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Kim
by Rudyard Kipling
June, 2000 [Etext #2226]
*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Kim, by Rudyard Kipling*****
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Kim
by
Rudyard Kipling
Chapter 1
O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to judgment Day,
Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!
Buddha at Kamakura.
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam
Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher -
the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.
Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the
Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the
conqueror's loot.
There was some justification for Kim - he had kicked Lala
Dinanath's boy off the trunnions - since the English held the
Punjab and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any
native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his
mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he
consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the
bazar; Kim was white - a poor white of the very poorest. The
half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium, and
pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square
where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was
Kim's mother's sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a
Colonel's family and had married Kimball O'Hara, a young colour-
sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment. He afterwards took
a post on the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway, and his Regiment
went home without him. The wife died of cholera in Ferozepore,
and O'Hara fell to drink and loafing up and down the line with
the keen-eyed three-year-old baby. Societies and chaplains,
anxious for the child, tried to catch him, but O'Hara drifted
away, till he came across the woman who took opium and learned
the taste from her, and died as poor whites die in India. His
estate at death consisted of three papers - one he called his 'ne
varietur' because those words were written below his signature
thereon, and another his 'clearance-certificate'. The third was
Kim's birth-certificate. Those things, he was used to say, in his
glorious opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a man. On no
account was Kim to part with them, for they belonged to a great
piece of magic - such magic as men practised over yonder behind
the Museum, in the big blue-and-white Jadoo-Gher - the Magic
House, as we name the Masonic Lodge. It would, he said, all come
right some day, and Kim's horn would be exalted between pillars -
monstrous pillars - of beauty and strength. The Colonel himself,
riding on a horse, at the head of the finest Regiment in the
world, would attend to Kim - little Kim that should have been
better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class devils,
whose God was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim,
if they had not forgotten O'Hara - poor O'Hara that was gang-
foreman on the Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in
the broken rush chair on the veranda. So it came about after his
death that the woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth-
certificate into a leather amulet-case which she strung round
Kim's neck.
'And some day,' she said, confusedly remembering O'Hara's
prophecies, 'there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green
field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'
dropping into English - 'nine hundred devils.'
'Ah,' said Kim, 'I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a
horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men
making ready the ground for these matters. That is how my father
said they always did; and it is always so when men work magic.'
If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those
papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by the
Provincial Lodge, and sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills;
but what she had heard of magic she distrusted. Kim, too, held
views of his own. As he reached the years of indiscretion, he
learned to avoid missionaries and white men of serious aspect who
asked who he was, and what he did. For Kim did nothing with an
immense success. True, he knew the wonderful walled city of
Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in
glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al
Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the
Arabian Nights, but missionaries and secretaries of charitable
societies could not see the beauty of it. His nickname through
the wards was 'Little Friend of all the World'; and very often,
being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night
on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of
fashion. It was intrigue, - of course he knew that much, as he
had known all evil since he could speak, - but what he loved was
the game for its own sake - the stealthy prowl through the dark
gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and
sounds of the women's world on the flat roofs, and the headlong
flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark.
Then there were holy men, ash-smeared fakirs by their brick
shrines under the trees at the riverside, with whom he was quite
familiar - greeting them as they returned from begging-tours,
and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish. The woman who
looked after him insisted with tears that he should wear European
clothes - trousers, a shirt and a battered hat. Kim found it
easier to slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on
certain businesses. One of the young men of fashion - he who was
found dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake
had once given him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume
of a lowcaste street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place
under some baulks in Nila Ram's timber-yard, beyond the Punjab
High Court, where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after
they have driven down the Ravi. When there was business or frolic
afoot, Kim would use his properties, returning at dawn to the
veranda, all tired out from shouting at the heels of a marriage
procession, or yelling at a Hindu festival. Sometimes there was
food in the house, more often there was not, and then Kim went
out again to eat with his native friends.
As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and
again from his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal and
Abdullah the sweetmeat-seller's son, to make a rude remark to the
native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door.
The big Punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did
the water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat-
skin bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bent over
new packing-cases. So did everybody in sight except the peasants
from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to view the
things that men made in their own province and elsewhere. The
Museum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybody
who sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.
'Off ! Off ! Let me up!' cried Abdullah, climbing up ZamZammah's
wheel.
'Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi" sang
Kim. 'All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!'
'Let me up!' shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered
cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but
India is the only democratic land in the world.
'The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them
off. Thy father was a pastry-cook -'
He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring
Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes,
had never seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon
fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it
could Kim refer to any known trade or profession. At his belt
hung a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as
holy men wear. On his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter.
His face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the
Chinese bootmaker in the bazar. His eyes turned up at the corners
and looked like little slits of onyx.
'Who is that?' said Kim to his companions.
'Perhaps it is a man,' said Abdullah, finger in mouth, staring.
'Without doubt.' returned Kim; 'but he is no man of India that I
have ever seen.'
'A priest, perhaps,' said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. 'See! He
goes into the Wonder House!'
'Nay, nay,' said the policeman, shaking his head. 'I do not
understand your talk.' The constable spoke Punjabi. 'O Friend of
all the World, what does he say?'
'Send him hither,' said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah,
flourishing his bare heels. 'He is a foreigner, and thou art a
buffalo.'
The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was
old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking
artemisia of the mountain passes.
'O Children, what is that big house?' he said in very fair Urdu.
'The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!' Kim gave him no title - such
as Lala or Mian. He could not divine the man's creed.
'Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?'
'It is written above the door - all can enter.'
'Without payment?'
'I go in and out. I am no banker,' laughed Kim.
'Alas! I am an old man. I did not know.' Then, fingering his
rosary, he half turned to the Museum.
'What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?' Kim
asked.
'I came by Kulu - from beyond the Kailas - but what know you?
>From the Hills where' - he sighed - 'the air and water are fresh
and cool.'
'Aha! Khitai [a Chinaman],' said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had
once chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above
the boots.
'Pahari [a hillman],' said little Chota Lal.
'Aye, child - a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. Didst hear
of Bhotiyal [Tibet]? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya [Tibetan],
since you must know - a lama - or, say, a guru in your tongue.'
'A guru from Tibet,' said Kim. 'I have not seen such a man. They
be Hindus in Tibet, then?'
'We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our
lamasseries, and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die.
Now do you, who are children, know as much as I do who am old.'
He smiled benignantly on the boys.
'Hast thou eaten?'
He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn, wooden begging-
bowl. The boys nodded. All priests of their acquaintance begged.
'I do not wish to eat yet.' He turned his head like an. old
tortoise in the sunlight. 'Is it true that there are many images
in the Wonder House of Lahore?' He repeated the last words as one
making sure of an address.
'That is true,' said Abdullah. 'It is full of heathen buts. Thou
also art an idolater.'
'Never mind him,' said. Kim. 'That is the Government's house and
there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard.
Come with me and I will show.'
'Strange priests eat boys,' whispered Chota Lal.
'And he is a stranger and a but-parast [idolater],' said
Abdullah, the Mohammedan.
Kim laughed. 'He is new. Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe.
Come!'
Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man
followed and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger
figures of the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how
long since, by forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and
not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch.
There were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief,
fragments of statues and slabs crowded with figures that had
encrusted the brick walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of
the North Country and now, dug up and labelled, made the pride of
the Museum. In open-mouthed wonder the lama turned to this and
that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large alto-
relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord
Buddha. The Master was represented seated on a lotus the petals
of which were so deeply undercut as to show almost detached.
Round Him was an adoring hierarchy of kings, elders, and old-time
Buddhas. Below were lotus-covered waters with fishes and water-
birds. Two butterfly-winged dewas held a wreath over His head;
above them another pair supported an umbrella surmounted by the
jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.
