I'd not give room for an Emperor--
I'd hold my road for a King.
To the Triple Crown I'd not bow down--
But this is a different thing!
I'll not fight with the Powers of Air--
Sentries pass him through!
Drawbridge let fall--He's the Lord of us all--
The Dreamer whose dream came true!
'The Siege of the Fairies.'
TWO hundred miles north of Chini, on the blue shale of Ladakh, lies
Yankling Sahib, the merry-minded man, spy-glassing wrathfully across the
ridges for some sign of his pet tracker--a man from Ao-chung. But that
renegade, with a new Mannlicher rifle and two hundred cartridges, is
elsewhere, shooting musk-deer for the market, and Yankling Sahib will
learn next season how very ill he has been.
Up the valleys of Bushahr--the far-beholding eagles of the Himalayas
swerve at his new blue-and-white gored umbrella--hurries a Bengali, once
fat and well-looking, now lean and weather-worn. He has received the
thanks of two foreigners of distinction, piloted not unskillfully to
Mashobra tunnel which leads to the great and gay capital of India. It
was not his fault that, blanketed by wet mists, he conveyed them past
the telegraph-station and European colony of Kotgarh. It was not his
fault, but that of the Gods, of whom he discoursed so engagingly, that
he led them into the borders of Nahan, where the Rajah of that state
mistook them for deserting British soldiery. Hurree Babu explained the
greatness and glory, in their own country, of his companions, till the
drowsy kinglet smiled. He explained it to every one who asked--many
times--aloud--variously. He begged food, arranged accommodation, proved
a skilful leech for an injury of the groin--such a blow as one may
receive rolling down a rock-covered hillside in the dark--and in all
things indispensable. The reason of his friendliness did him credit.
With millions of fellow-serfs, he had learned to look upon Russia as the
great deliverer from the North. He was a fearful man. He had been afraid
that he could not save his illustrious employers from the anger of an
excited peasantry. He himself would just as lief hit a holy man as not,
but. . . . He was deeply grateful and sincerely rejoiced that he had
done his 'little possible' towards bringing their venture to--barring
the lost baggage--a successful issue. He had forgotten the blows; denied
that any blows had been dealt that unseemly first night under the pines.
He asked neither pension nor retaining fee, but, if they deemed him
worthy, would they write him a testimonial? It might be useful to him
later, if others, their friends, came over the Passes. He begged them to
remember him in their future greatnesses, for he 'opined subtly' that
he, even he, Mohendro Lal Dutt, M. A. of Calcutta, had 'done the state
some service.'
They gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness, and
unerring skill as a guide. He put it in his waist-belt and sobbed with
emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. He led them at high
noon along crowded Simla Mall to the Alliance Bank of Simla, where they
wished to establish their identity. Thence he vanished like a dawn-cloud
on Jakko.
Behold him, too fine drawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the drugs in
his little brass-bound box, ascending Shamlegh slope, a just man made
perfect. Watch him, all Babudom laid aside, smoking at noon on a cot,
while a woman with turquoise-studded head-gear points south-easterly
across the bare grass. Litters, she says, do not travel as fast as
single men, but his birds should now be in the Plains. The holy man
would not stay though Lispeth pressed him. The Babu groans heavily,
girds up his huge loins, and is off again. He does not care to travel
after dusk; but his days' marches--there is none to enter them in a
book--would astonish folk who mock at his race. Kindly villagers,
remembering the Dacca drug-vendor of two months ago, give him shelter
against evil spirits of the wood. He dreams of Bengali Gods, University
text-books of education, and the Royal Society, London, England. Next
dawn the bobbing blue-and-white umbrella goes forward.
On the edge of the Doon, Mussoorie well behind them and the Plains
spread out in golden dust before, rests a worn litter in which--all the
Hills know it--lies a sick lama who seeks a River for his healing.
Villages have almost come to blows over the honour of bearing it, for
not only has the lama given them blessings, but his disciple good
money--full one-third Sahibs' prices. Twelve miles a day has the dooli
travelled, as the greasy, rubbed pole-ends show, and by roads that few
Sahibs use. Over the Nilang Pass in storm when the driven snow-dust
filled every fold of the impassive lama's drapery; between the black
horns of Raieng where they heard the whistle of the wild goats through
the clouds; pitching and strained on the shale below; hard-held between
shoulder and clenched jaw when they rounded the hideous curves of the
Cut Road under Bhagirati; swinging and creaking to the steady jog-trot
of the descent into the Valley of the Waters; pressed along the steamy
levels of that locked valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring
gusts off Kedarnath; set down of mid-days in the dun gloom of kindly
oak-forests; passed from village to village in dawn-chill, when even
devotees may be forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men; or by
torchlight, when the least fearful think of ghosts--the dooli has
reached her last stage. The little hill-folk sweat in the modified heat
of the lower Sewaliks, and gather round the priests for their blessing
and their wage.
'Ye have acquired merit,' says the lama. 'Merit greater than your
knowing. And ye will return to the Hills,' he sighs.
