Kim (12 page)

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 apologised 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.

Here come I to my own again—
Fed, forgiven, and known again—
Claimed by bone of my bone again,
    And sib to flesh of my flesh!
The fatted calf is dressed for me,
But the husks have greater zest for me . . .
I think my pigs will be best for me,
    So I’m off to the styes afresh.
            — The Prodigal Son

Once more
the lazy, string-tied, shuffling procession got under way, and she slept till they reached the next halting-stage. It was a very short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so Kim cast about for means of amusement.

‘But why not sit and rest?’ said one of the escort. ‘Only the devils and the English walk to and fro without reason.’

‘Never make friends with the Devil, a Monkey, or a Boy. No man knows what they will do next,’ said his fellow.

Kim turned a scornful back—he did not want to hear the old story how the Devil played with the boys and repented of it—and walked idly across country.

The lama strode after him. All that day, whenever they passed a stream, he had turned aside to look at it, but in no case had he received any warning that he had found his River. Insensibly, too, the comfort of speaking to someone in a reasonable tongue, and of being properly considered and respected as her spiritual adviser by a well-born woman, had weaned his thoughts a little from the Search. And further, he was prepared to spend serene years in his quest; having nothing of the white man’s impatience, but a great faith.

‘Where goest thou?’ he called after Kim.

‘Nowhither—it was a small march, and all this’—Kim waved his hands abroad—‘is new to me.’

‘She is beyond question a wise and a discerning woman. But it is hard to meditate when——’

‘All women are thus.’ Kim spoke as might have Solomon.

‘Before the lamassery was a broad platform,’ the lama muttered, looping up the well-worn rosary, ‘of stone. On that I have left the marks of my feet—pacing to and fro with these.’

He clicked the beads, and began the ‘
Om mane pudme hum
’s of his devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet, and the absence of dust.

One thing after another drew Kim’s idle eye across the plain. There was no purpose in his wanderings, except that the build of the huts near by seemed new, and he wished to investigate.

They came out on a broad tract of grazing-ground, brown and purple in the afternoon light, with a heavy clump of mangoes in the centre. It struck Kim as curious that no shrine stood in so eligible a spot: the boy was observing as any priest for these things. Far across the plain walked side by side four men, made small by the distance. He looked intently under his curved palms and caught the sheen of brass.

‘Soldiers. White soldiers!’ said he. ‘Let us see.’

‘It is always soldiers when thou and I go out alone together. But I have never seen the white soldiers.’

‘They do no harm except when they are drunk. Keep behind this tree.’

They stepped behind the thick trunks in the cool dark of the mango-tope. Two little figures halted; the other two came forward uncertainly. They were the advance-party of a regiment on the march, sent out, as usual, to mark the camp. They bore five-foot sticks with fluttering flags, and called to each other as they spread over the flat earth.

At last they entered the mango-grove, walking heavily.

‘It’s here or hereabouts—officers’ tents under the trees, I take it, an’ the rest of us can stay outside. Have they marked out for the baggage-wagons behind?’

They cried again to their comrades in the distance, and the rough answer came back faint and mellowed.

‘Shove the flag in here, then,’ said one.

‘What do they prepare?’ said the lama, wonderstruck. ‘This is a great and terrible world. What is the device on the flag?’

A soldier thrust a stave within a few feet of them, grunted discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion, who looked up and down the shaded cave of greenery, and returned it.

Kim stared with all his eyes, his breath coming short and sharp between his teeth. The soldiers stamped off into the sunshine.

‘O Holy One!’ he gasped. ‘My horoscope! The drawing in the dust by the priest at Umballa! Remember what he said. First come two—
ferashes
—to make all things ready—in a dark place, as it is always at the beginning of a vision.’

‘But this is not vision,’ said the lama. ‘It is the world’s Illusion, and no more.’

‘And after them comes the Bull—the Red Bull on the green field. Look! It is he!’

He pointed to the flag that was snap-snapping in the evening breeze not ten feet away. It was no more than an ordinary camp marking-flag; but the regiment, always punctilious in matters of millinery, had charged it with the regimental device, the Red Bull, which is the crest of the Mavericks—the great Red Bull on a background of Irish green.

‘I see, and now I remember.’ said the lama. ‘Certainly it is thy Bull. Certainly, also, the two men came to make all ready.’

‘They are soldiers—white soldiers. What said the priest? “The sign over against the Bull is the sign of War and armed men.” Holy One, this thing touches my Search.’

‘True. It is true.’ The lama stared fixedly at the device that flamed like a ruby in the dusk. ‘The priest at Umballa said that thine was the sign of War.’

‘What is to do now?’

‘Wait. Let us wait.’

‘Even now the darkness clears,’ said Kim. It was only natural that the descending sun should at last strike through the tree-trunks, across the grove, filling it with mealy gold light for a few minutes; but to Kim it was the crown of the Umballa Brahmin’s prophecy.

‘Hark!’ said the lama. ‘One beats a drum—far off!’

At first the sound, carrying diluted through the still air, resembled the beating of an artery in the head. Soon a sharpness was added.

‘Ah! The music,’ Kim explained. He knew the sound of a regimental band, but it amazed the lama.

At the far end of the plain a heavy, dusty column crawled in sight. Then the wind brought the tune:

        We crave your condescension
        To tell you what we know
Of marching in the Mulligan Guards
        To Sligo Port below!

