The night was so still that a keen listener might have heard a light footfall behind the screen, as if some one were stealing away from it. But those two only heard their own soft breathing as their lips met.
"Durga! Durga! asleep as usual, and I bade thee keep the fire aglow lest I should need aught."
The familiar fault-finding rang through the courtyard, and not even a tremble in Parbutti's voice betrayed knowledge of that unseen listener, who, five minutes before, had hid behind the screen. Gopâl was right; her wits were quick to seize on what was to her own advantage. Anger and reproach were desirable, doubtless, but what if they left her helpless? Besides, there was time to spare for such things when she had accepted the inevitable. So through the still summer night she lay awake piecing together a plan of revenge against the woman who, on the other side of the mud wall, lay awake piecing together her plan for peace. Revenge! That was the first consideration; if it could be combined with comparative comfort. Peace! Yes! peace; if it could be had without that gnawing sense of shame which had come so unexpectedly to complicate the situation. So much for the women's thoughts; as for the man's, as he sat in the dawning light eating his morning meal, they might have been inferred from a certain irritation towards both the women who, in one way or another, were engaged in ministering to his comfort. For polygamy is not altogether tragic; it is often comic--at times almost farcical.
The clangour of metal upon metal rose with the sun, and all through the long hot day the beat and the burr filled the courtyards where those two women went about their daily tasks. When evening came it brought Gopâl an unusual display of platters at supper time--an unusual sweetness both in the viands and in Parbutti's voice.
"Lo! 'tis like a wedding feast, wife," he said, well pleased.
She gave an odd little hysterical laugh. "Perhaps 'tis time there was a wedding, O Gopâl!" Then she grew grave. "Thy people say so, and mine also. Even last night Mai Râdha spoke to me of her daughter. And perhaps 'twere better so. Thou wouldst not cease to love me, O Gopâl! because I brought thee fair sons; ay! and a fair wife too."
Her face was turned away; she spoke softly, regretfully, dutifully, as a good Hindu wife should under the circumstances, and her husband could hardly believe his ears. Parbutti--jealous Parbutti--suggesting a wife of her own choice! Here indeed would have been a chance of peace, were it not for Durga. What a fool he had been to be so precipitate! A sudden regard for the wife who was prepared to sacrifice so much to him mingled not unnaturally with a corresponding resentment against the woman whose love was certain to stand in the way of his pleasure. Yet he was too much taken aback for real assent or denial, and murmured something incoherently about there being no need for hurry, no need to bring a strange woman to the house--as yet. Parbutti's conventional decorum gave way before even this faint allusion to realities, and she turned upon him sharply.
"Wherefore no stranger, Gopâl? Sure it must be so, seeing thou wouldst not mock me by thinking of a widow--a childless widow. 'Tis not as if thou didst set store by foolish old ways. 'Tis not as though thou wast old and foolish thyself. Thou canst choose a virgin bride, and thou shalt choose one, else will I not yield thee. For thine own sake, husband, I will not. Mai Râdha's daughter is worthy of thee. Lo! I have seen her, but if thou heedest me not inquire of her secretly. Durga is old and a widow. We want no more childless ones in this house--nor her sons, even if fate were kind; for look you, I hate her--I hate her."
Gopâl's faint protest died down before Parbutti's vehemence; if she hated, she hated, and there was an end of it. No use in words, or for the matter of that in deeds. He went moodily out into the bazaars for comfort, telling himself he had been a fool to let his fancy for a woman as old as he was fetter his future. He might have known it would not last. That was the worst of it! Had he braved Parbutti's shrill wrath at first when the passion was there, it might have seemed worth while to suffer discomfort; now it was hard to hark back dutywards. What a fool he had been! halting as it were between the new and the old. He had glozed over the secrecy by appealing to the customs of his forefathers, and now he hated the tie they imposed upon him. Durga was his dead brother's widow, but what right had she to more consideration than any other woman who had yielded to a man's promise? She was no better than those others, would be no worse off than those others if he-- Even Gopâl could not put the thought plainly before himself; so he took refuge in a general sense of injury.
"Let be! Let be," he said angrily, the next time that Durga, with a growing passion in her voice, demanded that he should admit the truth. "And if thou sayest a word--I swear I will deny it. Nay! look not so, Durga! I meant only if thou wilt not obey."