Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

big, shapeless white woman on a pile of bedding asked him mysteriously whether he thought her husband would come back from the war. Kim reflected gravely, and said that he would, and the woman gave him food. In many respects, this big procession that played music at intervals⁠—this crowd that talked and laughed so easily⁠—resembled a festival in Lahore city. So far, there was no sign of hard work, and he resolved to lend the spectacle his patronage. At evening there came out to meet them bands of music, and played the Mavericks into camp near Umballa railway station. That was an interesting night. Men of other regiments came to visit the Mavericks. The Mavericks went visiting on their own account. Their pickets hurried forth to bring them back, met pickets of strange regiments on the same duty; and, after a while, the bugles blew madly for more pickets with officers to control the tumult. The Mavericks had a reputation for liveliness to live up to. But they fell in on the platform next morning in perfect shape and condition; and Kim, left behind with the sick, women, and boys, found himself shouting farewells excitedly as the trains drew away. Life as a Sahib was amusing so far; but he touched it with a cautious hand. Then they marched him back in charge of a drummer-boy to empty, lime-washed barracks, whose floors were covered with rubbish and string and paper, and whose ceilings gave back his lonely footfall. Native-fashion, he curled himself up on a stripped cot and went to sleep. An angry man stumped down the veranda, woke him up, and said he was a schoolmaster. This was enough for Kim, and he retired into his shell. He could just puzzle out the various English Police notices in Lahore city, because they affected his comfort; and among the many guests of the woman who looked after him had been a queer German who painted scenery for the Parsee travelling theatre. He told Kim that he had been “on the barricades in Forty-eight,” and therefore⁠—at least that was how it struck Kim⁠—he would teach the boy to write in return for food. Kim had been kicked as far as single letters, but did not think well of them.

“I do not know anything. Go away!” said Kim, scenting evil. Hereupon the man caught him by the ear, dragged him to a room in a far-off wing where a dozen drummer-boys were sitting on forms, and told him to be still if he could do nothing else. This he managed very successfully. The man explained something or other with white lines on a black board for at least half an hour, and Kim continued his interrupted nap. He much disapproved of the present aspect of affairs, for this was the very school and discipline he had spent two-thirds of his young life in avoiding. Suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him, and he wondered that he had not thought of it before.

The man dismissed them, and first to spring through the veranda into the open sunshine was Kim.

“ ’Ere, you! ’Alt! Stop!” said a high voice at his heels. “I’ve got to look after you. My orders are not to let you out of my sight. Where are you goin’?”

It was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the forenoon⁠—a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and Kim loathed him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons.

“To the bazaar⁠—to get sweets⁠—for you,” said Kim, after thought.

“Well, the bazaar’s out o’ bounds. If we go there we’ll get a dressing-down. You come back.”

“How near can we go?” Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he wished to be polite⁠—for the present.

“ ’Ow near? ’Ow far, you mean! We can go as far as that tree down the road.”

“Then I will go there.”

“All right. I ain’t goin’. It’s too ’ot. I can watch you from ’ere. It’s no good your runnin’ away. If you did, they’d spot you by your clothes. That’s regimental stuff you’re wearin’. There ain’t a picket in Umballa wouldn’t ’ead you back quicker than you started out.”

This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the corner of a bare road leading towards the bazaar, and eyed the natives passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue he knew best. “And now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazaar and tell him to come here. I would write a letter.”

“But⁠—but what manner of white man’s son art thou to need a bazaar letter-writer? Is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?”

“Ay; and Hell is full of the same sort. Do my order, you⁠—you Od! Thy mother was married under a basket! Servant of Lal Beg” (Kim knew the God of the sweepers), “run on my business or we will talk again.”

The sweeper shuffled off in haste. “There is a white boy by the barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,” he stammered to the first bazaar letter-writer he came across. “He needs thee.”

“Will he pay?” said the spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens and sealing-wax all in order.

“I do not know. He is not like other boys. Go and see. It is well worth.”

Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight. As soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly.

“First I will take my pay,” the letter-writer said. “Bad words have made the price higher. But who art thou, dressed in that fashion, to speak in this fashion?”

“Aha! That is in the letter