'Surely. The high hills as soon as may be.' The bearer rubs his
shoulder, drinks water, spits it out again, and readjusts his grass
sandal. Kim--his face is drawn and tired--pays very small silver from
his belt, heaves out the food-bag, crams an oilskin packet--they are
holy writings--into his bosom, and helps the lama to his feet. The peace
has come again into the old man's eyes, and he does not look for the
hills to fall down and crush him as he did that terrible night when they
were delayed by the flooded river.
The men pick up the dooli and swing out of sight between the scrub
clumps.
The lama raises a hand toward the rampart of the Himalayas. 'Not with
you, O blessed among all hills, fell the Arrow of Our Lord! And never
shall I breathe your air again!'
'But thou art ten times the stronger man in this good air,' says Kim,
for to his wearied soul appeal the well-cropped, kindly plains. 'Here,
or hereabouts, fell the Arrow, yes. We will go very softly, perhaps a
kos a day, for the Search is sure. But the bag weighs heavy.'
'Ay, our Search is sure. I have come out of great temptation.'
* * * * *
It was never more than a couple of miles a day now, and Kim's shoulders
bore all the weight of it--the burden of an old man, the burden of the
heavy food-bag with the locked books, the load of the writings on his
heart, and the details of the daily routine. He begged in the dawn, set
blankets for the lama's meditation, held the weary head on his lap
through the noon-day heats, fanning away the flies till his wrist ached,
begged again in the evenings, and rubbed the lama's feet, who rewarded
him with promise of Freedom--to-day, to-morrow, or, at furthest, the
next day.
'Never was such a chela. I doubt at times whether Ananda more faithfully
nursed Our Lord. And thou art a Sahib? When I was a man--a long time
ago--I forgot that. Now I look upon thee often, and every time I
remember that thou art a Sahib. It is strange.'
'Thou hast said there is neither black nor white. Why plague me with
this talk, Holy One? Let me rub the other foot. It vexes me. I am not a
Sahib. I am thy chela, and my head is heavy on my shoulders.'
'Patience a little! We reach Freedom together. Then thou and I, upon
the far bank of the River, will look back upon our lives as in the Hills
we saw our days' marches laid out behind us. Perhaps I was once a
Sahib.'
''Was never a Sahib like thee, I swear it.'
'I am certain the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House was in past
life a very wise abbot. But even his spectacles do not make my eyes see.
There fall shadows when I would look steadily. No matter--we know the
tricks of the poor stupid carcass--shadow changing to another shadow. I
am bound by the illusion of Time and Space. How far came we to-day in
the flesh?'
'Perhaps half a kos.' Three-quarters of a mile, and it was a weary
march.
'Half a kos. Ha! I went ten thousand thousand in the spirit. How we are
all lapped and swathed and swaddled in these senseless things.' He
looked at his thin blue-veined hand that found the beads so heavy.
'Chela, hast thou never a wish to leave me?'
Kim thought of the oilskin packet and the books in the food-bag. If some
one duly authorised would only take delivery of them the Great Game
might play itself for aught he then cared. He was tired and hot in his
head, and a cough that came from the stomach worried him.
'No,' he said almost sternly. 'I am not a dog or a snake to bite when I
have learned to love.'
'Thou art too tender for me.'
'Not that either. I have moved in one matter without consulting thee. I
have sent a message to the Kulu woman by that woman who gave us the
goat's milk this morn, saying that thou wast a little feeble and would
need a litter. I beat myself in my mind that I did not do it when we
entered the Doon. We stay in this place till the litter returns.'
'I am content. She is a woman with a heart of gold, as thou sayest, but
a talker--something of a talker.'
'She will not weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my heart
is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee.' An hysterical
catch rose in his throat. 'I have walked thee too far; I have not picked
good food always for thee; I have not considered the heat; I have talked
to people on the road and left thee alone. . . . I have--I have . . .
Hai mai! But I love thee . . . and it is all too late. . . . I was a
child. . . . Oh why was I not a man! . . .' Overborne by strain,
fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, Kim broke down and sobbed at
the lama's feet.
'What a to-do is here,' said the old man gently. 'Thou hast never
stepped a hair's breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me? Child, I
have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new
wall. Day by day since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from thee.
Therefore, not through any sin of thine art thou weakened. It is the
Body--the silly, stupid Body--that speaks now. Not the assured Soul. Be
comforted! Know at least the devils that thou fightest. They are
earth-born--children of illusion. We will go to the woman from Kulu. She
shall acquire merit in housing us, and specially in tending me. Thou
shalt run free till strength returns. I had forgotten the stupid Body.
If there be any blame, I bear it. But we are too close to the Gates of
Deliverance to weigh blame. I could praise thee, but what need? In a
little--in a very little--we shall sit beyond all needs.'
And so he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on
that little-understood beast, our Body, who, being but a delusion,
insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the
immense multiplication of unnecessary devils.
