Good Luck, she is never a lady,
But the cursedest quean alive.
Tricksy, wincing, and jady--
Kittle to lead or drive.
Greet her--she's hailing a stranger!
Meet her--she's busking to leave!
Let her alone for a shrew to the bone
And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!
Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune!
Give or hold at your will
If I've no care for Fortune,
Fortune must follow me still!
'The Wishing Caps.'
THEN, lowering their voices, they spoke together. Kim came to rest under
a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow.
'Let us go on. The River is not here.'
'Hai mai? Have we not walked enough for a little? Our River will not run
away. Patience, and he will give us a dole.'
'That,' said the old soldier suddenly, 'is the Friend of the Stars. He
brought me the news yesterday. Having seen the very man Himself, in a
vision, giving orders for the war.'
'Hm!' said his son, all deep in his broad chest. 'He came by a
bazar-rumour and made profit of it.'
His father laughed. 'At least he did not ride to me begging for a new
charger and the gods know how many rupees. Are thy brothers' regiments
also under orders?'
'I do not know. I took leave and came swiftly to thee in case--'
'In case they ran before thee to beg. O gamblers and spendthrifts all!
But thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. A good horse is needed
there, truly. A good follower and a good pony also for the marching. Let
us see--let us see.' He thrummed on the pommel.
'This is no place to cast accounts in, my father. Let us go to thy
house.'
'At least pay the boy then: I have no pice with me, and he brought
auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the World, a war is toward as thou
hast said.'
'Nay, as I know, the war,' returned Kim composedly.
'Eh?' said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.
'My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the
news--bear witness we brought the news, and now we go.' Kim half-crooked
his hand at his side.
The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling something
about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and would feed
them well for some days. The lama, seeing the flash of the metal, droned
a blessing.
'Go thy way, Friend of all the World,' piped the old soldier, wheeling
his scrawny mount. 'For once in all my days I have met a true
prophet--who was not in the Army.'
Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as the
younger.
A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the road.
He had seen the money pass.
'Halt!' he cried in impressive English. 'Know ye not that there is a
takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter the
road from this side-road. It is the order of the Sirkar, and the money
is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the ways.'
'And the bellies of the police,' said Kim, skipping out of arm's reach.
'Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came from the
nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law. Hast thou ever heard the
name of thy brother?'
'And who was he? Leave the boy alone,' cried a senior constable,
immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the
veranda.
'He took a label from a bottle of belaitee-pani (soda-water), and,
affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who
passed, saying that it was the Sirkar's order. Then came an Englishman
and broke his head. Ah, brother, I am a town-crow, not a village-crow!'
The policeman drew back abashed, and Kim hooted at him all down the
road.
'Was there ever such a disciple as I?' he cried merrily to the lama.
'All earth would have picked thy bones within ten mile of Lahore city if
I had not guarded thee.'
'I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or
sometimes an evil imp,' said the lama, smiling slowly.
'I am thy chela.' Kim dropped into step at his side--that indescribable
gait of the long-distance tramp all the world over.
'Now let us walk,' muttered the lama, and to the click of his rosary
they walked in silence mile upon mile. The lama, as usual, was deep in
meditation, but Kim's bright eyes were open wide. This broad, smiling
river of life, he considered, was a vast improvement on the cramped and
crowded Lahore streets. There were new people and new sights at every
stride--castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his
experience.
They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with baskets of
lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs sniffing
at their heels. These people kept their own side of the road, moving at
a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes gave them ample room;
for the Sansi is deep pollution. Behind them, walking wide and stiffly
across the strong shadows, the memory of his leg-irons still on him,
strode one newly released from the jail; his full stomach and shiny skin
to prove that the Government fed its prisoners better than most honest
men could feed themselves. Kim knew that walk well, and made broad jest
of it as they passed. Then an Akali, a wild-eyed, wild-haired Sikh
devotee in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, with polished-steel
quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban, stalked past,
returning from a visit to one of the independent Sikh States, where he
had been singing the ancient glories of the Khalsa to College-trained
princelings in top-boots and white-cord breeches. Kim was careful not to
irritate that man; for the Akali's temper is short and his arm quick.
