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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, slipping 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 wagons 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,
grey-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 cartwheels 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.
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 on 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 longsuffering 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 par.
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, grey-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 Hindustani 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 hat 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 fakir. 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 wagon. 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 -' I
'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 recognized
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
fakir 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 Buddha Gay. 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 the 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. Maybe' - 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.'
'Maybe,' 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
women 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
singsong 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 shadows of the
low 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 reforming 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, those 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 ear-shot went to work.
India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more
excited than anyone, 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 grey
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, today he paced with tenfold pride in the
train of a semi-royal procession,
with a recognized 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 sugarcane, 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 hats no
nose?'
'What?' she shrilled back. 'Thine
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 apologized 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.
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