Kim
the guard hauled Kim on to the platform. The lama blinked—he could not
overtake the situation and Kim lifted up his voice and wept outside the
carriage window.
“I am very poor. My father is dead—my mother is dead. O charitable
ones, if I am left here, who shall tend that old man?”
“What—what is this?” the lama repeated. “He must go to Benares. He must
come with me. He is my _chela_. If there is money to be paid—”
“Oh, be silent,” whispered Kim; “are we Rajahs to throw away good
silver when the world is so charitable?”
The Amritzar girl stepped out with her bundles, and it was on her that
Kim kept his watchful eye. Ladies of that persuasion, he knew, were
generous.
“A ticket—a little _tikkut_ to Umballa—O Breaker of Hearts!” She
laughed. “Hast thou no charity?”
“Does the holy man come from the North?”
“From far and far in the North he comes,” cried Kim. “From among the
hills.”
“There is snow among the pine-trees in the North—in the hills there is
snow. My mother was from Kulu. Get thee a ticket. Ask him for a
blessing.”
“Ten thousand blessings,” shrilled Kim. “O Holy One, a woman has given
us in charity so that I can come with thee—a woman with a golden heart.
I run for the _tikkut_.”
The girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed Kim to
the platform. He bowed his head that he might not see her, and muttered
in Tibetan as she passed on with the crowd.
“Light come—light go,” said the cultivator’s wife viciously.
“She has acquired merit,” returned the lama. “Beyond doubt it was a
nun.”
“There be ten thousand such nuns in Amritzar alone. Return, old man, or
the _te-rain_ may depart without thee,” cried the banker.
“Not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food
also,” said Kim, leaping to his place. “Now eat, Holy One. Look. Day
comes!”
Golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away across
the flat green levels. All the rich Punjab lay out in the splendour of
the keen sun. The lama flinched a little as the telegraph-posts swung
by.
“Great is the speed of the _te-rain_,” said the banker, with a
patronizing grin. “We have gone farther since Lahore than thou couldst
walk in two days: at even, we shall enter Umballa.”
“And that is still far from Benares,” said the lama wearily, mumbling
over the cakes that Kim offered. They all unloosed their bundles and
made their morning meal. Then the banker, the cultivator, and the
soldier prepared their pipes and wrapped the compartment in choking,
acrid smoke, spitting and coughing and enjoying themselves. The Sikh
and the cultivator’s wife chewed _pan;_ the lama took snuff and told
his beads, while Kim, cross-legged, smiled over the comfort of a full
stomach.
“What rivers have ye by Benares?” said the lama of a sudden to the
carriage at large.
“We have Gunga,” returned the banker, when the little titter had
subsided.
“What others?”
“What other than Gunga?”
“Nay, but in my mind was the thought of a certain River of healing.”
“That is Gunga. Who bathes in her is made clean and goes to the Gods.
Thrice have I made pilgrimage to Gunga.” He looked round proudly.
“There was need,” said the young sepoy drily, and the travellers’ laugh
turned against the banker.
“Clean—to return again to the Gods,” the lama muttered. “And to go
forth on the round of lives anew—still tied to the Wheel.” He shook his
head testily. “But maybe there is a mistake. Who, then, made Gunga in
the beginning?”
“The Gods. Of what known faith art thou?” the banker said, appalled.
“I follow the Law—the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods that made
Gunga. What like of Gods were they?”
The carriage looked at him in amazement. It was inconceivable that
anyone should be ignorant of Gunga.
“What—what is thy God?” said the money-lender at last.
“Hear!” said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. “Hear: for I
speak of Him now! O people of Hind, listen!”
He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his own
thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese book
of the Buddha’s life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently.
All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues;
shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers,
and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning and will continue to
the end.
“Um!” said the soldier of the Ludhiana Sikhs. “There was a Mohammedan
regiment lay next to us at the Pirzai Kotal, and a priest of theirs—he
was, as I remember, a _naik_—when the fit was on him, spake prophecies.
But the mad all are in God’s keeping. His officers overlooked much in
that man.”
The lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange land.
“Hear the tale of the Arrow which our Lord loosed from the bow,” he
said.
This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while he
told it. “Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that River. Know ye aught
that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case.”
“There is Gunga—and Gunga alone—who washes away sin.” ran the murmur
round the carriage.
“Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way,” said the
cultivator’s wife, looking out of the window. “See how they have
blessed the crops.”
“To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter,” said her
husband. “For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land suffices,
and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Home-stead.” He shrugged one
knotted, bronzed shoulder.
“Think you our Lord came so far North?” said the lama, turning to Kim.
