Kim
“What fools are these Police Sahibs!” said Kim genially.
E23 glanced up under his eyelids. “It is well said,” he muttered in a
changed voice. “I go to drink water. Keep my place.”
He blundered out almost into the Englishman’s arms, and was bad-worded
in clumsy Urdu.
“_Tum mut?_ You drunk? You mustn’t bang about as though Delhi station
belonged to you, my friend.”
E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of
the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded him
of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at Umballa in the terrible
time of his first schooling.
“My good fool,” the Englishman drawled. “_Nickle-jao!_ Go back to your
carriage.”
Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the
yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D.S.P. to
remotest posterity, by—here Kim almost jumped—by the curse of the
Queen’s Stone, by the writing under the Queen’s Stone, and by an
assortment of Gods with wholly, new names.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,”—the Englishman flushed angrily—“but
it’s some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that!”
E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the
Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand.
“Oh, _zoolum!_ What oppression!” growled the Jat from his corner. “All
for the sake of a jest too.” He had been grinning at the freedom of the
Saddhu’s tongue. “Thy charms do not work well today, Holy One!”
The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The ruck
of passengers, busy, with their babies and their bundles, had not
noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed through
his head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib discoursing loud
personalities to an old lady near Umballa three years ago.
“It is well”, the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting,
bewildered press—a Persian greyhound between his feet and a cageful of
yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his
back. “He has gone now to send word of the letter which I hid. They
told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known that he is like the
crocodile—always at the other ford. He has saved me from present
calamity, but I owe my life to thee.”
“Is he also one of Us?” Kim ducked under a Mewar camel-driver’s greasy
armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.
“Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make report
to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his protection.”
He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages, and
squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office.
“Return, or they take thy place! Have no fear for the work, brother—or
my life. Thou hast given me breathing-space, and Strickland Sahib has
pulled me to land. We may work together at the Game yet. Farewell!”
Kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little nettled
in that he had no key to the secrets about him.
“I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure. _I_ could not have
leaped into safety as did the Saddhu. He knew it was darkest under the
lamp. _I_ could not have thought to tell news under pretence of cursing
... and how clever was the Sahib! No matter, I saved the life of one
... Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?” he whispered, as he took his
seat in the now crowded compartment.
“A fear gripped him,” the lama replied, with a touch of tender malice.
“He saw thee change the Mahratta to a Saddhu in the twinkling of an
eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him. Then he saw the
Saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the _polis_—all the effect of thy
art. Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he said that thou didst
change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier of words with the
Sahibs, and he feared a like fate. Where is the Saddhu?”
“With the _polis_,” said Kim ... “Yet I saved the Kamboh’s child.”
The lama snuffed blandly.
“Ah, _chela_, see how thou art overtaken! Thou didst cure the Kamboh’s
child solely to acquire merit. But thou didst put a spell on the
Mahratta with prideful workings—I watched thee—and with sidelong
glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer: whence
calamity and suspicion.”
Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more than
any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged, but he
saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi into the
night.
“It is true,” he murmured. “Where I have offended thee I have done
wrong.”
“It is more, _chela_. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a
stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not tell
how far.”
This ignorance was well both for Kim’s vanity and for the lama’s peace
of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at Simla a
code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more important,
the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to—abstract.
Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of
murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir
cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi
platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the locked heart
of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had reached the angry
minister of a southern State reporting that all trace of a somewhat
bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely train
halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the stone Kim had helped to
heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in far-away Roum—where
it disturbed a pious man at prayers.
The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvillea-trellis
near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of
his disciple. “We will put these things behind us,” he said, indicating
the brazen engine and the gleaming track. “The jolting of the
_te-rain_—though a wonderful thing—has turned my bones to water. We
will use clean air henceforward.”
“Let us go to the Kulu woman’s house” said Kim, and stepped forth
cheerily under the bundles. Early morning Saharunpore-way is clean and
well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St Xavier’s, and it
topped his already thrice-heaped contentment.
