Kim
“Thank you. That goes straight to an ethnologist’s heart. Well, I must
be getting back to my breakfast. Good Heavens! Old Mahbub here still?”
He raised his voice, and the horse-dealer came out from under the
shadow of the tree, “Well, what is it?”
“As regards that young horse,” said Mahbub, “I say that when a colt is
born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without
teaching—when such a colt knows the game by divination—then I say it is
a great wrong to break that colt to a heavy cart, Sahib!”
“So say I also, Mahbub. The colt will be entered for polo only. (These
fellows think of nothing in the world but horses, Padre.) I’ll see you
tomorrow, Mahbub, if you’ve anything likely for sale.”
The dealer saluted, horseman-fashion, with a sweep of the off hand. “Be
patient a little, Friend of all the World,” he whispered to the
agonized Kim. “Thy fortune is made. In a little while thou goest to
Nucklao, and—here is something to pay the letter-writer. I shall see
thee again, I think, many times,” and he cantered off down the road.
“Listen to me,” said the Colonel from the veranda, speaking in the
vernacular. “In three days thou wilt go with me to Lucknow, seeing and
hearing new things all the while. Therefore sit still for three days
and do not run away. Thou wilt go to school at Lucknow.”
“Shall I meet my Holy One there?” Kim whimpered.
“At least Lucknow is nearer to Benares than Umballa. It may be thou
wilt go under my protection. Mahbub Ali knows this, and he will be
angry if thou returnest to the Road now. Remember—much has been told me
which I do not forget.”
“I will wait,” said Kim, “but the boys will beat me.”
Then the bugles blew for dinner.
CHAPTER VII
Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised
With idiot moons and stars retracing stars?
Creep thou betweene—thy coming’s all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fraye
(By Adam’s, fathers’, own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate or mars!
Sir John Christie.
In the afternoon the red-faced schoolmaster told Kim that he had been
“struck off the strength”, which conveyed no meaning to him till he was
ordered to go away and play. Then he ran to the bazar, and found the
young letter-writer to whom he owed a stamp.
“Now I pay,” said Kim royally, “and now I need another letter to be
written.”
“Mahbub Ali is in Umballa,” said the writer jauntily. He was, by virtue
of his office, a bureau of general misinformation.
“This is not to Mahbub, but to a priest. Take thy pen and write
quickly. _To Teshoo Lama, the Holy One from Bhotiyal seeking for a
River, who is now in the Temple of the Tirthankars at Benares._ Take
more ink! _In three days I am to go down to Nucklao to the school at
Nucklao. The name of the school is Xavier. I do not know where that
school is, but it is at Nucklao._”
“But I know Nucklao,” the writer interrupted. “I know the school.”
“Tell him where it is, and I give half an anna.”
The reed pen scratched busily. “He cannot mistake.” The man lifted his
head. “Who watches us across the street?”
Kim looked up hurriedly and saw Colonel Creighton in tennis-flannels.
“Oh, that is some Sahib who knows the fat priest in the barracks. He is
beckoning me.”
“What dost thou?” said the Colonel, when Kim trotted up.
“I—I am not running away. I send a letter to my Holy One at Benares.”
“I had not thought of that. Hast thou said that I take thee to
Lucknow?”
“Nay, I have not. Read the letter, if there be a doubt.”
“Then why hast thou left out my name in writing to that Holy One?” The
Colonel smiled a queer smile. Kim took his courage in both hands.
“It was said once to me that it is inexpedient to write the names of
strangers concerned in any matter, because by the naming of names many
good plans are brought to confusion.”
“Thou hast been well taught,” the Colonel replied, and Kim flushed. “I
have left my cheroot-case in the Padre’s veranda. Bring it to my house
this even.”
“Where is the house?” said Kim. His quick wit told him that he was
being tested in some fashion or another, and he stood on guard.
“Ask anyone in the big bazar.” The Colonel walked on.
“He has forgotten his cheroot-case,” said Kim, returning. “I must bring
it to him this evening. That is all my letter except, thrice over,
_Come to me! Come to me! Come to me!_ Now I will pay for a stamp and
put it in the post. He rose to go, and as an afterthought asked: “Who
is that angry-faced Sahib who lost the cheroot-case?”
“Oh, he is only Creighton Sahib—a very foolish Sahib, who is a Colonel
Sahib without a regiment.”
“What is his business?”
“God knows. He is always buying horses which he cannot ride, and asking
riddles about the works of God—such as plants and stones and the
customs of people. The dealers call him the father of fools, because he
is so easily cheated about a horse. Mahbub Ali says he is madder than
most other Sahibs.”
“Oh!” said Kim, and departed. His training had given him some small
knowledge of character, and he argued that fools are not given
information which leads to calling out eight thousand men besides guns.
The Commander-in-Chief of all India does not talk, as Kim had heard him
talk, to fools. Nor would Mahbub Ali’s tone have changed, as it did
every time he mentioned the Colonel’s name, if the Colonel had been a
fool. Consequently—and this set Kim to skipping—there was a mystery
somewhere, and Mahbub Ali probably spied for the Colonel much as Kim
had spied for Mahbub. And, like the horse-dealer, the Colonel evidently
respected people who did not show themselves to be too clever.
