Kim Read online

  '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 talk 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 a
nd 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?'