As to the unlucky Sham Rao, he broke out in a cold sweat, and tried
to assure us that we were mistaken, that we did not fully understand
her language.
"It is not about you, it is not about you! It is of me she speaks,
because I am in Government service. Oh, she is inexorable!"
"Rakshasas! Asuras!" thundered the voice. "How dare you appear
before us? how dare you to stand on this holy ground in boots made
of a cow's sacred skin? Be cursed for etern - -"
But her curse was not destined to be finished. In an instant the
Hercules-like Narayan had fallen on the Sivatherium, and upset the
whole pile, the skull, the horns and the demoniac Pythia included.
A second more, and we thought we saw the witch flying in the air
towards the portico. A confused vision of a stout, shaven Brahman,
suddenly emerging from under the Sivatherium and instantly
disappearing in the hollow beneath it, flashed before my dilated eyes.
But, alas! after the third second had passed, we all came to the
embarrassing conclusion that, judging from the loud clang of the
door of the cave, the representative of the Seven Sisters had
ignominiously fled. The moment she had disappeared from our
inquisitive eyes to her subterranean domain, we all realized that
the unearthly hollow voice we had heard had nothing supernatural
about it and belonged to the Brahman hidden under the Sivatherium -
to someone's live uncle, as Mr. Y - - had rightly supposed.
- - - - - -
Oh, Narayan! how carelessly.... how disorderly the worlds rotate
around us.... I begin to seriously doubt their reality. From this
moment I shall earnestly believe that all things in the universe
are nothing but illusion, a mere Maya. I am becoming a Vedantin....
I doubt that in the whole universe there may be found anything more
objective than a Hindu witch flying up the spout.
- - - - -
Miss X - - woke up, and asked what was the meaning of all this noise.
The noise of many voices and the sounds of the many retreating
footsteps, the general rush of the crowd, had frightened her. She
listened to us with a condescending smile, and a few yawns, and
went to sleep again.
Next morning, at daybreak, we very reluctantly, it must be owned,
bade good-bye to the kind-hearted, good-natured Sham Rao. The
confoundingly easy victory of Narayan hung heavily on his mind.
His faith in the holy hermitess and the seven goddesses was a good
deal shaken by the shameful capitulation of the Sisters, who had
surrendered at the first blow from a mere mortal. But during the
dark hours of the night he had had time to think it over, and to
shake off the uneasy feeling of having unwillingly misled and
disappointed his European friends.
Sham Rao still looked confused when he shook hands with us at parting,
and expressed to us the best wishes of his family and himself.