Here and there they met or were overtaken by the gaily dressed crowds of
whole villages turning out to some local fair; the women, with their
babes on their hips, walking behind the men, the older boys prancing on
sticks of sugar-cane, dragging rude brass models of locomotives such as
they sell for a halfpenny, or flashing the sun into the eyes of their
betters from cheap toy mirrors. One could see at a glance what each had
bought; and if there were any doubt it needed only to watch the wives
comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the newly purchased dull glass
bracelets that come from the North-West. These merry-makers stepped
slowly, calling one to the other and stopping to haggle with
sweetmeat-sellers, or to make a prayer before one of the wayside
shrines--sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mussalman--which the low caste of
both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A solid line of blue,
rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing
up through the quivering dust and trot past to a chorus of quick
cackling. That was a gang of changars--the women who have taken all the
embankments of all the Northern railways under their charge--a
flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan of
earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a job, and wasting no time by
the road. They belong to the caste whose men do not count, and they
walked with squared elbows, swinging hips, and heads on high, as suits
women who carry heavy weights. A little later a marriage procession
would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings, and a smell
of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust. One
could see the bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel, staggering
through the haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony turned aside to
snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim would join the
Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the couple a hundred
sons and no daughters, as the saying is. Still more interesting and
more to be shouted over it was when a strolling juggler with some
half-trained monkeys, or a panting, feeble bear, or a woman who tied
goats' horns to her feet, and with these danced on a slack-rope, set the
horses to shying and the women to shrill, long-drawn quavers of
amazement.
The lama never raised his eyes. He did not note the money-lender on his
goose-rumped pony, hastening along to collect the cruel interest; or the
long-shouting, deep-voiced little mob--still in military formation--of
native soldiers on leave, rejoicing to be rid of their breeches and
puttees, and saying the most outrageous things to the most respectable
women in sight. Even the seller of Ganges-water he did not see, and Kim
expected that he would at least buy a bottle of that precious stuff. He
looked steadily at the ground, and strode as steadily hour after hour,
his soul busied elsewhere. But Kim was in the seventh heaven of joy. The
Grand Trunk at this point was built on an embankment to guard against
winter floods from the foothills, so that one walked, as it were, a
little above the country, along a stately corridor, seeing all India
spread out to left and right. It was beautiful to behold the many-yoked
grain and cotton waggons crawling over the country-roads: one could hear
their axles, complaining a mile away, coming nearer, till with shouts
and yells and bad words they climbed up the steep incline and plunged on
to the hard main road, carter reviling carter. It was equally beautiful
to watch the people, little clumps of red and blue and pink and white
and saffron, turning aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and
growing small by twos and threes across the level plain. Kim felt these
things, though he could not give tongue to his feelings, and so
contented himself with buying peeled sugar-cane and spitting the pith
generously about his path. From time to time the lama took snuff, and at
last Kim could endure the silence no longer.
'This is a good land--the land of the South!' said he. 'The air is good;
the water is good. Eh?'
'And they are all bound upon the Wheel,' said the lama. 'Bound from life
after life. To none of these has the Way been shown.' He shook himself
back to this world.
'And now we have walked a weary way,' said Kim. 'Surely we shall soon
come to a parao (a resting-place). Shall we stay there? Look, the sun is
sloping.'
'Who will receive us this evening?'
'That is all one. This country is full of good folk. Besides,'--he sunk
his voice beneath a whisper,--'we have money.'
The crowd thickened as they neared the resting-place which marked the
end of their day's journey. A line of stalls selling very simple food
and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a police-station, a well, a
horse-trough, a few trees, and, under them, some trampled ground dotted
with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a parao on the
Grand Trunk; if you except the beggars and the crows--both hungry.
By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower
branches of the mango trees; the parakeets and doves were coming home in
their hundreds; the chattering, gray-backed Seven Sisters, talking over
the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes almost
under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings in the
branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the night-picket.
Swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for an instant the
faces and the cart-wheels and the bullocks' horns as red as blood. Then
the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low, even haze,
like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the country, and
bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke and cattle and
the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes. The evening patrol
hurried out of the police-station with important coughings and
reiterated orders; and a live charcoal ball in the cup of a wayside
carter's hookah glowed red while Kim's eye mechanically watched the last
flicker of the sun on the brass tweezers.
[Illustration: The Lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing
his stick of sugar-cane, and making way for no one under the status of a
priest.]
The life of the parao was very like that of the Kashmir Serai on a small
scale. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only
allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.
His wants were few, because, since the lama had no caste scruples,
cooked food from the nearest stall would serve; but, for luxury's sake,
Kim bought a handful of dung-cakes to build a fire. All about, coming
and going round the little flames, men cried for oil, or grain, or
sweetmeats, or tobacco, jostling one another while they waited their
turn at the well; and under the men's voices you heard from halted,
shuttered carts the high squeals and giggles of women whose faces should
not be seen in public.
Nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their womenfolk
travel--and they visit a good deal--it is better to take them quickly by
rail in a properly screened compartment; and that custom is spreading.
But there are always those of the old rock who hold by the use of their
forefathers; and, above all, there are always the old women,--more
conservative than the men,--who toward the end of their days go a
pilgrimage. They, being withered and undesirable, do not, under certain
circumstances, object to unveiling. After their long seclusion, during
which they have always been in business touch with a thousand outside
interests, they love the bustle and stir of the open road, the
gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite possibilities of gossip with
like-minded dowagers. Very often it suits a long-suffering family that a
strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady should disport herself about India
in this fashion; for certainly pilgrimage is grateful to the Gods. So
all about India, in the most remote places, as in the most public, you
find some knot of grizzled servitors in nominal charge of an old lady
who is more or less curtained and hid away in a bullock-cart. Such men
are staid and discreet, and when a European or a high-caste native is
near will net their charge with most elaborate precautions; but in the
ordinary haphazard chances of pilgrimage the precautions are not taken.
The old lady is, after all, intensely human, and lives to look upon
life.
Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a
broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had
just been drawn into the parao. Eight men made its retinue, and two of
the eight were armed with rusty sabres--sure signs that they followed a
person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An
increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a
European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains.
Here was evidently a woman used to command.
Kim looked over the retinue critically. Half of them were thin-legged,
gray-bearded Ooryas from down country. The other half were duffle-clad,
felt-hatted hillmen of the North: and that mixture told its own tale,
even if he had not overheard the incessant sparring between the two
divisions. The old lady was going south on a visit--probably to a rich
relative, most probably to a son-in-law, who had sent up an escort as a
mark of respect. The hillmen would be of her own people--Kulu or Kangra
folk. It was quite clear that she was not taking her daughter down to be
wedded, or the curtains would have been laced home and the guard would
have allowed no one near the car. A merry and a high-spirited dame,
thought Kim, balancing the dung-cake in one hand, the cooked food in the
other, and piloting the lama with a nudging shoulder. Something might be
made out of the meeting. The lama would give him no help, but, as a
conscientious chela, Kim was delighted to beg for two.
He built his fire as close to the cart as he dared, waiting for one of
the escort to order him away. The lama dropped wearily to the ground,
much as a heavy fruit-eating bat cowers, and returned to his rosary.
'Stand farther off, beggar!' The order was shouted in broken Hindustanee
by one of the hillmen.
'Huh! It is only a pahari' (a hillman), said Kim over his shoulder.
'Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?'
The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim's pedigree for three
generations.
'Ah!' Kim's voice was sweeter than ever, as he broke the dung-cake into
fit pieces. 'In my country we call that the beginning of love-talk.'
A harsh, thin cackle behind the curtains put the hillman on his mettle
for a second shot.
'Not so bad--not so bad,' said Kim with calm. 'But have a care, my
brother, lest we--we, I say--be minded to give a curse or so in return.
And our curses have the knack of biting home.'
The Ooryas laughed; the hillman sprang forward threateningly; the lama
suddenly raised his head, bringing his huge tam-o'-shanter cap into the
full light of Kim's new-started fire.
