And Parbutti knew it--knew the man with whom she had to deal a thousand times better than Durga knew him; so her shrill voice came first, allowing no compromise, no shilly-shallying. Durga had claimed him as the father of her child. Was it true? for in that case there was no need to bring a bride to the house, nor indeed under such circumstances would Mai Râdha ever consent to her daughter's marriage. Let him take his choice without delay.
And Durga, still gauging him by the measure of her own nature, claimed the truth also. Between the two Gopâl stood irresolute, divided between fear and desire.
"'Tis thy choice, O husband!" came Parbutti's shrill voice; "the widow or the bride, thou canst not have both."
He knew it perfectly. It was one or the other, and a sudden fierce dislike leapt up against poor Durga.
"It is a lie," he muttered, his eyes upon the ground; "I have naught to do with her, naught."
Durga fell back as if she had been struck, but Parbutti's laugh of triumph failed before the sombre fire of those big blazing eyes. For an instant it seemed as if the former would give herself up to vehement upbraiding; then suddenly she passed into the silence of the outer court without a word, and crouched down in her favourite attitude beside the smouldering fires. She felt sick and faint with horror, shame, incredulity. In all her known world of custom and conduct she seemed to find no foothold on which to recover her balance. He had denied her, he had denied the hearth. Her tense fingers hung rigidly without clasp or grip on anything, just as her mind seemed to have lost hold on all her beliefs, all her knowledge.
In a dim, half-dazed way she knew what would happen. By and by, when opportunity occurred, Gopâl would creep out, as he had crept out many a time before, and seek to soothe her. There need be no scandal, no open turning into the streets, if she would promise to make no fuss. Perhaps, once the marriage were accomplished he might even be induced to acknowledge the child. And at this thought something that was not shame, nor anger, nor horror, but sheer animal jealousy, leapt up within her; for she had learnt to care, as women do learn, even when they know that he for whom they care is not worth it.
So Parbutti and this new woman were to have him, and she--
When the brain is quick its owner may suffer more from the very variety and complexity it gives to grief; but the grief for all that is less absorbing. Durga was so lost in hers that she scarcely noticed Parbutti coming in after a time to see about the supper. There was no call on her for help this evening, no blame because the fires were slack and nothing ready. To tell truth, even Parbutti did not care to drive the stunned look from Durga's face, lest it should be replaced by seven devils; so she was left alone. Yet even so, something made her start, and for a second her hand moved as if she were about to thrust it out in a gesture of dismay; then it sank back listlessly. The impulse had come and gone--the housewifely impulse of warning to the younger woman that tamarind pulp which had been kept for days in a copper vessel was not likely to be a wholesome ingredient in a man's supper. After all, what did it matter to her? Surely Parbutti should know such things without being told them; if not, what right had she to be house-mother, ousting those who did? A curiously petty spite against her simmered up in Durga-dei's mind, and like the bubbles on boiling water served for a time to break up the surface of her hot anger against Gopâl. What! was she to save Parbutti from the consequences of her own ignorance and negligence? There was no more than that in Durga's mind as she watched the cooking; no more than that, and a dumb conviction that somehow the future must be changed, utterly changed. It could not be as the past had been; so much was certain. Yet as she sat, thinking not at all, something must have been juggling with her brain, for Parbutti's first words, when an hour or so afterwards she came bustling back into the outer court, found their reply ready on Durga's lips.
"He is not well," she fussed. "Durga! thou art more learned in simples than most. What shall I give to stay the burning in his throat and keep the sickness from him? God send it be not the great sickness; but 'tis in the city they say." The widow stood up mechanically, and her right hand sought once more the crevices of the wall against which she was leaning.