Greatest Short Stories by Mulk Raj Anand Page B

accented her voice with bitterness.
    ‘She is your daughter,’ said old Hari Ram to appease the woman. In his innocence he imagined that the proverbial mother-in-law had become the cause of his daughter’s flight. ‘I have brought her back… the midwife, Champa, said that the girl has made a mistake…’
    ‘To be sure,’ answered the mother-in-law. ‘There was no question, since Balwant has not been back from Kalej for more than a few days at a time…
    Unless she has cast the spell of her grey eyes on someone else… Jaswant says he has seen her winking at the visitors on the roadside…’
    ‘We are respectable people,’ said Chaudhri Ganga Ram to reinforce his wife’s speech.
    ‘I… what shall I say, Chaudhriji,’ answered Hari Ram meekly. ‘I wish fate had made her not so good looking… But,’ now, I have brought her back. And you can kill her if she looks at another… Here is a ring for my son Balwant. I could not give much dowry. Now I will make up a little for what the boy did not get…’
    From the wearisome acceptance of her fate, there swirled up incomprehensible violent urges of truth in Lajwanti, so that she shook a little and was on the point of telling them the horrible facts. And she was mad at her father for effacing himself and bowing before her in-laws. But the tremors in her entrails ended in choking her throat. And the lofty flights of anger only befogged her brain.
    ‘Jaswant! Jaswant!… Come over here…’ the mother-in-law called her eldest son.
    The scarecrow in the field turned round. Then he lifted the palm of his hand to see. He understood. And he began to walk back.
    In the silence of doom, Lajwanti quivered as though the demons of hell had let loose snakes and scorpions on her body. And, in a fit of crazy abandon, she felt herself borne form the underworld, on a bed, by her heroic husband, his arms wrapped around her… Actually, beneath the trembling flesh, she knew Balwant to be a coward, who dare not even raise his head to look at his elder brother.
    ‘She has come back!’ Jaswant ground the words in his mouth, throwing the white radishes away on the ground near the outdoor kitchen.
    ‘She could not tell you that she wanted to see the midwife,’ old Hari Ram said. ‘It was a false alarm.’
    ‘ There are mid-wives here also!’ Jaswant answered pat. ‘Why there is the Safdarjung Hospital!…’ Do no be taken in by her stories, Uncle. She has looked at more than one before her marriage… She is just a bad girl!… The way she insulted me when I went to fetch her back,… She sat, there, answering back! And allowed that Afsar ’s wife to slap me on the face!… Prostitute!…’
    ‘Bus! bus! Son!’ Chaudhri Ganga Ram said to restrain the boy.
    ‘Take that for having me beaten!’ Jaswant said and kicked Lajwanti on her behind, ‘Lajwanti quivered, then veered round, almost doubled over, and uttered a shrill cry before beginning to sob.
    ‘You deserved a shoe beating!’ shouted Jaswant, towering over the girl like an eagle in a malevolent glee of power, his arms outstretched as though he was going to hit her again.
    ‘Come away!’ shouted his father.
    ‘Let him punish her if he thinks she has done wrong,’ said Hari Ram. And let her fall at his feet… My daughter is pure… After saying this he felt pangs of remorse at his own cowardice and he was caught in the paroxysm of a dry throated cough, and water filled his eyes.
    ‘Maina, my maina,’ Lajwanti said under her breath, ‘I cannot bear this…’
    ‘Deceitful cunning wretch!’ Jaswant said and he turned away towards her father. ‘Take her away… We have no use for her here! After she has disgraced us before the whole brotherhood’
    ‘Not so many angry words, son!’ Chaudhri Ganga Ram said. ‘You have punished her enough!’
    ‘Son, let her get up and work!’ mother-in-law said.
    ‘Bless your words of wisdom’ said Hari Ram. ‘I knew you would be merciful… And now I leave her in your