“Where is this new haste born from? Wise men do not run about like
chickens in the sun. We have come hundreds upon hundreds of _kos_
already, and, till now, I have scarcely been alone with thee an
instant. How canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds? How
can I, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the Way?”
“Her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then?” the disciple
smiled.
“Nor her desire for charms. I remember once when I spoke of the Wheel
of Life”—the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy—“she was
only curious about the devils that besiege children. She shall acquire
merit by entertaining us—in a little while—at an after-occasion—softly,
softly. Now we will wander loose-foot, waiting upon the Chain of
Things. The Search is sure.”
So they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful
fruit-gardens—by way of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and
little Phulesa—the line of the Siwaliks always to the north, and behind
them again the snows. After long, sweet sleep under the dry stars came
the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking village—begging-bowl
held forth in silence, but eyes roving in defiance of the Law from
sky’s edge to sky’s edge. Then would Kim return soft-footed through the
soft dust to his master under the shadow of a mango-tree or the thinner
shade of a white Doon _siris_, to eat and drink at ease. At mid-day,
after talk and a little wayfaring, they slept; meeting the world
refreshed when the air was cooler. Night found them adventuring into
new territory—some chosen village spied three hours before across the
fat land, and much discussed upon the road.
There they told their tale—a new one each evening so far as Kim was
concerned—and there were they made welcome, either by priest or
headman, after the custom of the kindly East.
When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon Kim,
there was always the Wheel of Life to draw forth, to hold flat under
wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle. Here sat
the Gods on high—and they were dreams of dreams. Here was our Heaven
and the world of the demi-Gods—horsemen fighting among the hills. Here
were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls ascending or descending
the ladder and therefore not to be interfered with. Here were the
Hells, hot and cold, and the abodes of tormented ghosts. Let the
_chela_ study the troubles that come from over-eating—bloated stomach
and burning bowels. Obediently, then, with bowed head and brown finger
alert to follow the pointer, did the _chela_ study; but when they came
to the Human World, busy and profitless, that is just above the Hells,
his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel
itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling—all warmly
alive. Often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text,
bidding Kim—too ready—note how the flesh takes a thousand shapes,
desirable or detestable as men reckon, but in truth of no account
either way; and how the stupid spirit, bond-slave to the Hog, the Dove,
and the Serpent—lusting after betel-nut, a new yoke of oxen, women, or
the favour of kings—is bound to follow the body through all the Heavens
and all the Hells, and strictly round again. Sometimes a woman or a
poor man, watching the ritual—it was nothing less—when the great yellow
chart was unfolded, would throw a few flowers or a handful of cowries
upon its edge. It sufficed these humble ones that they had met a Holy
One who might be moved to remember them in his prayers.
“Cure them if they are sick,” said the lama, when Kim’s sporting
instincts woke. “Cure them if they have fever, but by no means work
charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.”
“Then all Doing is evil?” Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at
the fork of the Doon road, watching the little ants run over his hand.
“To abstain from action is well—except to acquire merit.”
“At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action
was unbefitting a Sahib. And I am a Sahib.”
“Friend of all the World,”—the lama looked directly at Kim—“I am an old
man—pleased with shows as are children. To those who follow the Way
there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal. We be all souls
seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned among Sahibs, when we
come to my River thou wilt be freed from all illusion—at my side. Hai!
My bones ache for that River, as they ached in the _te-rain;_ but my
spirit sits above my bones, waiting. The Search is sure!”
“I am answered. Is it permitted to ask a question?”
The lama inclined his stately head.
“I ate thy bread for three years—as thou knowest. Holy One, whence
came—?”
“There is much wealth, as men count it, in Bhotiyal,” the lama returned
with composure. “In my own place I have the illusion of honour. I ask
for that I need. I am not concerned with the account. That is for my
monastery. Ai! The black high seats in the monastery, and novices all
in order!”
And he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the immense
and sumptuous ritual of avalanche-guarded cathedrals; of processions
and devil-dances; of the changing of monks and nuns into swine; of holy
cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue between monastery
and monastery; of voices among the hills, and of that mysterious mirage
that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of Lhassa and of the Dalai Lama,
whom he had seen and adored.
Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off