Kim
“Said I not—said I not he was from the other world?” cried the lama
proudly. “He is the Friend of all the World. He is the Friend of the
Stars!”
“At least it does not concern us,” a man cried. “O thou young
soothsayer, if the gift abides with thee at all seasons, I have a
red-spotted cow. She may be sister to thy Bull for aught I know—”
“Or I care,” said Kim. “My Stars do not concern themselves with thy
cattle.”
“Nay, but she is very sick,” a woman struck in. “My man is a buffalo,
or he would have chosen his words better. Tell me if she recover?”
Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the play;
but one does not know Lahore city, and least of all the _faquirs_ by
the Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing human nature.
The priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly—a dry and
blighting smile.
“Is there no priest, then, in the village? I thought I had seen a great
one even now,” cried Kim.
“Ay—but—” the woman began.
“But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful of
thanks.” The shot told: they were notoriously the closest-fisted couple
in the village. “It is not well to cheat the temples. Give a young calf
to thine own priest, and, unless thy Gods are angry past recall, she
will give milk within a month.”
“A master-beggar art thou,” purred the priest approvingly. “Not the
cunning of forty years could have done better. Surely thou hast made
the old man rich?”
“A little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms,” Kim
retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious—“Does one grow
rich on that? And, as thou canst see, he is mad. But it serves me while
I learn the road at least.”
He knew what the _faquirs_ of the Taksali Gate were like when they
talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their lewd
disciples.
“Is his Search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends? It may be
treasure.”
“He is mad—many times mad. There is nothing else.”
Here the old soldier bobbled up and asked if Kim would accept his
hospitality for the night. The priest recommended him to do so, but
insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the
temple—at which the lama smiled guilelessly. Kim glanced from one face
to the other, and drew his own conclusions.
“Where is the money?” he whispered, beckoning the old man off into the
darkness.
“In my bosom. Where else?”
“Give it me. Quietly and swiftly give it me.”
“But why? Here is no ticket to buy.”
“Am I thy _chela_, or am I not? Do I not safeguard thy old feet about
the ways? Give me the money and at dawn I will return it.” He slipped
his hand above the lama’s girdle and brought away the purse.
“Be it so—be it so.” The old man nodded his head. “This is a great and
terrible world. I never knew there were so many men alive in it.”
Next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was
quite happy; and Kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with the
old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on his dry
knees, told tales of the Mutiny and young captains thirty years in
their graves, till Kim dropped off to sleep.
“Certainly the air of this country is good,” said the lama. “I sleep
lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking till broad
day. Even now I am heavy.”
“Drink a draught of hot milk,” said Kim, who had carried not a few such
remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance. “It is time to take the
Road again.”
“The long Road that overpasses all the rivers of Hind,” said the lama
gaily. “Let us go. But how thinkest thou, _chela_, to recompense these
people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness? Truly they
are _būt-parast_, but in other lives, maybe, they will receive
enlightenment. A rupee to the temple? The thing within is no more than
stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must acknowledge when and
where it is good.”
“Holy One, hast thou ever taken the Road alone?” Kim looked up sharply,
like the Indian crows so busy about the fields.
“Surely, child: from Kulu to Pathânkot—from Kulu, where my first
_chela_ died. When men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men
were well-disposed throughout all the Hills.”
“It is otherwise in Hind,” said Kim drily. “Their Gods are many-armed
and malignant. Let them alone.”
“I would set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World,
thou and thy yellow man.” The old soldier ambled up the village street,
all shadowy in the dawn, on a punt, scissor-hocked pony. “Last night
broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried heart, and it was
as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad in the air. I smell it.
See! I have brought my sword.”
He sat long-legged on the little beast, with the big sword at his
side—hand dropped on the pommel—staring fiercely over the flat lands
towards the North. “Tell me again how He showed in thy vision. Come up
and sit behind me. The beast will carry two.”
“I am this Holy One’s disciple,” said Kim, as they cleared the
village-gate. The villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them, but
the priest’s farewell was cold and distant. He had wasted some opium on
a man who carried no money.
“That is well spoken. I am not much used to holy men, but respect is
always good. There is no respect in these days—not even when a
Commissioner Sahib comes to see me. But why should one whose Star leads
him to war follow a holy man?”
“But he _is_ a holy man,” said Kim earnestly. “In truth, and in talk
and in act, holy. He is not like the others. I have never seen such an
one. We be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars.”
“Thou art not. That I can see. But I do not know that other. He marches
well, though.”
