บทที่ บทที่ 12 · Chapter XII

. Chapter XII

Who hath desired the Sea—the sight of salt-water unbounded?

The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber

wind-hounded?

The sleek-barrelled swell before storm—grey, foamless, enormous, and

growing?

Stark calm on the lap of the Line—or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing?

His Sea in no showing the same—his Sea and the same ’neath all showing—

His Sea that his being fulfils?

So and no otherwise—so and no otherwise Hill-men desire their Hills!

The Sea and the Hills.

“I have found my heart again,” said E23, under cover of the platform’s

tumult. “Hunger and fear make men dazed, or I might have thought of

this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for me. Thou hast

saved my head.”

A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and

perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages.

Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who

looked like a lawyer’s tout.

“See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in his

hand,” said E23. “Thev go carriage by carriage, like fisher-folk

netting a pool.”

When the procession reached their compartment, E23 was counting his

beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for

being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the

Saddhu’s distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared

straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up

his belongings.

“Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies,” said the Englishman aloud,

and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police mean

extortion to the native all India over.

“The trouble now,” whispered E23, “lies in sending a wire as to the

place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the

_tar_-office in this guise.”

“Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?”

“Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick

pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!”

This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police—belt,

helmet, polished spurs and all—strutting and twirling his dark

moustache.

“What fools are these Police Sahibs!” said Kim genially.

E23 glanced up under his eyelids. “It is well said,” he muttered in a

changed voice. “I go to drink water. Keep my place.”

He blundered out almost into the Englishman’s arms, and was bad-worded

in clumsy Urdu.

“_Tum mut?_ You drunk? You mustn’t bang about as though Delhi station

belonged to you, my friend.”

E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of

the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded him

of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at Umballa in the terrible

time of his first schooling.

“My good fool,” the Englishman drawled. “_Nickle-jao!_ Go back to your

carriage.”

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the

yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D.S.P. to

remotest posterity, by—here Kim almost jumped—by the curse of the

Queen’s Stone, by the writing under the Queen’s Stone, and by an

assortment of Gods with wholly, new names.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,”—the Englishman flushed angrily—“but

it’s some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that!”

E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the

Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand.

“Oh, _zoolum!_ What oppression!” growled the Jat from his corner. “All

for the sake of a jest too.” He had been grinning at the freedom of the

Saddhu’s tongue. “Thy charms do not work well today, Holy One!”

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The ruck

of passengers, busy, with their babies and their bundles, had not

noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed through

his head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib discoursing loud

personalities to an old lady near Umballa three years ago.

“It is well”, the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting,

bewildered press—a Persian greyhound between his feet and a cageful of

yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his

back. “He has gone now to send word of the letter which I hid. They

told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known that he is like the

crocodile—always at the other ford. He has saved me from present

calamity, but I owe my life to thee.”

“Is he also one of Us?” Kim ducked under a Mewar camel-driver’s greasy

armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.

“Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make report

to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his protection.”

He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages, and

squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office.

“Return, or they take thy place! Have no fear for the work, brother—or

my life. Thou hast given me breathing-space, and Strickland Sahib has

pulled me to land. We may work together at the Game yet. Farewell!”

Kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little nettled

in that he had no key to the secrets about him.

“I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure. _I_ could not have

leaped into safety as did the Saddhu. He knew it was darkest under the

lamp. _I_ could not have thought to tell news under pretence of cursing

... and how clever was the Sahib! No matter, I saved the life of one

... Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?” he whispered, as he took his

seat in the now crowded compartment.

“A fear gripped him,” the lama replied, with a touch of tender malice.

“He saw thee change the Mahratta to a Saddhu in the twinkling of an

eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him. Then he saw the

Saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the _polis_—all the effect of thy

art. Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he said that thou didst

change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier of words with the

Sahibs, and he feared a like fate. Where is the Saddhu?”

“With the _polis_,” said Kim ... “Yet I saved the Kamboh’s child.”

The lama snuffed blandly.

