Kim
was not it—he tells me that he is freed from all sin. _I_ could have
told him that before he wetted himself all over. He is well now—this
happened a week ago—but burn me such holiness! A babe of three would do
better. Do not fret thyself for the Holy One. He keeps both eyes on
thee when he is not wading our brooks.”
“I do not remember to have seen him. I remember that the days and
nights passed like bars of white and black, opening and shutting. I was
not sick: I was but tired.”
“A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. But it is
done now.”
“Maharanee,” Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to
the title of plain love—“Mother, I owe my life to thee. How shall I
make thanks? Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and—”
“The house be unblessed!” (It is impossible to give exactly the old
lady’s word.) “Thank the Gods as a priest if thou wilt, but thank me,
if thou carest, as a son. Heavens above! Have I shifted thee and lifted
thee and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung at my
head? Somewhere a mother must have borne thee to break her heart. What
used thou to her—son?”
“I had no mother, my mother,” said Kim. “She died, they tell me, when I
was young.”
“_Hai mai!_ Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if—when
thou takest the road again and this house is but one of a thousand used
for shelter and forgotten, after an easy-flung blessing. No matter. I
need no blessings, but—but—” She stamped her foot at the poor relation.
“Take up the trays to the house. What is the good of stale food in the
room, O woman of ill-omen?”
“I ha—have borne a son in my time too, but he died,” whimpered the
bowed sister-figure behind the _chudder_. “Thou knowest he died! I only
waited for the order to take away the tray.”
“It is I that am the woman of ill-omen,” cried the old lady penitently.
“We that go down to the _chattris_ (the big umbrellas above the
burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues) clutch hard at
the bearers of the _chattis_ (water-jars—young folk full of the pride
of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy). When one cannot dance in
the festival one must e’en look out of the window, and grandmothering
takes all a woman’s time. Thy master gives me all the charms I now
desire for my daughter’s eldest, by reason—is it?—that he is wholly
free from sin. The _hakim_ is brought very low these days. He goes
about poisoning my servants for lack of their betters.”
“What _hakim_, mother?”
“That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three
pieces. He cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and
thou had been blood-brothers together up Kulu-way, and feigning great
anxiety for thy health. He was very thin and hungry, so I gave orders
to have him stuffed too—him and his anxiety!”
“I would see him if he is here.”
“He eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save
himself from an apoplexy. He is so full of anxiety for thy health that
he sticks to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps. He will
keep. We shall never get rid of him.”
“Send him here, mother”—the twinkle returned to Kim’s eye for a
flash—“and I will try.”
“I’ll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. At least he had
the sense to fish the Holy One out of the brook; thus, as the Holy One
did _not_ say, acquiring merit.”
“He is a very wise _hakim_. Send him, mother.”
“Priest praising priest? A miracle! If he is any friend of thine (ye
squabbled at your last meeting) I’ll hale him here with horse-ropes
and—and give him a caste-dinner afterwards, my son ... Get up and see
the world! This lying abed is the mother of seventy devils ... my son!
my son!”
She trotted forth to raise a typhoon off the cook-house, and almost on
her shadow rolled in the Babu, robed as to the shoulders like a Roman
emperor, jowled like Titus, bare-headed, with new patent-leather shoes,
in highest condition of fat, exuding joy and salutations.
“By Jove, Mister O’Hara, but I _am_ jolly glad to see you. I will
kindly shut the door. It is a pity you are sick. Are you very sick?”
“The papers—the papers from the _kilta_. The maps and the _murasla!_”
He held out the key impatiently; for the present need on his soul was
to get rid of the loot.
“You are quite right. That is correct Departmental view to take. You
have got everything?”
“All that was handwritten in the _kilta_ I took. The rest I threw down
the hill.” He could hear the key’s grate in the lock, the sticky pull
of the slow-rending oilskin, and a quick shuffling of papers. He had
been annoyed out of all reason by the knowledge that they lay below him
through the sick idle days—a burden incommunicable. For that reason the
blood tingled through his body, when Hurree, skipping elephantinely,
shook hands again.
“This is fine! This is finest! Mister O’Hara! you have—ha! ha! swiped
the whole bag of tricks—locks, stocks, and barrels. They told me it was
eight months’ work gone up the spouts! By Jove, how they beat me! ...
Look, here is the letter from Hilás!” He intoned a line or two of Court
Persian, which is the language of authorized and unauthorized
diplomacy. “Mister Rajah Sahib has just about put his foot in the
holes. He will have to explain offeecially how the deuce-an’-all he is
writing love-letters to the Czar. And they are very clever maps ... and
there is three or four Prime Ministers of these parts implicated by the
correspondence. By Gad, sar! The British Government will change the
succession in Hilás and Bunár, and nominate new heirs to the throne.
‘Trea-son most base’ ... but you do not understand? Eh?”
“Are they in thy hands?” said Kim. It was all he cared for.
“Just you jolly-well bet yourself they are.” He stowed the entire trove
about his body, as only Orientals can. “They are going up to the
office, too. The old lady thinks I am permanent fixture here, but I
shall go away with these straight off—immediately. Mr Lurgan will be
proud man. You are offeecially subordinate to me, but I shall embody
your name in my verbal report. It is a pity we are not allowed written
reports. We Bengalis excel in thee exact science.” He tossed back the
key and showed the box empty.
