wanted to come out to that garden of hers.
With tender care I slowly carried her to the marble pavement and made her lie down on it. I would have fain laid her head upon my lap but I knew she would look upon it as a strange procedure on my part; sol placed a pillow under her head.
The full-blown Bokul flowers dropped one by one. The shadowy moon-light, peeping through the branches, fell upon her emaciated face. A still calmness pervaded the scene. Sitting aside in silence, in that heavy-scented darkness of shadows, I looked at her face and tears started in my eyes. Slowly drawing near her I lifted with both my hands one of her fevered worn-out hands. She did not resist it. As I sat silent in this posture for sometime, my heart overflowed and I exclaimed "I will never forget your love."
All at once I understood that the words were quite uncalled-for. My wife burst into laughter. There was a modest shame, there was happiness, and there was just a shade of mistrust and there was sharp ridicule, too, in a large measure, in that laugh. She did not utter a single word by way of protest, but by that laughter she made it clear to me that it was neither probable that I would never forget her, nor did she expect it at all.
It was for fear of this sweet piercing laughter of my wife that I never ventured to assume a gallant bearing towards her or to address the conventional phrases of endearment to her in the regular way of love-making. The things that came to my mind in her absence seemed to be mere babble when I stood before her. I cannot even now understand why the printed things that draw out floods of tears in the reading, excite laughter when we want to utter them. A speech can be contradicted or controverted but a laugh cannot be dealt with thus. Consequently I had to remain dumb. The moonlight grew brighter; a Kokila grew disconsolate by crying coo—coo. I wandered, if in such a moon-light night the bird's mate had turned deaf.
There was no sign of the alleviation of her troubles in-spite of prolonged treatment. The doctor advised a change of air as the likeliest course. I took my wife to Allahabad."
Dakshiná Babu stuck fast and abruptly stopped at this stage. Eyeing me suspiciously, he rested his head on his hands and brooded over his thoughts. I, too, remained silent. The kerosene lamp in the recess in the wall gave forth a dim light and the buzzing of the mosquitoes became distinctly audible in the silent room. Suddenly breaking the silence he resumed his story.
"At Allahabad she was placed under the treatment of Dr. Haran.
At last, a long period having been passed in the same condition, the Doctor said, I too came to perceive, my wife also understood that she was incurable and must remain a confirmed invalid for the rest of her days.
Then one day she said that since there was neither a chance of recovery nor was there any hope of her dying in the near future,—how long should I get on with her who was more dead than alive?—and she requested me to take a second wife.
It was, as though, a mere piece of sound reasoning and correct judgment; there was nothing in her manner to indicate that it involved nobleness or heroism or anything uncommon on her part.
Now, it was my turn to laugh; but have I such a gift of laughing? I, like the hero of a novel, exclaimed with a lofty, solemn air. "As long as I shall live—"
She said interrupting me "Come, come, you need not go on in that strain. Your words give one such a turn!"
Without acknowledging my defeat I said "I can never bring myself to love any one else in this life." At this, my wife burst into a laugh and I had to stop.
I cannot say whether I had then confessed it even to myself, but now I perfectly understand that I had grown weary at heart of this constant task of nursing without any hope of the patient's recovery. I had no such design as to break loose from it; still even to imagine that I would have to pass my whole life with this confirmed invalid, was painful to me. Alas! in the days of my first youth, when I looked forward, the world that was before me appeared bright and cheerful, with the magic of love, the expectancy of bliss and the mirage of beauty. Henceforth the remaining days are but a vast, dreary, barren, parching desert.
