Chương Chương 11 · Chapter XI

. Chapter XI

Give the man who is not made

To his trade

Swords to fling and catch again,

Coins to ring and snatch again,

Men to harm and cure again,

Snakes to charm and lure again—

He’ll be hurt by his own blade,

By his serpents disobeyed,

By his clumsiness bewrayed,”

By the people mocked to scorn—

So ’tis not with juggler born!

Pinch of dust or withered flower,

Chance-flung fruit or borrowed staff,

Serve his need and shore his power,

Bind the spell, or loose the laugh!

_But a man who, etc._, Op. 15

Followed a sudden natural reaction.

“Now am I alone—all alone,” he thought. “In all India is no one so

alone as I! If I die today, who shall bring the news—and to whom? If I

live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I am a

Son of the Charm—I, Kim.”

A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves into a

mazement as it were by repeating their own names over and over again to

themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is

called personal identity. When one grows older, the power, usually,

departs, but while it lasts it may descend upon a man at any moment.

“Who is Kim—Kim—Kim?”

He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all

other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to

pin-points. In a minute—in another half-second—he felt he would arrive

at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always happens,

his mind dropped away from those heights with a rush of a wounded bird,

and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head.

A long-haired Hindu _bairagi_ (holy man), who had just bought a ticket,

halted before him at that moment and stared intently.

“I also have lost it,” he said sadly. “It is one of the Gates to the

Way, but for me it has been shut many years.”

“What is the talk?” said Kim, abashed.

“Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy soul

might be. The seizure came of a sudden. _I_ know. Who should know but

I? Whither goest thou?”

“Toward Kashi [Benares].”

“There are no Gods there. I have proved them. I go to Prayag

[Allahabad] for the fifth time—seeking the Road to Enlightenment. Of

what faith art thou?”

“I too am a Seeker,” said Kim, using one of the lama’s pet words.

“Though”—he forgot his Northern dress for the moment—“though Allah

alone knoweth what I seek.”

The old fellow slipped the _bairagi’s_ crutch under his armpit and sat

down on a patch of ruddy leopard’s skin as Kim rose at the call for the

Benares train.

“Go in hope, little brother,” he said. “It is a long road to the feet

of the One; but thither do we all travel.”

Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty

miles in the crowded compartment, was cheering his neighbours with a

string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master’s magical

gifts.

Benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though it was pleasant

to find how his cloth was respected. At least one-third of the

population prays eternally to some group or other of the many million

deities, and so reveres every sort of holy man. Kim was guided to the

Temple of the Tirthankars, about a mile outside the city, near Sarnath,

by a chance-met Punjabi farmer—a Kamboh from Jullundur-way who had

appealed in vain to every God of his homestead to cure his small son,

and was trying Benares as a last resort.

“Thou art from the North?” he asked, shouldering through the press of

the narrow, stinking streets much like his own pet bull at home.

“Ay, I know the Punjab. My mother was a pahareen, but my father came

from Amritzar—by Jandiala,” said Kim, oiling his ready tongue for the

needs of the Road.

“Jandiala—Jullundur? Oho! Then we be neighbours in some sort, as it

were.” He nodded tenderly to the wailing child in his arms. “Whom dost

thou serve?”

“A most holy man at the Temple of the Tirthankers.”

“They are all most holy and—most greedy,” said the Jat with bitterness.

“I have walked the pillars and trodden the temples till my feet are

flayed, and the child is no whit better. And the mother being sick too

... Hush, then, little one ... We changed his name when the fever came.

We put him into girl’s clothes. There was nothing we did not do,

except—I said to his mother when she bundled me off to Benares—she

should have come with me—I _said_ Sakhi Sarwar Sultan would serve us

best. We know His generosity, but these down-country Gods are

strangers.”

The child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked at

Kim through heavy eyelids.

“And was it all worthless?” Kim asked, with easy interest.

“All worthless—all worthless,” said the child, lips cracking with

fever.

“The Gods have given him a good mind, at least” said the father

proudly. “To think he should have listened so cleverly. Yonder is thy

Temple. Now I am a poor man—many priests have dealt with me—but my son

is my son, and if a gift to thy master can cure him—I am at my very

wits’ end.”

Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. Three years ago he

would have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way without

a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved that he

was a man. Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice already, and

knew enough to recognize starvation when he saw it.