“Good. That is good. I was very tired. My Holy One was sick, too. And
did he fall into—”
“Oah yess. I am his good friend, I tell you. He was behaving very
strange when I came down after you, and I thought perhaps he might have
the papers. I followed him on his meditations, and to discuss
ethnological points also. You see, I am verree small person here
nowadays, in comparison with all his charms. By Jove, O’Hara, do you
know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. Yess, I tell you.
Cataleptic, too, if not also epileptic. I found him in such a state
under a tree _in articulo mortem_, and he jumped up and walked into a
brook and he was nearly drowned but for me. I pulled him out.”
“Because I was not there!” said Kim. “He might have died.”
“Yes, he might have died, but he is dry now, and asserts he has
undergone transfiguration.” The Babu tapped his forehead knowingly. “I
took notes of his statements for Royal Society—_in posse_. You must
make haste and be quite well and come back to Simla, and I will tell
you all my tale at Lurgan’s. It was splendid. The bottoms of their
trousers were _quite_ torn, and old Nahan Rajah, he thought they were
European soldiers deserting.”
“Oh, the Russians? How long were they with thee?”
“One was a Frenchman. Oh, days and days and days! Now all the
hill-people believe all Russians are all beggars. By Jove! they had not
one dam’-thing that I did not get them. And I told the common
people—oah, _such_ tales and anecdotes!—I will tell you at old Lurgan’s
when you come up. We will have—ah—a night out! It is feather in both
our caps! Yess, and they gave me a certificate. That is creaming joke.
You should have seen them at the Alliance Bank identifying themselves!
And thank Almighty God you got their papers so well! You do not laugh
verree much, but you shall laugh when you are well. Now I will go
straight to the railway and get out. You shall have all sorts of
credits for your game. When do you come along? We are very proud of you
though you gave us great frights. And especially Mahbub.”
“Ay, Mahbub. And where is he?”
“Selling horses in this vi-cinity, of course.”
“Here! Why? Speak slowly. There is a thickness in my head still.”
The Babu looked shyly down his nose. “Well, you see, I am fearful man,
and I do not like responsibility. You were sick, you see, and I did not
know where deuce-an’-all the papers were, and if so, how many. So when
I had come down here I slipped in private wire to Mahbub—he was at
Meerut for races—and I tell him how case stands. He comes up with his
men and he consorts with the lama, and then he calls me a fool, and is
very rude—”
“But wherefore—wherefore?”
“That is what _I_ ask. I only suggest that if anyone steals the papers
I should like some good strong, brave men to rob them back again. You
see, they are vitally important, and Mahbub Ali he did not know where
you were.”
“Mahbub Ali to rob the Sahiba’s house? Thou art mad, Babu,” said Kim
with indignation.
“I wanted the papers. Suppose she had stole them? It was only practical
suggestion, I think. You are not pleased, eh?”
A native proverb—unquotable—showed the blackness of Kim’s disapproval.
“Well,”—Hurree shrugged his shoulders—“there is no accounting for thee
taste. Mahbub was angry too. He has sold horses all about here, and he
says old lady is _pukka_ (thorough) old lady and would not condescend
to such ungentlemanly things. _I_ do not care. I have got the papers,
and I was very glad of moral support from Mahbub. I tell you, I am
fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the more
dam’-tight places I get into. So I was glad you came with me to Chini,
and I am glad Mahbub was close by. The old lady she is sometimes very
rude to me and my beautiful pills.”
“Allah be merciful!” said Kim on his elbow, rejoicing. “What a beast of
wonder is a Babu! And that man walked alone—if he did walk—with robbed
and angry foreigners!”
“Oah, thatt was nothing, after they had done beating me; but if I lost
the papers it was pretty-jolly serious. Mahbub he nearly beat me too,
and he went and consorted with the lama no end. I shall stick to
ethnological investigations henceforwards. Now good-bye, Mister O’Hara.
I can catch 4.25 p.m. to Umballa if I am quick. It will be good times
when we all tell thee tale up at Mr Lurgan’s. I shall report you
offeecially better. Good-bye, my dear fallow, and when next you are
under thee emotions please do not use the Mohammedan terms with the
Tibetan dress.”
He shook hands twice—a Babu to his boot-heels—and opened the door. With
the fall of the sunlight upon his still triumphant face he returned to
the humble Dacca quack.
“He robbed them,” thought Kim, forgetting his own share in the game.
“He tricked them. He lied to them like a Bengali. They give him a
_chit_ (a testimonial). He makes them a mock at the risk of his
life—_I_ never would have gone down to them after the pistol-shots—and
then he says he is a fearful man ... And he _is_ a fearful man. I must
get into the world again.”
At first his legs bent like bad pipe-stems, and the flood and rush of
the sunlit air dazzled him. He squatted by the white wall, the mind
rummaging among the incidents of the long _dooli_ journey, the lama’s
weaknesses, and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own
self-pity, of which, like the sick, he had great store. The unnerved
brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once rowelled,
sidles from the spur. It was enough, amply enough, that the spoil of