A DARK HOUSE: A DARK LIFE.
In the absence of Nagendra and Surja Mukhi from their spacious home,
all was darkness therein. The clerks sat in the office, and Kunda
Nandini dwelt in the inner apartments with the poor relations. But how
can stars dispel the darkness of a moonless night?
In the corners hung spiders' webs; in the rooms stood dust in heaps;
pigeons built their nests in the cornices and sparrows in the beams.
Heaps of withered leaves lay rotting in the garden; weeds grew over
the tanks; the flower-beds were hidden by jungle. There were jackals
in the court-yard, and rats in the granary; mould and fungus were
everywhere to be seen; musk-rats and centipedes swarmed in the rooms;
bats flew about night and day. Nearly all Surja Mukhi's pet birds had
been eaten by cats; their soiled feathers lay scattered around. The
ducks had been killed by the jackals, the peacocks had flown into the
woods; the cows had become emaciated, and no longer gave milk.
Nagendra's dogs had no spirit left in them, they neither played nor
barked; they were never let loose; some had died, some had gone mad,
some had escaped. The horses were diseased, or had become ill from
want of work; the stables were littered with stubble, grass, and
feathers. The horses were sometimes fed, sometimes neglected. The
grooms were never to be found in the stables. The cornice of the house
was broken in places, as were the sashes, the shutters, and the
railings. The matting was soaked with rain; there was dust on the
painted walls. Over the bookcases were the dwellings of insects;
straws from the sparrows' nests on the glass of the chandeliers. In
the house there was no mistress, and without a mistress paradise
itself would be a ruin.
As in an untended garden overgrown with grass a single rose or lily
will bloom, so in this house Kunda Nandini lived alone. Wherever a few
joined in a meal Kunda partook of it. If any one addressed her as
house-mistress, Kunda thought, "They are mocking me." If the _Dewan_
sent to ask her about anything her heart beat with fear. There was a
reason for this. As Nagendra did not write to Kunda, she had been
accustomed to send to the _Dewan_ for the letters received by him. She
did not return the letters, and she lived in fear that the _Dewan_
would claim them; and in fact the man no longer sent them to her, but
only suffered her to read them as he held them in his hand.
The suffering felt by Surja Mukhi was endured in equal measure by
Kunda Nandini. Surja Mukhi loved her husband; did not Kunda love him?
In that little heart there was inexhaustible love, and because it
could find no expression, like obstructed breathing it wounded her
heart. From childhood, before her first marriage, Kunda had loved
Nagendra; she had told no one, no one knew it. She had had no desire
to obtain Nagendra, no hope of doing so; her despair she had borne in
silence. To have striven for it would have been like striving to reach
the moon in the sky. Now where was that moon? For what fault had
Nagendra thrust her from him? Kunda revolved these thoughts in her
mind night and day; night and day she wept. Well! let Nagendra not
love her. It was her good fortune to love him. Why might she not even
see him? Nor that only: he regarded Kunda as the root of his troubles;
every one considered her so. Kunda thought, "Why should I be blamed
for all this?"
In an evil moment Nagendra had married Kunda. As every one who sits
under the upas-tree must die, so every one who had been touched by the
shadow of this marriage was ruined.
Then again Kunda thought, "Surja Mukhi has come to this condition
through me. Surja Mukhi protected me, loved me as a sister; I have
made her a beggar by the roadside. Who is there more unfortunate than
I? Why did I not die by the roadside? Why do I not die now? I will
not die now; let him come, let me see him again. Will he not come?"
Kunda had not received the news of Surja Mukhi's death, therefore she
thought, "What is the use of dying now? Should Surja Mukhi return, then
I will die; I will no longer be a thorn in her path."