“Call him forth and I will give him a bond on my best yoke, so that the

child is cured.”

Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. A white-clad Oswal

banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked him what he

did.

“I am _chela_ to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal—within there.

He bade me come. I wait. Tell him.”

“Do not forget the child,” cried the importunate Jat over his shoulder,

and then bellowed in Punjabi; “O Holy One—O disciple of the Holy One—O

Gods above all the Worlds—behold affliction sitting at the gate!” That

cry is so common in Benares that the passers never turned their heads.

The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the darkness

behind him, and the easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slid by; for the

lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him. When the

click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court where the

calm images of the Arhats stand, a novice whispered, “Thy _chela_ is

here,” and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of that prayer.

Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran before

him, and, lifting up the child, cried: “Look upon this, Holy One; and

if the Gods will, he lives—he lives!”

He fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin.

“What is now?” The lama’s eyes turned to Kim. It was noticeable he

spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago, under ZamZammah; but father would

allow no private talk.

“It is no more than a fever,” said Kim. “The child is not well fed.”

“He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.”

“If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One.”

“What! Have they made thee a healer? Wait here,” said the lama, and he

sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while Kim,

looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little

betel-box. He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as

a Sahib—of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself—boy’s dreams

all. There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered search

through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for thought

and a muttered invocation between whiles. Quinine he had in tablets,

and dark brown meat-lozenges—beef most probably, but that was not _his_

business. The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a lozenge

greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.

“Take then these six.” Kim handed them to the man. “Praise the Gods,

and boil three in milk; other three in water. After he has drunk the

milk give him this” (it was the half of a quinine pill), “and wrap him

warm. Give him the water of the other three, and the other half of this

white pill when he wakes. Meantime, here is another brown medicine that

he may suck at on the way home.”

“Gods, what wisdom!” said the Kamboh, snatching.

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of

autumn malaria—if you except the patter that he added to impress the

lama.

“Now go! Come again in the morning.”

“But the price—the price,” said the Jat, and threw back his sturdy

shoulders. “My son is my son. Now that he will be whole again, how

shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the wayside and

did not even give a bowl of curds in return?”

“They are alike, these Jats,” said Kim softly. “The Jat stood on his

dunghill and the King’s elephants went by. ‘O driver,’ said he, ‘what

will you sell those little donkeys for?’”

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the

lama. “It is the saying of my own country the very talk of it. So are

we Jats all. I will come tomorrow with the child; and the blessing of

the Gods of the Homesteads—who are good little Gods—be on you both ...

Now, son, we grow strong again. Do not spit it out, little Princeling!

King of my Heart, do not spit it out, and we shall be strong men,

wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning.”

He moved away, crooning and mumbling. The lama turned to Kim, and all

the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.

“To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge.

That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World.”

“I was made wise by thee, Holy One,” said Kim, forgetting the little

play just ended; forgetting St Xavier’s; forgetting his white blood;

forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan-fashion, to

touch his master’s feet in the dust of the Jain temple. “My teaching I

owe to thee. I have eaten thy bread three years. My time is finished. I

am loosed from the schools. I come to thee.”

“Herein is my reward. Enter! Enter! And is all well?” They passed to

the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across. “Stand

that I may see. So!” He peered critically. “It is no longer a child,

but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. I did well—I did

well when I gave thee up to the armed men on that black night. Dost

thou remember our first day under Zam-Zammah?”

“Ay,” said Kim. “Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage the

first day I went to—”

“The Gates of Learning? Truly. And the day that we ate the cakes

together at the back of the river by Nucklao. Aha! Many times hast thou

begged for me, but that day I begged for thee.”

“Good reason,” quoth Kim. “I was then a scholar in the Gates of

Learning, and attired as a Sahib. Do not forget, Holy One,” he went on

playfully. “I am still a Sahib—by thy favour.”

“True. And a Sahib in most high esteem. Come to my cell, _chela_.”

“How is that known to thee?”

The lama smiled. “First by means of letters from the kindly priest whom

we met in the camp of armed men; but he is now gone to his own country,

and I sent the money to his brother.” Colonel Creighton, who had

succeeded to the trusteeship when Father Victor went to England with

the Mavericks, was hardly the Chaplain’s brother. “But I do not well

understand Sahibs’ letters. They must be interpreted to me. I chose a

surer way. Many times when I returned from my Search to this Temple,

which has always been a nest to me, there came one seeking

Enlightenment—a man from Leh—that had been, he said, a Hindu, but

wearied of all those Gods.” The lama pointed to the Arhats.