'What is it?' said he.
The man halted as though struck to stone. 'I--I--am saved from a great
sin,' he stammered.
'The foreigner has found him a priest at last,' whispered one of the
Ooryas.
'Hai! Why is that beggar-brat not well beaten?' the old woman cried.
The hillman drew back to the cart and whispered something to the
curtain. There was dead silence, then a muttering.
'This goes well,' thought Kim, pretending neither to see nor hear.
'When--when--he has eaten,'--the hillman fawned on Kim--'it--it is
requested that the Holy One will do the honour to talk to one who would
speak to him.'
'After he has eaten he will sleep,' Kim returned loftily. He could not
quite see what new turn the game had taken, but stood resolute to profit
by it. 'Now, I will get him his food.' The last sentence, spoken loudly,
ended with a sigh as of faintness.
'I--I myself and the others of my people will look to that--if it is
permitted.'
'It is permitted,' said Kim, more loftily than ever. 'Holy One, these
people will bring us food.'
'The land is good. All the country of the South is good--a great and a
terrible world,', mumbled the lama drowsily.
'Let him sleep,' said Kim, 'but look to it that we are well fed when he
wakes. He is a very holy man.'
Again one of the Ooryas said something contemptuously.
'He is not a faquir. He is not a down-country beggar,' Kim went on
severely, addressing the stars. 'He is the most holy of holy men. He is
above all castes. I am his chela.'
'Come here!' said the flat thin voice behind the curtain; and Kim came,
conscious that eyes he could not see were staring at him. One skinny
brown finger heavy with rings lay on the edge of the cart, and the talk
went this way:
'Who is that one?'
'An exceedingly holy one. He comes from far off. He comes from Tibet.'
'Where in Tibet?'
'From behind the snows--from a very far place. He knows the stars; he
makes horoscopes; he reads nativities. But he does not do this for
money. He does it for kindness and great charity. I am his disciple. I
am called also the Friend of the Stars.'
'Thou art no hillman.'
'Ask him. He will tell thee I was sent to him from the stars to show him
an end to his pilgrimage.'
'Humph! Consider, brat, that I am an old woman and not altogether a
fool. Lamas I know, and to these I give reverence, but thou art no more
a lawful chela than this my finger is the pole of this waggon. Thou art
a casteless Hindu--a bold and unblushing beggar, attached, belike, to
the Holy One for the sake of gain.'
'Do we not all work for gain?' Kim changed his tone promptly to match
that altered voice. 'I have heard'--this was a bow drawn at a
venture--'I have heard--'
'What hast thou heard?' she snapped, rapping with the finger.
'Nothing that I well remember, but some talk in the bazars, which is
doubtless a lie, that even Rajahs--small hill Rajahs--'
'But none the less of good Rajput blood.'
'Assuredly of good blood. That these even sell the more comely of their
womenfolk for gain. Down south they sell them--to zemindars and such-all
of Oudh.'
If there be one thing in the world that the small hill Rajahs deny it is
just this charge; but it happens to be one thing that the bazars
believe, when they discuss the mysterious slave-traffics of India. The
old lady explained to Kim, in a tense, indignant whisper, precisely what
manner and fashion of malignant liar he was. Had Kim hinted this when
she was a girl, he would have been pommelled to death that same evening
by an elephant. This was perfectly true.
'Ahai! I am only a beggar's brat, as the Eye of Beauty has said,' he
wailed in extravagant terror.
'Eye of Beauty, forsooth! Who am I that thou shouldst fling
beggar-endearments at me?' And yet she laughed at the long-forgotten
word. 'Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without truth.
Ay, thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up and down
Hind that a king's widow must jostle all the scum of the land, and be
made a mock by beggars.'
'Great Queen,' said Kim promptly, for he heard her shaking with
indignation, 'I am even what the Great Queen says I am; but none the
less is my master holy. He has not yet heard the Great Queen's order
that--'
'Order? I order a Holy One--a Teacher of the Law--to come and speak to a
woman? Never!'
