Bab Bab 15 · Chapter XV

. Chapter XV

I’d not give room for an Emperor—

I’d hold my road for a King.

To the Triple Crown I’d not bow down—

But this is a different thing!

_I_’ll not fight with the Powers of Air—

Sentries pass him through!

Drawbridge let fall—He’s the Lord of us all—

The Dreamer whose dream came true!

_The Siege of the Fairies._

Two hundred miles north of Chini, on the blue shale of Ladakh, lies

Yankling Sahib, the merry-minded man, spy-glassing wrathfully across

the ridges for some sign of his pet tracker—a man from Ao-chung. But

that renegade, with a new Mannlicher rifle and two hundred cartridges,

is elsewhere, shooting musk-deer for the market, and Yankling Sahib

will learn next season how very ill he has been.

Up the valleys of Bushahr—the far-beholding eagles of the Himalayas

swerve at his new blue-and-white gored umbrella—hurries a Bengali, once

fat and well-looking, now lean and weather-worn. He has received the

thanks of two foreigners of distinction, piloted not unskilfully to

Mashobra tunnel, which leads to the great and gay capital of India. It

was not his fault that, blanketed by wet mists, he conveyed them past

the telegraph-station and European colony of Kotgarh. It was not his

fault, but that of the Gods, of whom he discoursed so engagingly, that

he led them into the borders of Nahan, where the Rajah of that state

mistook them for deserting British soldiery. Hurree Babu explained the

greatness and glory, in their own country, of his companions, till the

drowsy kinglet smiled. He explained it to everyone who asked—many

times—aloud—variously. He begged food, arranged accommodation, proved a

skilful leech for an injury of the groin—such a blow as one may receive

rolling down a rock-covered hillside in the dark—and in all things

indispensable. The reason of his friendliness did him credit. With

millions of fellow-serfs, he had learned to look upon Russia as the

great deliverer from the North. He was a fearful man. He had been

afraid that he could not save his illustrious employers from the anger

of an excited peasantry. He himself would just as lief hit a holy man

as not, but ... He was deeply grateful and sincerely rejoiced that he

had done his “little possible” towards bringing their venture

to—barring the lost baggage—a successful issue, he had forgotten the

blows; denied that any blows had been dealt that unseemly first night

under the pines. He asked neither pension nor retaining fee, but, if

they deemed him worthy, would they write him a testimonial? It might be

useful to him later, if others, their friends, came over the Passes. He

begged them to remember him in their future greatnesses, for he “opined

subtly” that he, even he, Mohendro Lal Dutt, MA of Calcutta, had “done

the State some service”.

They gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness, and

unerring skill as a guide. He put it in his waist-belt and sobbed with

emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. He led them at high

noon along crowded Simla Mall to the Alliance Bank of Simla, where they

wished to establish their identity. Thence he vanished like a

dawn-cloud on Jakko.

Behold him, too fine-drawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the drugs in

his little brass-bound box, ascending Shamlegh slope, a just man made

perfect. Watch him, all Babudom laid aside, smoking at noon on a cot,

while a woman with turquoise-studded headgear points south-easterly

across the bare grass. Litters, she says, do not travel as fast as

single men, but his birds should now be in the Plains. The holy man

would not stay though Lispeth pressed him. The Babu groans heavily,

girds up his huge loins, and is off again. He does not care to travel

after dusk; but his days’ marches—there is none to enter them in a

book—would astonish folk who mock at his race. Kindly villagers,

remembering the Dacca drug-vendor of two months ago, give him shelter

against evil spirits of the wood. He dreams of Bengali Gods, University

text-books of education, and the Royal Society, London, England. Next

dawn the bobbing blue-and-white umbrella goes forward.

On the edge of the Doon, Mussoorie well behind them and the Plains

spread out in golden dust before, rests a worn litter in which—all the

Hills know it—lies a sick lama who seeks a River for his healing.

Villages have almost come to blows over the honour of bearing it, for

not only has the lama given them blessings, but his disciple good

money—full one-third Sahibs’ prices. Twelve miles a day has the _dooli_

travelled, as the greasy, rubbed pole-ends show, and by roads that few

Sahibs use. Over the Nilang Pass in storm when the driven snow-dust

filled every fold of the impassive lama’s drapery; between the black

horns of Raieng where they heard the whistle of the wild goats through

the clouds; pitching and strained on the shale below; hard-held between

shoulder and clenched jaw when they rounded the hideous curves of the

Cut Road under Bhagirati; swinging and creaking to the steady jog-trot

of the descent into the Valley of the Waters; pressed along the steamy

levels of that locked valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring

gusts off Kedarnath; set down of mid-days in the dun gloom of kindly

oak-forests; passed from village to village in dawn-chill, when even

devotees may be forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men; or by

torchlight, when the least fearful think of ghosts—the _dooli_ has

reached her last stage. The little hill-folk sweat in the modified heat

of the lower Siwaliks, and gather round the priests for their blessing

and their wage.

