Kim
once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that makes a
man. Oh, the old days—the good days of my strength!”
“That strength is weakness.”
“It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it
otherwise,” the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into the
pony’s lean flank.
“But I know a River of great healing.”
“I have drank Gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. All she gave me was a
flux, and no sort of strength.”
“It is not Gunga. The River that I know washes from all taint of sin.
Ascending the far bank one is assured of Freedom. I do not know thy
life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and courteous. Thou
hast clung to thy Way, rendering fidelity when it was hard to give, in
that Black Year of which I now remember other tales. Enter now upon the
Middle Way which is the path to Freedom. Hear the Most Excellent Law,
and do not follow dreams.”
“Speak, then, old man,” the soldier smiled, half saluting. “We be all
babblers at our age.”
The lama squatted under the shade of a mango, whose shadow played
checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony; and
Kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the crotch of
the twisted roots.
There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of
doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. Slowly and
impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes the old soldier
slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the reins
round his wrist. The lama’s voice faltered, the periods lengthened. Kim
was busy watching a grey squirrel. When the little scolding bunch of
fur, close pressed to the branch, disappeared, preacher and audience
were fast asleep, the old officer’s strong-cut head pillowed on his
arm, the lama’s thrown back against the tree-bole, where it showed like
yellow ivory. A naked child toddled up, stared, and, moved by some
quick impulse of reverence, made a solemn little obeisance before the
lama—only the child was so short and fat that it toppled over sideways,
and Kim laughed at the sprawling, chubby legs. The child, scared and
indignant, yelled aloud.
“Hai! Hai!” said the soldier, leaping to his feet. “What is it? What
orders? ... It is ... a child! I dreamed it was an alarm. Little
one—little one—do not cry. Have I slept? That was discourteous indeed!”
“I fear! I am afraid!” roared the child.
“What is it to fear? Two old men and a boy? How wilt thou ever make a
soldier, Princeling?”
The lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child,
clicked his rosary.
“What is that?” said the child, stopping a yell midway. “I have never
seen such things. Give them me.”
“Aha.” said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the grass:
This is a handful of cardamoms, This is a lump of _ghi:_
This is millet and chillies and rice, A supper for thee and me!
The child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing beads.
“Oho!” said the old soldier. “Whence hadst thou that song, despiser of
this world?”
“I learned it in Pathânkot—sitting on a doorstep,” said the lama shyly.
“It is good to be kind to babes.”
“As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that
marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light, stumbling-blocks
upon the Way. Do children drop from Heaven in thy country? Is it the
Way to sing them songs?”
“No man is all perfect,” said the lama gravely, recoiling the rosary.
“Run now to thy mother, little one.”
“Hear him!” said the soldier to Kim. “He is ashamed for that he has
made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in thee, my
brother. Hai, child!” He threw it a pice. “Sweetmeats are always
sweet.” And as the little figure capered away into the sunshine: “They
grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I slept in the midst of
thy preaching. Forgive me.”
“We be two old men,” said the lama. “The fault is mine. I listened to
thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the next.”
“Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And that
song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the song of
Nikal Seyn before Delhi—the old song.”
And they fared out from the gloom of the mango-tope, the old man’s
high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail
he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn [Nicholson]—the song that men sing
in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama listened
with deep interest.
“_Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead—he died before Delhi! Lances of the North,
take vengeance for Nikal Seyn_.” He quavered it out to the end, marking
the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony’s rump.
“And now we come to the Big Road,” said he, after receiving the
compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. “It is long since
I have ridden this way, but thy boy’s talk stirred me. See, Holy
One—the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most part
it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road—all
hard—takes the quick traffic. In the days before rail-carriages the
Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now there are only
country-carts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road for the
heavy carts—grain and cotton and timber, fodder, lime and hides. A man
goes in safety here for at every few _kos_ is a police-station. The
police are thieves and extortioners (I myself would patrol it with
cavalry—young recruits under a strong captain), but at least they do
not suffer any rivals. All castes and kinds of men move here.
“Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias,
pilgrims and potters—all the world going and coming. It is to me as a
river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.”
And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs
straight, bearing without crowding India’s traffic for fifteen hundred
miles—such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. They
looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white
breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed
police-station opposite.
“Who bears arms against the law?” a constable called out laughingly, as
he caught sight of the soldier’s sword. “Are not the police enough to
destroy evil-doers?”
