Kim, Rudyard Kipling [best romance ebooks TXT] 📗

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! and 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 calamity.”

“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. Siná 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