'The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself,' the lama half
sobbed; and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist
invocation:
To Him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat.
'And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also. My
pilgrimage is well begun. And what work! What work!'
'Yonder is the Sahib.' said Kim, and dodged sideways among the
cases of the arts and manufacturers wing. A white-bearded
Englishman was looking at the lama, who gravely turned and
saluted him and after some fumbling drew forth a note-book and a
scrap of paper.
'Yes, that is my name,' smiling at the clumsy, childish print.
'One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places - he is now
Abbot of the Lung-Cho Monastery - gave it me,' stammered the
lama. 'He spoke of these.' His lean hand moved tremulously round.
'Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am
here' - he glanced at the lama's face - 'to gather knowledge.
Come to my office awhile.' The old man was trembling with
excitement.
The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from
the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear
against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his
instinct, stretched out to listen and watch.
Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama,
haltingly at first, spoke to the Curator of his own lamassery,
the Such-zen, opposite the Painted Rocks, four months' march
away. The Curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed
him that very place, perched on its crag, overlooking the
gigantic valley of many-hued strata.
'Ay, ay!' The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of
Chinese work. 'Here is the little door through which we bring
wood before winter. And thou - the English know of these things?
He who is now Abbot of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe.
The Lord - the Excellent One - He has honour here too? And His
life is known?'
'It is all carven upon the stones. Come and see, if thou art
rested.'
Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the Curator beside
him, went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee
and the appreciative instinct of a craftsman.
Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the
blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek
convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the
sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it
from his mound of books - French and German, with photographs and
reproductions.
Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian
story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father
listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin
Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of
impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park;
the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the
Bodhisat in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the
death at Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there
were almost countless repetitions of the meditation under the
Bodhi tree; and the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In
a few minutes the Curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-
telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts. And they went at it
all over again, the lama taking snuff, wiping his spectacles, and
talking at railway speed in a bewildering mixture of Urdu and
Tibetan. He had heard of the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, Fu-
Hiouen and Hwen-Tsiang, and was anxious to know if there was any
translation of their record. He drew in his breath as he turned
helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas Julien. "Tis all
here. A treasure locked.' Then he composed himself reverently to
listen to fragments hastily rendered into Urdu. For the first
time he heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the
help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the
Holy Places of Buddhism. Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted
and traced with yellow. The brown finger followed the Curator's
pencil from point to point. Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle
Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was
Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One's death. The old man bowed
his head over the sheets in silence for a while, and the Curator
lit another pipe. Kim had fallen asleep. When he waked, the talk,
still in spate, was more within his comprehension.
'And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to
the Holy Places which His foot had trod - to the Birthplace, even
to Kapila; then to Mahabodhi, which is Buddh Gaya - to the
Monastery - to the Deer-park -to the place of His death.'
The lama lowered his voice. 'And I come here alone. For five -
seven - eighteen - forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law
was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with
devildom, charms, and idolatry. Even as the child outside said
but now. Ay, even as the child said, with but-parasti.'
'So it comes with all faiths.'
'Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were
dried pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed
Law have cumbered ourselves - that, too, had no worth to these
old eyes. Even the followers of the Excellent One are at feud on
feud with one another. It is all illusion. Ay, maya, illusion.
But I have another desire' - the seamed yellow face drew within
three inches of the Curator, and the long forefinger-nail tapped
on the table. 'Your scholars, by these books, have followed the
Blessed Feet in all their wanderings; but there are things which
they have not sought out. I know nothing - nothing do I know -
but I go to free myself from the Wheel of Things by a broad and
open road.' He smiled with most simple triumph. 'As a pilgrim to
the Holy Places I acquire merit. But there is more. Listen to a
true thing. When our gracious Lord, being as yet a youth, sought
a mate, men said, in His father's Court, that He was too tender
for marriage. Thou knobbiest?'
The Curator nodded, wondering what would come next.
'So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers.
And at the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which
they gave Him, called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou
knowest?'
'It is written. I have read.'
'And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far
beyond sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth,
there broke out a stream which presently became a River, whose
nature, by our Lord's beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere
He freed himself, is that whoso bathes in it washes away all
taint and speckle of sin.'
'So it is written,' said the Curator sadly.
The lama drew a long breath. "Where is that River? Fountain of
Wisdom, where fell the arrow?"
'Alas', my brother, I do not know,' said the Curator.
'Nay, if it please thee to forget - the one thing only that thou
hast not told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I
ask with my head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We know
He drew the bow! We know the arrow fell! We know the stream
gushed! Where, then, is the River? My dream told me to find it.
So I came. I am here. But where is the River?'
'If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?'
'By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,' the lama
went on, unheeding. 'The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some
little stream, maybe - dried in the heats? But the Holy One would
never so cheat an old man.'
'I do not know. I do not know.'
The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a
handsbreadth from the Englishman's. 'I see thou dost not know.
Not being of the Law, the matter is hid from thee.'
'Ay - hidden - hidden.'
'We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I' - he rose with
a sweep of the soft thick drapery - 'I go to cut myself free.
Come also!'
'I am bound,' said the Curator. 'But whither goest thou?'
'First to Kashi [Benares]: where else? There I shall meet one of
the pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker
in secret, and from him haply I may learn. Maybe he will go with
me to Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there
will I seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go -
for the place is not known where the arrow fell.'
'And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to
Benares.'
'By road and the trains. From Pathankot, having left the Hills, I
came hither in a te-rain. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed
to see those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and
snatching up their threads,' - he illustrated the stoop and whirl
of a telegraph-pole flashing past the train. 'But later, I was
cramped and desired to walk, as I am used.'
'And thou art sure of thy road?' said the Curator.
'Oh. for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the
appointed persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much
I knew in my lamassery from sure report,' said the lama proudly.
'And when dost thou go?' The Curator smiled at the mixture of
old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India
today.
'As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come
to the River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of
the hours of the trains that go south.'
'And for food?' Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money
somewhere about them, but the Curator wished to make sure.
'For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even
as He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was
with me when I left the hills a chela [disciple] who begged for
me as the Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took
him and he died. I have now no chela, but I will take the alms-
bowl and thus enable the charitable to acquire merit.' He nodded
his head valiantly. Learned doctors of a lamassery do not beg,
but the lama was an enthusiast in this quest.
'Be it so,' said the Curator, smiling. 'Suffer me now to acquire
merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book
of white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three -
thick and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles.'
The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but
the power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid
into the lama's hand, saying: 'Try these.'
'A feather! A very feather upon the face? The old man turned his
head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. 'How scarcely do I
feel them! How clearly do I see!
'They be, bilaur - crystal - and will never scratch. May they
help thee to thy River, for they are thine.'
'I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,' said
the lama, 'as a sign of friendship between priest and priest -
and now -' He fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron
pincers, and laid it on the Curator's table. 'That is for a
memory between thee and me - my pencase. It is something old -
even as I am.'
It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not
smelted these days; and the collector's heart in the Curator's
bosom had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would
the lama resume his gift.
'When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a
written picture of the Padma Samthora such as I used to make on
silk at the lamassery. Yes - and of the Wheel of Life,' he
chuckled, 'for we be craftsmen together, thou and I.'
The Curator would have detained him: they are few in the world
who still have the secret of the conventional brush-pen Buddhist
pictures which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But
the lama strode out, head high in air, and pausing an instant
before the great statue of a Bodhisat in meditation, brushed
through the turnstiles.
Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him
wildly. This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he
meant to investigate further, precisely as he would have
investigated a new building or a strange festival in Lahore city.
The lama was his trove, and he purposed to take possession. Kim's
mother had been Irish too.