“Ah, _chela_, see how thou art overtaken! Thou didst cure the Kamboh’s

child solely to acquire merit. But thou didst put a spell on the

Mahratta with prideful workings—I watched thee—and with sidelong

glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer: whence

calamity and suspicion.”

Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more than

any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged, but he

saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi into the

night.

“It is true,” he murmured. “Where I have offended thee I have done

wrong.”

“It is more, _chela_. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a

stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not tell

how far.”

This ignorance was well both for Kim’s vanity and for the lama’s peace

of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at Simla a

code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more important,

the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to—abstract.

Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of

murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir

cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi

platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the locked heart

of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had reached the angry

minister of a southern State reporting that all trace of a somewhat

bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely train

halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the stone Kim had helped to

heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in far-away Roum—where

it disturbed a pious man at prayers.

The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvillea-trellis

near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of

his disciple. “We will put these things behind us,” he said, indicating

the brazen engine and the gleaming track. “The jolting of the

_te-rain_—though a wonderful thing—has turned my bones to water. We

will use clean air henceforward.”

“Let us go to the Kulu woman’s house” said Kim, and stepped forth

cheerily under the bundles. Early morning Saharunpore-way is clean and

well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St Xavier’s, and it

topped his already thrice-heaped contentment.

“Where is this new haste born from? Wise men do not run about like

chickens in the sun. We have come hundreds upon hundreds of _kos_

already, and, till now, I have scarcely been alone with thee an

instant. How canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds? How

can I, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the Way?”

“Her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then?” the disciple

smiled.

“Nor her desire for charms. I remember once when I spoke of the Wheel

of Life”—the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy—“she was

only curious about the devils that besiege children. She shall acquire

merit by entertaining us—in a little while—at an after-occasion—softly,

softly. Now we will wander loose-foot, waiting upon the Chain of

Things. The Search is sure.”

So they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful

fruit-gardens—by way of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and

little Phulesa—the line of the Siwaliks always to the north, and behind

them again the snows. After long, sweet sleep under the dry stars came

the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking village—begging-bowl

held forth in silence, but eyes roving in defiance of the Law from

sky’s edge to sky’s edge. Then would Kim return soft-footed through the

soft dust to his master under the shadow of a mango-tree or the thinner

shade of a white Doon _siris_, to eat and drink at ease. At mid-day,

after talk and a little wayfaring, they slept; meeting the world

refreshed when the air was cooler. Night found them adventuring into

new territory—some chosen village spied three hours before across the

fat land, and much discussed upon the road.

There they told their tale—a new one each evening so far as Kim was

concerned—and there were they made welcome, either by priest or

headman, after the custom of the kindly East.

When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon Kim,

there was always the Wheel of Life to draw forth, to hold flat under

wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle. Here sat

the Gods on high—and they were dreams of dreams. Here was our Heaven

and the world of the demi-Gods—horsemen fighting among the hills. Here

were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls ascending or descending

the ladder and therefore not to be interfered with. Here were the

Hells, hot and cold, and the abodes of tormented ghosts. Let the

_chela_ study the troubles that come from over-eating—bloated stomach

and burning bowels. Obediently, then, with bowed head and brown finger

alert to follow the pointer, did the _chela_ study; but when they came

to the Human World, busy and profitless, that is just above the Hells,

his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel

itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling—all warmly

alive. Often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text,

bidding Kim—too ready—note how the flesh takes a thousand shapes,

desirable or detestable as men reckon, but in truth of no account

either way; and how the stupid spirit, bond-slave to the Hog, the Dove,

and the Serpent—lusting after betel-nut, a new yoke of oxen, women, or

the favour of kings—is bound to follow the body through all the Heavens

and all the Hells, and strictly round again. Sometimes a woman or a

poor man, watching the ritual—it was nothing less—when the great yellow

chart was unfolded, would throw a few flowers or a handful of cowries

upon its edge. It sufficed these humble ones that they had met a Holy

One who might be moved to remember them in his prayers.