“A fat man?” said Kim, a twinkle in his eye.

“Very fat; but I perceived in a little his mind was wholly given up to

useless things—such as devils and charms and the form and fashion of

our tea-drinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we initiated the

novices. A man abounding in questions; but he was a friend of thine,

_chela_. He told me that thou wast on the road to much honour as a

scribe. And I see thou art a physician.”

“Yes, that am I—a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside when I

come as thy disciple. I have accomplished the years appointed for a

Sahib.”

“As it were a novice?” said the lama, nodding his head. “Art thou freed

from the schools? I would not have thee unripe.”

“I am all free. In due time I take service under the Government as a

scribe—”

“Not as a warrior. That is well.”

“But first I come to wander with thee. Therefore I am here. Who begs

for thee, these days?” he went on quickly. The ice was thin.

“Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here,

except when I come to look again at my disciple. From one end to

another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the _te-rain_. A great

and a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were in

my own Bhotiyal.”

He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion gave

him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-legged

attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teak-wood

table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups, was before

him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily carved teak,

bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and fronted by a lamp,

an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-pots.

“The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by giving

me these a year since,” he said, following Kim’s eye. “When one is far

from one’s own land such things carry remembrance; and we must

reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way. See!” He pointed to a

curiously-built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic metal

ornament. “When I was Abbot in my own place—before I came to better

knowledge I made that offering daily. It is the Sacrifice of the

Universe to the Lord. Thus do we of Bhotiyal offer all the world daily

to the Excellent Law. And I do it even now, though I know that the

Excellent One is beyond all pinchings and pattings.” He snuffed from

his gourd.

“It is well done, Holy One,” Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the

cushions, very happy and rather tired.

“And also,” the old man chuckled, “I write pictures of the Wheel of

Life. Three days to a picture. I was busied on it—or it may be I shut

my eyes a little—when they brought word of thee. It is good to have

thee here: I will show thee my art—not for pride’s sake, but because

thou must learn. The Sahibs have not _all_ this world’s wisdom.”

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow

Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of Indian ink. In cleanest,

severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes,

whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger,

and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens and Hells, and

all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat Himself first

drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His disciples the cause

of things. Many ages have crystallized it into a most wonderful

convention crowded with hundreds of little figures whose every line

carries a meaning. Few can translate the picture-parable; there are not

twenty in all the world who can draw it surely without a copy: of those

who can both draw and expound are but three.

“I have a little learned to draw,” said Kim. “But this is a marvel

beyond marvels.”

“I have written it for many years,” said the lama. “Time was when I

could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. I will teach

thee the art—after due preparation; and I will show thee the meaning of

the Wheel.”

“We take the Road, then?”

“The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made plain

to me in a hundred dreams—notably one that came upon the night of the

day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without thee I should

never find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest, I put this from

me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would not take thee with me that

day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes. I would not take thee till the

time was ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to the Sea, from the Sea

to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain. Then I remembered the

_Jâtaka_.”

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had told

it so often to the Jam priests.

“Further testimony is not needed,” he ended serenely. “Thou wast sent

for an aid. That aid removed, my Search came to naught. Therefore we

will go out again together, and our Search sure.”

“Whither go we?”

“What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is sure. If

need be, the River will break from the ground before us. I acquired

merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave thee the

jewel that is Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a follower of

Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in Bhotiyal. It is

sufficient. We are together, and all things are as they were—Friend of

all the World—Friend of the Stars—my _chela!_”

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the

lama never demanded any details of life at St Xavier’s, nor showed the

faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs. His mind

moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their wonderful

first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling, till it

pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old age.

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played

with his ghost-dagger and rosary. The clamour of Benares, oldest of all

earth’s cities awake before the Gods, day and night, beat round the

walls as the sea’s roar round a breakwater. Now and again, a Jain

priest crossed the court, with some small offering to the images, and

swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a

living thing. A lamp twinkled, and there followed the sound of a

prayer. Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the

still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That

night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an English word...

“Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,” he said,

about three o’clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking from

dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. “The Jat will be here at

the light.”