'Hai! hai! Let us talk of the woman from Kulu. Think you she will ask
another charm for her grandsons? When I was a young man, a very long
time ago, I was plagued with these vapours--and some others--and I went
to an abbot--a very holy man and a seeker after truth, though then I
knew it not. Sit up and listen, child of my soul! My tale was told. Said
he to me, "Chela, know this. There are many lies in the world, and not a
few liars, but there are no liars like our bodies, except it be the
sensations of our bodies." Considering this I was comforted, and of his
great favour he suffered me to drink tea in his presence. Suffer me now
to drink tea, for I am thirsty.'
With a laugh above his tears, Kim kissed the lama's feet, and went about
tea-making.
'Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for some
other things. Dost know it?'
'I have guessed maybe,' and the lama's eyes twinkled. 'We must change
that.'
So, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of importance,
paddled up nothing less than the Sahiba's pet palanquin sent twenty
miles, with that same grizzled old Oorya servant in charge, and when
they reached the disorderly order of the long white rambling house
behind Saharunpore, the lama took his own measures.
Said the Sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments: 'What
is the good of an old woman's advice to an old man? I told thee--I told
thee, Holy One, to keep an eye upon the chela. How didst thou do it?
Never answer me! I know. He has been running among the women. Look at
his eyes--hollow and sunk--and the Betraying Line from the nose down! He
has been sifted out! Fie! Fie! And a priest, too!'
Kim looked up over-weary to smile, shaking his head in denial.
'Do not jest,' said the lama. 'That time is done. We are here upon great
matters. A sickness of soul took me in the Hills, and him a sickness of
the body. Since then I have lived upon his strength--eating him.'
'Children together--young and old,' she sniffed, but forbore to make any
new jokes. 'May this present hospitality restore ye. Hold awhile and I
will come to gossip of the high good hills.'
At evening time--her son-in-law was returned, so she did not need to go
on inspection round the farm--she won to the meat of the matter,
explained low-voicedly by the lama. The two old heads nodded wisely
together. Kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was dozing
soddenly. The lama had forbidden him to set blankets or get food.
'I know--I know. Who but I?' she cackled. 'We who go down to the
burning-ghats clutch at the hands of those coming up from the River of
Life with full water-jars--yes, brimming water-jars. I did the boy
wrong. He lent thee his strength? It is true that the old eat the young
daily. 'Stands now we must restore him.'
'Thou hast many times acquired merit--'
'My merit. What is it? Old bag of bones making curries for men who do
not ask "Who cooked this?" Now if it were stored up for my grandson--'
'He that had the belly-pain?'
'To think the Holy One remembers that! I must tell his mother. It is
most singular honour! "He that had the belly-pain"--straightway the Holy
One remembered. She will be proud.'
'My chela is to me as a son to the unenlightened.'
'Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years. If a
child cries they say the heavens are falling. Now a grandmother is far
enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of giving the
breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or the wind. And
since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the Holy One was here,
maybe I offended in pressing for charms.'
'Sister,' said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist monk may
sometimes employ towards a nun, 'if charms comfort thee--'
'They are better than ten thousand doctors.'
'I say, if they comfort thee, I who was Abbot of Suchzen will make as
many as thou mayest desire. I have never seen thy face--'
'That even the monkeys who steal our loquats count for a gain. Hee!
hee!'
'But as he who sleeps there said,' he nodded at the shut door of the
guest-chamber across the forecourt, 'thou hast a heart of gold. . . .
And he is in the spirit my very "grandson" to me.'
'Good! I am the Holy One's cow.' This was pure Hinduism, but the lama
never heeded. 'I am old. I have borne sons in the body. Oh, once I could
please men! Now I can cure them.' He heard her armlets tinkle as though
she bared arms for action. 'I will take over the boy and dose him, and
stuff him, and make him all whole. Hai! hai! We old people know
something yet.'
Wherefore when Kim, aching in every bone, opened his eyes, and would go
to the cook-house to get his master's food, he found strong coercion
about him, and a veiled old figure at the door, flanked by the grizzled
manservant, who told him precisely the very things that he was on no
account to do.
'Thou must have? Thou shalt have nothing. What? A locked box in which to
keep holy books? Oh, that is another matter. Heavens forbid I should
come between a priest and his prayers! It shall be brought, and thou
shalt keep the key.'
They pushed the coffer under his cot, and Kim shut away Mahbub's pistol,
the oilskin packet of letters, and the locked books and diaries, with a
groan of relief. For some absurd reason their weight on his shoulders
was nothing to their weight on his poor mind. His neck ached under it of
nights.
'Thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young folk have
given up tending their betters. The remedy is sleep, and certain drugs,'
said the Sahiba; and he was glad to give himself up to the blankness
that half menaced and half soothed him.
She brewed drinks, in some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the
still-room--drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood
over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had
come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means
of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded
sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the
Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, hens, and
the like, fetched a wide compass by those parts. Best of all, when the
body was cleared, she cut out from the mass of poor relations that
crowded the back of the buildings--household dogs, we name them--a
cousin's widow, skilled in what Europeans, who know nothing about it,
call massage. And the two of them, laying him east and west, that the
mysterious earth-currents which thrill the clay of our bodies might help
and not hinder, took him to pieces all one long afternoon--bone by bone,
muscle by muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by nerve.