He rejoiced that he had not betrayed his knowledge of the Colonel’s
house; and when, on his return to barracks, he discovered that no
cheroot-case had been left behind, he beamed with delight. Here was a
man after his own heart—a tortuous and indirect person playing a hidden
game. Well, if he could be a fool, so could Kim.
He showed nothing of his mind when Father Victor, for three long
mornings, discoursed to him of an entirely new set of Gods and
Godlings—notably of a Goddess called Mary, who, he gathered, was one
with Bibi Miriam of Mahbub Ali’s theology. He betrayed no emotion when,
after the lecture, Father Victor dragged him from shop to shop buying
articles of outfit, nor when envious drummer-boys kicked him because he
was going to a superior school did he complain, but awaited the play of
circumstances with an interested soul. Father Victor, good man, took
him to the station, put him into an empty second-class next to Colonel
Creighton’s first, and bade him farewell with genuine feeling.
“They’ll make a man o’ you, O’Hara, at St Xavier’s—a white man, an’, I
hope, a good man. They know all about your comin’, an’ the Colonel will
see that ye’re not lost or mislaid anywhere on the road. I’ve given you
a notion of religious matters,—at least I hope so,—and you’ll remember,
when they ask you your religion, that you’re a Cath’lic. Better say
Roman Cath’lic, tho’ I’m not fond of the word.”
Kim lit a rank cigarette—he had been careful to buy a stock in the
bazar—and lay down to think. This solitary passage was very different
from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the lama. “Sahibs
get little pleasure of travel,” he reflected. “_Hai mai!_ I go from one
place to another as it might be a kickball. It is my _Kismet_. No man
can escape his _Kismet_. But I am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a
Sahib.” He looked at his boots ruefully. “No; I am Kim. This is the
great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?” He considered his own
identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was
one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going
southward to he knew not what fate.
Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. So far
as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey of
India as a chain-man. If he were very good, and passed the proper
examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen
years old, and Colonel Creighton would see that he found suitable
employment.
Kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of this
talk. Then the Colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent and
picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented. No man could be a fool who knew
the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose
eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs.
“Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains
and rivers, to carry these pictures in thine eye till a suitable time
comes to set them upon paper. Perhaps some day, when thou art a
chain-man, I may say to thee when we are working together: ‘Go across
those hills and see what lies beyond.’ Then one will say: ‘There are
bad people living in those hills who will slay the chain-man if he be
seen to look like a Sahib.’ What then?”
Kim thought. Would it be safe to return the Colonel’s lead?
“I would tell what that other man had said.”
“But if I answered: ‘I will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge of
what is behind those hills—for a picture of a river and a little news
of what the people say in the villages there’?”
“How can I tell? I am only a boy. Wait till I am a man.” Then, seeing
the Colonel’s brow clouded, he went on: “But I think I should in a few
days earn the hundred rupees.”
“By what road?”
Kim shook his head resolutely. “If I said how I would earn them,
another man might hear and forestall me. It is not good to sell
knowledge for nothing.”
“Tell now.” The Colonel held up a rupee. Kim’s hand half reached
towards it, and dropped.
“Nay, Sahib; nay. I know the price that will be paid for the answer,
but I do not know why the question is asked.”
“Take it for a gift, then,” said Creighton, tossing it over. “There is
a good spirit in thee. Do not let it be blunted at St Xavier’s. There
are many boys there who despise the black men.”
“Their mothers were bazar-women,” said Kim. He knew well there is no
hatred like that of the half-caste for his brother-in-law.
“True; but thou art a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. Therefore, do not
at any time be led to contemn the black men. I have known boys newly
entered into the service of the Government who feigned not to
understand the talk or the customs of black men. Their pay was cut for
ignorance. There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.”
Several times in the course of the long twenty-four hours’ run south
did the Colonel send for Kim, always developing this latter text.
“We be all on one lead-rope, then,” said Kim at last, “the Colonel,
Mahbub Ali, and I—when I become a chain-man. He will use me as Mahbub
Ali employed me, I think. That is good, if it allows me to return to
the Road again. This clothing grows no easier by wear.”
When they came to the crowded Lucknow station there was no sign of the
lama. He swallowed his disappointment, while the Colonel bundled him
into a _ticca-gharri_ with his neat belongings and despatched him alone
to St Xavier’s.
“I do not say farewell, because we shall meet again,” he cried. “Again,
and many times, if thou art one of good spirit. But thou art not yet
tried.”
“Not when I brought thee”—Kim actually dared to use the _tum_ of
equals—“a white stallion’s pedigree that night?”
“Much is gained by forgetting, little brother,” said the Colonel, with
a look that pierced through Kim’s shoulder-blades as he scuttled into
the carriage.
It took him nearly five minutes to recover. Then he sniffed the new air
appreciatively. “A rich city,” he said. “Richer than Lahore. How good