Kim
well. And there are yet years and years and long years before I can be
even a chain-man.”
“Have patience, Friend of all the World”—Kim started at the title.
“Would I had a few of the years that so irk thee. I have proved thee in
several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make my report to
the Colonel Sahib.” Then, changing suddenly into English with a deep
laugh:
“By Jove! O’Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must
not become proud and you must not talk. You must go back to Lucknow and
be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and
perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!” Kim’s
face fell. “Oh, I mean _if_ you like. I know where you want to go.”
Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the
rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who, with
a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat openwork-stockinged
left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in the morning chill.
“How comes it that this man is one of _us?_” thought Kim considering
the jelly back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection threw
him into most pleasant day-dreams. Lurgan Sahib had given him five
rupees—a splendid sum—as well as the assurance of his protection if he
worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had spoken most explicitly of the
reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was content. If only, like
the Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a letter and a number—and a
price upon his head! Some day he would be all that and more. Some day
he might be almost as great as Mahbub Ali! The housetops of his search
should be half India; he would follow Kings and Ministers, as in the
old days he had followed _vakils_ and lawyers’ touts across Lahore city
for Mahbub Ali’s sake. Meantime, there was the present, and not at all
unpleasant, fact of St Xavier’s immediately before him. There would be
new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday
adventures to hear. Young Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur,
had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the
head-hunters.
That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half
across the forecourt of a Patiala palace by an explosion of fireworks;
nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own
adventures through the last three months. He could paralyse St
Xavier’s—even the biggest boys who shaved—with the recital, were that
permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be a
price upon his head in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him; and
if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price never be set, but
Colonel Creighton would cast him off—and he would be left to the wrath
of Lurgan Sahib and Mahbub Ali—for the short space of life that would
remain to him.
“So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish,” was his proverbial
philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there would always
remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as Lurgan Sahib
had said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St Xavier’s, from
Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with
virtue as Kimball O’Hara, jiggeting down to Umballa behind Hurree
Chunder Mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the
Ethnological Survey was R.17.
And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a huge
meal at Kalka, he spoke uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to school? Then
he, an M A of Calcutta University, would explain the advantages of
education. There were marks to be gained by due attention to Latin and
Wordsworth’s _Excursion_ (all this was Greek to Kim). French, too was
vital, and the best was to be picked up in Chandernagore a few miles
from Calcutta. Also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by
strict attention to plays called _Lear_ and _Julius Cæsar_, both much
in demand by examiners. _Lear_ was not so full of historical allusions
as _Julius Cæsar;_ the book cost four annas, but could be bought
second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. Still more important than Wordsworth,
or the eminent authors, Burke and Hare, was the art and science of
mensuration. A boy who had passed his examination in these branches—for
which, by the way, there were no cram-books—could, by merely marching
over a country with a compass and a level and a straight eye, carry
away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums in
coined silver. But as it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about
measuring-chains a boy would do well to know the precise length of his
own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder
called adventitious aids he might still tread his distances. To keep
count of thousands of paces, Hurree Chunder’s experience had shown him
nothing more valuable than a rosary of eighty-one or a hundred and
eight beads, for “it was divisible and sub-divisible into many
multiples and sub-multiples”. Through the volleying drifts of English,
Kim caught the general trend of the talk, and it interested him very
much. Here was a new craft that a man could tuck away in his head and
by the look of the large wide world unfolding itself before him, it
seemed that the more a man knew the better for him.
Said the Babu when he had talked for an hour and a half “I hope some
day to enjoy your offeecial acquaintance. _Ad interim_, if I may be
pardoned that expression, I shall give you this betel-box, which is
highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago.” It
was a cheap, heart-shaped brass thing with three compartments for
carrying the eternal betel-nut, lime and _pan_-leaf; but it was filled
with little tabloid-bottles.
“That is reward of merit for your performance in character of that holy
man. You see, you are so young you think you will last for ever and not
take care of your body. It is great nuisance to go sick in the middle
of business. I am fond of drugs myself, and they are handy to cure poor
people too. These are good Departmental drugs—quinine and so on. I give
it you for souvenir. Now good-bye. I have urgent private business here
by the roadside.”
He slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the Umballa road, hailed a
passing cart and jingled away, while Kim, tongue-tied, twiddled the
brass betel-box in his hands.
The record of a boy’s education interests few save his parents, and, as
you know, Kim was an orphan. It is written in the books of St Xavier’s
in Partibus that a report of Kim’s progress was forwarded at the end of
each term to Colonel Creighton and to Father Victor, from whose hands
duly came the money for his schooling. It is further recorded in the
same books that he showed a great aptitude for mathematical studies as
well as map-making, and carried away a prize (_The Life of Lord
Lawrence_, tree-calf, two vols., nine rupees, eight annas) for
proficiency therein; and the same term played in St Xavier’s eleven
against the Alighur Mohammedan College, his age being fourteen years
and ten months. He was also re-vaccinated (from which we may assume
that there had been another epidemic of smallpox at Lucknow) about the
same time. Pencil notes on the edge of an old muster-roll record that
he was punished several times for “conversing with improper persons”,
and it seems that he was once sentenced to heavy pains for “absenting
himself for a day in the company of a street beggar”. That was when he
got over the gate and pleaded with the lama through a whole day down
the banks of the Gumti to accompany him on the Road next holidays—for
one month—for a little week; and the lama set his face as a flint
against it, averring that the time had not yet come. Kim’s business,
said the old man as they ate cakes together, was to get all the wisdom
of the Sahibs and then he would see. The Hand of Friendship must in
some way have averted the Whip of Calamity, for six weeks later Kim
seems to have passed an examination in elementary surveying “with great
credit”, his age being fifteen years and eight months. From this date
the record is silent. His name does not appear in the year’s batch of
those who entered for the subordinate Survey of India, but against it
stand the words “removed on appointment.”
Several times in those three years, cast up at the Temple of the
Tirthankars in Benares the lama, a little thinner and a shade yellower,
if that were possible, but gentle and untainted as ever. Sometimes it
was from the South that he came—from south of Tuticorin, whence the
wonderful fire-boats go to Ceylon where are priests who know Pali;
sometimes it was from the wet green West and the thousand
cotton-factory chimneys that ring Bombay; and once from the North,
where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk for a day with
the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House. He would stride to his
cell in the cool, cut marble—the priests of the Temple were good to the
old man,—wash off the dust of travel, make prayer, and depart for
Lucknow, well accustomed now to the way of the rail, in a third-class
carriage. Returning, it was noticeable, as his friend the Seeker
pointed out to the head-priest, that he ceased for a while to mourn the
loss of his River, or to draw wondrous pictures of the Wheel of Life,
but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom of a certain mysterious
_chela_ whom no man of the Temple had ever seen. Yes, he had followed
the traces of the Blessed Feet throughout all India. (The Curator has
still in his possession a most marvellous account of his wanderings and
meditations.) There remained nothing more in life but to find the River
of the Arrow. Yet it was shown to him in dreams that it was a matter
not to be undertaken with any hope of success unless that seeker had
with him the one _chela_ appointed to bring the event to a happy issue,
and versed in great wisdom—such wisdom as white-haired Keepers of
Images possess. For example (here came out the snuff-gourd, and the
kindly Jain priests made haste to be silent):
“Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares—let all listen
to the _Jâtaka!_—an elephant was captured for a time by the king’s
hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous legiron. This
he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up
and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants to wrench it
asunder. One by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed.
At the last they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be
broken by any bestial power. And in a thicket, new-born, wet with
moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd whose mother had
died. The fettered elephant, forgetting his own agony, said: ‘If I do
not help this suckling it will perish under our feet.’ So he stood
above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily
moving herd; and he begged milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve,
and the ringed elephant was the calf’s guide and defence. Now the days
of an elephant—let all listen to the _Jâtaka!_—are thirty-five years to
his full strength, and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant
befriended the younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the
flesh.
“Then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron, and turning
to the elder said: ‘What is this?’ ‘It is even my sorrow,’ said he who
had befriended him. Then that other put out his trunk and in the
twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring, saying: ‘The appointed time
has come.’ So the virtuous elephant who had waited temperately and done
kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by the very calf whom he
had turned aside to cherish—let all listen to the _Jâtaka!_ for the
Elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke the ring was none other
than The Lord Himself...”