Kneaded to irresponsible pulp, half hypnotised by the perpetual flick
and readjustment of the uneasy chudders that veiled their eyes, Kim slid
ten thousand miles into slumber--thirty-six hours of it--sleep that
soaked like rain after drought.
Then she fed him, and the house spun to her clamour. She caused fowls to
be slain; she sent for vegetables, and the sober, slow-thinking
gardener, nigh as old as she, sweated for it; she took spices, and milk,
and onion, with little fish from the brooks--anon limes for sherbets,
fat quails of the pit, then chicken-livers upon a skewer, with sliced
ginger between.
'I have seen something of this world,' she said over the crowded trays,
'and there are but two sorts of women in it--those who take the strength
out of a man and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I
am this. Nay--do not play the priestling with me. Mine was but a jest.
If it does not hold good now, it will when thou takest the road again.
Cousin'--this to the poor relation, never wearied of extolling her
patroness's charity--'he is getting a bloom on the skin of a new-curried
horse. Our work is like polishing jewels to be thrown to a
dance-girl--eh?'
Kim sat up and smiled. The terrible weakness had dropped from him like
an old shoe. His tongue itched for free speech again, and but a week
back the lightest word clogged it like ashes. The pain in his neck (he
must have caught it from the lama) had gone with the heavy dengue-aches
and the evil taste in the mouth. The two old women, a little, but not
much, more careful about their veils now, clucked as merrily as the hens
that had entered pecking through the open door.
'Where is my Holy One?' he demanded.
'Hear him! Thy Holy One is well,' she snapped viciously. 'Though that is
none of his merit. Knew I a charm to make him wise, I'd sell my jewels
and buy it. To refuse good food that I cooked myself--and go roving into
the fields for two nights on an empty belly--and to tumble into a brook
at the end of it--call you that holiness? Then, when he has nearly
broken what thou hast left of my heart with anxiety, he tells me that he
has acquired merit. Oh, how like are all men! No, that was not it--he
tells me that he is freed from all sin. I could have told him that
before he wetted himself all over. He is well now--this happened a week
ago--but burn me such holiness! A babe of three would do better! Do not
fret thyself for the Holy One. He keeps both eyes on thee when he is not
wading our brooks.'
'I do not remember to have seen him. I remember that the days and nights
passed like bars of white and black, opening and shutting. I was not
sick: I was only tired.'
'A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. But it is
all done now.'
'Maharanee,' Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to
the title of plain love--'Mother, I owe my life to thee. How shall I
make thanks? Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and--'
'The house be unblessed.' (It is impossible to give exactly the old
lady's word.) 'Thank the Gods as a priest if thou wilt, but thank me if
thou carest as a son. Heavens above! Have I shifted thee and lifted thee
and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung at my head?
Somewhere a mother must have borne thee to break her heart. What used
thou to her--son?'
'I had no mother, my mother,' said Kim. 'She died, they tell me, when I
was young.'
'Hai mai! Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if--when thou
takest the road again and this house is but one of a thousand used for
shelter and forgotten, after an easy-flung blessing. No matter. I need
no blessings, but--but--' She stamped her foot at the poor relation:
'Take up the trays to the house. What is the good of stale food in the
room, oh woman of ill-omen?'
'I ha--have borne a son in my time too, but he died,' whimpered the
bowed sister-figure behind the chudder. 'Thou knowest he died! I only
waited for the order to take away the tray.'
'It is I that am the woman of ill-omen,' cried the old lady penitently.
'We that go down to the chattris (the big umbrellas above the
burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues) clutch hard at the
bearers of the chattis (water-jars--young folk full of the pride of
life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy). When one cannot dance in the
festival one must e'en look out of the window, and grandmothering takes
all a woman's time. Thy master gives me all the charms I now desire for
my daughter's eldest, by reason--is it?--that he is wholly free from
sin. The hakim is brought very low these days. He goes about poisoning
my servants for lack of their betters.'
'What hakim, mother?'
'That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three pieces.
He cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and thou had
been blood-brothers together up Kulu-way, and feigning great anxiety for
thy health. He was very thin and hungry, so I gave orders to have him
stuffed too--him and his anxiety!'
'I would see him if he is here.'
'He eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save himself
from an apoplexy. He is so full of anxiety for thy health that he sticks
to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps. He will keep. We
shall never get rid of him.'
'Send him here, mother'--the twinkle returned to Kim's eye for a
flash--'and I will try.'
'I'll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. At least he had the
sense to fish the Holy One out of the brook; thus, as the Holy One did
not say, acquiring merit.'
'He is a very wise hakim. Send him, mother.'
'Priest praising priest? A miracle! If he is any friend of thine (ye
squabbled at your last meeting) I'll hale him here with horse-ropes
and--and give him a caste-dinner afterwards, my son. . . . Get up and
see the world! This lying abed is the mother of seventy devils . . . my
son! my son!'
