Kim

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'To abstain from action is well - except to acquire merit.'

'At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action
was unbefitting a Sahib. And I am a Sahib.'

'Friend of all the World,' - the lama looked directly at Kim - 'I am
an old man - pleased with shows as are children. To those who
follow the Way there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal.
We be all souls seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned
among Sahibs, when we come to my River thou wilt be freed from all
illusion - at my side. Hai! My bones ache for that River, as they
ached in the te-rain; but my spirit sits above my bones, waiting.
The Search is sure!'

'I am answered. Is it permitted to ask a question?'

The lama inclined his stately head.

'I ate thy bread for three years - as thou knowest. Holy One,
whence came -?'

'There is much wealth, as men count it, in Bhotiyal,' the lama
returned with composure. 'In my own place I have the illusion of
honour. I ask for that I need. I am not concerned with the account.
That is for my monastery. Ai! The black high seats in the
monastery, and novices all in order!'

And he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the
immense and sumptuous ritual of avalanche-guarded cathedrals; of
processions and devil-dances; of the changing of monks and nuns into
swine; of holy cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue
between monastery and monastery; of voices among the hills, and of
that mysterious mirage that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of
Lhassa and of the Dalai Lama, whom he had seen and adored.

Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off
from his race and his mother-tongue. He slipped back to thinking
and dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's
ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old
man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned
to the steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and
again, indeed, he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig,
expecting, he said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing;
but he was content to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate
wind that comes down from the Doon. This was not Ceylon, nor Buddh
Gaya, nor Bombay, nor some grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to
have stumbled upon two years ago. He spoke of those places as a
scholar removed from vanity, as a Seeker walking in humility, as an
old man, wise and temperate, illumining knowledge with brilliant
insight. Bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tale called up by some
wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and down Hind; till
Kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him for fifty good
reasons. So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining,
as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over-
eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their
stomachs told them the time, and the people brought them their food,
as the saying is. They were lords of the villages of Aminabad,
Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and little Phulesa, where Kim gave
the soulless woman a blessing.

But news travels fast in India, and too soon shuffled across the
crop-land, bearing a basket of fruits with a box of Kabul grapes and
gilt oranges, a white-whiskered servitor - a lean, dry Oorya -
begging them to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress,
distressed in her mind that the lama had neglected her so long.

'Now do I remember' - the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new
proposition. 'She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.'

Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow's manger, telling stories to a
village smith's children.

'She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not
forgotten her,' he said. 'Let her acquire merit. Send word that we
will come.'

They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were
overwhelmed with attentions at the end; for the old lady held a fine
tradition of hospitality, to which she forced her son-in-law, who
was under the thumb of his women-folk and bought peace by borrowing
of the money-lender. Age had not weakened her tongue or her memory,
and from a discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not
less than a dozen servants, she paid Kim compliments that would have
flung European audiences into unclean dismay.

'But thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the parao,' she
shrilled. 'I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of
my daughter's son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and
useless.'

For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food
and drink were brought; and in the evening - the smoke-scented
evening, copper-dun and turquoise across the fields - it pleased her
to order her palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by
smoky torchlight; and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains,
she gossiped.

'Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise;
but with this rogue, who can be too careful?'

'Maharanee,' said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, 'is it
my fault that none other than a Sahib - a polis-Sahib - called the
Maharanee whose face he -' 'Chutt! That was on the pilgrimage.
When we travel - thou knowest the proverb.'

'Called the Maharanee a Breaker of Hearts and a Dispenser of
Delights?'

'To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of
the bloom of my beauty.' She chuckled like a contented parrot above
the sugar lump. 'Now tell me of thy goings and comings - as much as
may be without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon
thine eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I would have gone there again
this year, but my daughter - we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is
the effect of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I
would ask thy Holy One - stand aside, rogue - a charm against most
lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter's
eldest. Two years back he gave me a powerful spell.'

'Oh, Holy One!' said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama's rueful
face.

'It is true. I gave her one against wind.'

'Teeth - teeth - teeth, ' snapped the old woman.

"'Cure them if they are sick,"' Kim quoted relishingly, "'but by no
means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta."'

'That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual
importunity.' The lama groaned as the Unjust judge had groaned
before him. 'Thus it comes - take note, my chela - that even those
who would follow the Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days
through, when the child was sick, she talked to me.'

'Arre! 1 6and to whom else should I talk? The boy's mother knew
nothing, and the father - in the nights of the cold weather it was -
"Pray to the Gods," said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!'

'I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do?'

"'To abstain from action is well - except to acquire merit."'

'Ah chela, if thou desertest me, I am all alone.'

'He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate,' said the old lady.
'But all priests are alike.'

Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her
flippancy. 'To importune the wise out of season is to invite
calamitv.'

'There is a talking mynah' - the thrust came back with the well-
remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger - 'over the stables
which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I
forget honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists
into his belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: "Here is
the pain!" ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the hakim's
medicine. He sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as
Shiv's own bull. He does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the
child because of the in-auspicious colour of the bottles.'

