over to Mahendra. Let her take her ease at reading and writing—I shall be the maid-of-all-work!"
With this Rajlakshmi went off to her room and shut herself in with a great clatter of bolts.
Annapurna sank to the floor in dismay. Asha, unable to understand the inwardness of this sudden domestic storm, went pale with shame and fear. Mahendra, with rage in his heart, said to himself, "No more of this. I must look after my wife myself, or else I should be doing a great wrong."
With the wish thus supported by the sense of duty, the flame was fanned by the wind. And college, examination, friendship's claims and social duties—where were they when Mahendra, to educate his wife, went with her into retirement?
The proud Rajlakshmi vowed that even if Mahendra and his wife sat starving at her door, she would not so much as vouchsafe them a glance. She would see how Mahendra could manage with his wife without the help of his mother!
Days passed—yet no repentant footsteps were heard near her door.
Rajlakshmi conceded that if pardon was begged, pardon must be granted, or poor Mahendra would be too grievously wounded.
But the petition for pardon did not arrive.
Rajlakshmi decided that she would go and offer her forgiveness. After all, if the son was in a huff, should the mother sulk too?
Mahendra's bedroom and study was a small room, the only one on the third storey, at a corner of the terraced roof. The last few days his mother had entirely neglected the making of his bed and the tidying of his things. Like breasts aching with an excess of milk, her maternal heart had begun to feel the weight of these undischarged daily cares. That noon she thought, "By this time Mahendra must be at his college. I'd better go and do up his room. When he comes back he'll at once recognise his mother's touch."
Rajlakshmi climbed up the steep stairs. The door of Mahendra's room was ajar, and as she came up to it she started as if pricked by a thorn. Mahendra was lying asleep on a bed made on the floor, and with her back to the door his wife was gently stroking his bare feet with her hands. The sight of this conjugal scene in the broad light of day was too much for Rajlakshmi. She crept back downstairs, abashed and mortified.
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."