“It may be,” Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red _pan_-juice on the
floor.
“The last of the Great Ones,” said the Sikh with authority, “was
Sikander Julkarn [Alexander the Great]. He paved the streets of
Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds to
this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God.”
“Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi,” said the young soldier
jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb. “That is all that makes a
Sikh.” But he did not say this very loud.
The lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass. In
the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning “_Om mane
pudme hum! Om mane pudme hum!_”—and the thick click of the wooden
rosary beads.
“It irks me,” he said at last. “The speed and the clatter irk me.
Moreover, my _chela_, I think that maybe we have over-passed that
River.”
“Peace, peace,” said Kim. “Was not the River near Benares? We are yet
far from the place.”
“But—if our Lord came North, it may be any one of these little ones
that we have run across.”
“I do not know.”
“But thou wast sent to me—wast thou sent to me?—for the merit I had
acquired over yonder at Such-zen. From beside the cannon didst thou
come—bearing two faces—and two garbs.”
“Peace. One must not speak of these things here,” whispered Kim. “There
was but one of me. Think again and thou wilt remember. A boy—a Hindu
boy—by the great green cannon.”
“But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard holy among
images—who himself made more sure my assurance of the River of the
Arrow?”
“He—we—went to the Ajaib-Gher in Lahore to pray before the Gods there,”
Kim explained to the openly listening company. “And the Sahib of the
Wonder House talked to him—yes, this is truth as a brother. He is a
very holy man, from far beyond the Hills. Rest, thou. In time we come
to Umballa.”
“But my River—the River of my healing?”
“And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on
foot. So that we miss nothing—not even a little rivulet in a
field-side.”
“But thou hast a Search of thine own?” The lama—very pleased that he
remembered so well—sat bolt upright.
“Ay,” said Kim, humouring him. The boy was entirely happy to be out
chewing _pan_ and seeing new people in the great good-tempered world.
“It was a bull—a Red Bull that shall come and help thee and carry
thee—whither? I have forgotten. A Red Bull on a green field, was it
not?”
“Nay, it will carry me nowhere,” said Kim. “It is but a tale I told
thee.”
“What is this?” The cultivator’s wife leaned forward, her bracelets
clinking on her arm. “Do ye both dream dreams? A Red Bull on a green
field, that shall carry thee to the heavens or what? Was it a vision?
Did one make a prophecy? _We_ have a Red Bull in our village behind
Jullundur city, and he grazes by choice in the very greenest of our
fields!”
“Give a woman an old wife’s tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a
thread”, they will weave wonderful things,” said the Sikh. “All holy
men dream dreams, and by following holy men their disciples attain that
power.”
“A Red Bull on a green field, was it?” the lama repeated. “In a former
life it may be thou hast acquired merit, and the Bull will come to
reward thee.”
“Nay—nay—it was but a tale one told to me—for a jest belike. But I will
seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy River and rest
from the clatter of the train.”
“It may be that the Bull knows—that he is sent to guide us both.” said
the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating Kim:
“This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of this
world.”
“Beggars aplenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a
_yogi_ nor such a disciple,” said the woman.
Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled.
But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him of
their best.
And at last—tired, sleepy, and dusty—they reached Umballa City Station.
“We abide here upon a law-suit,” said the cultivator’s wife to Kim. “We
lodge with my man’s cousin’s younger brother. There is room also in the
courtyard for thy _yogi_ and for thee. Will—will he give me a
blessing?”
“O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the
night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how we have
been helped since the dawn!”
The lama bowed his head in benediction.
“To fill my cousin’s younger brother’s house with wastrels—” the
husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.
“Thy cousin’s younger brother owes my father’s cousin something yet on
his daughter’s marriage-feast,” said the woman crisply. “Let him put
their food to that account. The _yogi_ will beg, I doubt not.”
“Ay, I beg for him,” said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under
shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali’s Englishman and
deliver himself of the white stallion’s pedigree.
“Now,” said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner
courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, “I go away
for a while—to—to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not stray abroad till
I return.”
“Thou wilt return? Thou wilt surely return?” The old man caught at his
wrist. “And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is it too late to
look tonight for the River?”
“Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on the
road—an hundred _kos_ from Lahore already.”
“Yea—and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and terrible
world.”
Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his
own and a few score thousand other folk’s fate slung round his neck.
Mahbub Ali’s directions left him little doubt of the house in which his
Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the Club,
made him quite sure. It remained only to identify his man, and Kim
slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed grass
close to the veranda. The house blazed with lights, and servants moved
about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver. Presently forth
came an Englishman, dressed in black and white, humming a tune. It was
too dark to see his face, so Kim, beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.