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the
darkness towards the room prepared.

'Thou hast angered him, belike,' said Kim.

'Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None
but a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit
for bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown,
he will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's
drugs.'

'Who is the hakim, Maharanee?'

'A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca - a
master of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by
means of a small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He
travels about now, vending preparations of great value. He has even
papers, printed in Angrezi, telling what things he has done for
weak-backed men and slack women. He has been here four days; but
hearing ye were coming (hakims and priests are snake and tiger the
world over) he has, as I take it, gone to cover.'

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant,
sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: 'This
house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and -
priests. Let the boy stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with
a grandmother?' He raised his voice respectfully: 'Sahiba, the hakim
sleeps after his meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote'

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down- talk a
Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a
good game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally
himself, should be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those
curious bastard English advertisements at the backs of native
newspapers. St Xavier's boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to
snigger over among their mates; for the language of the grateful
patient recounting his symptoms is most simple and revealing. The
Oorya, not unanxious to play off one parasite against the other,
slunk away towards the dovecote

'Yes,' said Kim, with measured scorn. 'Their stock-in-trade is a
little coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are
broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children
- who are not born.' The old lady chuckled. 'Do not be envious.
Charms are better, eh? I never gainsaid it. See that thy Holy One
writes me a good amulet by the morning.'

'None but the ignorant deny' - a thick, heavy voice boomed through
the darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting - 'None but the
ignorant deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the
value of medicines.'

'A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: "I will open a grocer's
shop,"' Kim retorted.

Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to
attention.

'The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says
he: "Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones."'
Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went
on: 'I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the
wisdom of the Sahibs.'

'The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children
when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,' piped the voice
inside the palanquin.

'I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and
angry men. Sina well compounded when the moon stands in the proper
House; yellow earths I have - arplan from China that makes a man
renew his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir,
and the best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before -'

'That I surely believe,' said Kim.

'They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere
ink in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which
descend and wrestle with the evil.'

'Very mightily they do so,' sighed the old lady.

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and
bankruptcy, studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. 'But
for my fate, which overrules all, I had been now in Government
employ. I bear a degree from the great school at Calcutta - whither,
maybe, the son of this House shall go.'

'He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years be
made an F A' (First Arts - she used the English word, of which she
had heard so often), 'how much more shall children clever as some
that I know bear away prizes at rich Calcutta.'

'Never,' said the voice, 'have I seen such a child! Born in an
auspicious hour, and - but for that colic which, alas! turning into
black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon - destined to many
years, he is enviable.'

'Hai mai!' said the old lady. 'To praise children is inauspicious,
or I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is
unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men,
and women we know ... The child's father is away too, and I must be
chowkedar [watchman] in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin.
Let the hakim and the young priest settle between them whether
charms or medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco
for the guests, and - round the homestead go I!'

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde
of dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba - her failings, her tongue,
and her large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial
custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her
jurisdiction for any gift under heaven. None the less, she made
great parade of her formal inspections, the riot of which could be
heard half-way to Mussoorie.

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The hakim,
still squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim
pulled at the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional
debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring.

'To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with
teaching the peacock to sing,' said the hakim.

'True courtesy,' Kim echoed, 'is very often inattention.'

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

'Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,' cried a scullion. 'Look at it!'

'Get hence! Remove!' said the hakim. 'Is it the habit of the place
to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.'

'If the Sahiba knew -' Kim began.

'Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young
Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to
-'

'The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the
money-lender's head. Who speaks against her?' The old servitor
curled his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'I am
responsible for the honour of this house. Go!' and he drove the
underlings before him.

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips:
'How do you do, Mister O'Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.'

Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road,
perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet
backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed
him, too, that he had been hoodwinked.

'Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow - resurgam - I shall rise again and
you shall not know me. How much did you bet - eh?'

He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed
uneasily.

'But why come here, Babuji?'

'Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to
congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at
Delhi. Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree
neat and handy. Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has
been in some dam'-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He
told me; I tell Mr Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely.
All the Department is pleased.'

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it
can be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise -
ensnaring praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-
workers. Earth has nothing on the same plane to compare with it.
But, cried the Oriental in him, Babus do not travel far to retail
compliments.

'Tell thy tale, Babu,' he said authoritatively.

'Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in
about what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton -
' He looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.

'The Colonel Sahib,' the boy from St Xavier's corrected. 'Of
course. He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to
Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South - too
much railway travel; but I drew good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I
meet our mutual at Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now,
and says Saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I
hear what you have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous
spur of the moment. I tell our mutual you take the bally bun, by
Jove! It was splendid. I come to tell you so.'

'Umm!'

The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her
setting. Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night
and to beat upon a drum. Kim's next sentence was in the vernacular.

'How didst thou follow us?'

'Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to
Saharunpore. So I come on. Red Lamas are not inconspicuous persons.
I buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor really. I go to
Akrola of the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk
there. All the common people know what you do. I knew when the
hospitable old lady sent the dooli. They have great recollections of
the old lama's visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their
hands from medicines. So I am a doctor, and - you hear my talk? I
think it is verree good. My word, Mister O'Hara, they know about
you and the lama for fifty miles - the common people. So I come. Do
you mind?'

'Babuji,' said Kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, 'I am a
Sahib.'

'My dear Mister O'Hara

'And I hope to play the Great Game.'

'You are subordinate to me departmentally at present.'

'Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from
Simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet words. I
am not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg.
Thou art here - speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art thou
here? Give a straight answer.'

'That is so verree disconcerting of the Europeans, Mister O'Hara.
you should know a heap better at your time of life.'

'But I want to know,' said Kim, laughing. 'If it is the Game, I may
help. How can I do anything if you bukh [babble] all round the
shop?'

Hurree Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it guggled
again.

'Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O'Hara . . . It
concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.'

'Still? That was finished long ago.'

'When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before.
Listen to me till the end. There were Five Kings who prepared a
sudden war three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion's
pedigree by Mahbub Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere
they were ready, fell our Army.'

'Ay - eight thousand men with guns. I remember that night.'

'But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The
troops were recalled because the Government believed the Five Kings
were cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes.
HilaS and Bunar - Rajahs with guns - undertook for a price to guard
the Passes against all coming from the North. They protested both
fear and friendship.' He broke off with a giggle into English: "Of
course, I tell you this unoffeecialiv to elucidate political
situation, Mister O'Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from
criticizing any action of superiors. Now I go on. - This pleased the
Government, anxious to avoid expense, and a bond was made for so
many rupees a month that Hilas and Bunar should guard the Passes as
soon as the State's troops were withdrawn. At that time - it was
after we two met - I, who had been selling tea in Leh, became a
clerk of accounts in the Army. When the troops were withdrawn, I
was left behind to pay the coolies who made new roads in the Hills.
This road-making was part of the bond between Bunar, Hilas, and the
Government.'

'So? And then?'

'I tell you, it was jolly-beastly cold up there too, after summer,'
said Hurree Babu confidentially. 'I was afraid these Bunar men would
cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. My native sepoy-guard,
they laughed at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man. Nevar mind
thatt. I go on colloquially ... I send word many times that these
two Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet
farther North, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet
were frozen, and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for
which I was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet
of strangers and enemies.'

'For?'

'For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies.
Then I was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue.
Mahbub came South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after
snow-melting' - he shivered afresh - come two strangers under cover
of shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains
and levels and compasses.'

'Oho! The thing gets clearer.'

'They are well received by Hilas and Bunar. They make great
promises; they speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaisar with gifts. Up
the valleys, down the valleys go they, saying, "Here is a place to
build a breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the
road against an army" - the very roads for which I paid out the
rupees monthly. The Government knows', but does nothing. The three
other Kings, who were not paid for guarding the Passes, tell them by
runner of the bad faith of Bunar and Hilas. When all the evil is
done, look you - when these two strangers with the levels and the
compasses make the Five Kings to believe that a great army will
sweep the Passes tomorrow or the next day - Hill-people are all
fools - comes the order to me, Hurree Babu, "Go North and see what
those strangers do." I say to Creighton Sahib, "This is not a
lawsuit, that we go about to collect evidence."'Hurree returned to
his English with a jerk: "'By Jove," I said, "why the dooce do you
not issue demi-offeecial orders to some brave man to poison them,
for an example? It is, if you permit the observation, most
reprehensible laxity on your part." And Colonel Creighton, he
laughed at me! It is all your beastly English pride. You think no
one dare conspire! That is all tommy-rott.'

Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood
it, in his quick mind.

'Then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?'

'No. To meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their
horns and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively
sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the
Government. Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride.'

'Then what is to fear from them?'

'By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things
with black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly
unscrupulous people. I - I do not want to consort with them without
a witness.'

'Will they kill thee?'

'Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I
trust, to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you
know. But - but they may beat me.'

'Why?'

Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. 'Of course I shall
affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as perhaps
interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such
thing. And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is as
easy for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old lady. Onlee - onlee
- you see, Mister O'Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is
serious detriment in some respects. And all-so I am Bengali - a
fearful man.'

'God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame?' said Kim, quoting
the proverb.

'It was process of Evolution, I think, from Primal Necessity, but
the fact remains in all the cui bono. I am, oh, awfully fearful! - I
remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa.
(No, I have never reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister
O'Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these two
gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible
contingency with European assistance in emergency.' He coughed and
spat out the cardamoms. 'It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which
you can say "No, Babu". If you have no pressing engagement with your
old man - perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his
fancies - I should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me
till I find those sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you
since I met my friend at Delhi. And also I will embody your name in
my offeecial report when matter is finally adjudicated. It will be
a great feather in your cap. That is why I come really.

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