“Cure them if they are sick,” said the lama, when Kim’s sporting

instincts woke. “Cure them if they have fever, but by no means work

charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.”

“Then all Doing is evil?” Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at

the fork of the Doon road, watching the little ants run over his hand.

“To abstain from action is well—except to acquire merit.”

“At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action

was unbefitting a Sahib. And I am a Sahib.”

“Friend of all the World,”—the lama looked directly at Kim—“I am an old

man—pleased with shows as are children. To those who follow the Way

there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal. We be all souls

seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned among Sahibs, when we

come to my River thou wilt be freed from all illusion—at my side. Hai!

My bones ache for that River, as they ached in the _te-rain;_ but my

spirit sits above my bones, waiting. The Search is sure!”

“I am answered. Is it permitted to ask a question?”

The lama inclined his stately head.

“I ate thy bread for three years—as thou knowest. Holy One, whence

came—?”

“There is much wealth, as men count it, in Bhotiyal,” the lama returned

with composure. “In my own place I have the illusion of honour. I ask

for that I need. I am not concerned with the account. That is for my

monastery. Ai! The black high seats in the monastery, and novices all

in order!”

And he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the immense

and sumptuous ritual of avalanche-guarded cathedrals; of processions

and devil-dances; of the changing of monks and nuns into swine; of holy

cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue between monastery

and monastery; of voices among the hills, and of that mysterious mirage

that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of Lhassa and of the Dalai Lama,

whom he had seen and adored.

Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off

from his race and his mother-tongue. He slipped back to thinking and

dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama’s

ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old man’s

mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned to the

steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and again, indeed,

he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he said,

the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing; but he was content to be

with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down from

the Doon. This was not Ceylon, nor Buddh Gaya, nor Bombay, nor some

grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled upon two years ago.

He spoke of those places as a scholar removed from vanity, as a Seeker

walking in humility, as an old man, wise and temperate, illumining

knowledge with brilliant insight. Bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tale

called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and

down Hind; till Kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him

for fifty good reasons. So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity,

abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not

over-eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their

stomachs told them the time, and the people brought them their food, as

the saying is. They were lords of the villages of Aminabad, Sahaigunge,

Akrola of the Ford, and little Phulesa, where Kim gave the soulless

woman a blessing.

But news travels fast in India, and too soon shuffled across the

crop-land, bearing a basket of fruits with a box of Kabul grapes and

gilt oranges, a white-whiskered servitor—a lean, dry Oorya—begging them

to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress, distressed in

her mind that the lama had neglected her so long.

“Now do I remember”—the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new

proposition. “She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.”

Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow’s manger, telling stories to a

village smith’s children.

“She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not

forgotten her,” he said. “Let her acquire merit. Send word that we will

come.”

They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were

overwhelmed with attentions at the end; for the old lady held a fine

tradition of hospitality, to which she forced her son-in-law, who was

under the thumb of his women-folk and bought peace by borrowing of the

money-lender. Age had not weakened her tongue or her memory, and from a

discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not less than a dozen

servants, she paid Kim compliments that would have flung European

audiences into unclean dismay.

“But thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the _parao_,” she

shrilled. “I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of my

daughter’s son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and

useless.”

For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food and

drink were brought; and in the evening—the smoke-scented evening,

copper-dun and turquoise across the fields—it pleased her to order her

palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky torchlight;

and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains, she gossiped.

“Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise; but

with this rogue, who can be too careful?”

“Maharanee,” said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, “is it my

fault that none other than a Sahib—a _polis_-sahib—called the Maharanee

whose face he—” “Chutt! That was on the pilgrimage. When we travel—thou

knowest the proverb.”

“Called the Maharanee a Breaker of Hearts and a Dispenser of Delights?”