She trotted forth to raise a typhoon off the cook-house, and almost on
her shadow rolled in the Babu, robed as to the shoulders like a Roman
emperor, jowled like Titus, bareheaded, with new patent-leather shoes,
in highest condition of fat, exuding joy and salutations.
'By Jove, Mister O'Hara, but I am jolly glad to see you. I will kindly
shut the door. It is a pity you are sick. Are you very sick?'
'The papers--the papers from the kilta. The maps and the murasla!' He
held out the key impatiently; for the present need on his soul was to
get rid of the loot.
'You are quite right. That is correct departmental view to take. You
have got everything?'
'All that was handwritten in the kilta I took. The rest I threw down the
hill.' He could hear the key's grate in the lock, the sticky pull of the
slow-rending oilcloth, and a quick shuffling of papers. He had been
annoyed out of all reason by the knowledge that they lay below him
through the sick idle days--a burden incommunicable. For that reason the
blood tingled through his body, when Hurree, skipping elephantinely,
shook hands again.
'This is fine! This is finest! Mister O'Hara! You have--ha! ha!--swiped
the whole bag of tricks--locks, stocks, and barrels. They told me it was
eight months' work gone up the spouts! By Jove, how they beat me! . . .
Look, here is the letter from Hilas!' He intoned a line or two of Court
Persian, which is the language of authorised and unauthorised diplomacy.
'Mister Rajah Sahib has just about put his foot in the holes. He will
have to explain offeecially how the deuce-an'-all he is writing
love-letters to the Czar. And they are very clever maps . . . and there
is three or four Prime Ministers of these parts implicated by the
correspondence. By Gad, Sar! The British Government will change the
succession in Hilas and Bunar, and nominate new heirs to the throne.
"Treason most base" . . . but you do not understand? Eh?'
'Are they in thy hands?' said Kim. It was all he cared for.
'Just you jolly well bet yourself they are.' He stowed the entire trove
about his body, as only Orientals can. 'They are going up to the office,
too. The old lady thinks I am permanent fixture here, but I shall go
away with these straight off--immediately. Mr. Lurgan will be proud man.
You are offeecially subordinate to me, but I shall embody your name in
my verbal report. It is a pity we are not allowed written reports. We
Bengalis excel in thee exact science.' He tossed back the key and showed
the box empty.
'Good. That is good. I was very tired. My Holy One was sick, too. And
did he fall into--'
'Oah yess. I am his good friend, I tell you. He was behaving very
strange when I came down after you, and I thought perhaps he might have
the papers. I followed him on his meditations, and to discuss
ethnological points also. You see, I am verree small person here
nowadays in comparison with all his charms. By Jove, O'Hara, do you
know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. Yess, I tell you.
Cataleptic, too, if not also epileptic. I found him in such a state
under a tree in articulo mortem, and he jumped up and walked into a
brook and he was nearly drowned but for me. I pulled him out.'
'Because I was not there!' said Kim. 'He might have died.'
'Yes, he might have died, but he is dry now, and asserts he has
undergone transfiguration.' The Babu tapped his forehead knowingly. 'I
took notes of his statements for Royal Society--in posse. You must make
haste and be quite well and come back to Simla, and I will tell you all
my tale at Lurgan's. It was splendid. The bottoms of their trousers were
quite torn, and old Nahan Rajah, he thought they were European soldiers
deserting.'
'Oh, the Russians? How long were they with thee?'
'One was a Frenchman. Oh, days and days and days! Now all the
hill-people believe all Russians are all beggars. By Jove! they had not
one dam-thing that I did not get them. And I told the common
people--oah, such tales and anecdotes! I will tell you at old Lurgan's
when you come up. We will have--ah--a night out! It is feather in both
our caps! Yess, and they gave me a certificate. That is creaming joke.
You should have seen them at the Alliance Bank identifying themselves!
And thank Almighty God you got their papers so well! You do not laugh
verree much, but you shall laugh when you are well. Now I will go
straight to the railway and get out. You shall have all sorts of credits
for your game. When do you come along? We are very proud of you, though
you gave us great frights. And especially Mahbub.'
'Ay, Mahbub. And where is he?'
'Selling horses in this vi-cinity, of course.'
'Here! Why? Speak slowly. There is a thickness in my head still.'
The Babu looked shyly down his nose. 'Well, you see, I am fearful man,
and I do not like responsibility. You were sick, you see, and I did not
know where deuce-an'-all the papers were, and if so, how many. So when I
had come down here I slipped in private wire to Mahbub--he was at
Meerut for races--and I tell him how case stands. He comes up with his
men and he consorts with the lama, and then he calls me a fool, and is
very rude--'
'But wherefore--wherefore?'
'That is what I ask. I only suggest that if any one steals the papers I
should like some good strong, brave men to rob them back again. You see
they are vitally important, and Mahbub Ali he did not know where you
were.'
'Mahbub Ali to rob the Sahiba's house? Thou art mad, Babu,' said Kim
with indignation.
