Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

them, and, when talk languished, flung pebbles into the void. Thirty miles away, as the eagle flies, lay the next range, seamed and channelled and pitted with little patches of brush⁠—forests, each a day’s dark march. Behind the village, Shamlegh hill itself cut off all view to southward. It was like sitting in a swallow’s nest under the eaves of the roof of the world.

From time to time the lama stretched out his hand, and with a little low-voiced prompting would point out the road to Spiti and north across the Parungla.

“Beyond, where the hills lie thickest, lies De-ch’en” (he meant Han-lé), “the great Monastery. s’Tag-stan-ras-ch’en built it, and of him there runs this tale.” Whereupon he told it: a fantastic piled narrative of bewitchment and miracles that set Shamlegh a-gasping. Turning west a little, he steered for the green hills of Kulu, and sought Kailung under the glaciers. “For thither came I in the old, old days. From Leh I came, over the Baralachi.”

“Yes, yes; we know it,” said the far-faring people of Shamlegh.

“And I slept two nights with the priests of Kailung. These are the Hills of my delight! Shadows blessed above all other shadows! There my eyes opened on this world; there my eyes were opened to this world; there I found Enlightenment; and there I girt my loins for my Search. Out of the Hills I came⁠—the high Hills and the strong winds. Oh, just is the Wheel!” He blessed them in detail⁠—the great glaciers, the naked rocks, the piled moraines and tumbled shale; dry upland, hidden salt-lake, age-old timber and fruitful water-shot valley one after the other, as a dying man blesses his folk; and Kim marvelled at his passion.

“Yes⁠—yes. There is no place like our Hills,” said the people of Shamlegh. And they fell to wondering how a man could live in the hot terrible Plains where the cattle run as big as elephants, unfit to plough on a hillside; where village touches village, they had heard, for a hundred miles; where folk went about stealing in gangs, and what the robbers spared the Police carried utterly away.

So the still forenoon wore through, and at the end of it Kim’s messenger dropped from the steep pasture as unbreathed as when she had set out.

“I sent a word to the hakim,” Kim explained, while she made reverence.

“He joined himself to the idolaters? Nay, I remember he did a healing upon one of them. He has acquired merit, though the healed employed his strength for evil. Just is the Wheel! What of the hakim?”

“I feared that thou hadst been bruised and⁠—and I knew he was wise.” Kim took the waxed walnut-shell and read in English on the back of his note: ‘Your favour received. Cannot get away from present company at present, but shall take them into Simla. After which, hope to rejoin you. Inexpedient to follow angry gentlemen. Return by same road you came, and will overtake. Highly gratified about correspondence due to my forethought.’ He says, Holy One, that he will escape from the idolaters, and will return to us. Shall we wait awhile at Shamlegh, then?”

The lama looked long and lovingly upon the hills and shook his head.

“That may not be, chela. From my bones outward I do desire it, but it is forbidden. I have seen the Cause of Things.”

“Why? When the Hills give thee back thy strength day by day? Remember we were weak and fainting down below there in the Doon.”

“I became strong to do evil and to forget. A brawler and a swashbuckler upon the hillsides was I.” Kim bit back a smile. “Just and perfect is the Wheel, swerving not a hair. When I was a man⁠—a long time ago⁠—I did pilgrimage to Guru Ch’wan among the poplars” (he pointed Bhotanwards), “where they keep the Sacred Horse.”

“Quiet, be quiet!” said Shamlegh, all arow. “He speaks of Jam-lin-nin-k’or, the Horse That Can Go Round the World in a Day.”

“I speak to my chela only,” said the lama, in gentle reproof, and they scattered like frost on south eaves of a morning. “I did not seek truth in those days, but the talk of doctrine. All illusion! I drank the beer and ate the bread of Guru Ch’wan. Next day one said: ‘We go out to fight Sangor Gutok down the valley to discover’ (mark again how Lust is tied to Anger!) ‘which Abbot shall bear rule in the valley and take the profit of the prayers they print at Sangor Gutok.’ I went, and we fought a day.”

“But how, Holy One?”

“With our long pencases as I could have shown⁠ ⁠… I say, we fought under the poplars, both Abbots and all the monks, and one laid open my forehead to the bone. See!” He tilted back his cap and showed a puckered silvery scar. “Just and perfect is the Wheel! Yesterday the scar itched, and after fifty years I recalled how it was dealt and the face of him who dealt it; dwelling a little in illusion. Followed that which thou didst see⁠—strife and stupidity. Just is the Wheel! The idolater’s blow fell upon the scar. Then I was shaken in my soul: my soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of illusion. Not till I came to Shamlegh could I meditate upon the Cause of Things, or trace the running grassroots of Evil. I strove all the long night.”

“But, Holy One, thou art innocent of all evil. May I be thy sacrifice!”

Kim was genuinely distressed at the old man’s sorrow, and Mahbub Ali’s phrase slipped out unawares.

“In the dawn,” the lama went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking between the slow sentences, “came enlightenment. It is here⁠ ⁠… I am an old man⁠ ⁠… hill-bred, hill-fed, never to sit down among my Hills. Three years I travelled through Hind, but⁠—can earth be stronger than Mother Earth? My stupid body yearned to the Hills and the snows