“To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of the

bloom of my beauty.” She chuckled like a contented parrot above the

sugar lump. “Now tell me of thy goings and comings—as much as may be

without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon thine

eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I would have gone there again this

year, but my daughter—we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the effect

of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would ask thy

Holy One—stand aside, rogue—a charm against most lamentable windy

colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter’s eldest. Two years back

he gave me a powerful spell.”

“Oh, Holy One!” said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama’s rueful

face.

“It is true. I gave her one against wind.”

“Teeth—teeth—teeth,” snapped the old woman.

“‘Cure them if they are sick,’” Kim quoted relishingly, ‘“but by no

means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.’”

“That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual

importunity.” The lama groaned as the Unjust Judge had groaned before

him. “Thus it comes—take note, my _chela_—that even those who would

follow the Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days through, when

the child was sick, she talked to me.”

“Arre! and to whom else should I talk? The boy’s mother knew nothing,

and the father—in the nights of the cold weather it was—‘Pray to the

Gods,’ said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!”

“I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do?”

“‘To abstain from action is well—except to acquire merit.’”

“Ah _chela_, if thou desertest me, I am all alone.”

“He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate,” said the old lady. “But

all priests are alike.”

Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her flippancy.

“To importune the wise out of season is to invite calamity.”

“There is a talking _mynah_”—the thrust came back with the

well-remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger—“over the stables

which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I forget

honour to my guests, but if ye had seen _him_ double his fists into his

belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: ‘Here is the pain!’

ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the _hakim’s_ medicine. He

sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as Shiv’s own bull. _He_

does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because of the

in-auspicious colour of the bottles.”

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness

towards the room prepared.

“Thou hast angered him, belike,” said Kim.

“Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but a

grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for

bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter’s son is grown, he

will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new _hakim’s_

drugs.”

“Who is the _hakim_, Maharanee?”

“A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca—a master

of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a

small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He travels about now,

vending preparations of great value. He has even papers, printed in

Angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack

women. He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (_hakims_

and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it,

gone to cover.”

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting

unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: “This house is a

cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and—priests. Let the boy

stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?” He

raised his voice respectfully: “Sahiba, the _hakim_ sleeps after his

meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote.”

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down-talk a

Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a good

game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should

be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those curious bastard English

advertisements at the backs of native newspapers. St Xavier’s boys

sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their mates;

for the language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms is

most simple and revealing. The Oorya, not unanxious to play off one

parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecote.

“Yes,” said Kim, with measured scorn. “Their stock-in-trade is a little

coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are

broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children—who

are not born.”

The old lady chuckled. “Do not be envious. Charms are better, eh? _I_

never gainsaid it. See that thy Holy One writes me a good amulet by the

morning.”

“None but the ignorant deny”—a thick, heavy voice boomed through the

darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting—“None but the ignorant

deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the value of

medicines.”

“A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: ‘I will open a grocer’s

shop,’” Kim retorted.

Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to

attention.

“The priest’s son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says he:

‘Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones.’”

Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went on:

“I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the wisdom of

the Sahibs.”

“The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children when

they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,” piped the voice inside

the palanquin.

“I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and

angry men. _Siná_ well compounded when the moon stands in the proper

House; yellow earths I have—_arplan_ from China that makes a man renew

his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir, and the

best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before—”

“That I surely believe,” said Kim.

“They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give _my_ sick the mere ink

in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend

and wrestle with the evil.”

“Very mightily they do so,” sighed the old lady.

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy,

studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. “But for my fate,

which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ. I bear a

degree from the great school at Calcutta—whither, maybe, the son of

this House shall go.”

“He shall indeed. If our neighbour’s brat can in a few years be made an

F A” (First Arts—she used the English word, of which she had heard so

often), “how much more shall children clever as some that I know bear

away prizes at rich Calcutta.”

“Never,” said the voice, “have I seen such a child! Born in an

auspicious hour, and—but for that colic which, alas! turning into black

cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon—destined to many years, he is

enviable.”