The old man halted by Zam-Zammah and looked round till his eye
fell on Kim. The inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for
awhile, and he felt old, forlorn, and very empty.
'Do not sit under that gun,' said the policeman loftily.
'Huh! Owl!' was Kim's retort on the lama's behalf 'Sit under that
gun if it please thee. When didst thou steal the milkwoman's
slippers, Dunnoo?'
That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the
moment, but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew that Kim's clear yell
could call up legions of bad bazar boys if need arose.
'And whom didst thou worship within?' said Kim affably, squatting
in the shade beside the lama.
'I worshipped none, child. I bowed before the Excellent Law.'
Kim accepted this new God without emotion. He knew already a few
score.
'And what dost thou do?'
'I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk.
What is the custom of charity in this town? In silence, as we do
of Tibet, or speaking aloud?'
'Those who beg in silence starve in silence,' said Kim, quoting a
native proverb. The lama tried to rise, but sank back again,
sighing for his disciple, dead in far-away Kulu. Kim watched head
to one side, considering and interested.
'Give me the bowl. I know the people of this city - all who are
charitable. Give, and I will bring it back filled.'
Simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl.
[start here]
'Rest, thou. I know the people.'
He trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a low-caste
vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down
the Motee Bazar. She knew Kim of old.
'Oho, hast thou turned yogi with thy begging-bowl?' she cried.
'Nay.' said Kim proudly. 'There is a new priest in the city a man
such as I have never seen.'
'Old priest - young tiger,' said the woman angrily. 'I am tired
of new priests! They settle on our wares like flies. Is the
father of my son a well of charity to give to all who ask?'
'No,' said Kim. 'Thy man is rather yagi [bad-tempered] than yogi
[a holy man]. But this priest is new. The Sahib in the Wonder
House has talked to him like a brother. O my mother, fill me this
bowl. He waits.'
'That bowl indeed! That cow-bellied basket! Thou hast as much
grace as the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket
of onions already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl.
He comes here again.'
The huge, mouse-coloured Brahmini bull of the ward was
shouldering his way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen
plantain hanging out of his mouth. He headed straight for the
shop, well knowing his privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his
head, and puffed heavily along the line of baskets ere making his
choice. Up flew Kim's hard little heel and caught him on his
moist blue nose. He snorted indignantly, and walked away across
the tram-rails, his hump quivering with rage.
'See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now,
mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop - yes, and some
vegetable curry.'
A growl came out of the back of the shop, where a man lay.
'He drove away the bull,' said the woman in an undertone. 'It is
good to give to the poor.' She took the bowl and returned it full
of hot rice.
'But my yogi is not a cow,' said Kim gravely, making a hole with
his fingers in the top of the mound. 'A little curry is good, and
a fried cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, I
think.'
'It is a hole as big as thy head,' said the woman fretfully. But
she filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable
curry, clapped a fried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified
butter on the cake, dabbed a lump of sour tamarind conserve at
the side; and Kim looked at the load lovingly.
'That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to
this house. He is a bold beggar-man.'
'And thou?' laughed the woman. 'But speak well of bulls. Hast
thou not told me that some day a Red Bull will come out of a
field to help thee? Now hold all straight and ask for the holy
man's blessing upon me. Perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my
daughter's -sore eyes. Ask. him that also, O thou Little Friend
of all the World.'
But Kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging
pariah dogs and hungry acquaintances.
'Thus do we beg who know the way of it,' said he proudly to the
lama, who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. 'Eat now
and - I will eat with thee. Ohe, bhisti!' he called to the water-
carrier, sluicing the crotons by the Museum. 'Give water here. We
men are thirsty.'
'We men!' said the bhisti, laughing. 'Is one skinful enough for
such a pair? Drink, then, in the name of the Compassionate.'
He loosed a thin stream into Kim's hands, who drank nativefasion;
but the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible
upper draperies and drink ceremonially.
'Pardesi [a foreigner],' Kim explained, as the old man delivered
in an unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing.
They ate together in great content, clearing the beggingbowl.
Then the lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd,
fingered his rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of
age, as the shadow of Zam-Zammah grew long.
Kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively
young Mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that
they sell to students of the Punjab University who copy English
customs. Then he smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the
belly of the gun, and the outcome of his thoughts was a sudden
and stealthy departure in the direction of Nila Ram's timber-
yard.
The lama did not wake till the evening life of the city had begun
with lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and
subordinates from the Government offices. He stared dizzily in
all directions, but none looked at him save a Hindu urchin in a
dirty turban and Isabella-coloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed his
head on his knees and wailed.
'What is this?' said the boy, standing before him. 'Hast thou
been robbed?'
'It is my new chela [disciple] that is gone away from me, and I
know not where he is.'
'And what like of man was thy disciple?'
'It was a boy who came to me in place of him who died, on account
of the merit which I had gained when I bowed before the Law
within there.' He pointed towards the Museum. 'He came upon me to
show me a road which I had lost. He led me into the Wonder House,
and by his talk emboldened me to speak to the Keeper of the
Images, so that I was cheered and made strong. And when I was
faint with hunger he begged for me, as would a chela for his
teacher. Suddenly was he sent. Suddenly has he gone away. It was
in my mind to have taught him the Law upon the road to Benares.'
Kim stood amazed at this, because he had overheard the talk in
the Museum, and knew that the old man was speaking the truth,
which is a thing a native on the road seldom presents to a
stranger.
'But I see now that he was but sent for a purpose. By this I know
that I shall find a certain River for which I seek.'
'The River of the Arrow?' said Kim, with a superior smile.
'Is this yet another Sending?' cried the lama. 'To none have I
spoken of my search, save to the Priest of the Images. Who art
thou?'
'Thy chela,' said Kim simply, sitting on his heels. 'I have never
seen anyone like to thee in all this my life. I go with thee to
Benares. And, too, I think that so old a man as thou, speaking
the truth to chance-met people at dusk, is in great need of a
disciple.'
'But the River - the River of the Arrow?'
'Oh, that I heard when thou wast speaking to the- Englishman. I
lay against the door.'
The lama sighed. 'I thought thou hadst been a guide permitted.
Such things fall sometimes - but I am not worthy. Thou dost not,
then, know the River?'
'Not U Kim laughed uneasily. 'I go to look for - for a bull a
Red. Bull on a green field who shall help me.' Boylike, if an
acquaintance had a scheme, Kim was quite ready with one of his
own; and,
boylike, he had really thought for as much as twenty minutes at a
time of his father's prophecy.
'To what, child?' said the lama.
'God knows, but so my father told me'. I heard thy talk in the
Wonder House of all those new strange places in the Hills, and if
one so old and so little - so used to truth-telling - may go out
for the small matter of a river, it seemed to me that I too must
go a-travelling. If it is our fate to find those things we shall
find them - thou, thy River; and I, my Bull, and the Strong
Pillars and some other matters that I forget.'
'It is not pillars but a Wheel from which I would be free,' said
the lama.
'That is all one. Perhaps they will make me a king,' said Kim,
serenely prepared for anything.
'I will teach thee other and better desires upon the road,' the
lama replied in the voice of authority. 'Let us go to Benares.'
'Not by night. Thieves are abroad. Wait till the day.'
'But there is no place to sleep.' The old man was used to the
order of his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the
Rule decrees, preferred a decency in these things.
'We shall get good lodging at the Kashmir Serai,' said Kim,
laughing at his perplexity. 'I have a friend there. Come!'
The hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their
way through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the
lama mooned through it like a man in a dream. It was his first
experience of a large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-
car with its continually squealing brakes frightened him. Half
pushed, half towed, he arrived at the high gate of the Kashmir
Serai: that huge open square over against the railway station,
surrounded with arched cloisters, where the camel and horse
caravans put up on their return from Central Asia. Here were all
manner of Northern folk, tending tethered ponies and kneeling
camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water
for the evening meal at the creaking well-windlasses; piling
grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the
surly caravan dogs; paying off camel-drivers; taking on new
grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in the packed
square. The cloisters, reached by three or four masonry steps,
made a haven of refuge around this turbulent sea. Most of them
were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a viaduct; the
space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded off into
rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous
native padlocks. Locked doors showed that the owner was away, and
a few rude - sometimes very rude - chalk or paint scratches told
where he had gone. Thus: 'Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan.'
Below, in coarse verse: 'O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on
the coat of a Kabuli, why hast thou allowed this louse Lutuf to
live so long?'
Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts,
sidled along the cloisters to the far end, nearest the -railway
station, where Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came
in from that mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.
Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub in his little life,
especially between his tenth and his thirteenth year - and the
big burly Afghan, his beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was
elderly and did not wish his grey hairs to show), knew the boy's
value as a gossip. Sometimes he would tell Kim to watch a man who
had nothing whatever to do with horses: to follow him for one
whole day and report every soul with whom he talked. Kim would
deliver himself of his tale at evening, and Mahbub would listen
without a word or gesture. It was intrigue of some kind, Kim
knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing whatever to anyone
except Mahbub, who gave him beautiful meals all hot from the
cookshop at the head of the serai, and once as much as eight
annas in money.
'He is here,' said Kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose.
'Ohe. Mahbub Ali!' He halted at a dark arch and slipped behind
the bewildered lama.
The horse-trader, his deep, embroidered Bokhariot belt unloosed,
was lying on a pair of silk carpet saddle-bags, pulling lazily at
an immense silver hookah. He turned his head very slightly at the
cry; and seeing only the tall silent figure, chuckled in his
deep. chest.
'Allah! A lama! A Red Lama! It is far from Lahore to the Passes.
What dost thou do here?'
The lama held out the begging-bowl mechanically.
'God's curse on all unbelievers!' said Mahbub. 'I do not give to
a lousy Tibetan; but ask my Baltis over yonder behind the camels.
They may value your blessings. Oh, horseboys, here is a
countryman of yours. See if he be hungry.'
A shaven, crouching Balti, who had come down with the horses, and
who was nominally some sort of degraded Buddhist, fawned upon the
priest, and in thick gutturals besought the Holy One to sit at
the horseboys' fire.
'Go!' said Kim, pushing him lightly, and the lama strode away,
leaving Kim at the edge of the cloister.
'Go!' said Mahbub Ali, returning to his hookah. 'Little Hindu,
run away. God's curse on all unbelievers! Beg from those of my
tail who are of thy faith.'
'Maharaj,' whined Kim, using the Hindu form of address, and
thoroughly enjoying the situation; 'my father is dead - my mother
is dead - my stomach is empty.'
'Beg from my men among the horses, I say. There must be some
Hindus in my tall.'
'Oh, Mahbub Ali, but am I a Hindu?' said Kim in English.
The trader gave no sign of astonishment, but looked under shaggy
eyebrows.
'Little Friend of all the World,' said he, 'what is this?'
'Nothing. I am now that holy man's disciple; and we go a
pilgrimage together - to Benares, he says. He is quite mad, and I
am tired of Lahore city. I wish new air and water.'
'But for whom dost thou work? Why come to me?' The voice was
harsh with suspicion.
'To whom else should I come? I have no money. It is not good to
go about without money. Thou wilt sell many horses to the
officers. They are very fine horses, these new ones: I have seen
them. Give me a rupee, Mahbub Ali, and when I come to my wealth I
will give thee a bond and pay.'
'Um!' said Mahbub Ali, thinking swiftly. 'Thou hast never before
lied to me. Call that lama - stand back in the dark.'
'Oh, our tales will agree,' said Kim, laughing.
'We go to Benares,' said the lama, as soon as he understood the
drift of Mahbub Ali's questions. 'The boy and I, I go to seek for
a certain River.'
'Maybe - but the boy?'
'He is my disciple. He was sent, I think, to guide me to that
River. Sitting under a. gun was I when he came suddenly. Such
things have befallen the fortunate to whom guidance was allowed.
But I remember now, he said he was of this world - a Hindu.'
'And his name?'
'That I did not ask. Is he not my disciple?'
'His country - his race - his village? Mussalman - Sikh Hindu -
Jain - low caste or high?'
'Why should I ask? There is neither high nor low in the Middle
Way. If he is my chela - does - will - can anyone take him from
me? for, look you, without him I shall not find my River.' He
wagged his head solemnly.
'None shall take him from thee. Go, sit among my Baltis,' said
Mahbub Ali, and the lama drifted off, soothed by the promise.
'Is he not quite mad?' said Kim, coming forward to the light
again. 'Why should I lie to thee, Hajji?'
Mahbub puffed his hookah in silence. Then he began, almost
whispering: 'Umballa is on the road to Benares - if indeed ye two
go there.'
'Tck! Tck! I tell thee he does not know how to lie - as we two
know.'
'And if thou wilt carry a message for me as far as Umballa, I
will give thee money. It concerns a horse - a white stallion
which I have sold to an officer upon the last time I returned
from the Passes. But then - stand nearer and hold up hands as
begging -the pedigree of the white stallion was not fully
established, and that officer, who is now at Umballa, bade me
make it clear.' (Mahbub here described the horse and the
appearance of the officer.) 'So the message to that officer will
be: "The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established." By
this will he know that thou comest from me. He will then say
"What proof hast thou?" and thou wilt answer: "Mahbub Ali has
given me the proof."'
'And all for the sake of a white stallion,' said Kim, with a
giggle, his eyes aflame.
'That pedigree I will give thee now - in my own fashion and some
hard words as well.' A shadow passed behind Kim, and a feeding
camel. Mahbub Ali raised his voice.
'Allah! Art thou the only beggar in the city? Thy mother is dead.
Thy father is dead. So is it with all of them. Well, well - '
He turned as feeling on the floor beside him and tossed a flap of
soft, greasy Mussalman bread to the boy. 'Go and lie down among
my horseboys for tonight - thou and the lama. Tomorrow I may give
thee service.'
Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he
found a small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with
three silver rupees - enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust
money and paper into his leather amulet-case. The lama,
sumptuously fed by Mahbub's Baltis, was already asleep in a
corner of one of the stalls. Kim lay down beside him and laughed.
He knew he had rendered a service to Mahbub Ali, and not for one
little minute did he believe the tale of the stallion's pedigree.
But Kim did not suspect that Mahbub Ali, known as one of the best
horse-dealers in the Punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader,
whose caravans penetrated far and far into the Back of Beyond,
was registered in one of the locked books of the Indian Survey
Department as C25 IB. Twice or thrice yearly C25 would send in a
little story, baldly told but most interesting, and generally -
it was checked by the statements of R17 and M4 - quite true. It
concerned all manner of out-of-the-way mountain principalities,
explorers of nationalities other than English, and the guntrade -
was, in brief, a small portion of that vast mass of 'information
received' on which the Indian Government acts. But, recently,
five confederated Kings, who had no business to confederate, had
been informed by a kindly Northern Power that there was a leakage
of news from their territories into British India. So those
Kings' Prime Ministers were seriously annoyed and took steps,
after the Oriental fashion. They suspected, among many others,
the bullying, red-bearded horsedealer whose caravans ploughed
through their fastnesses belly-deep in snow. At least, his
caravan that season had been ambushed and shot at twice on the
way down, when Mahbub's men accounted for three strange ruffians
who might, or might not, have been hired for the job. Therefore
Mahbub had avoided halting at the insalubrious city of Peshawur,
and had come through without stop to Lahore, where, knowing his
country-people, he anticipated curious developments.
