Narayan was against this parti de plaisir from the very beginning,
and now, without explaining his reasons, he said she was the only
sensible one among us.
"You won't lose anything," he remarked, "by staying where you are.
And I only wish everyone would follow your example."
"What ground have you for saying so, I wonder?" remonstrated Sham Rao,
and a slight note of disappointment rang in his voice, when he saw
that the excursion, proposed and organized by himself, threatened
to come to nothing. "What harm could be done by it? I won't insist
any more that the `incarnation of gods' is a rare sight, and that
the Europeans hardly ever have an opportunity of witnessing it;
but, besides, the Kangalim in question is no ordinary woman. She
leads a holy life; she is a prophetess, and her blessing could
not prove harmful to any one. I insisted on this excursion out
of pure patriotism."
"Sahib, if your patriotism consists in displaying before foreigners
the worst of our plagues, then why did you not order all the lepers
of your district to assemble and parade before the eyes of our guests?
You are a patel, you have the power to do it."
How bitterly Narayan's voice sounded to our unaccustomed ears.
Usually he was so even-tempered, so indifferent to everything
belonging to the exterior world.
Fearing a quarrel between the Hindus, the colonel remarked, in a
conciliatory tone, that it was too late for us to reconsider our
expedition. Besides, without being a believer in the "incarnation
of gods," he was personally firmly convinced that demoniacs
existed even in the West. He was eager to study every psychological
phenomenon, wherever he met with it, and whatever shape it might assume.
It would have been a striking sight for our European and American
friends if they had beheld our procession on that dark night. Our
way lay along a narrow winding path up the mountain. Not more
than two people could walk together - and we were thirty, including
the torch-bearers. Surely some reminiscence of night sallies
against the confederate Southerners had revived in the colonel's
breast, judging by the readiness with which he took upon himself
the leadership of our small expedition. He ordered all the rifles
and revolvers to be loaded, despatched three torch-bearers to march
ahead of us, and arranged us in pairs. Under such a skilled chieftain
we had nothing to fear from tigers; and so our procession started,
and slowly crawled up the winding path.
It cannot be said that the inquisitive travelers, who appeared
later on, in the den of the prophetess of Mandu, shone through
the freshness and elegance of their costumes.