“_Hai mai!_” said the old lady. “To praise children is inauspicious, or

I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is unguarded,

and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we

know ... The child’s father is away too, and I must be _chowkedar_

(watchman) in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. Let the

_hakim_ and the young priest settle between them whether charms or

medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the

guests, and—round the homestead go I!”

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of

dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba—her failings, her tongue, and her

large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial custom, but

no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction for any gift

under heaven. None the less, she made great parade of her formal

inspections, the riot of which could be heard half-way to Mussoorie.

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The _hakim_,

still squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim

pulled at the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional

debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring.

“To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching

the peacock to sing,” said the _hakim_.

“True courtesy,” Kim echoed, “is very often inattention.”

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

“Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,” cried a scullion. “Look at it!”

“Get hence! Remove!” said the _hakim_. “Is it the habit of the place to

pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.”

“If the Sahiba knew—” Kim began.

“Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young

Shaitan’s colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to—”

“The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the

money-lender’s head. Who speaks against her?” The old servitor curled

his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. “_I_ am

responsible for the honour of this house. Go!” and he drove the

underlings before him.

Said the _hakim_, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips:

“How do you do, Mister O’Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.”

Kim’s hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road,

perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet

backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed him,

too, that he had been hoodwinked.

“Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow—_resurgam_—I shall rise again and you

shall not know me. How much did you bet—eh?”

He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed

uneasily.

“But why come here, Babuji?”

“Ah! _Thatt_ is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to

congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at Delhi.

Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and handy.

Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in some

dam’-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me; I tell Mr

Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the Department is

pleased.”

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can

be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise—ensnaring

praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-workers. Earth has

nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, cried the Oriental

in him, Babus do not travel far to retail compliments.

“Tell thy tale, Babu,” he said authoritatively.

“Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in about

what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton—” He

looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.

“The Colonel Sahib,” the boy from St Xavier’s corrected.

“_Of_ course. He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to

Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South—too much

railway travel; but I drew good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I meet

our mutual at Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now, and says

Saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I hear what you

have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous spur of the

moment. I tell our mutual you take the bally bun, by Jove! It was

splendid. I come to tell you so.”

“Umm!”

The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her setting.

Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night and to beat

upon a drum. Kim’s next sentence was in the vernacular.

“How didst thou follow us?”

“Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to

Saharunpore. So I come on. Red Lamas are not inconspicuous persons. I

buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor really. I go to

Akrola of the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk

there. All the common people know what you do. I knew when the

hospitable old lady sent the _dooli_. They have great recollections of

the old lama’s visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their hands

from medicines. So I am a doctor, and—you hear my talk? _I_ think it is

verree good. My word, Mister O’Hara, they know about you and the lama

for fifty miles—the common people. So I come. Do you mind?”

“Babuji,” said Kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, “I am a

Sahib.”

“My dear Mister O’Hara—”

“And I hope to play the Great Game.”

“You are subordinate to me departmentally at present.”

“Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from

Simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet words. I am

not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg. Thou art

here—speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art thou here? Give a

straight answer.”

“That is so verree disconcerting of the Europeans, Mister O’Hara. _You_

should know a heap better at your time of life.”

“But I want to know,” said Kim, laughing. “If it is the Game, I may

help. How can I do anything if you _bukh_ (babble) all round the shop?”

Hurree Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it gurgled again.

“Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O’Hara ... It

concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.”

“Still? That was finished long ago.”

“When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. Listen

to me till the end. There were Five Kings who prepared a sudden war

three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion’s pedigree by Mahbub

Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere they were ready, fell our

Army.”

“Ay—eight thousand men with guns. I remember that night.”

“But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The troops

were recalled because the Government believed the Five Kings were

cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes. Hilás and

Bunár—Rajahs with guns—undertook for a price to guard the Passes

against all coming from the North. They protested both fear and

friendship.” He broke off with a giggle into English: “Of course, I

tell you this unoffeecially to elucidate political situation, Mister

O’Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from criticizing any action of

superiors. Now I go on.—This pleased the Government, anxious to avoid

expense, and a bond was made for so many rupees a month that Hilás and

Bunár should guard the Passes as soon as the State’s troops were

withdrawn. At that time—it was after we two met—I, who had been selling

tea in Leh, became a clerk of accounts in the Army. When the troops

were withdrawn, I was left behind to pay the coolies who made new roads

in the Hills. This road-making was part of the bond between Bunár,

Hilás, and the Government.”