The first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long,
easy, camel-like strides. He was deep in meditation, mechanically
clicking his rosary.
They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the
flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the
snowcapped Himalayas faint to the eastward. All India was at work in
the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of ploughmen
behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows. Even the pony felt
the good influence and almost broke into a trot as Kim laid a hand on
the stirrup-leather.
“It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine,” said the
lama on the last bead of his eighty-one.
The old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the first
time was aware of him.
“Seekest thou the River also?” said he, turning.
“The day is new,” was the reply. “What need of a river save to water at
before sundown? I come to show thee a short lane to the Big Road.”
“That is a courtesy to be remembered, O man of good will. But why the
sword?”
The old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his game of
make-believe.
“The sword,” he said, fumbling it. “Oh, that was a fancy of mine an old
man’s fancy. Truly the police orders are that no man must bear weapons
throughout Hind, but”—he cheered up and slapped the hilt—“all the
constabeels hereabout know me.”
“It is not a good fancy,” said the lama. “What profit to kill men?”
“Very little—as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it
would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers. I do not speak
without knowledge who have seen the land from Delhi south awash with
blood.”
“What madness was that, then?”
“The Gods, who sent it for a plague, alone know. A madness ate into all
the Army, and they turned against their officers. That was the first
evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands. But they
chose to kill the Sahibs’ wives and children. Then came the Sahibs from
over the sea and called them to most strict account.”
“Some such rumour, I believe, reached me once long ago. They called it
the Black Year, as I remember.”
“What manner of life hast thou led, not to know The Year? A rumour
indeed! All earth knew, and trembled!”
“Our earth never shook but once—upon the day that the Excellent One
received Enlightenment.”
“Umph! I saw Delhi shake at least—and Delhi is the navel of the world.”
“So they turned against women and children? That was a bad deed, for
which the punishment cannot be avoided.”
“Many strove to do so, but with very small profit. I was then in a
regiment of cavalry. It broke. Of six hundred and eighty sabres stood
fast to their salt—how many, think you? Three. Of whom I was one.”
“The greater merit.”
“Merit! We did not consider it merit in those days. My people, my
friends, my brothers fell from me. They said: ‘The time of the English
is accomplished. Let each strike out a little holding for himself.’ But
I had talked with the men of Sobraon, of Chilianwallah, of Moodkee and
Ferozeshah. I said: ‘Abide a little and the wind turns. There is no
blessing in this work.’ In those days I rode seventy miles with an
English Memsahib and her babe on my saddle-bow. (Wow! That was a horse
fit for a man!) I placed them in safety, and back came I to my
officer—the one that was not killed of our five. ‘Give me work,’ said
I, ‘for I am an outcast among my own kind, and my cousin’s blood is wet
on my sabre.’ ‘Be content,’ said he. ‘There is great work forward. When
this madness is over there is a recompense.’”
“Ay, there is a recompense when the madness is over, surely?” the lama
muttered half to himself.
“They did not hang medals in those days on all who by accident had
heard a gun fired. No! In nineteen pitched battles was I; in
six-and-forty skirmishes of horse; and in small affairs without number.
Nine wounds I bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of an Order,
for my captains, who are now generals, remembered me when the
Kaisar-i-Hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign, and all the
land rejoiced. They said: ‘Give him the Order of Berittish India.’ I
carry it upon my neck now. I have also my _jaghir_ (holding) from the
hands of the State—a free gift to me and mine. The men of the old
days—they are now Commissioners—come riding to me through the
crops—high upon horses so that all the village sees—and we talk out the
old skirmishes, one dead man’s name leading to another.”
“And after?” said the lama.
“Oh, afterwards they go away, but not before my village has seen.”
“And at the last what wilt thou do?”
“At the last I shall die.”
“And after?”
“Let the Gods order it. I have never pestered Them with prayers. I do
not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life
that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and
reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as
our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked
too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will remember this,
and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade, and
wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than three Rissaldar—majors
all—in the regiments.”
“And they likewise, bound upon the Wheel, go forth from life to
life—from despair to despair,” said the lama below his breath, “hot,
uneasy, snatching.”
“Ay,” the old soldier chuckled. “Three Rissaldar—majors in three
regiments. Gamblers a little, but so am I. They must be well mounted;
and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took women. Well,
well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It is a
well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask save
at the lance’s point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and they
feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call me a toothless old
ape.”
“Hast thou never desired any other thing?”
“Yes—yes—a thousand times! A straight back and a close-clinging knee