“Ye have acquired merit,” says the lama. “Merit greater than your

knowing. And ye will return to the Hills,” he sighs.

“Surely. The high Hills as soon as may be.” The bearer rubs his

shoulder, drinks water, spits it out again, and readjusts his grass

sandal. Kim—his face is drawn and tired—pays very small silver from his

belt, heaves out the food-bag, crams an oilskin packet—they are holy

writings—into his bosom, and helps the lama to his feet. The peace has

come again into the old man’s eyes, and he does not look for the hills

to fall down and crush him as he did that terrible night when they were

delayed by the flooded river.

The men pick up the _dooli_ and swing out of sight between the scrub

clumps.

The lama raises a hand toward the rampart of the Himalayas. “Not with

you, O blessed among all hills, fell the Arrow of Our Lord! And never

shall I breathe your airs again!”

“But thou art ten times the stronger man in this good air,” says Kim,

for to his wearied soul appeal the well-cropped, kindly Plains. “Here,

or hereabouts, fell the Arrow, yes. We will go very softly, perhaps, a

_kos_ a day, for the Search is sure. But the bag weighs heavy.”

“Ay, our Search is sure. I have come out of great temptation.”

It was never more than a couple of miles a day now, and Kim’s shoulders

bore all the weight of it—the burden of an old man, the burden of the

heavy food-bag with the locked books, the load of the writings on his

heart, and the details of the daily routine. He begged in the dawn, set

blankets for the lama’s meditation, held the weary head on his lap

through the noonday heats, fanning away the flies till his wrists

ached, begged again in the evenings, and rubbed the lama’s feet, who

rewarded him with promise of Freedom—today, tomorrow, or, at furthest,

the next day.

“Never was such a _chela_. I doubt at times whether Ananda more

faithfully nursed Our Lord. And thou art a Sahib? When I was a man—a

long time ago—I forgot that. Now I look upon thee often, and every time

I remember that thou art a Sahib. It is strange.”

“Thou hast said there is neither black nor white. Why plague me with

this talk, Holy One? Let me rub the other foot. It vexes me. I am _not_

a Sahib. I am thy _chela_, and my head is heavy on my shoulders.”

“Patience a little! We reach Freedom together. Then thou and I, upon

the far bank of the River, will look back upon our lives as in the

Hills we saw our days’ marches laid out behind us. Perhaps I was once a

Sahib.”

“Was never a Sahib like thee, I swear it.”

“I am certain the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House was in past

life a very wise Abbot. But even his spectacles do not make my eyes

see. There fall shadows when I would look steadily. No matter—we know

the tricks of the poor stupid carcass—shadow changing to another

shadow. I am bound by the illusion of Time and Space. How far came we

today in the flesh?”

“Perhaps half a koss.” (Three quarters of a mile, and it was a weary

march.)

“Half a koss. Ha! I went ten thousand thousand in the spirit. How, we

are all lapped and swathed and swaddled in these senseless things.” He

looked at his thin blue-veined hand that found the beads so heavy.

“_Chela_, hast thou never a wish to leave me?”

Kim thought of the oilskin packet and the books in the food-bag. If

someone duly authorized would only take delivery of them the Great Game

might play itself for aught he then cared. He was tired and hot in his

head, and a cough that came from the stomach worried him.

“No.” he said almost sternly. “I am not a dog or a snake to bite when I

have learned to love.”

“Thou art too tender towards me.”

“Not that either. I have moved in one matter without consulting thee. I

have sent a message to the Kulu woman by that woman who gave us the

goat’s milk this morn, saying that thou wast a little feeble and

wouldst need a litter. I beat myself in my mind that I did not do it

when we entered the Doon. We stay in this place till the litter

returns.”

“I am content. She is a woman with a heart of gold, as thou sayest, but

a talker—something of a talker.”

“She will not weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my

heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee.” An

hysterical catch rose in his throat. “I have walked thee too far: I

have not picked good food always for thee; I have not considered the

heat; I have talked to people on the road and left thee alone ... I

have—I have ... _Hai mai!_ But I love thee ... and it is all too late

... I was a child ... Oh, why was I not a man? ...” Overborne by

strain, fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, Kim broke down and

sobbed at the lama’s feet.

“What a to-do is here!” said the old man gently. “Thou hast never

stepped a hair’s breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me? Child,

I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new

wall. Day by day, since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from

thee. _Therefore_, not through any sin of thine, art thou weakened. It

is the Body—the silly, stupid Body—that speaks now. Not the assured

Soul. Be comforted! Know at least the devils that thou fightest. They

are earth-born—children of illusion. We will go to the woman from Kulu.

She shall acquire merit in housing us, and specially in tending me.

Thou shalt run free till strength returns. I had forgotten the stupid

Body. If there be any blame, I bear it. But we are too close to the

Gates of Deliverance to weigh blame. I could praise thee, but what

need? In a little—in a very little—we shall sit beyond all needs.”

And so he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on

that little-understood beast, our Body, who, being but a delusion,

insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the

immense multiplication of unnecessary devils.