'Pity my stupidity. I thought it was given as an order--'
'It was not. It was a petition. Does this make all clear?'
A silver coin clicked on the edge of the cart. Kim took it and salaamed
profoundly. The old lady recognised that, as the eyes and the ears of
the lama, he was to be propitiated.
'I am but the Holy One's disciple. When he has eaten perhaps he will
come.'
'Oh, villain and shameless rogue!' The jewelled forefinger shook itself
at him reprovingly; but he could hear the old lady's chuckle.
'Nay, what is it?' he said, dropping into his most caressing and
confidential tone--the one, he well knew, that few could resist. 'Is--is
there any need of a son in thy family? Speak freely, for we priests--'
That last was a direct plagiarism from a faquir by the Taksali Gate.
'We priests! Thou art not yet old enough to--' She checked the joke with
another laugh. 'Believe me, now and again, we women, O priest, think of
other matters than sons. Moreover, my daughter has borne her man-child.'
'Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are better
still.' Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative cough, looking
discreetly earthward.
'True--oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those
down-country Brahmins are utterly useless. I sent gifts and monies and
gifts again to them and they prophesied.'
'Ah,' drawled Kim, with infinite contempt, 'they prophesied!' A
professional could have done no better.
'And it was not till I remembered my own Gods that my prayers were
heard. I chose an auspicious hour, and--perhaps thy Holy One has heard
of the Abbot of the Lung-Cho lamassery. It was to him I put the matter,
and behold in the due time all came about as I desired. The Brahmin in
the house of the father of my daughter's son has since said that it was
through his prayers--which is a little error that I will explain to him
when we reach our journey's end. And so afterwards I go to Buddh Gaya,
to make shraddha for the father of my children.'
'Thither go we.'
'Doubly auspicious,' chirruped the old lady. 'A second son at least!'
'O Friend of all the World!' The lama had waked, and, simply as a child
bewildered in a strange bed, called for Kim.
'I come! I come, Holy One!' He dashed to the fire, where he found the
lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen visibly adoring
him and the Southerners looking sourly.
'Go back! Withdraw!' Kim cried. 'Do we eat publicly like dogs?' They
finished the meal in silence, each turned a little from the other, and
Kim topped it with a native-made cigarette.
'Have I not said an hundred times that the South is a good land? Here is
a virtuous and high-born widow of a Hill Rajah on pilgrimage, she says,
to Buddh Gaya. She it is sends us those dishes; and when thou art well
rested she would speak to thee.'
'Is this also thy work?' The lama dipped deep into his snuff-gourd.
'Who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?' Kim's
eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his nostrils
and stretched him on the dusty ground. 'Have I failed to oversee thy
comforts, Holy One?'
'A blessing on thee.' The lama inclined his solemn head. 'I have known
many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to none among
men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to
thee--thoughtful, wise, and courteous, but something of a small imp.'
'And I have never seen such a priest as thou.' Kim considered the
benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. 'It is less than three days
since we took road together, and it is as though it were a hundred
years.'
'Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have rendered
thee some service. May be'--he smiled--'I freed thee from a trap; or,
having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not enlightened,
cast thee back into the river.'
'May be,' said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation again
and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not consider
imaginative. 'Now, as regards that woman in the bullock-cart, I think
she needs a second son for her daughter.'
'That is no part of the Way,' sighed the lama. 'But at least she is from
the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!'
He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to come
too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he caught were
in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech of the
mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned over
in his mind before answering. Now and again he heard the sing-song
cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was a strange picture that Kim
watched between drooped eyelids. The lama, very straight and erect, the
deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in the light of the
parao fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is slashed with the shadow
of the long sun, addressed a tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like
a many-coloured jewel in the same uncertain light. The patterns on the
gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and re-forming as the
folds shook and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew more
earnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light
between the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain
darkness speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms
and faces and shadows. The voices of early evening had settled down to
one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the
bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the tinkle of
a Bengali dancing-girl's sitar. Most men had eaten and pulled deep at
their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full blast sound like
bull-frogs.
At last the lama returned. A hillman walked behind him with a wadded
cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire.
