IV
It was nearly ten o'clock at night when Sripati returned from Ranihat.
The earth was drowned in torrents of rain. It seemed that the downpour
would never stop, that the night would never end.
Jogmaya asked: "Well?"
"I've lots to say, presently."
So saying, Sripati changed his clothes, and sat down to supper; then he
lay dawn for a smoke. His mind was perplexed.
His wife stilled her curiosity for a long time; then she came to his
couch and demanded: "What did you hear?"
"That you have certainly made a mistake."
Jogmaya was nettled. Women never make mistakes, or, if they do, a
sensible man never mentions them; it is better to take them on his own
shoulders. Jogmaya snapped: "May I be permitted to hear how?"
Sripati replied: "The woman you have taken into your house is not your
Kadambini."
Hearing this, she was greatly annoyed, especially since it was her
husband who said it. "What! I don't know my own friend? I must come to
you to recognise her! You are clever, indeed!"
Sripati explained that there was no need to quarrel about his
cleverness. He could prove what he said. There was no doubt that
Jogmaya's Kadambini was dead.
Jogmaya replied: "Listen! You've certainly made some huge mistake.
You've been to the wrong house, or are confused as to what you have
heard. Who told you to go yourself? Write a letter, and everything will
be cleared up."
Sripati was hurt by his wife's lack of faith in his executive ability;
he produced all sorts of proof, without result. Midnight found them
still asserting and contradicting. Although they were both agreed now
that Kadambini should be got out of the house, although Sripati believed
that their guest had deceived his wife all the time by a pretended
acquaintance, and Jogmaya that she was a prostitute, yet in the present
discussion neither would acknowledge defeat. By degrees their voices
became so loud that they forgot that Kadambini was sleeping in the next
room.
The one said: "We're in a nice fix! I tell you, I heard it with my own
ears!" And the other answered angrily: "What do I care about that? I can
see with my own eyes, surely."
At length Jogmaya said: "Very well. Tell me when Kadambini died." She
thought that if she could find a discrepancy between the day of death
and the date of some letter from Kadambini, she could prove that Sripati
erred.
He told her the date of Kadambini's death, and they both saw that it
fell on the very day before she came to their house. Jogmaya's heart
trembled, even Sripati was not unmoved.
Just then the door flew open; a damp wind swept in and blew the lamp
out. The darkness rushed after it, and filled the whole house. Kadambini
stood in the room. It was nearly one o'clock, the rain was pelting
outside.
Kadambini spoke: "Friend, I am your Kadambini, but I am no longer
living. I am dead."
Jogmaya screamed with terror; Sripati could speak.
"But, save in being dead, I have done you no wrong. If I have no place
among the living, I have none among the dead. Oh! whither shall I go?"
Crying as if to wake the sleeping Creator in the dense night of rain,
she asked again: " Oh! whither shall I go? "
So saying Kadambini left her friend fainting in the dark house, and went
out into the world, seeking her own place.