“So? And then?”

“I tell you, it was jolly-beastly cold up there too, after summer,”

said Hurree Babu confidentially. “I was afraid these Bunár men would

cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. My native sepoy-guard,

they laughed at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man. Nevar mind

thatt. I go on colloquially ... I send word many times that these two

Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet farther

North, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet were frozen,

and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for which I was

paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of strangers

and enemies.”

“For?”

“For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies. Then I

was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue. Mahbub came

South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after

snow-melting”—he shivered afresh—“come two strangers under cover of

shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains and

levels and compasses.”

“Oho! The thing gets clearer.”

“They are well received by Hilás and Bunár. They make great promises;

they speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaisar with gifts. Up the valleys,

down the valleys go they, saying, ‘Here is a place to build a

breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the road against

an army’—the very roads for which I paid out the rupees monthly. The

Government knows, but does nothing. The three other Kings, who were

_not_ paid for guarding the Passes, tell them by runner of the bad

faith of Bunár and Hilás. When all the evil is done, look you—when

these two strangers with the levels and the compasses make the Five

Kings to believe that a great army will sweep the Passes tomorrow or

the next day—Hill-people are all fools—comes the order to me, Hurree

Babu, ‘Go North and see what those strangers do.’ I say to Creighton

Sahib, ‘This is not a lawsuit, that we go about to collect evidence.’”

Hurree returned to his English with a jerk: “‘By Jove,’ I said, ‘why

the dooce do you not issue demi-offeecial orders to some brave man to

poison them, for an example? It is, if you permit the observation, most

reprehensible laxity on your part.’ And Colonel Creighton, he laughed

at me! It is all your beastly English pride. You think no one dare

conspire! That is all tommy-rott.”

Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood it,

in his quick mind.

“Then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?”

“No. To meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their horns

and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively sporting

gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the Government.

Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride.”

“Then what is to fear from them?”

“By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things with

black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly unscrupulous

people. I—I do not want to consort with them without a witness.”

“Will they kill thee?”

“Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I trust,

to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you know.

But—but they may beat me.”

“Why?”

Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. “Of _course_ I shall

affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as perhaps

interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such

thing. And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is as easy

for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old lady. Onlee—onlee—you see,

Mister O’Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is serious detriment

in some respects. And _all_so I am Bengali—a fearful man.”

“God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame?” said Kim, quoting the

proverb.

“It was process of Evolution, _I_ think, from Primal Necessity, but the

fact remains in all the _cui bono_. I am, oh, awfully fearful!—I

remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa.

(No, I have never reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister

O’Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these two

gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible

contingency with European assistance in emergency.” He coughed and spat

out the cardamoms. “It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which you can

say ‘No, Babu’. If you have no pressing engagement with your old

man—perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his fancies—I

should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me till I find those

sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you since I met my friend at

Delhi. And also I will embody your name in my offeecial report when

matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a great feather in your cap.

That is why I come really.”

“Humph! The end of the tale, I think, is true; but what of the

fore-part?”

“About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A lots

more than you would suppose,” said Hurree earnestly. “You come—eh? I go

from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant and painted

meads. I shall go to Mussoorie to good old Munsoorie Pahar, as the

gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rampur into Chini. That is the only

way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold, but we must wait

for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see, one Russian is a

Frenchman, and I know my French pretty well. I have friends in

Chandernagore.”