'I wanted the papers. Suppose she had stole them? It was only practical
suggestion, I think. You are not pleased, eh?'
A native proverb--unquotable--showed the blackness of Kim's disapproval.
'Well,'--Hurree shrugged his shoulders,--'there is no accounting for
thee taste. Mahbub was angry too. He has sold horses all about here, and
he says old lady is pukka (thorough) old lady and would not condescend
to such ungentlemanly things. I do not care. I have got the papers, and
I was very glad of moral support from Mahbub. I tell you I am fearful
man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the more dam-tight
places I get into. So I was glad you came with me to Chini, and I am
glad Mahbub was close by. The old lady she is sometimes very rude to me
and my beautiful pills.'
'Allah be merciful,' said Kim on his elbow, rejoicing. 'What a beast of
wonder is a Babu! And that man walked alone--if he did walk--with robbed
and angry foreigners!'
'Oah, thatt was nothing, after they had done beating me; but if I lost
the papers it was pretty jolly serious. Mahbub he nearly beat me too,
and he went and consorted with the lama no end. I shall stick to
ethnological investigations henceforwards. Now good-bye, Mister O'Hara.
I can catch 4.25 p. m. to Umballa if I am quick. It will be good times
when we all tell thee tale up at Mister Lurgan's. I shall report you
offeecially better. Good-bye, my dear fallow, and when next you are
under thee emotions please do not use the Mohammedan terms with the
Tibetan dress.'
He shook hands twice--a Babu to his boot-heels--and opened the door.
With the fall of the sunlight upon his still triumphant face he returned
to the humble Dacca quack.
'He robbed them,' thought Kim, forgetting his own share in the game. 'He
tricked them. He lied to them like a Bengali. They give him a chit (a
testimonial). He makes them a mock at the risk of his life--I never
would have gone down to them after the pistol-shots--and then he says he
is a fearful man. . . . And he is a fearful man. I must get into the world
again.'
At first his legs bent like bad pipe-stems, and the flood and rush of
the sunlit air dazzled him. He squatted by the white wall, the mind
rummaging among the incidents of the long dooli journey, the lama's
weaknesses, and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own
self-pity, of which, like the sick, he had great store. The unnerved
brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once rowelled,
sidles from the spur. It was enough, amply enough, that the spoil of the
kilta was away--off his hands--out of his possession. He tried to think
of the lama,--to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook,--but the
bigness of the world, seen between the forecourt gates, swept linked
thought aside. Then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields, with
the thatched huts hidden among crops--looked with strange eyes unable to
take up the size and proportion and use of things--stared for a still
half-hour. All that while he felt, though he could not put it into
words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings--a cog-wheel
unconnected with any machinery, just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap
Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner. The breezes fanned over him,
the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house
behind--squabbles, orders, and reproofs--hit on dead ears.
'I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?' His soul repeated it again and
again.
He did not want to cry,--had never felt less like crying in his
life,--but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and
with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up
anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball
an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be
walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be
tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and
true--solidly planted upon the feet--perfectly comprehensible--clay of
his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea
in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom
watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share.
Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back from
meditation, tell him.'
There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away,
with a young banian tree behind--a look-out, as it were, above some
new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as
he neared it. The ground was good clean dust--no new herbage that,
living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds
the seed of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his
palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full
length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. And Mother Earth
was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the
poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good currents.
His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands surrendered
to her strength. The many-rooted tree above him, and even the dead
man-handled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did not
know. Hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep.
Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons
smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously, for
the house had told them where he had gone.
'Allah! What a fool's trick to play in open country,' muttered the
horse-dealer. 'He could be shot a hundred times--but this is not the
Border.'
'And,' said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, 'never was such
a chela. Temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a merry
heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous.
Great is his reward!'
'I know the boy--as I have said.'
'And he was all those things?'
'Some of them--but I have not yet found a Red Hat's charm for making him
overly truthful. He has certainly been well nursed.'
'The Sahiba is a heart of gold,' said the lama earnestly. 'She looks
upon him as her son.'
'Hmph! Half Hind seems that-way disposed. I only wished to see that the
boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. As thou knowest, he and I
were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.'
'That is a bond between us.' The lama sat down. 'We are at the end of
the pilgrimage.'
'No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back. I
heard what the Sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the cot.'
Mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly-dyed beard.
'I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the hakim from
Dacca broke my meditations.'
'Otherwise'--this was in Pashtu for decency's sake--'thou wouldst have
ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of Hell--being an unbeliever
and an idolater for all thy child's simplicity. But now, Red Hat, what
is to be done?'
'This very night,'--the words came slowly, vibrating with
triumph,--'this very night he will be as free as I am from all taint of
sin--assured as I am when he quits this body of Freedom from the Wheel
of Things. I have a sign,' he laid his hand above the torn chart in his
bosom, 'that my time is short; but I shall have safeguarded him
throughout the years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told thee
only three nights back.'
