Kim (32 page)

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 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 gurgled 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. Hilás and Bunár—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 unoffeecially to elucidate political situation, Mister O’Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from criticising 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 Hilás and Bunár 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 Bunár, Hilás, 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 Bunár 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 Hilás and Bunár. 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 Bunár and Hilás. 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.’