Krishna Kanta's Will (Chatterjee, Knight)/Part 1/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX.
Nothing went well. Bhramar was alone. She took up the bedding and threw it on one side, saying it was too soft.
She forbade the servants to bring any flowers: she said they were full of insects. She refused to play card games, telling her companions her mother-in-law would be angry. Needles, thread, wools, patterns, she gave them all away to the village women, saying they made her eyes burn. Asked why she wore soiled garments, she abused the laundress, though the presses were full of clean clothes. Her hair and the comb ceased relationship, and her locks swayed in the wind like a field of thatching grass. Asked why, she would laugh and bunch it up on the top of her head anyhow, so far did she neglect herself.
At meal-times she began to frame excuses, saying she couldn't eat, she had fever. Her mother-in-law called in a doctor, put her under diet and pills, and entrusted the charge of administering the medicine to Khirodâ. The daughter-in-law snatched pills and food from Khiri’s hand and flung them out of window.
By degrees this sort of thing became unbearable in the eyes of Khiri. She said, "For whom are you thus grieving, Thâkurun? Does he for whom you are refusing food and sleep think of you for a single day? While you are weeping yourself to death, he is meditating, with closed eyes over his hukâ, on the charms of mistress Rohini."
Bhramar gave Khiri a sound slap. She was always very smart with her hand. Almost weeping she said, "You may say what you choose, but get out of my sight."
Khiri. "Do you think your slaps will shut people's mouths? For fear you should be angry we say nothing; but if I don't speak I shall die! Call Pânchi and ask her if Rohini did not come out of the Bâbu's garden that night he was so late."
Khirodâ's destiny was evil thus to talk to Bhramar so early in the day. Standing up, Bhramar rained slaps and cuffs upon Khirodâ, knocked her down, and dragged her by the hair, and at length burst out crying.
Khirodâ had never been angry at Bhramar's occasional slaps, but to-day it was too much. She got rather angry, and said, "Ha! mistress, what is the use of beating and dragging me? we speak for your own good. People are mocking at your name and we can't endure it. If you don't believe me, call in Pânchi and ask her."
Bhramar, weeping in anger and sorrow, exclaimed, "Ask her yourself. Am I a low creature like you that I should inquire about my husband from that outcast Pânchi? How dare you talk like that to me! I will speak to the Thâkurun and have you turned out with a broom. Go out of my sight."
Khirodâ went away grumbling. Then Bhramar, with tearful eyes and clasped hands, called upon Gobind Lâl, saying, "O preceptor, teacher, instructor in religion, my sole model of truthfulness, was it this you were hiding from me that day?"
In her innermost thoughts, in that hidden spot into which no eye ever penetrates, in that place where there is no self-deception, Bhramar, searching, found no disbelief in her husband. She did not distrust him. Once only she said to herself, "Should he be unfaithful how I should suffer! If I die all will be over."
To the Hindu woman the thought of death comes readily.