Kota stirred a little, uncomfortably, and lifted her languorous eyes to her sister’s face. Just then the slave came back with custard-apples, early mangoes, and pomegranates in a basket. Kota took them from her, proffered the dish to her visitor, who accepted one of the mangoes, and then, while both began to eat, Kota said slowly: “I am not happy, my sister. My mind is troubled. I am filled with melancholy and foreboding concerning the child. I see many strange visions in my sleep. The gods refuse me peace.”
“Art thou thus, Kota? That is not right. Yes, I can see thou art not well. Let Gokarna offer special sacrifice for thee.”
“He hath done so twice already since the Pumsavana. But ah, Hilka, I cannot speak my heart to him. It seems to me as if my thoughts were not my own. They are put into my mind by evil spirits. I fear them, and I fear the end. Alas, shall the soul of this child be evil? I fear it! I fear it!” She spoke with a nervous intensity that made a strong impression upon Hilka, who knew well her sister’s lazy, thoughtless temperament. It was the first time she had ever perceived any strong feeling in her. Now she said anxiously: “Go to Naka, at the end of the village, and get a charm from him to ward off the Devas.”
“Hush! Gokarna is coming! Do not speak before him of charms, or he would scold us both.”
Hilka, who had been sitting with her back to the street, turned hastily, as Kota’s husband appeared in the veranda entrance:—a tall and austere-looking Brahman, clad in a long, white garment. He came forward at once to greet his wife, giving Hilka but a careless recognition; for, to the head of the village, even his wife’s relatives were scarcely worthy of attention from him. And Hilka’s visit was brought to a sudden close; for no woman of Bul-Ruknu would, from choice, have stayed long in the proximity of the Priest of Siva.
Kota bade her sister a quiet farewell, not asking her to come again—rather taking that for granted. And when the visitor was gone, she turned immediately to her husband, who touched her on the forehead, answered briefly her questions concerning the day’s auguries, and presently left her and went into the house.
Kota, knowing that it would be useless to follow him, too dreary at heart to care whether or not he talked with her, returned to her cushions and sat down again to gaze off into space at the swirling, white heat-waves, and to dream, vaguely, of days that had never been.
For an Indian, Kota was a pretty woman, her eyes being very large and soft, and her black hair, just now woven with yellow champak flowers, thick and long. She was seventeen years old, and had been married for three years. Moreover, she had been born a Brahman, and, in her married life, had been highly honored; for, though until now she had been childless, her husband had not taken another wife. Above all, Gokarna’s parents had died in his early youth; so that Kota, at her marriage made mistress of the finest house in Bul-Ruknu, had been also spared that terror and curse of all young Indian women—the mother-in-law, whose traditional duty it was to make the life of the young wife one of perpetual misery.
At the time of her marriage, the girl Kota had been envied by every woman in the village. Later, despite the unheard-of advantages of her position, she had not been so much looked up to, for the reason that she was childless. But, just now, her star was again in the ascendant, since, in the winter, she was to present Gokarna’s house with a much-prayed-for heir.
In spite of the fact that she was to have what she herself had most longed for, Kota, as she had just explained to her sister, was not happy. Her mind was in an abnormal state; and was seriously affected by the slightest incident. Highly imaginative, like all her race, she had always been more or less given to visions and presentiments; though never so much as now. She would sit for hours motionless, wrapped in unhappy dreams, or, as the result of some slight accident, a prey to the keenest forebodings of evil. These things she did not often confide to her husband. Nor did she see enough of the members of her own family to get much comfort from them. Thus the naturally morbid state of her mind was fostered and increased by her loneliness and her secret broodings, till her nights were filled with terror, and her days were of the length of years.