“Hai! hai! Let us talk of the woman from Kulu. Think you she will ask

another charm for her grandsons? When I was a young man, a very long

time ago, I was plagued with these vapours—and some others—and I went

to an Abbot—a very holy man and a seeker after truth, though then I

knew it not. Sit up and listen, child of my soul! My tale was told.

Said he to me, ‘_Chela_, know this. There are many lies in the world,

and not a few liars, but there are no liars like our bodies, except it

be the sensations of our bodies.’ Considering this I was comforted, and

of his great favour he suffered me to drink tea In his presence. Suffer

me now to drink tea, for I am thirsty.”

With a laugh across his tears, Kim kissed the lama’s feet, and set

about the tea-making.

“Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for some

other things. Dost know it?”

“I have guessed maybe,” and the lama’s eyes twinkled. “We must change

that.”

So, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of importance,

paddled up nothing less than the Sahiba’s pet palanquin sent twenty

miles, with that same grizzled old Oorya servant in charge, and when

they reached the disorderly order of the long white rambling house

behind Saharunpore, the lama took his own measures.

Said the Sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments: “What

is the good of an old woman’s advice to an old man? I told thee—I

_told_ thee, Holy One, to keep an eye upon the _chela_. How didst thou

do it? Never answer me! _I_ know. He has been running among the women.

Look at his eyes—hollow and sunk—and the Betraying Line from the nose

down! He has been sifted out! Fie! Fie! And a priest, too!”

Kim looked up, over-weary to smile, shaking his head in denial.

“Do not jest,” said the lama. “That time is done. We are here upon

great matters. A sickness of soul took me in the Hills, and him a

sickness of the body. Since then I have lived upon his strength—eating

him.”

“Children together—young and old,” she sniffed, but forbore to make any

new jokes. “May this present hospitality restore ye! Hold awhile and I

will come to gossip of the high good Hills.”

At evening time—her son-in-law was returned, so she did not need to go

on inspection round the farm—she won to the meat of the matter,

explained low-voicedly by the lama. The two old heads nodded wisely

together. Kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was dozing

soddenly. The lama had forbidden him to set blankets or get food.

“I know—I know. Who but I?” she cackled. “We who go down to the

burning-ghats clutch at the hands of those coming up from the River of

Life with full water-jars—yes, brimming water-jars. I did the boy

wrong. He lent thee his strength? It is true that the old eat the young

daily. Stands now we must restore him.”

“Thou hast many times acquired merit—”

“_My_ merit. What is it? Old bag of bones making curries for men who do

not ask ‘Who cooked this?’ Now if it were stored up for my grandson—”

“He that had the belly-pain?”

“To think the Holy One remembers _that!_ I must tell his mother. It is

most singular honour! ‘He that had the belly-pain’—straightway the Holy

One remembered. She will be proud.”

“My _chela_ is to me as is a son to the unenlightened.”

“Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years. If a

child cries they say the heavens are falling. Now a grandmother is far

enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of giving

the breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or the wind.

And since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the Holy One was

here, maybe I offended in pressing for charms.”

“Sister,” said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist monk may

sometimes employ towards a nun, “if charms comfort thee—”

“They are better than ten thousand doctors.”

“I say, if they comfort thee, I who was Abbot of Such-zen, will make as

many as thou mayest desire. I have never seen thy face—”

“_That_ even the monkeys who steal our loquats count for again. Hee!

hee!”

“But as he who sleeps there said,”—he nodded at the shut door of the

guest-chamber across the forecourt—“thou hast a heart of gold... And he

is in the spirit my very ‘grandson’ to me.”

“Good! I am the Holy One’s cow.” This was pure Hinduism, but the lama

never heeded. “I am old. I have borne sons in the body. Oh, once I

could please men! Now I can cure them.” He heard her armlets tinkle as

though she bared arms for action. “I will take over the boy and dose

him, and stuff him, and make him all whole. Hai! hai! We old people

know something yet.”

Wherefore when Kim, aching in every bone, opened his eyes, and would go

to the cook-house to get his master’s food, he found strong coercion

about him, and a veiled old figure at the door, flanked by the grizzled

manservant, who told him very precisely the things that he was on no

account to do.

“Thou must have? Thou shalt have nothing. What? A locked box in which

to keep holy books? Oh, that is another matter. Heavens forbid I should

come between a priest and his prayers! It shall be brought, and thou

shalt keep the key.”

They pushed the coffer under his cot, and Kim shut away Mahbub’s

pistol, the oilskin packet of letters, and the locked books and

diaries, with a groan of relief. For some absurd reason their weight on

his shoulders was nothing to their weight on his poor mind. His neck

ached under it of nights.

“Thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young folk

have given up tending their betters. The remedy is sleep, and certain

drugs,” said the Sahiba; and he was glad to give himself up to the

blankness that half menaced and half soothed him.

