Rajmohan's Wife quotes

"That is why I am asking you to," replied Kanak. "

Why should you remain in a cage all the day. Do not all other housewives draw water?

"

Kanak laughed and replied, "Wrong! I am not a fat-bellied Bhattacharya. I have nothing to do with the Shastras.

But I would have gone even if I had fifty men.

"

Kanak smiled sadly and said, "It's a sin even to say so. But if all the fifty were of the same sort as the one given me by Fate, it would hardly matter.

If I meet none, I am a chaste and devoted wife even if married to a crore of men.

"

"The Kulin girl's lot!" exclaimed the other and quickly got a tiny pitcher from the kitchen. The pitcher perfectly matched the carrier of water. Then they both marched off towards the river. Kanak laughed and said, "

Come now, my proud girl, let's go and show beauty's splendour to the gaping idiots.

"

Madhav flushed, but immediately changed the subject and said, "What a girl Kanak is!

She can laugh with so much sorrow eating into her heart.

"

The woman proudly replied, "I am your wife." Her face reddened and her voice began to be choked. "

I had gone because I thought there was nothing wrong in it.

"

And then that smile and that tone of affection! Oh! she could give all she had now in the world again to see that smile, again to hear that tone of human voice.

Her heart was a warm spring of inexhaustible love, but it found no vent, and the cold breath of unkindness congealed the celestial stream at its source.

One painful remembrance, painful but too sweet in its painfulness not to be brooded over again and again, still connected her past happiness with her present lot. That she wished to forget; but she could not.

All thoughts of her own accursed future and degraded womanhood vanished as she thought of the beloved beings who were now sleeping in fancied security while utter poverty and misery, perhaps worse, yawned to engulf them in an hour.

She felt she must save them if she could, even at the price of her life.

Her first thought was to alarm her own household. But the next moment she perceived the folly of the thought. Who in the household would believe it of Rajmohan? Would his aunt believe it? or would his sister?

And even with her mother's consent, would Kanak have the courage to venture on such a journey at such an hour unattended or attended by only another woman, herself, specially when bands of dacoits were out, lurking on the wayside?

Matangini now perceived with despair that her only resource lay in herself. She must go herself.

Her whole soul recoiled at the idea. She thought not of the danger, though the danger was great. At this hour of dread loneliness, a young woman would have to thread her way through a wild and jungly path.

A band of desperate robbers were stationed somewhere in the vicinity, and should she fall into their hands, she shuddered to think what might be the consequence. If among these robbers she should meet her husband! Matangini shuddered again.

Matangini had a brave heart, and for her sister and her husband she felt she could risk her life.

As the appalling dangers rose before her mind, her noble love expanded and rose also, and she longed to sacrifice at its altar a life whose burden her crushed heart could not longer bear. But still another womanly feeling kept her back.

Immediately the voices in the garden were hushed. Matangini still retained presence of mind enough to see that the dacoits had taken the warning given by the animal, and that she was likely soon to be discovered.

Danger again restored her energies.

Darting with the fleetness and the lightness of the gazelle across the darkened bank of the pool, she as swiftly ascended to the edge of the water.

"Gods, give me strength," she uttered with her hands clasped on her bosom. Then summoning all her resolutions, she made rapid but noiseless steps. Her heart beat as she walked through the jungly path. The dreary silence and the dark shadows appalled her.

The knotted trunks of huge trees showed like so many unearthly forms watching her progress in malignant silence.

In each leafy bough that shot over her darkened path, she fancied there lurked a demon. In each dark recess she could see the skulking form and glistening eyes of a spectre or of a robber.

"I am a woman and no thief, come and see," was the reply.

It struck the slowly opening senses of Karuna that a thief does not usually possess so sweet a voice as the one she heard.

Without further parley, therefore, she came to the door and opened it.

… which might await her at home, not even the risk and danger of discovery by her husband, obliterated the faintest tint of the vivid picture which memory of fancy successfully traced before her mental view, now in the darkest, now in the most radiant colours.

She had promised to forget; the first thing she did after leaving Madhav was to remember; to remember and hang with rapture on each word he had uttered,—on each tear he had shed; and often would the rapture vanish and be succeeded by the thought that god and man abhorred her impurity of heart.

A part of their journey had been accomplished when the growing blackness of the skies announced that a storm was near.

THE house of Mathur Ghose was a genuine specimen of mofussil magnificence united with mofussil want of cleanliness.

From the far-off paddy fields you could descry through the intervening foliage, its high palisades and blackened walls. On a nearer view might be seen pieces of plaster of venerable antiquity prepared to bid farewell to their old and weather-beaten tenement.

"Oh fie!" interposed Tara, "

Is beauty ever disdained because sometimes a bad woman is beautiful?

At that rate, sister, you should have disfigured your own fine countenance long before this. No, no, because bad woman may have a fine knot of hair, that is no reason why a good woman should have none.

"

Women always hear more of each other than men,

" said she.

"Do not try to deceive me, love," returned Tara in a tone of earnest but affectionate remonstrance. "I know you care little for me or my love, but to a woman, her husband is—I cannot say what he is not.

Deceive the world, but you cannot deceive me.

"

As if still suspicious of the character of the security of this cell, the architect had taken the unusual precaution of plating the very walls with a coat of iron.

The black metal frowned by the dim and flickering light as if it inclosed a living grave.

There was another passage or resemblance of a passage from this room besides the iron-door already mentioned. It was another door, precisely of the same character, placed in one of the corners and leading apparently to a side-room;