“_He_ would certainly rejoice to see the Hills again,” said Kim

meditatively. “All his speech these ten days past has been of little

else. If we go together—”

“Oah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I

shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no hurry for

Hurree—that is an Europe pun, ha! ha!—and you come after. There is

plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map, of course. I shall

go tomorrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh? You go think on

it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now.” He yawned

ponderously, and with never a civil word lumbered off to his

sleeping-place. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in

Hindustani:

“Well is the Game called great! I was four days a scullion at Quetta,

waiting on the wife of the man whose book I stole. And that was part of

the Great Game! From the South—God knows how far—came up the Mahratta,

playing the Great Game in fear of his life. Now I shall go far and far

into the North playing the Great Game. Truly, it runs like a shuttle

throughout all Hind. And my share and my joy”—he smiled to the

darkness—“I owe to the lama here. Also to Mahbub Ali—also to Creighton

Sahib, but chiefly to the Holy One. He is right—a great and a wonderful

world—and I am Kim—Kim—Kim—alone—one person—in the middle of it all.

But I will see these strangers with their levels and chains...”

“What was the upshot of last night’s babble?” said the lama, after his

orisons.

“There came a strolling seller of drugs—a hanger-on of the Sahiba’s.

Him I abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that our charms are

worthier than his coloured waters.”

“Alas, my charms! Is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one?”

“Very strictly.”

“Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour.” He

fumbled at his pencase.

“In the Plains,” said Kim, “are always too many people. In the Hills,

as I understand, there are fewer.”

“Oh! the Hills, and the snows upon the Hills.” The lami tore off a tiny

square of paper fit to go in an amulet. “But what dost thou know of the

Hills?”

“They are very close.” Kim thrust open the door and looked at the long,

peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed in morning-gold. “Except in the

dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them.”

The lama snuffed the wind wistfully.

“If we go North,”—Kim put the question to the waking sunrise—“would not

much mid-day heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at least?

... Is the charm made, Holy One?”

“I have written the names of seven silly devils—not one of whom is

worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do foolish women drag us from

the Way!”

Hurree Babu came out from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with

ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and

deep-voiced, he did not look like “a fearful man”. Kim signed almost

imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning

toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to

the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady, more

or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of

green-mango colics in the young. The lama’s knowledge of medicine was,

of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black

horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound

remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the

science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views with enchanting

politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous physician. Hurree

Babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert dabbler in the

mysteries; but at least—he thanked the Gods therefore—he knew when he

sat in the presence of a master. He himself had been taught by the

Sahibs, who do not consider expense, in the lordly halls of Calcutta;

but, as he was ever first to acknowledge, there lay a wisdom behind

earthly wisdom—the high and lonely lore of meditation. Kim looked on

with envy. The Hurree Babu of his knowledge—oily, effusive, and

nervous—was gone; gone, too, was the brazen drug-vendor of overnight.

There remained—polished, polite, attentive—a sober, learned son of

experience and adversity, gathering wisdom from the lama’s lips. The

old lady confided to Kim that these rare levels were beyond her. She

liked charms with plenty of ink that one could wash off in water,

swallow, and be done with. Else what was the use of the Gods? She liked

men and women, and she spoke of them—of kinglets she had known in the

past; of her own youth and beauty; of the depredations of leopards and

the eccentricities of love Asiatic; of the incidence of taxation,

rack-renting, funeral ceremonies, her son-in-law (this by allusion,

easy to be followed), the care of the young, and the age’s lack of

decency. And Kim, as interested in the life of this world as she soon

to leave it, squatted with his feet under the hem of his robe, drinking

all in, while the lama demolished one after another every theory of

body-curing put forward by Hurree Babu.

At noon the Babu strapped up his brass-bound drug-box, took his

patent-leather shoes of ceremony in one hand, a gay blue-and-white

umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the Doon, where, he

said, he was in demand among the lesser kings of those parts.

“We will go in the cool of the evening, _chela_,” said the lama. “That

doctor, learned in physic and courtesy, affirms that the people among

these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a teacher.

In a very short time—so says the _hakim_—we come to cool air and the

smell of pines.”