“I am well answered. In my haste I would have done a wrong.” He sat

down on the cushions and returned to his rosary. “Surely old folk are

as children,” he said pathetically. “They desire a matter—behold, it

must be done at once, or they fret and weep! Many times when I was upon

the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at the hindrance of an

ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust. It was not so when I was a

man—a long time ago. None the less it is wrongful—”

“But thou art indeed old, Holy One.”

“The thing was done. A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or

young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the effect

of that Cause? Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it—or a

drunkard? _Chela_, this is a great and a terrible world.”

“I think it good,” Kim yawned. “What is there to eat? I have not eaten

since yesterday even.”

“I had forgotten thy need. Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold rice.”

“We cannot walk far on such stuff.” Kim felt all the European’s lust

for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple. Yet, instead

of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on

slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the farmer, voluble,

stuttering with gratitude.

“In the night the fever broke and the sweat came,” he cried. “Feel

here—his skin is fresh and new! He esteemed the salt lozenges, and took

milk with greed.” He drew the cloth from the child’s face, and it

smiled sleepily at Kim. A little knot of Jain priests, silent but

all-observant, gathered by the temple door. They knew, and Kim knew

that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. Being courteous

folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by presence, word, or

gesture. Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun rose.

“Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,” he said, not knowing how those

Gods were named. “The fever is indeed broken.”

“Look! See!” The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of three

years. “Was there ever such a _chela?_ He follows our Lord the Healer.”

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as

well as the Lingam and the Snake. They wear the Brahminical thread;

they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law. But, because they knew

and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he sought the

Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued long of

nights with the head-priest—as free-thinking a metaphysician as ever

split one hair into seventy—they murmured assent.

“Remember,”—Kim bent over the child—. “this trouble may come again.”

“Not if thou hast the proper spell,” said the father.

“But in a little while we go away.”

“True,” said the lama to all the Jains. “We go now together upon the

Search whereof I have often spoken. I waited till my _chela_ was ripe.

Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of my

rest, O people of good will.”

“But I am not a beggar.” The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching the

child.

“Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One,” a priest cried.

“Go,” Kim whispered. “Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and

for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food—curry, pulse,

cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be swift!”

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and slim,

in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the

other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama.

An English observer might have said that he looked rather like the

young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad

faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed.

The Seeker—he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-away

Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic—took no part in it, but

meditated, as always, alone among the images. The others were very

human; pressing small comforts upon the old man—a betel-box, a fine new

iron pencase, a food-bag, and such-like—warning him against the dangers

of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the Search.

Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and swore to

himself in the language of St Xavier’s.

“But it is my own fault,” he concluded. “With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub’s

bread, or Lurgan Sahib’s. At St Xavier’s, three meals a day. Here I

must jolly-well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good

training. _How_ I could eat a plate of beef now! ... Is it finished,

Holy One?”

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate

Chinese. “I must lean on thy shoulder,” said he, as the temple gates

closed. “We grow stiff, I think.”

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of

crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for the

way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

“Here we eat,” he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and

smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the

other.

“Fall to, Holy Ones!” he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the

shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.)

“Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with _hing_

(asafœtida), curds and sugar. King of my fields,”—this to the small

son—“let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur can pay a

service ... I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that they had not

cooked, but truly”—he looked away politely over the broad river—“where

there is no eye there is no caste.”

“And we,” said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for the

lama, “are beyond all castes.”

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had

licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff from his little finger did Kim

note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

“If our roads lie together,” he said roughly, “I go with thee. One does

not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak. But I

am not altogether a reed.” He picked up his _lathi_—a five-foot

male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron—and flourished it in the

air. “The Jats are called quarrel-some, but that is not true. Except

when we are crossed, we are like our own buffaloes.”

“So be it,” said Kim. “A good stick is a good reason.”

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged perspective

the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-ghats by the

river. Now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment

of a half-burned body bobbed by on the full current.

“But for thee,” said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his

hairy breast, “I might today have gone thither—with this one. The

priests tell us that Benares is holy—which none doubt—and desirable to

die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for money; and when

one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of none effect except

one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour, drink, lave, and scatter

flowers—but always pay the priests. No, the Punjab for me, and the soil

of the Jullundur-_doab_ for the best soil in it.”

