Kim, Rudyard Kipling [best romance ebooks TXT] 📗

an end for me,” shouted Kim in the vernacular. “I have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. They will not hurt you. Come to the fat priest’s tent with this thin man and see the end. It is all new, and they cannot talk Hindi. They are only uncurried donkeys.”

“Then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance,” the lama returned. “I am glad if thou art rejoiced, chela.”

Dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent, saluted the Churches as a Churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier. The yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face red-gold.

Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of “heathen”.

“And what was the end of the Search? What gift has the Red Bull brought?” The lama addressed himself to Kim.

“He says, ‘What are you going to do?’” Bennett was staring uneasily at Father Victor, and Kim, for his own ends, took upon himself the office of interpreter.

“I do not see what concern this faquir has with the boy, who is probably his dupe or his confederate,” Bennett began. “We cannot allow an English boy—Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner he goes to the Masonic Orphanage the better.”

“Ah! That’s your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental Lodge,” said Father Victor; “but we might as well tell the old man what we are going to do. He doesn’t look like a villain.”

“My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind. Now, Kimball, I wish you to tell this man what I say word for word.”

Kim gathered the import of the next few sentences and began thus:

“Holy One, the thin fool who looks like a camel says that I am the son of a Sahib.”

“But how?”

“Oh, it is true. I knew it since my birth, but he could only find it out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers. He thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib, and between the two of them they purpose to keep me in this Regiment or to send me to a madrissah (a school). It has happened before. I have always avoided it. The fat fool is of one mind and the camel-like one of another. But that is no odds. I may spend one night here and perhaps the next. It has happened before. Then I will run away and return to thee.”

“But tell them that thou art my chela. Tell them how thou didst come to me when I was faint and bewildered. Tell them of our Search, and they will surely let thee go now.”

“I have already told them. They laugh, and they talk of the police.”

“What are you saying?” asked Mr Bennett.

“Oah. He only says that if you do not let me go it will stop him in his business—his ur-gent private af-fairs.” This last was a reminiscence of some talk with a Eurasian clerk in the Canal Department, but it only drew a smile, which nettled him. “And if you did know what his business was you would not be in such a beastly hurry to interfere.”

“What is it then?” said Father Victor, not without feeling, as he watched the lama’s face.

“There is a River in this country which he wishes to find so verree much. It was put out by an Arrow which—” Kim tapped his foot impatiently as he translated in his own mind from the vernacular to his clumsy English. “Oah, it was made by our Lord God Buddha, you know, and if you wash there you are washed away from all your sins and made as white as cotton-wool.” (Kim had heard mission-talk in his time.) “I am his disciple, and we must find that River. It is so verree valuable to us.”

“Say that again,” said Bennett. Kim obeyed, with amplifications.

“But this is gross blasphemy!” cried the Church of England.

“Tck! Tck!” said Father Victor sympathetically. “I’d give a good deal to be able to talk the vernacular. A river that washes away sin! And how long have you two been looking for it?”

“Oh, many days. Now we wish to go away and look for it again. It is not here, you see.”

“I see,” said Father Victor gravely. “But he can’t go on in that old man’s company. It would be different, Kim, if you were not a soldier’s son. Tell him that the Regiment will take care of you and make you as good a man as your—as good a man as can be. Tell him that if he believes in miracles he must believe that—”

“There is no need to play on his credulity,” Bennett interrupted.

“I’m doing no such thing. He must believe that the boy’s coming here—to his own Regiment—in search of his Red Bull is in the nature of a miracle. Consider the chances against it, Bennett. This one boy in all India, and our Regiment of all others on the line o’ march for him to meet with! It’s predestined on the face of it. Yes, tell him it’s Kismet. Kismet, mallum? (Do you understand?)”

He turned towards the lama, to whom he might as well have talked of Mesopotamia.

“They say,”—the old man’s eye lighted at Kim’s speech “they say that the meaning of my horoscope is now accomplished, and that being led back—though as thou knowest I went out of curiosity—to these people and their Red Bull I must needs go to a madrissah and be turned into a Sahib. Now I make pretence of agreement, for at the worst it will be but a few meals eaten away from thee. Then I will slip away and follow down the road to Saharunpore. Therefore, Holy One, keep with that Kulu woman—on no account stray far from her cart till I come again. Past question, my sign is of War and of armed men. See how they have given me wine to drink and set me upon a bed of honour! My father must have been some great person. So if they raise me to honour among them, good. If not, good again. However it goes, I will run back to thee when I am tired. But stay with the Rajputni, or I shall miss thy feet ... Oah yess,” said the boy, “I have told him everything you tell me to say.”

