“Sir, I don’t care to go without you,” I said mournfully.
My friends paid not the slightest attention to my remark. They summoned a hackney carriage and departed with all the luggage. Kanai and I sat quietly at our guru’s feet. After a half hour of complete silence, Master rose and walked toward the second-floor dining patio.
“Kanai, please serve Mukunda’s food. His train leaves soon.”
Getting up from my blanket seat, I staggered suddenly with nausea and a ghastly churning sensation in my stomach. The stabbing pain was so intense that I felt I had been abruptly hurled into some violent hell. Groping blindly toward my guru, I collapsed before him, attacked by all symptoms of the dread Asiatic cholera. Sri Yukteswar and Kanai carried me to the sitting room.
Racked with agony, I cried, “Master, I surrender my life to you;” for I believed it was indeed fast ebbing from the shores of my body.
Sri Yukteswar put my head on his lap, stroking my forehead with angelic tenderness.
“You see now what would have happened if you were at the station with your friends,” he said. “I had to look after you in this strange way, because you chose to doubt my judgment about taking the trip at this particular time.”
I understood at last. Inasmuch as great masters seldom see fit to display their powers openly, a casual observer of the day’s events would have imagined that their sequence was quite natural. My guru’s intervention had been too subtle to be suspected. He had worked his will through Behari and my Uncle Sarada and Rajendra and the others in such an inconspicuous manner that probably everyone but myself thought the situations had been logically normal.
As Sri Yukteswar never failed to observe his social obligations, he instructed Kanai to go for a specialist, and to notify my uncle.
“Master,” I protested, “only you can heal me. I am too far gone for any doctor.”