'She deserves ten thousand grandchildren,' thought Kim. 'None the less,
but for me, these gifts would not have come.'
'A virtuous woman--and a wise one.' The lama slackened off, joint by
joint, like a slow camel. 'The world is full of charity to those who
follow the Way.' He flung a fair half of the quilt over Kim.
'And what said she?' Kim rolled up in his share of it.
'She asked me many questions and propounded many problems--the most of
which were idle tales which she had heard from devil-serving priests who
pretend to follow the Way. Some I answered, and some I said were
foolish. Many wear the Robe, but few keep the Way.'
'True. That is true.' Kim used the thoughtful, conciliatory tone of
those who wish to draw confidences.
'But by her lights she is most right-minded. She desires greatly that we
should go with her to Buddh Gaya; her road being ours, as I understand,
for many days' journey to the southward.'
'And?'
'Patience a little. To this I said that my Search came before all
things. She had heard many foolish legends, but this great truth of my
River she had never heard. Such are the priests of the lower hills! She
knew the Abbot of Lung-Cho, but she did not know of my River--nor the
tale of the Arrow.'
'And?'
'I spoke therefore of the Search, and of the Way, and of matters that
were profitable; she desiring only that I should accompany her and make
prayer for a second son.'
'Aha! "We women" do not think of anything save children,' said Kim
sleepily.
'Now, since our roads run together for a while, I do not see that we in
any way depart from our Search if so be we accompany her--at least as
far as--I have forgotten the name of the city.'
'Ohe!' said Kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of the
Ooryas a few yards away. 'Where is your master's house?'
'A little behind Saharunpore, among the fruit gardens.' He named the
village.
'That was the place,' said the lama. 'So far, at least, we can go with
her.'
'Flies go to carrion,' said the Oorya, in an abstracted voice.
'For the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin.' Kim breathed the
proverb impersonally to the shadow-tops of the trees overhead.
The Oorya grunted and held his peace.
'So then we go with her, Holy One?'
'Is there any reason against? I can still step aside and try all the
rivers that the road overpasses. She desires that I should come. She
very greatly desires it.'
Kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. When once that imperious old lady had
recovered from her natural awe of a lama he thought it probable that she
would be worth listening to.
He was nearly asleep when the lama suddenly quoted a proverb: 'The
husbands of the talkative have a great reward hereafter.' Then Kim heard
him snuff thrice, and dozed off, still laughing.
The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. Kim
sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. This was
seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have
it--bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of
bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food,
and new sights at every turn of the approving eye. The morning mist
swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some distant
river in shrieking green hosts: all the well-wheels within earshot went
to work. India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake
and more excited than any one, chewing on a twig that he would presently
use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly from all
the customs of the country he knew and loved. There was no need to worry
about food--no need to spend a cowrie at the crowded stalls. He was the
disciple of a holy man annexed by a strong-willed old lady. All things
would be prepared for them, and when they were respectfully invited so
to do they would sit and eat. For the rest,--Kim giggled here as he
cleaned his teeth,--his hostess would rather heighten the enjoyment of
the road. He inspected her bullocks critically, as they came up grunting
and blowing under the yokes. If they went too fast--it was not
likely--there would be a pleasant seat for himself along the pole; the
lama would sit beside the driver. The escort, of course, would walk. The
old lady, equally of course, would talk a great deal, and by what he had
heard that conversation would not lack salt. She was already ordering,
haranguing, rebuking, and, it must be said, cursing her servants for
delays.
'Get her her pipe. In the name of the Gods, get her her pipe and stop
her ill-omened mouth,' cried an Oorya, tying up his shapeless bundles of
bedding. 'She and the parrots are alike. They screech in the dawn.'
'The lead-bullocks! Hai! Look to the lead-bullocks!' They were backing
and wheeling as a grain-cart's axle caught them by the horns. 'Son of an
owl, where dost thou go?' This to the grinning carter.