She brewed drinks, in some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the

still-room—drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood

over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had

come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means

of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded

sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the

Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, hens, and

the like, fetched a wide compass by those parts. Best of all, when the

body was cleared, she cut out from the mass of poor relations that

crowded the back of the buildings—house-hold dogs, we name them—a

cousin’s widow, skilled in what Europeans, who know nothing about it,

call massage. And the two of them, laying him east and west, that the

mysterious earth-currents which thrill the clay of our bodies might

help and not hinder, took him to pieces all one long afternoon—bone by

bone, muscle by muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by

nerve. Kneaded to irresponsible pulp, half hypnotized by the perpetual

flick and readjustment of the uneasy _chudders_ that veiled their eyes,

Kim slid ten thousand miles into slumber—thirty-six hours of it—sleep

that soaked like rain after drought.

Then she fed him, and the house spun to her clamour. She caused fowls

to be slain; she sent for vegetables, and the sober, slow-thinking

gardener, nigh as old as she, sweated for it; she took spices, and

milk, and onion, with little fish from the brooks—anon limes for

sherbets, fat quails from the pits, then chicken-livers upon a skewer,

with sliced ginger between.

“I have seen something of this world,” she said over the crowded trays,

“and there are but two sorts of women in it—those who take the strength

out of a man and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I

am this. Nay—do not play the priestling with me. Mine was but a jest.

If it does not hold good now, it will when thou takest the road again.

Cousin,”—this to the poor relation, never wearied of extolling her

patroness’s charity—“he is getting a bloom on the skin of a new-curried

horse. Our work is like polishing jewels to be thrown to a

dance-girl—eh?”

Kim sat up and smiled. The terrible weakness had dropped from him like

an old shoe. His tongue itched for free speech again, and but a week

back the lightest word clogged it like ashes. The pain in his neck (he

must have caught it from the lama) had gone with the heavy dengue-aches

and the evil taste in the mouth. The two old women, a little, but not

much, more careful about their veils now, clucked as merrily as the

hens that had entered pecking through the open door.

“Where is my Holy One?” he demanded.

“Hear him! Thy Holy One is well,” she snapped viciously. “Though that

is none of _his_ merit. Knew I a charm to make him wise, I’d sell my

jewels and buy it. To refuse good food that I cooked myself—and go

roving into the fields for two nights on an empty belly—and to tumble

into a brook at the end of it—call you _that_ holiness? Then, when he

has nearly broken what thou hast left of my heart with anxiety, he

tells me that he has acquired merit. Oh, how like are all men! No, that

was not it—he tells me that he is freed from all sin. _I_ could have

told him that before he wetted himself all over. He is well now—this

happened a week ago—but burn me such holiness! A babe of three would do

better. Do not fret thyself for the Holy One. He keeps both eyes on

thee when he is not wading our brooks.”

“I do not remember to have seen him. I remember that the days and

nights passed like bars of white and black, opening and shutting. I was

not sick: I was but tired.”

“A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. But it is

done now.”

“Maharanee,” Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to

the title of plain love—“Mother, I owe my life to thee. How shall I

make thanks? Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and—”

“The house be unblessed!” (It is impossible to give exactly the old

lady’s word.) “Thank the Gods as a priest if thou wilt, but thank me,

if thou carest, as a son. Heavens above! Have I shifted thee and lifted

thee and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung at my

head? Somewhere a mother must have borne thee to break her heart. What

used thou to her—son?”

“I had no mother, my mother,” said Kim. “She died, they tell me, when I

was young.”

“_Hai mai!_ Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if—when

thou takest the road again and this house is but one of a thousand used

for shelter and forgotten, after an easy-flung blessing. No matter. I

need no blessings, but—but—” She stamped her foot at the poor relation.

“Take up the trays to the house. What is the good of stale food in the

room, O woman of ill-omen?”

“I ha—have borne a son in my time too, but he died,” whimpered the

bowed sister-figure behind the _chudder_. “Thou knowest he died! I only

waited for the order to take away the tray.”

“It is I that am the woman of ill-omen,” cried the old lady penitently.

“We that go down to the _chattris_ (the big umbrellas above the

burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues) clutch hard at

the bearers of the _chattis_ (water-jars—young folk full of the pride

of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy). When one cannot dance in

the festival one must e’en look out of the window, and grandmothering

takes all a woman’s time. Thy master gives me all the charms I now

desire for my daughter’s eldest, by reason—is it?—that he is wholly

free from sin. The _hakim_ is brought very low these days. He goes

about poisoning my servants for lack of their betters.”

“What _hakim_, mother?”

“That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three

pieces. He cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and

thou had been blood-brothers together up Kulu-way, and feigning great

anxiety for thy health. He was very thin and hungry, so I gave orders

to have him stuffed too—him and his anxiety!”

“I would see him if he is here.”

“He eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save

himself from an apoplexy. He is so full of anxiety for thy health that

he sticks to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps. He will

keep. We shall never get rid of him.”

“Send him here, mother”—the twinkle returned to Kim’s eye for a

flash—“and I will try.”

“I’ll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. At least he had

the sense to fish the Holy One out of the brook; thus, as the Holy One

did _not_ say, acquiring merit.”