“And I cannot see any need why he should wait,” said Bennett, feeling in his trouser-pocket. “We can investigate the details later—and I will give him a ru—”

“Give him time. Maybe he’s fond of the lad,” said Father Victor, half arresting the clergyman’s motion.

The lama dragged forth his rosary and pulled his huge hat-brim over his eyes.

“What can he want now?”

“He says”—Kim put up one hand. “He says: ‘Be quiet.’ He wants to speak to me by himself. You see, you do not know one little word of what he says, and I think if you talk he will perhaps give you very bad curses. When he takes those beads like that, you see, he always wants to be quiet.”

The two Englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in Bennett’s eye that promised ill for Kim when he should be relaxed to the religious arm.

“A Sahib and the son of a Sahib—” The lama’s voice was harsh with pain. “But no white man knows the land and the customs of the land as thou knowest. How comes it this is true?”

“What matter, Holy One?—but remember it is only for a night or two. Remember, I can change swiftly. It will all be as it was when I first spoke to thee under Zam-Zammah the great gun—”

“As a boy in the dress of white men—when I first went to the Wonder House. And a second time thou wast a Hindu. What shall the third incarnation be?” He chuckled drearily. “Ah, chela, thou has done a wrong to an old man because my heart went out to thee.”

“And mine to thee. But how could I know that the Red Bull would bring me to this business?”

The lama covered his face afresh, and nervously rattled the rosary. Kim squatted beside him and laid hold upon a fold of his clothing.

“Now it is understood that the boy is a Sahib?” he went on in a muffled tone. “Such a Sahib as was he who kept the images in the Wonder House.” The lama’s experience of white men was limited. He seemed to be repeating a lesson. “So then it is not seemly that he should do other than as the Sahibs do. He must go back to his own people.”

“For a day and a night and a day,” Kim pleaded.

“No, ye don’t!” Father Victor saw Kim edging towards the door, and interposed a strong leg.

“I do not understand the customs of white men. The Priest of the Images in the Wonder House in Lahore was more courteous than the thin one here. This boy will be taken from me. They will make a Sahib of my disciple? Woe to me! How shall I find my River? Have they no disciples? Ask.”

“He says he is very sorree that he cannot find the River now any more. He says, Why have you no disciples, and stop bothering him? He wants to be washed of his sins.”

Neither Bennett nor Father Victor found any answer ready.

Said Kim in English, distressed for the lama’s agony: “I think if you will let me go now we will walk away quietly and not steal. We will look for that River like before I was caught. I wish I did not come here to find the Red Bull and all that sort of thing. I do not want it.”

“It’s the very best day’s work you ever did for yourself, young man,” said Bennett.

“Good heavens, I don’t know how to console him,” said Father Victor, watching the lama intently. “He can’t take the boy away with him, and yet he’s a good man—I’m sure he’s a good man. Bennett, if you give him that rupee he’ll curse you root and branch!”

They listened to each other’s breathing—three—five full minutes. Then the lama raised his head, and looked forth across them into space and emptiness.

“And I am a Follower of the Way,” he said bitterly. “The sin is mine and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself for now I see it was but make-belief—that thou wast sent to me to aid in the Search. So my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and the wisdom of thy little years. But those who follow the Way must permit not the fire of any desire or attachment, for that is all Illusion. As says ...” He quoted an old, old Chinese text, backed it with another, and reinforced these with a third. “I stepped aside from the Way, my chela. It was no fault of thine. I delighted in the sight of life, the new people upon the roads, and in thy joy at seeing these things. I was pleased with thee who should have considered my Search and my Search alone. Now I am sorrowful because thou art taken away and my River is far from me. It is the Law which I have broken!”

“Powers of Darkness below!” said Father Victor, who, wise in the confessional, heard the pain in every sentence.

“I see now that the sign of the Red Bull was a sign for me as well as for thee. All Desire is red—and evil. I will do penance and find my River alone.”

“At least go back to the Kulu woman,” said Kim, “otherwise thou wilt be lost upon the roads. She will feed thee till I run back to thee.”

The lama waved a hand to show that the matter was finally settled in his mind.

“Now,”—his tone altered as he turned to Kim,—“what will they do with thee? At least I may, acquiring merit, wipe out past ill.”

“Make me a Sahib—so they think. The day after tomorrow I return. Do not grieve.”

“Of what sort? Such an one as this or that man?” He pointed to Father Victor. “Such an one as those I saw this evening, men wearing swords and stamping heavily?”

“Maybe.”

“That is not well. These men follow desire and come to emptiness. Thou must not be of their sort.”

“The Umballa priest said that my Star was War,” Kim interjected. “I will ask these fools—but there is truly no need. I will run away this night, for all I wanted to see the new things.”

Kim put two or three questions in English to Father Victor, translating the replies to the lama.

Then: “He says, ‘You take him from me and you cannot