'It must be true, as the Tirah priest said when I stole his cousin's
wife, that I am a sufi (a freethinker); for here I sit,' said Mahbub to
himself, 'drinking in blasphemy unthinkable. . . . I remember the tale.
On that, then, he goes to Jannatu l'Adn (the Gardens of Eden). But how?
Wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful river from which the
Babu dragged thee?'
'I was dragged from no river,' said the lama simply. 'Thou hast
forgotten what befell. I found it by knowledge.'
'Oh, aye. True,' stammered Mahbub, divided between high indignation and
enormous mirth. 'I had forgotten the exact run of what happened. Thou
didst find it knowingly.'
'And to say that I would take life is---not a sin, but a madness simple.
My chela aided me to the River. It is his right to be cleansed from
sin--with me.'
'Ay, he needs cleansing. But afterwards, old man--afterwards?'
'What matter under all the heavens? He is sure of
Nibban--enlightened--as I am.'
'Well said. I had a fear he might mount Mohammed's Horse and fly away.'
'Nay--he must go forth as a teacher.'
'Aha! Now I see! That is the right gait for the colt. Certainly he must
go forth as a teacher. He is somewhat urgently needed as a scribe by the
State, for instance.'
'To that end he was prepared. I acquired merit in that I gave alms for
his sake. A good deed does not die. He aided me in my Search. I aided
him in his. Just is the Wheel, O horse-seller from the North. Let him be
a teacher; let him be a scribe--what matter? He will have attained
Freedom at the end. The rest is illusion.'
'What matter? When I must have him with me beyond Balkh in six months! I
come up with ten lame horses and three strong-backed men--thanks to
that chicken of a Babu--to break a sick boy by force out of an old
trot's house. It seems that I stand by while a young Sahib is hoisted
into Allah knows what of an idolater's heaven by means of old Red Hat.
And I am reckoned something of a player of the Game myself! But the
madman is fond of the boy; and I must be very reasonably mad too.'
'What is the prayer?' said the lama, as the rough Pashtu rumbled into
the red beard.
'No matter at all; but now I understand that the boy, sure of Paradise,
can yet enter Government service, my mind is easier. I must get to my
horses. It grows dark. Do not wake him. I have no wish to hear him call
thee master.'
'But he is my disciple. What else?'
'He has told me.' Mahbub choked down his touch of spleen and rose
laughing. 'I am not altogether of thy faith, Red Hat--if so small a
matter concern thee.'
'It is nothing,' said the lama.
'I thought not. Therefore it will not move thee sinless, new-washed and
three parts drowned to boot, when I call thee a good man--a very good
man. We have talked together some four or five evenings now, and for all
I am a horse-coper I can still, as the saying is, see holiness beyond
the legs of a horse. Yea, can see, too, how our Friend of all the World
put his hand in thine at the first. Use him well, and suffer him to
return to the world as a teacher, when thou hast--bathed his legs, if
that be the proper medicine for the colt.'
'Why not follow the Way thyself, and so accompany the boy?'
Mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the demand,
which across the Border he would have paid with more than a blow. Then
the humour of it touched his worldly soul.
'Softly--softly--one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over the
Umballa jumps. I may come to Paradise later--I have workings that
way--great motions--and I owe them to thy simplicity. Thou hast never
lied?'
'What need?'
'O Allah, hear him! "What need" in this Thy world! Nor ever harmed a
man?'
'Once--with a pencase--before I was wise.'
'So? I think the better of thee. Thy teachings are good. Thou hast
turned one man that I know from the path of strife.' He laughed
immensely. 'He came here open-minded to commit a dacoity (a
house-robbery with violence). Yes, to cut, rob, kill, and carry off what
he desired.'
'A great foolishness!'
'Oh! black shame too. So he thought after he had seen thee--and a few
others, male and female. So he abandoned it; and now he goes to beat a
big fat Babu man.'
'I do not understand.'
'Allah forbid it! Some men are strong in knowledge, Red Hat. Thy
strength is stronger still. Keep it--I think thou wilt. If the boy be
not a good servant, pull his ears off.'
With a hitch of his broad Bokhariot belt the Pathan swaggered off into
the gloaming, and the lama came down from his clouds so far as to look
at the broad back.
'That person lacks courtesy, and is deceived by the shadow of
appearances. But he spoke well of my chela, who now enters upon his
reward. Let me make the prayer! . . . Wake, O fortunate above all born
of women. Wake! It is found!'
Kim came up from those deep wells, and the lama attended his yawning
pleasure; duly snapping fingers to head off evil spirits.
'I have slept a hundred years. Where--? Holy One, hast thou been here
long? I went out to look for thee, but'--he laughed drowsily--'I slept
by the way. I am all well now. Hast thou eaten? Let us go to the house.
It is many days since I tended thee. And the Sahiba fed thee well? Who
shampooed thy legs? What of the weaknesses--the belly and the neck, and
the beating in the ears?'
'Gone--all gone. Dost thou not know?'
'I know nothing, but that I have not seen thee in a monkey's age. Know
what?'