“He is a very wise _hakim_. Send him, mother.”

“Priest praising priest? A miracle! If he is any friend of thine (ye

squabbled at your last meeting) I’ll hale him here with horse-ropes

and—and give him a caste-dinner afterwards, my son ... Get up and see

the world! This lying abed is the mother of seventy devils ... my son!

my son!”

She trotted forth to raise a typhoon off the cook-house, and almost on

her shadow rolled in the Babu, robed as to the shoulders like a Roman

emperor, jowled like Titus, bare-headed, with new patent-leather shoes,

in highest condition of fat, exuding joy and salutations.

“By Jove, Mister O’Hara, but I _am_ jolly glad to see you. I will

kindly shut the door. It is a pity you are sick. Are you very sick?”

“The papers—the papers from the _kilta_. The maps and the _murasla!_”

He held out the key impatiently; for the present need on his soul was

to get rid of the loot.

“You are quite right. That is correct Departmental view to take. You

have got everything?”

“All that was handwritten in the _kilta_ I took. The rest I threw down

the hill.” He could hear the key’s grate in the lock, the sticky pull

of the slow-rending oilskin, and a quick shuffling of papers. He had

been annoyed out of all reason by the knowledge that they lay below him

through the sick idle days—a burden incommunicable. For that reason the

blood tingled through his body, when Hurree, skipping elephantinely,

shook hands again.

“This is fine! This is finest! Mister O’Hara! you have—ha! ha! swiped

the whole bag of tricks—locks, stocks, and barrels. They told me it was

eight months’ work gone up the spouts! By Jove, how they beat me! ...

Look, here is the letter from Hilás!” He intoned a line or two of Court

Persian, which is the language of authorized and unauthorized

diplomacy. “Mister Rajah Sahib has just about put his foot in the

holes. He will have to explain offeecially how the deuce-an’-all he is

writing love-letters to the Czar. And they are very clever maps ... and

there is three or four Prime Ministers of these parts implicated by the

correspondence. By Gad, sar! The British Government will change the

succession in Hilás and Bunár, and nominate new heirs to the throne.

‘Trea-son most base’ ... but you do not understand? Eh?”

“Are they in thy hands?” said Kim. It was all he cared for.

“Just you jolly-well bet yourself they are.” He stowed the entire trove

about his body, as only Orientals can. “They are going up to the

office, too. The old lady thinks I am permanent fixture here, but I

shall go away with these straight off—immediately. Mr Lurgan will be

proud man. You are offeecially subordinate to me, but I shall embody

your name in my verbal report. It is a pity we are not allowed written

reports. We Bengalis excel in thee exact science.” He tossed back the

key and showed the box empty.

“Good. That is good. I was very tired. My Holy One was sick, too. And

did he fall into—”

“Oah yess. I am his good friend, I tell you. He was behaving very

strange when I came down after you, and I thought perhaps he might have

the papers. I followed him on his meditations, and to discuss

ethnological points also. You see, I am verree small person here

nowadays, in comparison with all his charms. By Jove, O’Hara, do you

know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. Yess, I tell you.

Cataleptic, too, if not also epileptic. I found him in such a state

under a tree _in articulo mortem_, and he jumped up and walked into a

brook and he was nearly drowned but for me. I pulled him out.”

“Because I was not there!” said Kim. “He might have died.”

“Yes, he might have died, but he is dry now, and asserts he has

undergone transfiguration.” The Babu tapped his forehead knowingly. “I

took notes of his statements for Royal Society—_in posse_. You must

make haste and be quite well and come back to Simla, and I will tell

you all my tale at Lurgan’s. It was splendid. The bottoms of their

trousers were _quite_ torn, and old Nahan Rajah, he thought they were

European soldiers deserting.”

“Oh, the Russians? How long were they with thee?”

“One was a Frenchman. Oh, days and days and days! Now all the

hill-people believe all Russians are all beggars. By Jove! they had not

one dam’-thing that I did not get them. And I told the common

people—oah, _such_ tales and anecdotes!—I will tell you at old Lurgan’s

when you come up. We will have—ah—a night out! It is feather in both

our caps! Yess, and they gave me a certificate. That is creaming joke.

You should have seen them at the Alliance Bank identifying themselves!

And thank Almighty God you got their papers so well! You do not laugh

verree much, but you shall laugh when you are well. Now I will go

straight to the railway and get out. You shall have all sorts of

credits for your game. When do you come along? We are very proud of you

though you gave us great frights. And especially Mahbub.”

“Ay, Mahbub. And where is he?”

“Selling horses in this vi-cinity, of course.”

“Here! Why? Speak slowly. There is a thickness in my head still.”

The Babu looked shyly down his nose. “Well, you see, I am fearful man,

and I do not like responsibility. You were sick, you see, and I did not

know where deuce-an’-all the papers were, and if so, how many. So when

I had come down here I slipped in private wire to Mahbub—he was at

Meerut for races—and I tell him how case stands. He comes up with his

men and he consorts with the lama, and then he calls me a fool, and is

very rude—”

“But wherefore—wherefore?”

