Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

have no pressing engagement with your old man⁠—perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his fancies⁠—I should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me till I find those sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you since I met my friend at Delhi. And also I will embody your name in my offeecial report when matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a great feather in your cap. That is why I come really.”

“Humph! The end of the tale, I think, is true; but what of the forepart?”

“About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A lots more than you would suppose,” said Hurree earnestly. “You come⁠—eh? I go from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant and painted meads. I shall go to Mussoorie⁠—to good old Munsoorie Pahar, as the gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rampur into Chini. That is the only way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold, but we must wait for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see, one Russian is a Frenchman, and I know my French pretty well. I have friends in Chandernagore.”

“He would certainly rejoice to see the Hills again,” said Kim meditatively. “All his speech these ten days past has been of little else. If we go together⁠—”

“Oah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no hurry for Hurree⁠—that is a Europe pun, ha! ha!⁠—and you come after. There is plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map, of course. I shall go tomorrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh? You go think on it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now.” He yawned ponderously, and with never a civil word lumbered off to his sleeping-place. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in Hindustani:

“Well is the Game called great! I was four days a scullion at Quetta, waiting on the wife of the man whose book I stole. And that was part of the Great Game! From the South⁠—God knows how far⁠—came up the Mahratta, playing the Great Game in fear of his life. Now I shall go far and far into the North playing the Great Game. Truly, it runs like a shuttle throughout all Hind. And my share and my joy”⁠—he smiled to the darkness⁠—“I owe to the lama here. Also to Mahbub Ali⁠—also to Creighton Sahib, but chiefly to the Holy One. He is right⁠—a great and a wonderful world⁠—and I am Kim⁠—Kim⁠—Kim⁠—alone⁠—one person⁠—in the middle of it all. But I will see these strangers with their levels and chains⁠ ⁠…”

“What was the upshot of last night’s babble?” said the lama, after his orisons.

“There came a strolling seller of drugs⁠—a hanger-on of the Sahiba’s. Him I abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that our charms are worthier than his coloured waters.”

“Alas, my charms! Is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one?”

“Very strictly.”

“Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour.” He fumbled at his pencase.

“In the Plains,” said Kim, “are always too many people. In the Hills, as I understand, there are fewer.”

“Oh! the Hills, and the snows upon the Hills.” The lami tore off a tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. “But what dost thou know of the Hills?”

“They are very close.” Kim thrust open the door and looked at the long, peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed in morning-gold. “Except in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them.”

The lama snuffed the wind wistfully.

“If we go North,”⁠—Kim put the question to the waking sunrise⁠—“would not much midday heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at least?⁠ ⁠… Is the charm made, Holy One?”

“I have written the names of seven silly devils⁠—not one of whom is worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do foolish women drag us from the Way!”

Hurree Babu came out from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and deep-voiced, he did not look like “a fearful man.” Kim signed almost imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady, more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of green-mango colics in the young. The lama’s knowledge of medicine was, of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views with enchanting politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous physician. Hurree Babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert dabbler in the mysteries; but at least⁠—he thanked the Gods therefore⁠—he knew when he sat in the presence of a master. He himself had been taught by the Sahibs, who do not consider expense, in the lordly halls of Calcutta; but, as he was ever first to acknowledge, there lay a wisdom behind earthly wisdom⁠—the high and lonely lore of meditation. Kim looked on with envy. The Hurree Babu of his knowledge⁠—oily, effusive, and nervous⁠—was gone; gone, too, was the brazen drug-vendor of overnight. There remained⁠—polished, polite, attentive⁠—a sober, learned son of experience and adversity, gathering wisdom from the lama’s lips. The old lady confided to Kim that these rare levels were beyond her. She liked charms with plenty of ink that one could wash off in water, swallow, and be done with. Else what was the use of the Gods? She liked men and women, and she spoke of them⁠—of kinglets she had known in the past; of her own youth and beauty; of the depredations of leopards and