smile, when again hear your words of ready sympathy? Will you write a line to let me know how you are now?—Your sister Binod.
She sent a servant of the house with the letter to Vihari's lodgings.