“Ye go to the Hills? And by Kulu road? Oh, thrice happy!” shrilled the

old lady. “But that I am a little pressed with the care of the

homestead I would take palanquin ... but that would be shameless, and

my reputation would be cracked. Ho! Ho! I know the road—every march of

the road I know. Ye will find charity throughout—it is not denied to

the well-looking. I will give orders for provision. A servant to set

you forth upon your journey? No ... Then I will at least cook ye good

food.”

“What a woman is the Sahiba!” said the white-bearded Oorya, when a

tumult rose by the kitchen quarters. “She has never forgotten a friend:

she has never forgotten an enemy in all her years. And her

cookery—wah!” He rubbed his slim stomach.

There were cakes, there were sweetmeats, there was cold fowl stewed to

rags with rice and prunes—enough to burden Kim like a mule.

“I am old and useless,” she said. “None now love me—and none

respect—but there are few to compare with me when I call on the Gods

and squat to my cooking-pots. Come again, O people of good will. Holy

One and disciple, come again. The room is always prepared; the welcome

is always ready ... See the women do not follow thy _chela_ too openly.

I know the women of Kulu. Take heed, _chela_, lest he run away when he

smells his Hills again ... Hai! Do not tilt the rice-bag upside down

... Bless the household, Holy One, and forgive thy servant her

stupidities.”

She wiped her red old eyes on a corner of her veil, and clucked

throatily.

“Women talk,” said the lama at last, “but that is a woman’s infirmity.

I gave her a charm. She is upon the Wheel and wholly given over to the

shows of this life, but none the less, _chela_, she is virtuous,

kindly, hospitable—of a whole and zealous heart. Who shall say she does

not acquire merit?”

“Not I, Holy One,” said Kim, reslinging the bountiful provision on his

shoulders. “In my mind—behind my eyes—I have tried to picture such an

one altogether freed from the Wheel—desiring nothing, causing nothing—a

nun, as it were.”

“And, O imp?” The lama almost laughed aloud.

“I cannot make the picture.”

“Nor I. But there are many, many millions of lives before her. She will

get wisdom a little, it may be, in each one.”

“And will she forget how to make stews with saffron upon that road?”

“Thy mind is set on things unworthy. But she has skill. I am refreshed

all over. When we reach the lower hills I shall be yet stronger. The

_hakim_ spoke truly to me this morn when he said a breath from the

snows blows away twenty years from the life of a man. We will go up

into the Hills—the high hills—up to the sound of snow-waters and the

sound of the trees—for a little while. The _hakim_ said that at any

time we may return to the Plains, for we do no more than skirt the

pleasant places. The _hakim_ is full of learning; but he is in no way

proud. I spoke to him—when thou wast talking to the Sahiba—of a certain

dizziness that lays hold upon the back of my neck in the night, and he

said it rose from excessive heat—to be cured by cool air. Upon

consideration, I marvelled that I had not thought of such a simple

remedy.”

“Didst thou tell him of thy Search?” said Kim, a little jealously. He

preferred to sway the lama by his own speech—not through the wiles of

Hurree Babu.

“Assuredly. I told him of my dream, and of the manner by which I had

acquired merit by causing thee to be taught wisdom.”

“Thou didst not say I was a Sahib?”

“What need? I have told thee many times we be but two souls seeking

escape. He said—and he is just herein—that the River of Healing will

break forth even as I dreamed—at my feet, if need be. Having found the

Way, seest thou, that shall free me from the Wheel, need I trouble to

find a way about the mere fields of earth—which are illusion? That were

senseless. I have my dreams, night upon night repeated; I have

_Jâtaka;_ and I have thee, Friend of all the World. It was written in

thy horoscope that a Red Bull on a green field—I have not

forgotten—should bring thee to honour. Who but I saw that prophecy

accomplished? Indeed, I was the instrument. Thou shalt find me my

River, being in return the instrument. The Search is sure!”

He set his ivory-yellow face, serene and untroubled, towards the

beckoning Hills; his shadow shouldering far before him in the dust.