Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

“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?”30

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 quiett.’ 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 quiett.”

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