And there was that on Mahbub Ali which he did not wish to keep an
hour longer than was necessary - a wad of closely folded tissue-
paper, wrapped in oilskin - an impersonal, unaddressed statement,
with five microscopic pin-holes in one corner, that most
scandalously betrayed the five confederated Kings, the
sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Peshawur, a firm of
gun-makers in Belgium, and an important, semi-independent
Mohammedan ruler to the south. This last was R17's work, which
Mahbub had picked up beyond the Dora Pass and was carrying in for
R17, who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control,
could not leave his post of observation. Dynamite was milky and
innocuous beside that report Of C25; and even an Oriental, with
an Oriental's views of the value of time, could see that the
sooner it was in the proper hands the better. Mahbub had no
particular desire to die by violence, because two or three family
blood-feuds across the Border hung unfinished on his hands, and
when these scores were cleared he intended to settle down as a
more or less virtuous citizen. He had never passed the serai gate
since his arrival two days ago, but had been ostentatious in
sending telegrams to Bombay, where he banked some of his money;
to Delhi, where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling horses
to the agent of a Rajputana state; and to Umballa, where an
Englishman was excitedly demanding the pedigree of a white
stallion. The public letter-writer, who knew English, composed
excellent telegrams, such as: 'Creighton, Laurel Bank, Umballa.
Horse is Arabian as already advised. Sorrowful delayed pedigree
which am translating.' And later to the same address: 'Much
sorrowful delay. Will forward pedigree.' To his sub-partner at
Delhi he wired: 'Lutuf Ullah. Have wired two thousand rupees your
credit Luchman Narain's bank-' This was entirely in the way of
trade, but every one of those telegrams was discussed and re-
discussed, by parties who conceived themselves to be interested,
before they went over to the railway station in charge of a
foolish Balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on
the road.
When, in Mahbub's own picturesque language, he had muddied the
wells of inquiry with the stick of precaution, Kim had dropped on
him, sent from Heaven; and, being as prompt as he was
unscrupulous, Mahbub Ali used to taking all sorts of gusty
chances, pressed him into service on the spot.
A wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a
moment's interest as they wandered about India, the land of
pilgrims; but no one would suspect them or, what was more to the
point, rob.
He called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the
case. If the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm,
the paper would incriminate nobody. And he would go up to Umballa
leisurely and - at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion -
repeat his tale by word of mouth to the people concerned.
But R17's report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would
be distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand.
However, God was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he
could for the time being. Kim was the one soul in the world who
had never told him a lie. That would have been a fatal blot on
Kim's character if Mahbub had not known that to others, for his
own ends or Mahbub's business, Kim could lie like an Oriental.
Then Mahbub Ali rolled across the serai to the Gate of the
Harpies who paint their eyes and trap the stranger, and was at
some pains to call on the one girl who, he had reason to believe,
was a particular friend of a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit who had
waylaid his simple Balti in the matter of the telegrams. It was
an utterly foolish thing to do; because they fell to drinking
perfumed brandy against the Law of the Prophet, and Mahbub grew
wonderfully drunk, and the gates of his mouth were loosened, and
he pursued the Flower of Delight with the feet of intoxication
till he fell flat among the cushions, where the Flower of
Delight, aided by a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit, searched him
from head to foot most thoroughly.
About the same hour Kim heard soft feet in Mahbub's deserted
stall. The horse-trader, curiously enough, had left his door
unlocked, and his men were busy celebrating their return to India
with a whole sheep of Mahbub's bounty. A sleek young gentleman
from Delhi, armed with a bunch of keys which the Flower had
unshackled from the senseless one's belt, went through every
single box, bundle, mat, and saddle-bag in Mahbub's possession
even more systematically than the Flower and the pundit were
searching the owner.
'And I think.' said the Flower scornfully an hour later, one
rounded elbow on the snoring carcass, 'that he is no more than a
pig of an Afghan horse-dealer, with no thought except women and
horses. Moreover, he may have sent it away by now - if ever there
were such a thing.'
'Nay - in a matter touching Five Kings it would be next his black
heart,' said the pundit. 'Was there nothing?'
The Delhi man laughed and resettled his turban as he entered. 'I
searched between the soles of his slippers as the Flower searched
his clothes. This is not the man but another. I leave little
unseen.'
'They did not say he was the very man,' said the pundit
thoughtfully. 'They said, "Look if he be the man, since our
counsels are troubled."'
'That North country is full of horse-dealers as an old coat of
lice. There is Sikandar Khan, Nur Ali Beg, and Farrukh Shah all
heads of kafilas [caravans] - who deal there,' said the Flower.
'They have not yet come in,' said the pundit. 'Thou must ensnare
them later.'
Phew!' said the Flower with deep disgust, rolling Mahbub's head
from her lap. 'I earn my money. Farrukh Shah is a bear, Ali Beg a
swashbuckler, and old Sikandar Khan - yaie! Go! I sleep now. This
swine will not stir till dawn.'
When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of
drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an
enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt,
and staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very
near to it.
'What a colt's trick!' said he to himself 'As if every girl in
Peshawur did not use it! But 'twas prettily done. Now God He
knows how many more there be upon the Road who have orders to
test me - perhaps with the knife. So it stands that the boy must
go to Umballa - and by rail -for the writing is something
urgent. I abide here, following the Flower and drinking wine as
an Afghan coper should.'
He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there
heavy with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.
'Up! He stirred a sleeper. 'Whither went those who lay here last
even - the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?'
'Nay,' grunted the man, 'the old madman rose at second cockcrow
saying he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away.'
'The curse of Allah on all unbelievers!' said Mahbub heartily,
and climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.
But it was Kim who had wakened the lama - Kim with one eye laid
against a knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the Delhi man's
search through the boxes. This was no common thief that turned
over letters, bills, and saddles - no mere burglar who ran a
little knife sideways into the soles of Mahbub's slippers, or
picked the seams of the saddle-bags so deftly. At first Kim had
been minded to give the alarm - the long-drawn cho-or -choor!
[thief! thief!] that sets the serai ablaze of nights; but he
looked more carefully, and, hand on amulet, drew his own
conclusions.
'It must be the pedigree of that made-up horse-lie,' said he,
'the thing that I carry to Umballa. Better that we go now. Those
who search bags with knives may presently search bellies with
knives. Surely there is a woman behind this. Hai! Hai! in a
whisper to the light-sleeping old man. 'Come. It is time - time
to go to Benares.'
The lama rose obediently, and they passed out of the serai like
shadows.
Chapter 2
And whoso will, from Pride released;
Contemning neither creed nor priest,
May feel the Soul of all the East.
About him at Kamakura.
Buddha at Kamakura.
They entered the fort-like railway station, black in the end of
night; the electrics sizzling over the goods-yard where they
handle the heavy Northern grain-traffic.
'This is the work of devils!' said the lama, recoiling from the
hollow echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails between the masonry
platforms, and the maze of girders above. He stood in a gigantic
stone hall paved, it seemed, with the sheeted dead third-class
passengers who had taken their tickets overnight and were
sleeping in the waiting-rooms. All hours of the twenty-four are
alike to Orientals, and their passenger traffic is regulated
accordingly.
'This is where the fire-carriages come. One stands behind that
hole' -Kim pointed to the ticket-office - 'who will give thee a
paper to take thee to Umballa.'
'But we go to Benares,' he replied petulantly.
'All one. Benares then. Quick: she comes!'
'Take thou the purse.'