'Strange the knowledge did not reach out to thee, when all my thoughts
were theeward.'
'I cannot see the face, but the voice is like a gong. Has the Sahiba
made a young man of thee by her cookery?'
He peered at the cross-legged figure, outlined jet-black against the
lemon-coloured drift of light. So does the stone Bodhisat sit who looks
down upon the patent self-registering turnstiles of the Lahore Museum.
The lama held his peace. Except for the click of the rosary and a faint
'clop-clop' of Mahbub's retreating feet, the soft, smoky silence of
evening in India wrapped them close.
'Hear me! I bring news.'
'But let us--'
Out shot the long yellow hand compelling silence. Kim tucked his feet
under his robe-edge obediently.
'Hear me! I bring news! The Search is finished. Comes now the
Reward. . . . Thus. When we were among the Hills, I lived on thy
strength till the young branch bowed and nigh broke. When we came out of
the Hills, I was troubled for thee and for other matters which I held in
my heart. The boat of my soul lacked direction; I could not see into the
Cause of Things. So I gave thee over to the virtuous woman altogether. I
took no food. I drank no water. Still I saw not the Way. They pressed
food upon me and cried at my shut door. So I removed myself to a hollow
under a tree. I took no food. I took no water. I sat in meditation two
days and two nights, abstracting my mind; inbreathing and outbreathing
in the required manner. . . . Upon the second night--so great was my
reward--the wise Soul loosed itself from the silly Body and went free.
This I have never before attained, though I have stood on the threshold
of it. Consider, for it is a marvel!'
'A marvel indeed. Two days and two nights without food! Where was the
Sahiba?' said Kim under his breath.
'Yea, my Soul went free, and, wheeling like an eagle, saw indeed that
there was no Teshoo Lama nor any other soul. As a drop draws to water,
so my soul drew near to the Great Soul which is beyond all things. At
that point, exalted in contemplation, I saw all Hind, from Ceylon in the
sea to the Hills, and my own Painted Rocks at Suchzen; I saw every camp
and village, to the least, where we have ever rested. I saw them at one
time and in one place; for they were within the Soul. By this I knew the
Soul had passed beyond the illusion of Time and Space and of Things. By
this I knew that I was free. I saw thee lying in thy cot, and I saw
thee falling down hill under the idolater--at one time, in one place, in
my Soul, which, as I say, had touched the Great Soul. Also I saw the
stupid body of Teshoo Lama lying down, and the hakim from Dacca kneeled
beside, shouting in its ear. Then my Soul was all alone, and I saw
nothing, for I was all things, having reached the Great Soul. And I
meditated a thousand thousand years, passionless, well aware of the
Causes of all Things. Then a voice cried: "What shall come to the boy if
thou art dead?" and I was shaken back and forth in myself with pity for
thee; and I said: "I will return to my chela, lest he miss the Way."
Upon this my Soul, which is the soul of Teshoo Lama, withdrew itself
from the Great Soul with strivings and yearnings and retchings and
agonies not to be told. As the egg from the fish, as the fish from the
water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air; so
put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the soul of Teshoo
Lama from the Great Soul. Then a voice cried: "The River! Take heed to
the River!" and I looked down upon all the world, which was as I had
seen it before--one in time, one in place--and I saw plainly the River
of the Arrow at my feet. At that hour my Soul was hampered by some evil
or other whereof I was not wholly cleansed, and it lay upon my arms and
coiled round my waist; but I put it aside, and I cast forth as an eagle
in my flight for the very place of the River. I pushed aside world upon
world for thy sake. I saw the River below me--the River of the
Arrow--and, descending, the waters of it closed over me; and behold I
was again in the body of Teshoo Lama, but free from sin, and the hakim
from Dacca bore up my head in the waters of the River. It is here! It
is behind the mango-tope here--even here!'
'Allah Karim! Oh, well that the Babu was by! Wast thou very wet?'
'Why should I regard? I remember the hakim was concerned for the body of
Teshoo Lama. He haled it out of the holy water in his hands, and there
came afterwards thy horse-seller from the North with a cot and men, and
they put the body on the cot and bore it up to the Sahiba's house.'
'What said the Sahiba?'
'I was meditating in that body, and did not hear. So thus the Search is
ended. For the merit that I have acquired, the River of the Arrow is
here. It broke forth at our feet, as I have said. I have found it. Son
of my Soul, I have wrenched my Soul back from the Threshold of Freedom
to free thee from all sin--as I am free, and sinless. Just is the Wheel!
Certain is our deliverance. Come!'
He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won
Salvation for himself and his beloved.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Due to being unable to discern which spelling idiosyncracies Kipling
would have preferred to keep as displaying dialect and which were
typesetting errors, all were retained except the one listed below. This
includes, for example, the two uses of "quiett" on page 118.
Only the most obvious punctuation errors were repaired. This includes
such things as a closing double-quotation mark in place of a single one,
missing periods at the end of sentences, etc.
Page 139, "Mahbud" changed to "Mahbub" to match rest of usage. (Umballa
race-course, Mahbub Ali)