III
She sat in silence; and breaking upon it, they heard the soft tread of a man stop by their gate, and voices, and the servant who guarded the gate came in haste.
“Great Sir, here is the holy Brahman who is chief at the altar of great Jagannath in Chaki, and he would speak with you.”
“Bring him instantly hither. Stay! I go myself!” cried the Pandit, rising. He had forgotten his daughter.
“Father, have I your leave to go?” She drew the sari about her face.
“Daughter, no. This is a wise man and great. Be reverent and humble, and stay.”
She stood, trembling with fear to see one so holy. Surely it was a portent that the servant of the God should come on their reading. Yet she quieted her heart, and when her father, attending the great guest, placed him on his own seat, with the image of the wise Elephant-Headed One wreathing his trunk behind him, she bowed before him and touched his feet, for to her he was as Brahman and priest, an earthly God.
He was a man in middle life, tall and dignified in spite of a corpulence which gained upon him, and his features clear-cut in the proud lines that denoted his unstained ancestry. He knew himself the superior of kings. He would have spurned with his foot a jewel touched by the Mogul Emperor of India. Yet more. Had the Rajput Rana, a king of his own faith, sun-descended, royal, cast his shadow on his food in passing, he had cast it, polluted, away. So great is the pride of the Brahmans.
“Namaskar, Maharaj! What is your honoured pleasure?” asked the Pandit.
“I am on my way to Dilapur on the divine business,” he answered, with a voice like the lowest throbbing notes of the bronze temple gong. “But I would have a word with you, Brother, as I go.”