The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started
as the 3.25a.m. south-bound roared in. The sleepers sprang to
life, and the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of
water and sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and
shrill yells of women gathering up their baskets, their families,
and their husbands.
'It is the train - only the te-rain. It will not come here.
Wait!' Amazed at the lama's immense- simplicity (he had handed
him a small bag full of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket
to Umballa. A sleepy clerk grunted and flung out a ticket to the
next station, just six miles distant.
'Nay,' said Kim, scanning it with a grin. 'This may serve for
farmers, but I live in the city of Lahore. It was cleverly done,
Babu. Now give the ticket to Umballa.'
The Babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.
'Now another to Amritzar,' said Kim, who had no notion of
spending Mahbub Ali's money on anything so crude as a paid ride
to Umballa. 'The price is so much. The small money in return is
just so much. I know the ways of the te-rain ... Never did yogi
need chela as thou dost,' he went on merrily to the bewildered
lama. 'They would have flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me.
This way! Come!' He returned the money, keeping only one anna in
each rupee of the price of the Umballa ticket as his commission -
the immemorial commission of Asia.
The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class
carriage. 'Were it not better to walk?' said he weakly.
A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. 'Is he
afraid? Do not be afraid. I remember the time when I was afraid
of the te-rain. Enter! This thing is the work of the Government.'
'I do not fear,' said the lama. 'Have ye room within for two?'
'There is no room even for a mouse,' shrilled the wife of a well-
to-do cultivator - a Hindu Jat from the rich Jullundur, district.
Our night trains are not as well looked after as the day ones,
where the sexes are very strictly kept to separate carriages.
'Oh, mother of my son, we can make space,' said the blueturbaned
husband. 'Pick up the child. It is a holy man, see'st thou?'
'And my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him
sit on my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!' She looked
round for approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed
behind her head drapery.
'Enter! Enter!' cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded
account-book in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: 'It is
well to be kind to the poor.'
'Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn
calf,' said a young Dogra, soldier going south on leave; and they
all laughed.
'Will it travel to Benares?' said the lama.
'Assuredly. Else why should we come? Enter, or we are left,'
cried Kim.
'See!' shrilled the Amritzar girl. 'He has never entered a train.
Oh, see!'
'Nay, help,' said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand
and hauling him in. 'Thus is it done, father.'
'But - but - I sit on the floor. It is against the Rule to sit on
a bench,' said the lama. 'Moreover, it cramps me.'
'I say,' began the money-lender, pursing his lips, 'that there is
not one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause as
to break. We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and
peoples.'
'Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones,' said the wife,
scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy.
'I said we might have gone by cart along the road,' said the
husband, 'and thus have saved some money.'
'Yes - and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way.
That was talked out ten thousand times.'
'Ay, by ten thousand tongues,' grunted he.
'The Gods help us poor women if we may not speak. Oho! He is of
that sort which may not look at or reply to a woman.' For the
lama, constrained by his Rule, took not the faintest notice of
her. 'And his disciple is like him?'
'Nay, mother,' said Kim most promptly. 'Not when the woman is
well-looking and above all charitable to the hungry.'
'A beggar's answer,' said the Sikh, laughing. 'Thou hast brought
it on thyself, sister!' Kim's hands were crooked in supplication.
'And whither goest thou?' said the woman, handing him the half of
a cake from a greasy package.
'Even to Benares.'
'Jugglers belike?' the young soldier suggested. 'Have ye any
tricks to pass the time? Why does not that yellow man answer?'
'Because,' said Kim stoutly, 'he is holy, and thinks upon matters
hidden from thee.'
'That may be well. We of the Ludhiana Sikhs' - he rolled it out
sonorously -'do not trouble our heads with doctrine. We fight.'
'My sister's brother's son is naik (corporal] in that regiment,'
said the Sikh craftsman quietly. 'There are also some Dogra
companies there.' The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other
caste than a Sikh, and the banker tittered.
'They are all one to me, ' said the Amritzar girl.
'That we believe,' snorted the cultivator's wife malignantly.
'Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands
are, as it were, one brotherhood. There is one brotherhood of the
caste, but beyond that again' - she looked round timidly -'the
bond of the Pulton - the Regiment -eh?'
'My brother is in a Jat regiment,' said the cultivator. 'Dogras
be good men.'
'Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion,' said the soldier, with
a scowl at the placid old man in the corner. 'Thy Sikhs thought
so when our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal
in the face of eight Afridi standards on the ridge not three
months gone.'
He told the story of a Border action in which the Dogra companies
of the Ludhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well. The Amritzar
girl smiled; for she knew the talc was to win her approval.
'Alas!' said the cultivator's wife at the end. 'So their villages
were burnt and their little children made homeless?'
'They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of
the Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is this Amritzar?'
'Ay, and here they cut our tickets,' said the banker, fumbling at
his belt.
The lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came
round. Ticket-collecting is a slow business in the East, where
people secrete their tickets in all sorts of curious places. Kim
produced his and was told to get out.
'But I go to Umballa,' he protested. 'I go with this holy man.'
'Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care. This ticket is only
Kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his
father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama's
declining years, and that the lama would die without his care.
All the carriage bade the guard be merciful - the banker was
specially eloquent here - but 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 miles 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.
'Protector of the Poor!'
The man backed towards the voice.
'Mahbub Ali says -'
'Hah! What says Mahbub Ali?' He made no attempt to look for the
speaker, and that showed Kim that he knew.
'The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established.'
'What proof is there?' The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge
in the side of the drive.
'Mahbub Ali has given me this proof.' Kim flipped the wad of
folded paper into the air, and it fell in the path beside the
man, who put his foot on it as a gardener came round the corner.
When the servant passed he picked it up, dropped a rupee - Kim
could hear the clink - and strode into the house, never turning
round. Swiftly Kim took up the money; but for all his training,
he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of
any game. What he desired was the visible effect of action; so,
instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and wormed
nearer to the house.
He saw - Indian bungalows are open through and through the
Englishman return to a small dressing-room, in a comer of the
veranda, that was half office, littered with papers and despatch-
boxes, and sit down to study Mahbub Ali's message. His face, by
the full ray of the kerosene lamp, changed and darkened, and Kim,
used as every beggar must be to watching countenances, took good
note.
'Will! Will, dear!' called a woman's voice. 'You ought to be in
the drawing-room. They'll be here in a minute.'
The man still read intently.
'Will!' said the voice, five minutes later. 'He's come. I can
hear the troopers in the drive.'
The man dashed out bareheaded as a big landau with four native
troopers behind it halted at the veranda, and a tall, black
haired man, erect as an arrow, swung out, preceded by a young
officer who laughed pleasantly.
Flat on his belly lay Kim, almost touching the high wheels. His
man and the black stranger exchanged two sentences.
'Certainly, sir,' said the young officer promptly. 'Everything
waits while a horse is concerned.'
'We shan't be more than twenty minutes,' said Kim's man. 'You can
do the honours -keep 'em amused, and all that.'
'Tell one of the troopers to wait,' said the tall man, and they
both passed into the dressing-room together as the landau rolled
away. Kim saw their heads bent over Mahbub Ali's message, and
heard the voices - one low and deferential, the other sharp and
decisive.
'It isn't a question of weeks. It is a question of days - hours
almost,' said the elder. 'I'd been expecting it for some time,
but this' - he tapped Mahbub Ali's paper - 'clinches it. Grogan's
dining here to-night, isn't he?'
'Yes, sir, and Macklin too.'
'Very good. I'll speak to them myself. The matter will be
referred to the Council, of course, but this is a case where one
is justified in assuming that we take action at once. Warn the
Pined and Peshawar brigades. It will disorganize all the summer
reliefs, but we can't help that. This comes of not smashing them
thoroughly the first time. Eight thousand should be enough.'
