Kim
“And what said she?” Kim rolled up in his share of it.
“She asked me many questions and propounded many problems—the most of
which were idle tales which she had heard from devil-serving priests
who pretend to follow the Way. Some I answered, and some I said were
foolish. Many wear the Robe, but few keep the Way.”
“True. That is true.” Kim used the thoughtful, conciliatory tone of
those who wish to draw confidences.
“But by her lights she is most right-minded. She desires greatly that
we should go with her to Buddh Gaya; her road being ours, as I
understand, for many days’ journey to the southward.”
“And?”
“Patience a little. To this I said that my Search came before all
things. She had heard many foolish legends, but this great truth of my
River she had never heard. Such are the priests of the lower hills! She
knew the Abbot of Lung-Cho, but she did not know of my River—nor the
tale of the Arrow.”
“And?”
“I spoke therefore of the Search, and of the Way, and of matters that
were profitable; she desiring only that I should accompany her and make
prayer for a second son.”
“Aha! ‘We women’ do _not_ think of anything save children,” said Kim
sleepily.
“Now, since our roads run together for a while, I do not see that we in
any way depart from our Search if so be we accompany her—at least as
far as—I have forgotten the name of the city.”
“Ohé!” said Kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of the
Ooryas a few yards away. “Where is your master’s house?”
“A little behind Saharunpore, among the fruit gardens.” He named the
village.
“That was the place,” said the lama. “So far, at least, we can go with
her.”
“Flies go to carrion,” said the Oorya, in an abstracted voice.
“For the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin.” Kim breathed the
proverb impersonally to the shadow-tops of the trees overhead.
The Oorya grunted and held his peace.
“So then we go with her, Holy One?”
“Is there any reason against? I can still step aside and try all the
rivers that the road overpasses. She desires that I should come. She
very greatly desires it.”
Kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. When once that imperious old lady had
recovered from her natural awe of a lama he thought it probable that
she would be worth listening to.
He was nearly asleep when the lama suddenly quoted a proverb: “The
husbands of the talkative have a great reward hereafter.” Then Kim
heard him snuff thrice, and dozed off, still laughing.
The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. Kim
sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. This was
seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have
it—bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of
bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food,
and new sights at every turn of the approving eye. The morning mist
swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some distant
river in shrieking green hosts: all the well-wheels within ear-shot
went to work. India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more
awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would
presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly
from all the customs of the country he knew and loved. There was no
need to worry about food—no need to spend a cowrie at the crowded
stalls. He was the disciple of a holy man annexed by a strong-willed
old lady. All things would be prepared for them, and when they were
respectfully invited so to do they would sit and eat. For the rest—Kim
giggled here as he cleaned his teeth—his hostess would rather heighten
the enjoyment of the road. He inspected her bullocks critically, as
they came up grunting and blowing under the yokes. If they went too
fast—it was not likely—there would be a pleasant seat for himself along
the pole; the lama would sit beside the driver. The escort, of course,
would walk. The old lady, equally of course, would talk a great deal,
and by what he had heard that conversation would not lack salt. She was
already ordering, haranguing, rebuking, and, it must be said, cursing
her servants for delays.
“Get her her pipe. In the name of the Gods, get her her pipe and stop
her ill-omened mouth,” cried an Oorya, tying up his shapeless bundles
of bedding. “She and the parrots are alike. They screech in the dawn.”
“The lead-bullocks! Hai! Look to the lead-bullocks!” They were backing
and wheeling as a grain-cart’s axle caught them by the horns. “Son of
an owl, where dost thou go?” This to the grinning carter.
“Ai! Yai! Yai! That within there is the Queen of Delhi going to pray
for a son,” the man called back over his high load. “Room for the Queen
of Delhi and her Prime Minister the grey monkey climbing up his own
sword!” Another cart loaded with bark for a down-country tannery
followed close behind, and its driver added a few compliments as the
_ruth_-bullocks backed and backed again.
From behind the shaking curtains came one volley of invective. It did
not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting
appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even Kim had heard. He
could see the carter’s bare chest collapse with amazement, as the man
salaamed reverently to the voice, leaped from the pole, and helped the
escort haul their volcano on to the main road. Here the voice told him
truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing in
his absence.