“I have said many times—in the Temple, I think—that if need be, the

River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North,” said the

lama, rising. “I remember a pleasant place, set about with fruit-trees,

where one can walk in meditation—and the air is cooler there. It comes

from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.”

“What is the name?” said Kim.

“How should I know? Didst thou not—no, that was after the Army rose out

of the earth and took thee away. I abode there in meditation in a room

against the dovecot—except when she talked eternally.”

“Oho! the woman from Kulu. That is by Saharunpore.” Kim laughed.

“How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake of

past sins?” the Jat demanded cautiously. “It is a far cry to Delhi.”

“No,” said Kim. “I will beg a _tikkut_ for the _te-rain_.” One does not

own to the possession of money in India.

“Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage. My son

is best in his mother’s arms. The Government has brought on us many

taxes, but it gives us one good thing—the _te-rain_ that joins friends

and unites the anxious. A wonderful matter is the _te-rain_.”

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the

heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand questions as to

the lama’s walk and work in life, and received some curious answers.

Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat

North-Western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of

fellow-passengers. Even today, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark

oppression to Indian rustics. They do not understand why, when they

have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great

pieces out of the charm. So, long and furious are the debates between

travellers and Eurasian ticket-collectors. Kim assisted at two or three

with grave advice, meant to darken counsel and to show off his wisdom

before the lama and the admiring Kamboh. But at Somna Road the Fates

sent him a matter to think upon. There tumbled into the compartment, as

the train was moving off, a mean, lean little person—a Mahratta, so far

as Kim could judge by the cock of the tight turban. His face was cut,

his muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. He

told them that a country-cart had upset and nearly slain him: he was

going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched him closely. If, as he

asserted, he had been rolled over and over on the earth, there should

have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin. But all his injuries seemed

clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not cast a man into such

extremity of terror. As, with shaking fingers, he knotted up the torn

cloth about his neck he laid bare an amulet of the kind called a

keeper-up of the heart. Now, amulets are common enough, but they are

not generally strung on square-plaited copper wire, and still fewer

amulets bear black enamel on silver. There were none except the Kamboh

and the lama in the compartment, which, luckily, was of an old type

with solid ends. Kim made as to scratch in his bosom, and thereby

lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta’s face changed altogether at the

sight, and he disposed the amulet fairly on his breast.

“Yes,” he went on to the Kamboh, “I was in haste, and the cart, driven

by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the harm done

to me there was lost a full dish of _tarkeean_. I was not a Son of the

Charm [a lucky man] that day.”

“That was a great loss,” said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His

experience of Benares had made him suspicious.

“Who cooked it?” said Kim.

“A woman.” The Mahratta raised his eyes.

“But all women can cook _tarkeean_,” said the Kamboh. “It is a good

curry, as I know.”

“Oh yes, it is a good curry,” said the Mahratta.

“And cheap,” said Kim. “But what about caste?”

“Oh, there is no caste where men go to—look for _tarkeean_,” the

Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. “Of whose service art

thou?”

“Of the service of this Holy One.” Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy

lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.

“Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me. He is called the Friend of all

the World. He is also called the Friend of the Stars. He walks as a

physician—his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom.”

“And a Son of the Charm,” said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh made

haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.

“And who is _that?_” the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.

“One whose child I—we have cured, who lies under great debt to us. Sit

by the window, man from Jullundur. Here is a sick one.”

“Humph! _I_ have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. _My_ ears

are not long. _I_ am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.” The Jat

slid himself heavily into a far corner.

“Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity,”

cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

“This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him,” Kim

retorted. “None interfered between thy babe and me.”

“I am rebuked,” said the Kamboh meekly. “I am thy debtor for the life

of my son. Thou art a miracle-worker—I know it.”

“Show me the cuts.” Kim bent over the Mahratta’s neck, his heart nearly

choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance. “Now, tell

thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.”

“I come from the South, where my work lay. One of us they slew by the

roadside. Hast thou heard?” Kim shook his head. He, of course, knew

nothing of E’s predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an Arab

trader. “Having found a certain letter which I was sent to seek, I came

away. I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow. So sure was I that none

knew, I did not change my face. At Mhow a woman brought charge against

me of theft of jewellery in that city which I had left. Then I saw the

cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow by night, bribing the police,

who had been bribed to hand me over without question to my enemies in

the South. Then I lay in old Chitor city a week, a penitent in a

temple, but I could not get rid of the letter which was my charge. I

buried it under the Queen’s Stone, at Chitor, in the place known to us

all.”