'What about artillery, sir?'
'I must consult Macklin.'
'Then it means war?'
'No. Punishment. When a man is bound by the action of his
predecessor -'
'But C25 may have lied.'
'He bears out the other's information. Practically, they showed
their hand six months back. But Devenish would have it there was
a chance of peace. Of course they used it to make themselves
stronger. Send off those telegrams at once - the new code, not
the old - mine and Wharton's. I don't think we need keep the
ladies waiting any longer. We can settle the rest over the
cigars. I thought it was coming. It's punishment - not war.'
As the trooper cantered off, Kim crawled round to the back of the
house, where, going on his Lahore experiences, he judged there
would be food - and information. The kitchen was crowded with
excited scullions, one of whom kicked him.
'Aie,' said Kim, feigning tears. 'I came only to wash dishes in
return for a bellyful.'
'All Umballa is on the same errand. Get hence. They go in now
with the soup. Think you that we who serve Creighton Sahib need
strange scullions to help us through a big dinner?'
'It is a very big dinner,' said Kim, looking at the plates.
'Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-
Lat Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief].'
'Ho!' said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had
learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone.
'And all that trouble,' said he to himself, thinking as usual in
Hindustani, 'for a horse's pedigree! Mahbub Ali should have come
to me to learn a little lying. Every time before that I have
borne a message it concerned a woman. Now it is men. Better. The
tall man said that they will loose a great army to punish someone
-somewhere - the news goes to Pindi and Peshawur. There are also
guns. Would I had crept nearer. It is big news!'
He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother
discussing the family law-suit in all its bearings with the
cultivator and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed.
After the evening meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim
felt very much of a man as he pulled at the smooth coconut-shell,
his legs spread abroad in the moonlight, his tongue clicking in
remarks from time to time. His hosts were most polite; for the
cultivator's wife had told them of his vision of the Red Bull,
and of his probable descent from another world. Moreover, the
lama was a great and venerable curiosity.
The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut Brahmin, dropped in
later, and naturally started a theological argument to impress
the family. By creed, of course, they were all on their priest's
side, but the lama was the guest and the novelty. His gentle
kindliness, and his impressive Chinese quotations, that sounded
like spells, delighted them hugely; and in this sympathetic,
simple air, he expanded like the Bodhisat's own lotus, speaking
of his life in the great hills of Such-zen, before, as he said,
'I rose up to seek enlightenment.'
Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a master-
hand at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family priest
led him on to describe his methods; each giving the planets names
that the other could not understand, and pointing upwards as the
big stars sailed across the dark. The children of the house
tugged unrebuked at his rosary; and he clean forgot the Rule
which forbids looking at women as he talked of enduring snows,
landslips, blocked passes, the remote cliffs where men find
sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful upland road that
leads at last into Great China itself.
'How thinkest thou of this one?' said the cultivator aside to the
priest.
'A holy man - a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but
his feet are upon the Way,' was the answer. 'And his methods of
nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure.1
'Tell me,' said Kim lazily, 'whether I find my Red Bull on a
green field, as was promised me.'
'What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?' the priest asked,
swelling with importance.
'Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May.'
'Of what year?'
'I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the
great earthquake in Srinagar which is in Kashmir.' This Kim had
from the woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball
O'Hara. The earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood
a leading date in the Punjab.
'Ai!' said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim's
supernatural origin more certain. "Was not such an one's daughter
born then -'
'And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years all
likely boys,' cried the cultivator's wife, sitting outside the
circle in the shadow.
'None reared in the knowledge,' said the family priest, 'forget
how the planets stood in their Houses upon that night.' He began
to draw in the dust of the courtyard. 'At least thou hast good
claim to a half of the House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?'
'Upon a day,' said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was
creating, 'I shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a
green field, but first there will enter two men making all things
ready.'
'Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that
clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the
place. Then begins the Sight. Two men - thou sayest? Ay, ay. The
Sun, leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins.
Hence the two men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me
a twig, little one.'
He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched
again in the dust mysterious signs - to the wonder of all save
the lama, who, with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.
At the end of half an hour, he tossed the twig from him with a
grunt.
'Hm! Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to
make all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign
over against him is the sign of War and armed men.'
'There was indeed a man of the Ludhiana Sikhs in the carriage
from Lahore,' said the cultivator's wife hopefully.
'Tck! Armed men - many hundreds. What concern hast thou with
war?' said the priest to Kim. 'Thine is a red and an angry sign
of War to be loosed very soon.'
'None - none.' said the lama earnestly. 'We seek only peace and
our River.'
Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the dressing-
room. Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.
The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. 'More than
this I cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, boy.'
'And my River, my River,' pleaded the lama. 'I had hoped his Bull
would lead us both to the River.'
'Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother,' the priest replied.
'Such things are not common.'
Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted
on departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and
nearly three annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and
with many blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.
'Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from
'Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who
would give us meat and shelter?' quoth Kim, stepping merrily
under his burden.
'Yonder is a small stream. Let us look,' said the lama, and he
led from the white road across the fields; walking into a very
hornets' nest of pariah dogs.
Chapter 3
Yea, voice of every Soul that clung
To life that strove from rung to rung
When Devadatta's rule was young,
The warm wind brings Kamakura.
Buddha at Kamakura.
Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a
market-gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers
for Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed.
'Such an one,' said the lama, disregarding the dogs, 'is impolite
to strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned
by his demeanour, my disciple.'
'Ho, shameless beggars!' shouted the farmer. 'Begone! Get hence!'
'We go,' the lama returned, with quiet dignity. 'We go from these
unblessed fields.'
'Ah,' said Kim, sucking in his breath. 'If the next crops fail,
thou canst only blame thine own tongue.'
The man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. 'The land is full of
beggars,' he began, half apologetically.
'And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O
Mali?' said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener
least likes. 'All we sought was to look at that river beyond the
field there.'
'River, forsooth!' the man snorted. 'What city do ye hail from
not to know a canal-cut? It runs as straight as an arrow ' and I
pay for the water as though it were molten silver. There is a
branch of a river beyond. But if ye need water I can give that -
and milk.'
'Nay, we will go to the river,' said the lama, striding out.
'Milk and a meal.' the man stammered, as he looked at the strange
tall figure. 'I - I would not draw evil upon myself - or my
crops. But beggars are so many in these hard days.'
'Take notice.' The lama turned to Kim. 'He was led to speak
harshly by the Red Mist of anger. That clearing from his eyes, he
becomes courteous and of an affable heart. May his fields be
blessed! Beware not to judge men too hastily, O farmer.'
'I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone
to byre,' said Kim to the abashed man. 'Is he not wise and holy?
I am his disciple.'
He cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the
narrow field-borders with great dignity.
'There is no pride,' said the lama, after a pause, 'there is no
pride among such as follow the Middle Way.'
'But thou hast said he was low-caste and discourteous.'
'Low-caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not?
Afterwards he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offence.
Moreover, he is as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he
does not tread the way of deliverance.' He halted at a little
runlet among the fields, and considered the hoof-pitted bank.
'Now, how wilt thou know thy River?' said Kim, squatting in the
shade of some tall sugar-cane.
'When I find it, an enlightenment will surely be given. This, I
feel, is not the place. O littlest among the waters, if only thou
couldst tell me where runs my River! But be thou blessed to make
the fields bear!'
'Look! Look!' Kim sprang to his side and dragged him back. A
yellow-and-brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to
the bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still -
a big cobra with fixed, lidless eyes.
'I have no stick - I have no stick,' said Kim. '1 will get me one
and break his back.'