“Oh, _shabash!_” murmured Kim, unable to contain himself, as the man
slunk away.
“Well done, indeed? It is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman may
not go to make prayer to her Gods except she be jostled and insulted by
all the refuse of Hindustan—that she must eat _gâli_ (abuse) as men eat
_ghi_. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue—a word or two well spoken
that serves the occasion. And _still_ am I without my tobacco! Who is
the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not yet prepared my
pipe?”
It was hastily thrust in by a hillman, and a trickle of thick smoke
from each corner of the curtains showed that peace was restored.
If Kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man, today
he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal procession,
with a recognized place under the patronage of an old lady of charming
manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads tied up
native-fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling enormous
clouds of dust.
The lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of
sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest. They
could hear the old lady’s tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker.
She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road; and so soon
as they were clear of the _parao_ she flung back the curtains and
peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did not eye her
directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties were more or
less observed.
A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly
uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing from
her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.
“O mother,” he cried, “do they do this in the _zenanas?_ Suppose an
Englishman came by and saw that thou hast no nose?”
“What?” she shrilled back. “Thine own mother has no nose? Why say so,
then, on the open road?”
It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the
gesture of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.
“Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?” She withdrew all her veil and
stared at him.
It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he
called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few other
fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.
“That is a _nut-cut_ (rogue),” she said. “All police-constables are
_nut-cuts;_ but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou
hast never learned all that since thou camest from _Belait_ (Europe).
Who suckled thee?”
“A _pahareen_—a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty
under a shade—O Dispenser of Delights,” and he was gone.
“These be the sort”—she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her
mouth with _pan_—“These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the
land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe,
suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse
than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings.” Then she told a long, long
tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young policeman who had
disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin of her own, in the
matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a quotation from a work
by no means devotional.
Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether the
lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So Kim
dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. For an hour
or more the lama’s tam-o’shanter showed like a moon through the haze;
and, from all he heard, Kim gathered that the old woman wept. One of
the Ooryas half apologized for his rudeness overnight, saying that he
had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it
to the presence of the strange priest. Personally, he believed in
Brahmins, though, like all natives, he was acutely aware of their
cunning and their greed. Still, when Brahmins but irritated with
begging demands the mother of his master’s wife, and when she sent them
away so angry that they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real
reason of the second off-side bullock going lame, and of the pole
breaking the night before), he was prepared to accept any priest of any
other denomination in or out of India. To this Kim assented with wise
nods, and bade the Oorya observe that the lama took no money, and that
the cost of his and Kim’s food would be repaid a hundred times in the
good luck that would attend the caravan henceforward. He also told
stories of Lahore city, and sang a song or two which made the escort
laugh. As a town-mouse well acquainted with the latest songs by the
most fashionable composers—they are women for the most part—Kim had a
distinct advantage over men from a little fruit-village behind
Saharunpore, but he let that advantage be inferred.
At noon they turned aside to eat, and the meal was good, plentiful, and
well-served on plates of clean leaves, in decency, out of drift of the
dust. They gave the scraps to certain beggars, that all requirements
might be fulfilled, and sat down to a long, luxurious smoke. The old
lady had retreated behind her curtains, but mixed most freely in the
talk, her servants arguing with and contradicting her as servants do
throughout the East. She compared the cool and the pines of the Kangra
and Kulu hills with the dust and the mangoes of the South; she told a
tale of some old local Gods at the edge of her husband’s territory; she
roundly abused the tobacco which she was then smoking, reviled all
Brahmins, and speculated without reserve on the coming of many
grandsons.
CHAPTER V
Here come I to my own again
Fed, forgiven, and known again
Claimed by bone of my bone again,
And sib to flesh of my flesh!
The fatted calf is dressed for me,
But the husks have greater zest for me ...
I think my pigs will be best for me,
So I’m off to the styes afresh.
_The Prodigal Son_.
Once more the lazy, string-tied, shuffling procession got under way,
and she slept till they reached the next halting-stage. It was a very
short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so Kim cast about for
means of amusement.
“But why not sit and rest?” said one of the escort. “Only the devils
and the English walk to and fro without reason.”