Kim
rheumatic foreigners. He had arrived, revolving many wild schemes, on
the heels of a thunderstorm which had split a pine over against their
camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly impressed
baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel that with
one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. They were
subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the
custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses,
the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with rifles. The most of
them knew rifles and Sahibs of old: they were trackers and _shikarris_
of the Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but they had
never been thus treated in their lives. So the forest took them to her
bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore. There was no
need to feign madness or—the Babu had thought of another means of
securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on his
patent-leather shoes, opened the blue-and-white umbrella, and with
mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as “agent
for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of Rampur, gentlemen. What can I do
for you, please?”
The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other
Russian, but they spoke English not much inferior to the Babu’s. They
begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at Leh.
They had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils of
the chase to Simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They bore a general
letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it orientally) to all
Government officials. No, they had not met any other shooting-parties
_en route_. They did for themselves. They had plenty of supplies. They
only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this he waylaid a
cowering hillman among the trees, and after three minutes’ talk and a
little silver (one cannot be economical upon State service, though
Hurree’s heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies and the three
hangers-on reappeared. At least the Babu would be a witness to their
oppression.
“My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are onlee
common people and grossly ignorant. If your honours will kindly
overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a little while
rain will stop and we can then proceed. You have been shooting, eh?
That is fine performance!”
He skipped nimbly from one _kilta_ to the next, making pretence to
adjust each conical basket. The Englishman is not, as a rule, familiar
with the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly
Babu who had accidentally upset a _kilta_ with a red oilskin top. On
the other hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu were he never so
friendly, nor would he invite him to meat. The strangers did all these
things, and asked many questions—about women mostly—to which Hurree
returned gay and unstudied answers. They gave him a glass of whitish
fluid like to gin, and then more; and in a little time his gravity
departed from him. He became thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of
sweeping indecency of a Government which had forced upon him a white
man’s education and neglected to supply him with a white man’s salary.
He babbled tales of oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his
cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he staggered off, singing
love-songs of Lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. Never
was so unfortunate a product of English rule in India more unhappily
thrust upon aliens.
“They are all just of that pattern,” said one sportsman to the other in
French. “When we get into India proper thou wilt see. I should like to
visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is possible
that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his good-will.”
“We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be,” his
companion replied. “For my own part, I wish our reports had been sent
back from Hilás, or even Leh.”
“The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all
facilities—and Name of God!—they give them to us too! Is it
unbelievable stupidity?”
“It is pride—pride that deserves and will receive punishment.”
“Yes! To fight a fellow-Continental in our game is something. There is
a risk attached, but these people—bah! It is too easy.”
“Pride—all pride, my friend.”
“Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to Calcutta
and all,” said Hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden moss, “if I
cannot understand their French? They talk so par_tic_ularly fast! It
would have been much better to cut their beastly throats.”
When he presented himself again he was racked with a headache—penitent,
and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might have been
indiscreet. He loved the British Government—it was the source of all
prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the very same
opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him and to quote past words,
till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and leers of
infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his defences and
forced to speak—truth. When Lurgan was told the tale later, he mourned
aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn,
inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their heads and the
raindrops puddling in their footprints, waited on the weather. All the
Sahibs of their acquaintance—rough-clad men joyously returning year
after year to their chosen gullies—had servants and cooks and
orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs travelled without any
retinue. Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and ignorant; for no Sahib in
his senses would follow a Bengali’s advice. But the Bengali, appearing
from somewhere, had given them money, and could make shift with their
dialect. Used to comprehensive ill-treatment from their own colour,
they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by to run if occasion
offered.
Then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious earth-smells,
the Babu led the way down the slopes—walking ahead of the coolies in
pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His thoughts were
many and various. The least of them would have interested his
companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable guide, ever keen to
point out the beauties of his royal master’s domain. He peopled the
hills with anything thev had a mind to slay—thar, ibex, or markhor, and
bear by Elisha’s allowance. He discoursed of botany and ethnology with
unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends—he had been a
trusted agent of the State for fifteen years, remember—was
inexhaustible.
“Decidedly this fellow is an original,” said the taller of the two
foreigners. “He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier.”
“He represents _in petto_ India in transition—the monstrous hybridism
of East and West,” the Russian replied. “It is _we_ who can deal with
Orientals.”
“He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he has
a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confided to me
last night,” said the other.
Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain to
follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a _kilta_ full
of maps and documents—an extra-large one with a double red oil-skin
cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired to know what
to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he had stolen it. He
thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert Spencer, that there
remained some valuables to steal.
On the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the
forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged
lama—but they called him a bonze—sitting cross-legged above a
mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a
young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty.
The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had
suggested a halt till it came up to them.
“Ha!” said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. “That is eminent
local holy man. Probably subject of my royal master.”
“What is he doing? It is very curious.”
“He is expounding holy picture—_all_ hand-worked.”
The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low
across the gold-coloured grass. The sullen coolies, glad of the check,
halted and slid down their loads.
“Look!” said the Frenchman. “It is like a picture for the birth of a
religion—the first teacher and the first disciple. Is he a Buddhist?”
“Of some debased kind,” the other answered. “There are no true
Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the folds of the drapery. Look
at his eyes—how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so
young a people?” The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. “We
have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! _That_, do you understand, is
what disquiets me.” He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental
calm of the pose.
“Have patience. We shall make your mark together—we and you young
people. Meantime, draw his picture.”
The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his
deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.
“Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and I go
into Simla to oversee his recovery. They wish to see thy picture—”
“To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life,” said the
lama, “the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the rain
fell.”
“And to hear thee expound it.”
The lama’s eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. “To expound
the Most Excellent Way is good. Have they any knowledge of Hindi, such
as had the Keeper of Images?”
“A little, maybe.”
Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw
back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the Doctor of
Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers leaned on their
alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the red
sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long
shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts that
reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier’s library
‘_The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico_’ was its name. Yes,
they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and
very unlike the “highly unscrupulous folk” of Hurree Babu’s imagining.
The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty
or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping
like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy
proprietorship.
“These are the men,” Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the
two whites followed the grass-blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and
back again. “All their books are in the large _kilta_ with the reddish
top—books and reports and maps—and I have seen a King’s letter that
either Hilás or Bunár has written. They guard it most carefully. They
have sent nothing back from Hilás or Leh. That is sure.”
“Who is with them?”
“Only the _beegar_-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close
they cook their own food.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to
seek for the papers.”
“This were better in Mahbub Ali’s hands than a Bengali’s,” said Kim
scornfully.
“There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a
wall.”
“See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the
one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness.” The lama warmed to
his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading
light.
“That is enough,” the man said at last brusquely. “I cannot understand
him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than I. Ask him if
he will sell it.”