'Why? He is upon the Wheel as we are - a life ascending or
descending - very far from deliverance. Great evil must the soul
have done that is cast into this shape.'
'I hate all snakes,' said Kim. No native training can quench the
white man's horror of the Serpent.
'Let him live out his life.' The coiled thing hissed and half
opened its hood. 'May thy release come soon, brother!' the lama
continued placidly. 'Hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my
River?'
'Never have I seen such a man as thou art,' Kim whispered,
overwhelmed. 'Do the very snakes understand thy talk?'
'Who knows?' He passed within a foot of the cobra's poised head.
It flattened itself among the dusty coils.
'Come, thou!' he called over his shoulder.
'Not I,' said Kim'. 'I go round.'
'Come. He does no hurt.'
Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some
droned Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed
and bounded across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no
sign.
'Never have I seen such a man.' Kim wiped the sweat from his
forehead. 'And now, whither go we?'
'That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger - far from my
own place. But that the rel-carriage fills my head with noises of
devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now ... Yet by so going
we may miss the River. Let us find another river.'
Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year
through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes,
and nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to
every glimpse of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping
villages at noonday; the lama replying to the volleyed questions
with an unswerving simplicity. They sought a River a River of
miraculous healing. Had any one knowledge of such a stream?
Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the
end and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a
meal. The women were always kind, and the little children as
children are the world over, alternately shy and venturesome.
Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-
walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle
came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day's
last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens
round hungry Umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the
staple crops.
He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining
strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set
warm cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the
evening ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for
the village priest.
Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of
Lahore, of railway travel, and such-like city things, while the
men talked, slowly as their cattle chew the cud.
'I cannot fathom it,' said the headman at last to the priest.
'How readest thou this talk?' The lama, his tale told, was
silently telling his beads.
'He is a Seeker.' the priest answered. 'The land is full of such.
Remember him who came only last, month - the fakir with the
tortoise?'
'Ay, but that man had right and reason, for Krishna Himself
appeared in a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-
pyre if he journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no God who is
within my knowledge.'
'Peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad,' the
smooth-shaven priest replied. 'Hear me.' He turned to the lama.
'Three koss [six miles] to the westward runs the great road to
Calcutta.'
'But I would go to Benares - to Benares.'
'And to Benares also. It crosses all streams on this side of
Hind. Now my word to thee, Holy One, is rest here till tomorrow.
Then take the road' (it was the Grand Trunk Road he meant) 'and
test each stream that it overpasses; for, as I understand, the
virtue of thy River lies neither in one pool nor place, but
throughout its length. Then, if thy Gods will, be assured that
thou wilt come upon thy freedom.'
'That is well said.' The lama was much impressed by the plan. 'We
will begin tomorrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet
such a near road.' A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed
the sentence. Even the priest was impressed, and the headman
feared an evil spell: but none could look at the lama's simple,
eager face and doubt him long.
'Seest thou my chela?' he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with
an important sniff. It was his duty to repay courtesy with
courtesy.
'I see - and hear.' The headman rolled his eye where Kim was
chatting to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a
fire.
'He also has a Search of his own. No river, but a Bull. Yea, a
Red Bull on a green field will some day raise him to honour. He
is, I think, not altogether of this world. He was sent of a
sudden to aid me in this search, and his name is Friend of all
the World.'
The priest smiled. 'Ho, there, Friend of all the World,' he cried
across the sharp-smelling smoke, 'what art thou?'
'This Holy One's disciple,' said Kim.
'He says thou are a but [a spirit].'
'Can buts eat?' said Kim, with a twinkle. 'For I am hungry.'
'It is no jest,' cried the lama. 'A certain astrologer of that city
whose name I have forgotten -'
'That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last
night,' Kim whispered to the priest.
'Ay, Umballa was it? He cast a horoscope and declared that my
chela should find his desire within two days. But what said he of
the meaning of the stars, Friend of all the World?'
Kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village
greybeards.
'The meaning of my Star is War,' he replied pompously.
Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the
brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have
lain down, Kim's white blood set him upon his feet.
'Ay, War,' he answered.
'That is a sure prophecy,' rumbled a deep voice. 'For there is
always war along the Border -as I know.'
It was an old, withered man, who had served the Government in the
days of the Mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry
regiment. The Government had given him a good holding in the
village, and though the demands of his sons, now grey-bearded
officers on their own account, had impoverished him, he was still
a person of consequence. English officials - Deputy Commissioners
even - turned aside from the main road to visit him, and on those
occasions he dressed himself in the uniform of ancient days, and
stood up like a ramrod.
'But this shall be a great war - a war of eight thousand.' Kim's
voice shrilled across the quick-gathering crowd, astonishing
himself.
'Redcoats or our own regiments?' the old man snapped, as though
he were asking an equal. His tone made men respect Kim.
'Redcoats,' said Kim at a venture. 'Redcoats and guns.'
'But - but the astrologer said no word of this,' cried the lama,
snuffing prodigiously in his excitement.
'But I know. The word has come to me, who am this Holy One's
disciple. There will rise a war - a war of eight thousand redcoats.
>From Pindi and Peshawur they will be drawn. This is
sure.
'The boy has heard bazar-talk,' said the priest.
'But he was always by my side,' said the lama. 'How should he know?
I did not know.'
'He will make a clever juggler when the old man is dead,' muttered
the priest to the headman. 'What new trick is this?'
'A sign. Give me a sign,' thundered the old soldier suddenly. 'If
there were war my sons would have told me.'
'When all is ready, thy sons, doubt not, will be told. But it is a
long road from thy sons to the man in whose hands these things
lie.' Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences
in the letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he
pretended to know more than he knew. But now he was playing for
larger things - the sheer excitement and the sense of power. He
drew a new breath and went on.
'Old man, give me a sign. Do underlings order the goings of eight
thousand redcoats -with guns?'
'No.' Still the old man answered as though Kim were an equal.
'Dost thou know who He is, then, that gives the order?'
'I have seen Him.'
'To know again?'
'I have known Him since he was a lieutenant in the topkhana (the
Artillery].'
'A tall man. A tall man with black hair, walking thus?' Kim took
a few paces in a stiff, wooden style.
'Ay. But that anyone may have seen.' The crowd were breathless-
still through all this talk.
'That is true,' said Kim. 'But I will say more. Look now. First
the great man walks thus. Then He thinks thus.' (Kim drew a
forefinger over his forehead and downwards till it came to rest
by the angle of the jaw.) 'Anon He twitches his fingers thus.
Anon He thrusts his hat under his left armpit.' Kim illustrated
the motion and stood like a stork.
The old man groaned, inarticulate with amazement; and the crowd
shivered.
'So - so - so. But what does He when He is about to give an order?'
'He rubs the skin at the back of his neck - thus. Then falls one
finger on the table and He makes a small sniffing noise through
his nose. Then He speaks, saying: "Loose such and such a regiment.
Call out such guns."'
The old man rose stiffly and saluted.
'"For"' - Kim translated into the vernacular the clinching
sentences he had heard in the dressing-room at Umballa - '"For,"
says He, "we should have done this long ago. It is not war - it is
a chastisement. Snff!"'
'Enough. I believe. I have seen Him thus in the smoke of battles.
Seen and heard. It is He!'
'I saw no smoke' - Kim's voice shifted to the rapt sing-song of the
wayside fortune-teller. 'I saw this in darkness. First came a man
to make things clear. Then came horsemen. Then came He. standing in
a ring of light. The rest followed as I have said. Old man, have I
spoken truth?'
'It is He. Past all doubt it is He.'
The crowd drew a long, quavering breath, staring alternately at the
old man, still at attention, and ragged Kim against the purple
twilight.
'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
fakirs 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 fakirs 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 but-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 Pathankot - 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