Kim
pulled at the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional
debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring.
“To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching
the peacock to sing,” said the _hakim_.
“True courtesy,” Kim echoed, “is very often inattention.”
These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.
“Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,” cried a scullion. “Look at it!”
“Get hence! Remove!” said the _hakim_. “Is it the habit of the place to
pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.”
“If the Sahiba knew—” Kim began.
“Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young
Shaitan’s colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to—”
“The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the
money-lender’s head. Who speaks against her?” The old servitor curled
his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. “_I_ am
responsible for the honour of this house. Go!” and he drove the
underlings before him.
Said the _hakim_, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips:
“How do you do, Mister O’Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.”
Kim’s hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road,
perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet
backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed him,
too, that he had been hoodwinked.
“Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow—_resurgam_—I shall rise again and you
shall not know me. How much did you bet—eh?”
He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed
uneasily.
“But why come here, Babuji?”
“Ah! _Thatt_ is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to
congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at Delhi.
Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and handy.
Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in some
dam’-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me; I tell Mr
Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the Department is
pleased.”
For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can
be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise—ensnaring
praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-workers. Earth has
nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, cried the Oriental
in him, Babus do not travel far to retail compliments.
“Tell thy tale, Babu,” he said authoritatively.
“Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in about
what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton—” He
looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.
“The Colonel Sahib,” the boy from St Xavier’s corrected.
“_Of_ course. He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to
Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South—too much
railway travel; but I drew good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I meet
our mutual at Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now, and says
Saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I hear what you
have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous spur of the
moment. I tell our mutual you take the bally bun, by Jove! It was
splendid. I come to tell you so.”
“Umm!”
The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her setting.
Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night and to beat
upon a drum. Kim’s next sentence was in the vernacular.
“How didst thou follow us?”
“Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to
Saharunpore. So I come on. Red Lamas are not inconspicuous persons. I
buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor really. I go to
Akrola of the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk
there. All the common people know what you do. I knew when the
hospitable old lady sent the _dooli_. They have great recollections of
the old lama’s visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their hands
from medicines. So I am a doctor, and—you hear my talk? _I_ think it is
verree good. My word, Mister O’Hara, they know about you and the lama
for fifty miles—the common people. So I come. Do you mind?”
“Babuji,” said Kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, “I am a
Sahib.”
“My dear Mister O’Hara—”
“And I hope to play the Great Game.”
“You are subordinate to me departmentally at present.”
“Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from
Simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet words. I am
not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg. Thou art
here—speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art thou here? Give a
straight answer.”
“That is so verree disconcerting of the Europeans, Mister O’Hara. _You_
should know a heap better at your time of life.”
“But I want to know,” said Kim, laughing. “If it is the Game, I may
help. How can I do anything if you _bukh_ (babble) all round the shop?”
Hurree Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it gurgled again.
“Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O’Hara ... It
concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.”
“Still? That was finished long ago.”
“When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. Listen
to me till the end. There were Five Kings who prepared a sudden war
three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion’s pedigree by Mahbub
Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere they were ready, fell our
Army.”
“Ay—eight thousand men with guns. I remember that night.”
“But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The troops
were recalled because the Government believed the Five Kings were
cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes. Hilás and
Bunár—Rajahs with guns—undertook for a price to guard the Passes
against all coming from the North. They protested both fear and
friendship.” He broke off with a giggle into English: “Of course, I
tell you this unoffeecially to elucidate political situation, Mister
O’Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from criticizing any action of
superiors. Now I go on.—This pleased the Government, anxious to avoid
expense, and a bond was made for so many rupees a month that Hilás and
Bunár should guard the Passes as soon as the State’s troops were
withdrawn. At that time—it was after we two met—I, who had been selling
tea in Leh, became a clerk of accounts in the Army. When the troops
were withdrawn, I was left behind to pay the coolies who made new roads
in the Hills. This road-making was part of the bond between Bunár,
Hilás, and the Government.”
“So? And then?”
“I tell you, it was jolly-beastly cold up there too, after summer,”
said Hurree Babu confidentially. “I was afraid these Bunár men would
cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. My native sepoy-guard,
they laughed at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man. Nevar mind
thatt. I go on colloquially ... I send word many times that these two
Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet farther
North, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet were frozen,
and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for which I was
paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of strangers
and enemies.”
“For?”
“For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies. Then I
was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue. Mahbub came
South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after
snow-melting”—he shivered afresh—“come two strangers under cover of
shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains and
levels and compasses.”
“Oho! The thing gets clearer.”
“They are well received by Hilás and Bunár. They make great promises;
they speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaisar with gifts. Up the valleys,
down the valleys go they, saying, ‘Here is a place to build a
breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the road against
an army’—the very roads for which I paid out the rupees monthly. The
Government knows, but does nothing. The three other Kings, who were
_not_ paid for guarding the Passes, tell them by runner of the bad
faith of Bunár and Hilás. When all the evil is done, look you—when
these two strangers with the levels and the compasses make the Five
Kings to believe that a great army will sweep the Passes tomorrow or
the next day—Hill-people are all fools—comes the order to me, Hurree
Babu, ‘Go North and see what those strangers do.’ I say to Creighton
Sahib, ‘This is not a lawsuit, that we go about to collect evidence.’”
Hurree returned to his English with a jerk: “‘By Jove,’ I said, ‘why
the dooce do you not issue demi-offeecial orders to some brave man to
poison them, for an example? It is, if you permit the observation, most
reprehensible laxity on your part.’ And Colonel Creighton, he laughed
at me! It is all your beastly English pride. You think no one dare
conspire! That is all tommy-rott.”
Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood it,
in his quick mind.
“Then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?”
“No. To meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their horns
and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively sporting
gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the Government.
Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride.”
“Then what is to fear from them?”
“By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things with
black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly unscrupulous
people. I—I do not want to consort with them without a witness.”
“Will they kill thee?”
“Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I trust,
to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you know.
But—but they may beat me.”
“Why?”
Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. “Of _course_ I shall
affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as perhaps
interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such
thing. And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is as easy
for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old lady. Onlee—onlee—you see,
Mister O’Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is serious detriment
in some respects. And _all_so I am Bengali—a fearful man.”
“God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame?” said Kim, quoting the
proverb.
“It was process of Evolution, _I_ think, from Primal Necessity, but the
fact remains in all the _cui bono_. I am, oh, awfully fearful!—I
remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa.
(No, I have never reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister
O’Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these two
gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible
contingency with European assistance in emergency.” He coughed and spat
out the cardamoms. “It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which you can
say ‘No, Babu’. If you have no pressing engagement with your old
man—perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his fancies—I
should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me till I find those
sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you since I met my friend at
Delhi. And also I will embody your name in my offeecial report when
matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a great feather in your cap.
That is why I come really.”
“Humph! The end of the tale, I think, is true; but what of the
fore-part?”
“About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A lots
more than you would suppose,” said Hurree earnestly. “You come—eh? I go
from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant and painted
meads. I shall go to Mussoorie to good old Munsoorie Pahar, as the
gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rampur into Chini. That is the only
way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold, but we must wait
for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see, one Russian is a