Page:Tales of Bengal (Sita and Santa Chattopadhyay).djvu/85

Rh in the crowd. The tram car had started again and we advanced once more.

Her husband! The boys were evidently young, otherwise who could have thought of me as her husband? The wise people of the world would have laughed at them if they had heard. Just because my eyes are red, my hair ruffled and I run like one mad after her bedstead, you take me for her husband? You have not learnt yet that love has no right, can claim nothing at all, in this world. What is love compared to wealth and birth? Nothing, less than nothing. She is a queen and I am a poor schoolmaster.

We have arrived at Nimtolla. The funeral pyre was built up high of sandal wood. Her body was placed on it. Why such a smile now? Are you the exiled queen of Heaven, returning to your native land? Was it the curse of some angry sage that made you come to this earth of ours? Is it for that, that I never saw a smile on your lips while you were yet with us? And do you smile for the first time when Death welcomes you as his bride?

The fire was lit. Thousands of fiery serpents hissed out amidst the mass of her jet black dark hair. Their forked tongues darted to and fro like lightning. I covered my eyes and fled.

At the time, when after passing the Entrance Examination I was first admitted to a college, neither I myself nor anyone of my family ever thought that I should pass my life as a poor schoolmaster. Every one gave me the title of the "flower of the family." My mother never had a single golden ornament herself, but she believed firmly that her future daughter-in-law was sure to have diamond wristlets on her arms. Her dear Amar had won a scholarship at the first trial; so it was therefore as good as certain that he would be a judge at least? I wonder, to whose Rh