“That is what _I_ ask. I only suggest that if anyone steals the papers

I should like some good strong, brave men to rob them back again. You

see, they are vitally important, and Mahbub Ali he did not know where

you were.”

“Mahbub Ali to rob the Sahiba’s house? Thou art mad, Babu,” said Kim

with indignation.

“I wanted the papers. Suppose she had stole them? It was only practical

suggestion, I think. You are not pleased, eh?”

A native proverb—unquotable—showed the blackness of Kim’s disapproval.

“Well,”—Hurree shrugged his shoulders—“there is no accounting for thee

taste. Mahbub was angry too. He has sold horses all about here, and he

says old lady is _pukka_ (thorough) old lady and would not condescend

to such ungentlemanly things. _I_ do not care. I have got the papers,

and I was very glad of moral support from Mahbub. I tell you, I am

fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the more

dam’-tight places I get into. So I was glad you came with me to Chini,

and I am glad Mahbub was close by. The old lady she is sometimes very

rude to me and my beautiful pills.”

“Allah be merciful!” said Kim on his elbow, rejoicing. “What a beast of

wonder is a Babu! And that man walked alone—if he did walk—with robbed

and angry foreigners!”

“Oah, thatt was nothing, after they had done beating me; but if I lost

the papers it was pretty-jolly serious. Mahbub he nearly beat me too,

and he went and consorted with the lama no end. I shall stick to

ethnological investigations henceforwards. Now good-bye, Mister O’Hara.

I can catch 4.25 p.m. to Umballa if I am quick. It will be good times

when we all tell thee tale up at Mr Lurgan’s. I shall report you

offeecially better. Good-bye, my dear fallow, and when next you are

under thee emotions please do not use the Mohammedan terms with the

Tibetan dress.”

He shook hands twice—a Babu to his boot-heels—and opened the door. With

the fall of the sunlight upon his still triumphant face he returned to

the humble Dacca quack.

“He robbed them,” thought Kim, forgetting his own share in the game.

“He tricked them. He lied to them like a Bengali. They give him a

_chit_ (a testimonial). He makes them a mock at the risk of his

life—_I_ never would have gone down to them after the pistol-shots—and

then he says he is a fearful man ... And he _is_ a fearful man. I must

get into the world again.”

At first his legs bent like bad pipe-stems, and the flood and rush of

the sunlit air dazzled him. He squatted by the white wall, the mind

rummaging among the incidents of the long _dooli_ journey, the lama’s

weaknesses, and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own

self-pity, of which, like the sick, he had great store. The unnerved

brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once rowelled,

sidles from the spur. It was enough, amply enough, that the spoil of

the _kilta_ was away—off his hands—out of his possession. He tried to

think of the lama—to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook—but the

bigness of the world, seen between the forecourt gates, swept linked

thought aside. Then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields, with

the thatched huts hidden among crops—looked with strange eyes unable to

take up the size and proportion and use of things—stared for a still

half-hour. All that while he felt, though he could not put it into

words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings—a cog-wheel

unconnected with any machinery, just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap

Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner. The breezes fanned over him,

the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house

behind—squabbles, orders, and reproofs—hit on dead ears.

“I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?” His soul repeated it again and

again.

He did not want to cry—had never felt less like crying in his life—but

of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an

almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on

the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an

instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be

walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be

tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and

true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his

clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in

his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful

eyes reported this move: “Let him go. I have done my share. Mother

Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back from meditation,

tell him.”

There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away,

with a young banyan tree behind—a look-out, as it were, above some

new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as

he neared it. The ground was good clean dust—no new herbage that,

living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds

the seeds of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his

palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full

length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. And Mother Earth

was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the

poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good

currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands

surrendered to her strength. The many-rooted tree above him, and even

the dead manhandled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did

not know. Hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep.

Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons

smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously,

for the house had told them where he had gone.

“Allah! What a fool’s trick to play in open country!” muttered the

horse-dealer. “He could be shot a hundred times—but this is not the

Border.”

“And,” said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, “never was such

a _chela_. Temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a merry

heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous.

Great is his reward!”

“I know the boy—as I have said.”

“And he was all those things?”

“Some of them—but I have not yet found a Red Hat’s charm for making him

overly truthful. He has certainly been well nursed.”

“The Sahiba is a heart of gold,” said the lama earnestly. “She looks

upon him as her son.”

“Hmph! Half Hind seems that way disposed. I only wished to see that the

boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. As thou knowest, he and I

were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.”

“That is a bond between us.” The lama sat down. “We are at the end of

the pilgrimage.”

“No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back.

I heard what the Sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the cot.”

Mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly dyed beard.

“I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the _hakim_ from

Dacca broke my meditations.”

“Otherwise”—this was in Pushtu for decency’s sake—“thou wouldst have

ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of Hell—being an unbeliever

and an idolater for all thy child’s simplicity. But now, Red Hat, what

is to be done?”

