Kim by Rudyard Kipling (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📖

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, greybearded 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 -‘

‘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