“It was because of the police I bought it,” was the answer. “Does all
go well in Hind?”
“Rissaldar Sahib, all goes well.”
“I am like an old tortoise, look you, who puts his head out from the
bank and draws it in again. Ay, this is the Road of Hindustan. All men
come by this way...”
“Son of a swine, is the soft part of the road meant for thee to scratch
thy back upon? Father of all the daughters of shame and husband of ten
thousand virtueless ones, thy mother was devoted to a devil, being led
thereto by her mother. Thy aunts have never had a nose for seven
generations! Thy sister—What Owl’s folly told thee to draw thy carts
across the road? A broken wheel? Then take a broken head and put the
two together at leisure!”
The voice and a venomous whip-cracking came out of a pillar of dust
fifty yards away, where a cart had broken down. A thin, high Kathiawar
mare, with eyes and nostrils aflame, rocketed out of the jam, snorting
and wincing as her rider bent her across the road in chase of a
shouting man. He was tall and grey-bearded, sitting the almost mad
beast as a piece of her, and scientifically lashing his victim between
plunges.
The old man’s face lit with pride. “My child!” said he briefly, and
strove to rein the pony’s neck to a fitting arch.
“Am I to be beaten before the police?” cried the carter. “Justice! I
will have Justice—”
“Am I to be blocked by a shouting ape who upsets ten thousand sacks
under a young horse’s nose? That is the way to ruin a mare.”
“He speaks truth. He speaks truth. But she follows her man close,” said
the old man. The carter ran under the wheels of his cart and thence
threatened all sorts of vengeance.
“They are strong men, thy sons,” said the policeman serenely, picking
his teeth.
The horseman delivered one last vicious cut with his whip and came on
at a canter.
“My father!” He reigned back ten yards and dismounted.
The old man was off his pony in an instant, and they embraced as do
father and son in the East.
CHAPTER IV
Good Luck, she is never a lady,
But the cursedest quean alive,
Tricksy, wincing, and jady—
Kittle to lead or drive.
Greet her—she’s hailing a stranger!
Meet her—she’s busking to leave!
Let her alone for a shrew to the bone
And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!
Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune!
Give or hold at your will.
If I’ve no care for Fortune,
Fortune must follow me still!
_The Wishing-Caps_.
Then, lowering their voices, they spoke together. Kim came to rest
under a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow.
“Let us go on. The River is not here.”
“Hai mai! Have we not walked enough for a little? Our River will not
run away. Patience, and he will give us a dole.”
“This.” said the old soldier suddenly, “is the Friend of the Stars. He
brought me the news yesterday. Having seen the very man Himself, in a
vision, giving orders for the war.”
“Hm!” said his son, all deep in his broad chest. “He came by a
bazar-rumour and made profit of it.”
His father laughed. “At least he did not ride to me begging for a new
charger, and the Gods know how many rupees. Are thy brothers’ regiments
also under orders?”
“I do not know. I took leave and came swiftly to thee in case—”
“In case they ran before thee to beg. O gamblers and spendthrifts all!
But thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. A good horse is needed
there, truly. A good follower and a good pony also for the marching.
Let us see—let us see.” He thrummed on the pommel.
“This is no place to cast accounts in, my father. Let us go to thy
house.”
“At least pay the boy, then: I have no pice with me, and he brought
auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the World, a war is toward as thou
hast said.”
“Nay, as I know, _the_ war,” returned Kim composedly.
“Eh?” said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.
“My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news
bear witness, we brought the news, and now we go.” Kim half-crooked his
hand at his side.
The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling something
about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and would feed
them well for days. The lama, seeing the flash of the metal, droned a
blessing.
“Go thy way, Friend of all the World,” piped the old soldier, wheeling
his scrawny mount. “For once in all my days I have met a true
prophet—who was not in the Army.”
Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as
the younger.
A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the road.
He had seen the money pass.
“Halt!” he cried in impressive English. “Know ye not that there is a
_takkus_ of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter
the Road from this side-road? It is the order of the Sirkar, and the
money is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the
ways.”
“And the bellies of the police,” said Kim, slipping out of arm’s reach.
“Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came from the
nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law? Hast thou ever heard the
name of thy brother?”
“And who was he? Leave the boy alone,” cried a senior constable,
immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the
veranda.
“He took a label from a bottle of _belaitee-pani_ (soda-water), and,
affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who
passed, saying that it was the Sirkar’s order. Then came an Englishman