“This very night,”—the words came slowly, vibrating with triumph—“this

very night he will be as free as I am from all taint of sin—assured as

I am, when he quits this body, of Freedom from the Wheel of Things. I

have a sign”—he laid his hand above the torn chart in his bosom—“that

my time is short; but I shall have safeguarded him throughout the

years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told thee only three

nights back.”

“It must be true, as the Tirah priest said when I stole his cousin’s

wife, that I am a _sufi_ (a free-thinker); for here I sit,” said Mahbub

to himself, “drinking in blasphemy unthinkable ... I remember the tale.

On that, then, he goes to _Jannatu l’Adn_ (the Gardens of Eden). But

how? Wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful river from which

the Babu dragged thee?”

“I was dragged from no river,” said the lama simply. “Thou hast

forgotten what befell. I found it by Knowledge.”

“Oh, ay. True,” stammered Mahbub, divided between high indignation and

enormous mirth. “I had forgotten the exact run of what happened. Thou

didst find it knowingly.”

“And to say that I would take life is—not a sin, but a madness simple.

My _chela_ aided me to the River. It is his right to be cleansed from

sin—with me.”

“Ay, he needs cleansing. But afterwards, old man—afterwards?”

“What matter under all the Heavens? He is sure of Nibban—enlightened—as

I am.”

“Well said. I had a fear he might mount Mohammed’s Horse and fly away.”

“Nay—he must go forth as a teacher.”

“Aha! Now I see! That is the right gait for the colt. Certainly he must

go forth as a teacher. He is somewhat urgently needed as a scribe by

the State, for instance.”

“To that end he was prepared. I acquired merit in that I gave alms for

his sake. A good deed does not die. He aided me in my Search. I aided

him in his. Just is the Wheel, O horse-seller from the North. Let him

be a teacher; let him be a scribe—what matter? He will have attained

Freedom at the end. The rest is illusion.”

“What matter? When I must have him with me beyond Balkh in six months!

I come up with ten lame horses and three strong-backed men—thanks to

that chicken of a Babu—to break a sick boy by force out of an old

trot’s house. It seems that I stand by while a young Sahib is hoisted

into Allah knows what of an idolater’s Heaven by means of old Red Hat.

And I am reckoned something of a player of the Game myself! But the

madman is fond of the boy; and I must be very reasonably mad too.”

“What is the prayer?” said the lama, as the rough Pushtu rumbled into

the red beard.

“No matter at all; but now I understand that the boy, sure of Paradise,

can yet enter Government service, my mind is easier. I must get to my

horses. It grows dark. Do not wake him. I have no wish to hear him call

thee master.”

“But he _is_ my disciple. What else?”

“He has told me.” Mahbub choked down his touch of spleen and rose

laughing. “I am not altogether of thy faith, Red Hat—if so small a

matter concern thee.”

“It is nothing,” said the lama.

“I thought not. Therefore it will not move thee, sinless, new-washed

and three parts drowned to boot, when I call thee a good man—a very

good man. We have talked together some four or five evenings now, and

for all I am a horse-coper I can still, as the saying is, see holiness

beyond the legs of a horse. Yea, can see, too, how our Friend of all

the World put his hand in thine at the first. Use him well, and suffer

him to return to the world as a teacher, when thou hast—bathed his

legs, if that be the proper medicine for the colt.”

“Why not follow the Way thyself, and so accompany the boy?”

Mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the demand,

which across the Border he would have paid with more than a blow. Then

the humour of it touched his worldly soul.

“Softly—softly—one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over the

Umballa jumps. I may come to Paradise later—I have workings that

way—great motions—and I owe them to thy simplicity. Thou hast never

lied?”

“What need?”

“O Allah, hear him! ‘What need’ in this Thy world! Nor ever harmed a

man?”

“Once—with a pencase—before I was wise.”

“So? I think the better of thee. Thy teachings are good. Thou hast

turned one man that I know from the path of strife.” He laughed

immensely. “He came here open-minded to commit a _dacoity_ (a

house-robbery with violence). Yes, to cut, rob, kill, and carry off

what he desired.”

“A great foolishness!”

“Oh! black shame too. So he thought after he had seen thee—and a few

others, male and female. So he abandoned it; and now he goes to beat a

big fat Babu man.”

“I do not understand.”

“Allah forbid it! Some men are strong in knowledge, Red Hat. Thy

strength is stronger still. Keep it—I think thou wilt. If the boy be

not a good servant, pull his ears off.”

With a hitch of his broad Bokhariot belt the Pathan swaggered off into

the gloaming, and the lama came down from his clouds so far as to look

at the broad back.

“That person lacks courtesy, and is deceived by the shadow of

appearances. But he spoke well of my _chela_, who now enters upon his

reward. Let me make the prayer! ... Wake, O fortunate above all born of

women. Wake! It is found!”

Kim came up from those deep wells, and the lama attended his yawning

pleasure; duly snapping fingers to head off evil spirits.