'Ai! Yai! Yai! That within there is the Queen of Delhi going to pray
for a son,' the man called back over his high load. 'Room for the Queen
of Delhi and her prime minister the gray monkey climbing up his own
sword!' Another cart loaded with bark for a down-country tannery
followed close behind, and its driver added a few compliments as the
ruth-bullocks backed and backed again.
From behind the shaking curtains came one volley of invective. It did
not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting
appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even Kim had heard. He
could see the carter's bare chest collapse with amazement, as the man
salaamed reverently to the voice, leaped from the pole, and helped the
escort haul their volcano on to the main road. Here the voice told him
truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing in
his absence.
'Oh, shabash!' murmured Kim, unable to contain himself, as the man slunk
away.
'Well done, indeed? It is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman may
not go to make prayer to her gods except she be jostled and insulted by
all the refuse of Hindustan--that she must eat gali (abuse) as men eat
ghi. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue--a word or two well spoken
that serves the occasion. And still am I without my tobacco! Who is the
one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not yet prepared my pipe?'
It was hastily thrust in by a hillman, and a trickle of thick smoke from
each corner of the curtains showed that peace was restored.
If Kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man, to-day
he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal procession,
with a recognised place under the patronage of an old lady of charming
manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads tied up native
fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling enormous clouds of
dust.
The lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of
sugar-cane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest. They
could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker. She
bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road; and so soon as
they were clear of the parao she flung back the curtains and peered out,
her veil a third across her face. Her men did not eye her directly when
she addressed them, and thus the proprieties were more or less observed.
A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly
uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing from
her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.
'O mother,' he cried, 'do they do this in the zenanas? Suppose an
Englishman came by and saw that thou hadst no nose?'
'What?' she shrilled back. 'Thy own mother has no nose? Why say so,
then, on the open road?'
It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the gesture
of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.
'Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?' She withdrew all her veil and
stared at him.
It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he
called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few other
fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.
'That is a nut-cut' (rogue), she said. 'All police-constables are
nut-cuts; but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou hast
never learned all that since thou camest from Belait (Europe). Who
suckled thee?'
'A pahareen--a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty under
a shade--O Dispenser of Delights,' and he was gone.
'These be the sort'--she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her
mouth with pan. 'These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the
land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe,
suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse
than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings.' Then she told a long, long
tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young policeman who had
disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin of her own, in the
matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a quotation from a work
by no means devotional.
Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether the
lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So Kim
dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. For an hour
or more the lama's tam-o'-shanter showed like a moon through the haze;
and, from all he heard, Kim gathered that the old woman wept. One of the
Ooryas half apologised for his rudeness overnight, saying that he had
never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it to the
presence of the strange priest. Personally, he believed in Brahmins,
though, like all natives, he was acutely aware of their cunning and
their greed. Still, when Brahmins but irritated with begging demands the
mother of his master's wife, and when she sent them away so angry that
they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real reason of the second
off-side bullock going lame, and of the pole breaking the night before),
he was prepared to accept any priest of any other denomination in or out
of India. To this Kim assented with wise nods, and bade the Oorya
observe that the lama took no money, and that the cost of his and Kim's
food would be repaid a hundred times in the good luck that would attend
the caravan henceforward. He also told stories of Lahore city, and sang
a song or two which made the escort laugh. As a town-mouse well
acquainted with the latest songs by the most fashionable
composers,--they are women for the most part,--Kim had a distinct
advantage over men from a little fruit-village behind Saharunpore, but
he let that advantage be inferred.
At noon they, turned aside to eat, and the meal was good, plentiful, and
well served on plates of clean leaves, in decency, out of drift of the
dust. They gave the scraps to certain beggars, that all requirements
might be fulfilled, and sat down to a long, luxurious smoke. The old
lady had retreated behind her curtains, but mixed most freely in the
talk, her servants arguing with and contradicting her as servants do
throughout the East. She compared the cool and the pines of the Kangra
and Kulu hills with the dust and the mangoes of the South; she told a
tale of some old local Gods at the edge of her husband's territory; she
roundly abused the tobacco which she was then smoking, reviled all
Brahmins, and speculated without reserve on the coming of many
grandsons.