Page:Tales of Bengal (Sita and Santa Chattopadhyay).djvu/84

Tales of Bengal its dark embrace, or perhaps the joy and peace of some few souls might have turned into ashes at your funeral pyre, but would you have received so magnificent a send-off to your last home? Would there have been such a crowd of followers and would the people of the great capital have looked on you with wondering eyes? And this horrible uproar, which seems to tear down the very heavens, would there have been anything like this to herald your triumphal progress to the realms of death? Then surely you ought to be counted fortunate this day! You were the favourite Rani of the great Parbaticharan Roy, the head of the great Roy family! Then why should not the fire in my heart die out along with the fire which will soon consume your beauteous limbs? What is the tie which has bound the fate of a miserable wretch like myself to yours, a tie that cannot be disolved even in death? The fire still rages in my heart, for you, my queen, though you are no more. Is this not overweening temerity on the part of a poor school-master?

The procession advances on and on. I follow as one of the crowd. I have no right to walk with the members of your aristocrat husband's family.

Something happened and the procession stopped for a moment. A tramcar or some other vehicle in front had come to a standstill. For two minutes we all stood there. The crowd on both sides pushed their way to the bedstead to look their fill at you. Two young men, college students I thought from their appearance and the number of books in their hands, pushed right to the front and then started back as if in surprise. "Such beauty in death!" whispered one to the other, "What she must have been in life? I never thought to see such loveliness except in pictures. I wonder whose house she is leaving dark."

The other nudged him and whispered pointing to me, "Hush, perhaps that is her husband." They disappeared Rh