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the thread.

“At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings’ country; for Kotah to the

east is beyond the Queen’s law, and east again lie Jaipur and Gwalior.

Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted like a wet

jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard there was a

charge against me of murder in the city I had left—of the murder of a

boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting.”

“But cannot the Government protect?”

“We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our names are

blotted from the book. That is all. At Bandakui, where lives one of Us,

I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me a

Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chitor to

recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them. Therefore I did

not send a tar [telegram] to any one saying where the letter lay. I

wished the credit of it all.”

Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well.

“But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me,

and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts then

and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognized me as his

agent for cotton. May he burn in Hell for it!”

“And wast thou?”

“O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! I ran

into the Fleshers’ Ward and came out by the House of the Jew, who

feared a riot and pushed me forth. I came afoot to Somna Road—I had

only money for my _tikkut_ to Delhi—and there, while I lay in a ditch

with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut me and

searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the _te-rain_ it was!”

“Why did he not slay thee out of hand?”

“They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance of

lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over to the

State that desires it. I go back guarded, and then—I die slowly for an

example to the rest of Us. The South is not my country. I run in

circles—like a goat with one eye. I have not eaten for two days. I am

marked”—he touched the filthy bandage on his leg—“so that they will

know me at Delhi.”

“Thou art safe in the _te-rain_, at least.”

“Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again! The wires will

be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon me.

Twenty—a hundred, if need be—will have seen me slay that boy. And thou

art useless!”

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the case

would be deadly complete—even to the corpse. The Mahratta twitched his

fingers with pain from time to time. The Kamboh in his corner glared

sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim, fumbling

doctor-fashion at the man’s neck, thought out his plan between

invocations.

“Hast thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five—ten minutes

alone, if I had not been so pressed, and I might—”

“Is he cured yet, miracle-worker?” said the Kamboh jealously. “Thou

hast chanted long enough.”

“Nay. There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for three

days in the habit of a _bairagi_.” This is a common penance, often

imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher.

“One priest always goes about to make another priest,” was the retort.

Like most grossly superstitious folk, the Kamboh could not keep his

tongue from deriding his Church.

“Will thy son be a priest, then? It is time he took more of my

quinine.”

“We Jats are all buffaloes,” said the Kamboh, softening anew.

Kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child’s trusting little

lips. “I have asked for nothing,” he said sternly to the father,

“except food. Dost thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man. Have

I thy leave—Prince?”

Up flew the man’s huge paws in supplication. “Nay—nay. Do not mock me

thus.”

“It pleases me to cure this sick one. Thou shalt acquire merit by

aiding. What colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl? White. That is

auspicious. Was there raw turmeric among thy foodstuffs?”

“I—I—”

“Open thy bundle!”

It was the usual collection of small oddments: bits of cloth, quack

medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of _atta_—greyish, rough-ground

native flour—twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry pipe-stems, and a

packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in a quilt. Kim turned it over with

the air of a wise warlock, muttering a Mohammedan invocation.

“This is wisdom I learned from the Sahibs,” he whispered to the lama;

and here, when one thinks of his training at Lurgan’s, he spoke no more

than the truth. “There is a great evil in this man’s fortune, as shown

by the Stars, which—which troubles him. Shall I take it away?”

“Friend of the Stars, thou hast done well in all things. Let it be at

thy pleasure. Is it another healing?”

“Quick! Be quick!” gasped the Mahratta. “The train may stop.”

“A healing against the shadow of death,” said Kim, mixing the Kamboh’s

flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the red-earth bowl

of the pipe. E, without a word, slipped off his turban and shook down

his long black hair.

“That is my food—priest,” the jat growled.

“A buffalo in the temple! Hast thou dared to look even thus far?” said

Kim. “I must do mysteries before fools; but have a care for thine eyes.

Is there a film before them already? I save the babe, and for return

thou—oh, shameless!” The man flinched at the direct gaze, for Kim was

wholly in earnest.

“Shall I curse thee, or shall I—” He picked up the outer cloth of the

bundle and threw it over the bowed head. “Dare so much as to think a

wish to see, and—and—even I cannot save thee. Sit! Be dumb!”

“I am blind—dumb. Forbear to curse! Co—come, child; we will play a game

of hiding. Do not, for my sake, look from under the cloth.”