Here broke in the shrill-tongued fifes:

        We shouldered arms,
        We marched—we marched away.
        From Phoenix Park
        We marched to Dublin Bay.
        The drums and the fifes,
        Oh, sweetly they did play,
As we marched—marched—marched—with the Mulligan Guards!

It was the band of the Mavericks playing the regiment to camp; for the men were route-marching with their baggage. The rippling column swung into the level—carts behind it—divided left and right, ran about like an ant-hill, and . . .

‘But this is sorcery!’ said the lama.

The plain dotted itself with tents that seemed to rise, all spread, from the carts. Another rush of men invaded the grove, pitched a huge tent in silence, ran up yet eight or nine more by the side of it, unearthed cooking-pots, pans, and bundles, which were taken possession of by a crowd of native servants; and behold the mango-tope turned into an orderly town as they watched!

‘Let us go,’ said the lama, sinking back afraid, as the fires twinkled and white officers with jingling swords stalked into the Mess-tent.

‘Stand back in the shadow. No one can see beyond the light of a fire,’ said Kim, his eyes still on the flag. He had never before watched the routine of a seasoned regiment pitching camp in thirty minutes.

‘Look! look! look!’ clucked the lama. ‘Yonder comes a priest.’ It was Bennett, the Church of England Chaplain of the regiment, limping in dusty black. One of his flock had made some rude remarks about the Chaplain’s mettle; and to abash him Bennett had marched step by step with the men that day. The black dress, gold cross on the watch-chain, the hairless face, and the soft, black wideawake hat would have marked him as a holy man anywhere in all India. He dropped into a camp-chair by the door of the Mess-tent and slid off his boots. Three or four officers gathered round him, laughing and joking over his exploit.

‘The talk of white men is wholly lacking in dignity,’ said the lama, who judged only by tone. ‘But I considered the countenance of that priest and I think he is learned. Is it likely that he will understand our talk? I would talk to him of my Search.’

‘Never speak to a white man till he is fed,’ said Kim, quoting a well-known proverb. ‘They will eat now, and—and I do not think they are good to beg from. Let us go back to the resting-place. After we have eaten we will come again. It certainly was a Red Bull—
my
Red Bull.’

They were both noticeably absent-minded when the old lady’s retinue set their meal before them; so none broke their reserve, for it is not lucky to annoy guests.

‘Now,’ said Kim, picking his teeth, ‘we will return to that place; but thou, O Holy One, must wait a little way off, because thy feet are heavier than mine and I am anxious to see more of that Red Bull.’

‘But how canst thou understand the talk? Walk slowly. The road is dark,’ the lama replied uneasily.

Kim put the question aside. ‘I marked a place near to the trees,’ said he, ‘where thou canst sit till I call. Nay,’ as the lama made some sort of protest, ‘remember this is
my
Search—the Search for my Red Bull. The sign in the Stars was not for thee. I know a little of the customs of white soldiers, and I always desire to see some new things.’

‘What dost thou not know of this world?’ The lama squatted obediently in a little hollow of the ground not a hundred yards from the hump of the mango-trees dark against the star-powdered sky.

‘Stay till I call.’ Kim flitted into the dusk. He knew that in all probability there would be sentries round the camp, and smiled to himself as he heard the thick boots of one. A boy who can dodge over the roofs of Lahore city on a moonlight night, using every little patch and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely to be checked by a line of well-trained soldiers. He paid them the compliment of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting, crouching and dropping flat, worked his way toward the lighted Mess-tent where, close pressed behind the mango-tree, he waited till some chance word should give him a returnable lead.

The one thing now in his mind was further information as to the Red Bull. For aught he knew, and Kim’s limitations were as curious and sudden as his expansions, the men, the nine hundred thorough devils of his father’s prophecy, might pray to the beast after dark, as Hindus pray to the Holy Cow. That at least would be entirely right and logical, and the padre with the gold cross would be therefore the man to consult in the matter. On the other hand, remembering sober-faced padres whom he had avoided in Lahore city, the priest might be an inquisitive nuisance who would bid him learn. But had it not been proven at Umballa that his sign in the high heavens portended War and armed men? Was he not the Friend of the Stars as well as of all the World, crammed to the teeth with dreadful secrets? Lastly—and firstly as the undercurrent of all his quick thoughts—this adventure, though he did not know the English word, was a stupendous lark—a delightful continuation of his old flights across the housetops, as well as the fulfilment of sublime prophecy. He lay belly-flat and wriggled towards the Mess-tent door, a hand on the amulet round his neck.

It was as he suspected. The Sahibs prayed to their God; for in the centre of the Mess-table—its sole ornament when they were on the line of march—stood a golden bull fashioned from old-time loot of the Summer Palace at Pekin—a red-gold bull with lowered head, ramping upon a field of Irish green. To him the Sahibs held out their glasses and cried aloud confusedly.

Now the Reverend Arthur Bennett always left Mess after that toast, and being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt than usual. Kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his totem on the table, when the Chaplain stepped on his right shoulder-blade. Kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways, brought down the Chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by the throat and nearly choked the life out of him. Kim then kicked him desperately in the stomach. Mr Bennett gasped and doubled up, but without relaxing his grip, rolled over again, and silently hauled Kim to his own tent. The Mavericks were incurable practical jokers; and it occurred to the Englishman that silence was best till he had made complete inquiry.