“I have slept a hundred years. Where—? Holy One, hast _thou_ been here

long? I went out to look for thee, but”—he laughed drowsily—“I slept by

the way. I am all well now. Hast thou eaten? Let us go to the house. It

is many days since I tended thee. And the Sahiba fed thee well? Who

shampooed thy legs? What of the weaknesses—the belly and the neck, and

the beating in the ears?”

“Gone—all gone. Dost thou not know?”

“I know nothing, but that I have not seen thee in a monkey’s age. Know

what?”

“Strange the knowledge did not reach out to thee, when all my thoughts

were theeward.”

“I cannot see the face, but the voice is like a gong. Has the Sahiba

made a young man of thee by her cookery?”

He peered at the cross-legged figure, outlined jet-black against the

lemon-coloured drift of light. So does the stone Bodhisat sit who looks

down upon the patent self-registering turnstiles of the Lahore Museum.

The lama held his peace. Except for the click of the rosary and a faint

_clop-clop_ of Mahbub’s retreating feet, the soft, smoky silence of

evening in India wrapped them close.

“Hear me! I bring news.”

“But let us—”

Out shot the long yellow hand compelling silence. Kim tucked his feet

under his robe-edge obediently.

“Hear me! I bring news! The Search is finished. Comes now the Reward...

Thus. When we were among the Hills, I lived on thy strength till the

young branch bowed and nigh broke. When we came out of the Hills, I was

troubled for thee and for other matters which I held in my heart. The

boat of my soul lacked direction; I could not see into the Cause of

Things. So I gave thee over to the virtuous woman altogether. I took no

food. I drank no water. Still I saw not the Way. They pressed food upon

me and cried at my shut door. So I removed myself to a hollow under a

tree. I took no food. I took no water. I sat in meditation two days and

two nights, abstracting my mind; inbreathing and outbreathing in the

required manner ... Upon the second night—so great was my reward—the

wise Soul loosed itself from the silly Body and went free. This I have

never before attained, though I have stood on the threshold of it.

Consider, for it is a marvel!”

“A marvel indeed. Two days and two nights without food! Where was the

Sahiba?” said Kim under his breath.

“Yea, my Soul went free, and, wheeling like an eagle, saw indeed that

there was no Teshoo Lama nor any other soul. As a drop draws to water,

so my Soul drew near to the Great Soul which is beyond all things. At

that point, exalted in contemplation, I saw all Hind, from Ceylon in

the sea to the Hills, and my own Painted Rocks at Such-zen; I saw every

camp and village, to the least, where we have ever rested. I saw them

at one time and in one place; for they were within the Soul. By this I

knew the Soul had passed beyond the illusion of Time and Space and of

Things. By this I knew that I was free. I saw thee lying in thy cot,

and I saw thee falling downhill under the idolater—at one time, in one

place, in my Soul, which, as I say, had touched the Great Soul. Also I

saw the stupid body of Teshoo Lama lying down, and the _hakim_ from

Dacca kneeled beside, shouting in its ear. Then my Soul was all alone,

and I saw nothing, for I was all things, having reached the Great Soul.

And I meditated a thousand thousand years, passionless, well aware of

the Causes of all Things. Then a voice cried: ‘What shall come to the

boy if thou art dead?’ and I was shaken back and forth in myself with

pity for thee; and I said: ‘I will return to my _chela_, lest he miss

the Way.’ Upon this my Soul, which is the Soul of Teshoo Lama, withdrew

itself from the Great Soul with strivings and yearnings and retchings

and agonies not to be told. As the egg from the fish, as the fish from

the water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick

air, so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the Soul of

Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul. Then a voice cried: ‘The River! Take

heed to the River!’ and I looked down upon all the world, which was as

I had seen it before—one in time, one in place—and I saw plainly the

River of the Arrow at my feet. At that hour my Soul was hampered by

some evil or other whereof I was not wholly cleansed, and it lay upon

my arms and coiled round my waist; but I put it aside, and I cast forth

as an eagle in my flight for the very place of the River. I pushed

aside world upon world for thy sake. I saw the River below me—the River

of the Arrow—and, descending, the waters of it closed over me; and

behold I was again in the body of Teshoo Lama, but free from sin, and

the _hakim_ from Decca bore up my head in the waters of the River. It

is here! It is behind the mango-tope here—even here!”

“Allah kerim! Oh, well that the Babu was by! Wast thou very wet?”

“Why should I regard? I remember the _hakim_ was concerned for the body

of Teshoo Lama. He haled it out of the holy water in his hands, and

there came afterwards thy horse-seller from the North with a cot and

men, and they put the body on the cot and bore it up to the Sahiba’s

house.”

“What said the Sahiba?”

“I was meditating in that body, and did not hear. So thus the Search is

ended. For the merit that I have acquired, the River of the Arrow is

here. It broke forth at our feet, as I have said. I have found it. Son

of my Soul, I have wrenched my Soul back from the Threshold of Freedom

to free thee from all sin—as I am free, and sinless! Just is the Wheel!

Certain is our deliverance! Come!”

He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won

salvation for himself and his beloved.