UNCLE himself left for Allahabad a day or two later on a visit to his eldest daughter Bidhu.
On the morning of his departure Kamala invited Sailaja to a picnic meal with her at the new house, and Saila joined her there after giving Bipin his breakfast and seeing him off to the city.
The two friends set to work and with Umesh’s help prepared a meal under the nim tree. When breakfast was over they settled down for a day-long talk under the tree. The cool shade, the tempered sunshine, and the view over the river seemed to Kamala a wonderful setting to their conversation, and the purposeless longing that had found place in her heart became as remote as the kites that circled around in the sky above them, looking like specks in the blue.
The afternoon was still young when Saila bestirred herself; her husband would soon be back from the office and she must go.
“Could you not depart for once from your usual custom?” asked Kamala; but Saila merely smiled and shook her head while she fondled Kamala’s chin. When leaving she enjoined on Kamala to return before dark.
The sun was still above the horizon when Kamala finished her housework. She wrapped a shawl round her head and shoulders and settled down again under the nim tree to watch the sun sinking behind the high bank across the river, where a few fishing-boats were moored with masts silhouetted against the glowing sky.
Umesh now came out with an excuse to engage her in conversation. “You haven’t taken any pân for a long time, mother,” he said. “I got some ready at the other house and brought it along with me,” and he handed her some pan wrapped in paper.
Kamala awoke to the consciousness that dusk was falling and she sprang to her feet.
“Uncle Chakrabartti has sent a carriage for you,” added Umesh.
Kamala entered the bungalow for a last look round before driving home. In the principal room was a fireplace of the English pattern in which a fire could be lighted for warmth in winter, and on the mantelpiece above it a kerosene lamp was burning. Kamala stopped to lay the packet of pan on the mantelpiece and was on the point of resuming her perambulations when her eye caught her own name in Ramesh’s handwriting on the paper of the parcel.
“Where did you find that paper?” she asked Umesh.
“It was lying in a corner of master’s room. I picked it up when the floor was being swept.”
Kamala took it up and began to read. It was the letter in which Ramesh had made a clean breast to Hemnalini and which with his extraordinary carelessness he must have thrown aside.
She read the letter through.
“Why do you stand there and say nothing, mother?” asked Umesh; “it’s getting dark.”
One might have heard a pin drop in the room and Kamala’s expression alarmed Umesh. “Don’t you hear me, mother? We must be going home; it’s late,” he pleaded; but she did not stir till one of Uncle’s servants came in and announced pointedly that the carriage had been standing for a long time.