“I see hope,” said E23. “What is thy scheme?”

“This comes next,” said Kim, plucking the thin body-shirt. E23

hesitated, with all a North-West man’s dislike of baring his body.

“What is caste to a cut throat?” said Kim, rending it to the waist. “We

must make thee a yellow Saddhu all over. Strip—strip swiftly, and shake

thy hair over thine eyes while I scatter the ash. Now, a caste-mark on

thy forehead.” He drew from his bosom the little Survey paint-box and a

cake of crimson lake.

“Art thou only a beginner?” said E23, labouring literally for the dear

life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings and stood clear in the

loin-cloth while Kim splashed in a noble caste-mark on the ash-smeared

brow.

“But two days entered to the Game, brother,” Kim replied. “Smear more

ash on the bosom.”

“Hast thou met—a physician of sick pearls?” He switched out his long,

tight-rolled turban-cloth and, with swiftest hands, rolled it over and

under about his loins into the intricate devices of a Saddhu’s

cincture.

“Hah! Dost thou know his touch, then? He was my teacher for a while. We

must bar thy legs. Ash cures wounds. Smear it again.”

“I was his pride once, but thou art almost better. The Gods are kind to

us! Give me _that_.”

It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat’s bundle.

E23 gulped down a half handful. “They are good against hunger, fear,

and chill. And they make the eyes red too,” he explained. “Now I shall

have heart to play the Game. We lack only a Saddhu’s tongs. What of the

old clothes?”

Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of his

tunic. With a yellow-ochre paint cake he smeared the legs and the

breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and

turmeric.

“The blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother.”

“Maybe; but no need to throw them out of the window ... It is

finished.” His voice thrilled with a boy’s pure delight in the Game.

“Turn and look, O Jat!”

“The Gods protect us,” said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a buffalo

from the reeds. “But—whither went the Mahratta? What hast thou done?”

Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; E23, by virtue of his business,

was no bad actor. In place of the tremulous, shrinking trader there

lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash-smeared, ochre-barred,

dusty-haired Saddhu, his swollen eyes—opium takes quick effect on an

empty stomach—luminous with insolence and bestial lust, his legs

crossed under him, Kim’s brown rosary round his neck, and a scant yard

of worn, flowered chintz on his shoulders. The child buried his face in

his amazed father’s arms.

“Look up, Princeling! We travel with warlocks, but they will not hurt

thee. Oh, do not cry ... What is the sense of curing a child one day

and killing him with fright the next?”

“The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great healing.

When I was a child I made clay men and horses.”

“I have made them too. Sír Banás, he comes in the night and makes them

all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,” piped the child.

“And so thou art not frightened at anything. Eh, Prince?”

“I was frightened because my father was frightened. I felt his arms

shake.”

“Oh, chicken-man!” said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed. “I have

done a healing on this poor trader. He must forsake his gains and his

account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the

malignity of his enemies. The Stars are against him.”

“The fewer money-lenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no Saddhu,

he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.”

“So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder—given over to the

burning-ghat not two days ago. There remains one thing more. I did this

charm in thy presence because need was great. I changed his shape and

his soul. None the less, if, by any chance, O man from Jullundur, thou

rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the elders sitting under

the village tree, or in thine own house, or in company of thy priest

when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will come among the buffaloes,

and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the corn-bins, and the curse of

our Gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy feet and

after thy ploughshare.” This was part of an old curse picked up from a

_faquir_ by the Taksali Gate in the days of Kim’s innocence. It lost

nothing by repetition.

“Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!” cried the Jat. “Do not curse the

household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing! I am thy cow!” and he made

to grab at Kim’s bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage floor.

“But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of a pinch

of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I have honoured by

using in my art, so will the Gods return a blessing,” and he gave it at

length, to the man’s immense relief. It was one that he had learned

from Lurgan Sahib.

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the

business of disguisement. “Friend of the Stars,” he said at last, “thou

hast acquired great wisdom. Beware that it do not give birth to pride.

No man having the Law before his eyes speaks hastily of any matter

which he has seen or encountered.”

“No—no—no, indeed,” cried the farmer, fearful lest the master should be

minded to improve on the pupil. E23, with relaxed mouth, gave himself

up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the spent

Asiatic.

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into

Delhi about lamp-lighting time.