Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

will not weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee.” An hysterical catch rose in his throat. “I have walked thee too far: I have not picked good food always for thee; I have not considered the heat; I have talked to people on the road and left thee alone⁠ ⁠… I have⁠—I have⁠ ⁠… Hai mai! But I love thee⁠ ⁠… and it is all too late⁠ ⁠… I was a child⁠ ⁠… Oh, why was I not a man?⁠ ⁠…” Overborne by strain, fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, Kim broke down and sobbed at the lama’s feet.

“What a to-do is here!” said the old man gently. “Thou hast never stepped a hair’s breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me? Child, I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new wall. Day by day, since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from thee. Therefore, not through any sin of thine, art thou weakened. It is the Body⁠—the silly, stupid Body⁠—that speaks now. Not the assured Soul. Be comforted! Know at least the devils that thou fightest. They are earthborn⁠—children of illusion. We will go to the woman from Kulu. She shall acquire merit in housing us, and specially in tending me. Thou shalt run free till strength returns. I had forgotten the stupid Body. If there be any blame, I bear it. But we are too close to the Gates of Deliverance to weigh blame. I could praise thee, but what need? In a little⁠—in a very little⁠—we shall sit beyond all needs.”

And so he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on that little-understood beast, our Body, who, being but a delusion, insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the immense multiplication of unnecessary devils.

“Hai! hai! Let us talk of the woman from Kulu. Think you she will ask another charm for her grandsons? When I was a young man, a very long time ago, I was plagued with these vapours⁠—and some others⁠—and I went to an Abbot⁠—a very holy man and a seeker after truth, though then I knew it not. Sit up and listen, child of my soul! My tale was told. Said he to me, ‘Chela, know this. There are many lies in the world, and not a few liars, but there are no liars like our bodies, except it be the sensations of our bodies.’ Considering this I was comforted, and of his great favour he suffered me to drink tea in his presence. Suffer me now to drink tea, for I am thirsty.”

With a laugh across his tears, Kim kissed the lama’s feet, and set about the tea-making.

“Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for some other things. Dost know it?”

“I have guessed maybe,” and the lama’s eyes twinkled. “We must change that.”

So, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of importance, paddled up nothing less than the Sahiba’s pet palanquin sent twenty miles, with that same grizzled old Oorya servant in charge, and when they reached the disorderly order of the long white rambling house behind Saharunpore, the lama took his own measures.

Said the Sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments: “What is the good of an old woman’s advice to an old man? I told thee⁠—I told thee, Holy One, to keep an eye upon the chela. How didst thou do it? Never answer me! I know. He has been running among the women. Look at his eyes⁠—hollow and sunk⁠—and the Betraying Line from the nose down! He has been sifted out! Fie! Fie! And a priest, too!”

Kim looked up, overweary to smile, shaking his head in denial.

“Do not jest,” said the lama. “That time is done. We are here upon great matters. A sickness of soul took me in the Hills, and him a sickness of the body. Since then I have lived upon his strength⁠—eating him.”

“Children together⁠—young and old,” she sniffed, but forbore to make any new jokes. “May this present hospitality restore ye! Hold awhile and I will come to gossip of the high good hills.”

At evening time⁠—her son-in-law was returned, so she did not need to go on inspection round the farm⁠—she won to the meat of the matter, explained low-voicedly by the lama. The two old heads nodded wisely together. Kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was dozing soddenly. The lama had forbidden him to set blankets or get food.

“I know⁠—I know. Who but I?” she cackled. “We who go down to the burning-ghats clutch at the hands of those coming up from the River of Life with full water-jars⁠—yes, brimming water-jars. I did the boy wrong. He lent thee his strength? It is true that the old eat the young daily. Stands now we must restore him.”

“Thou hast many times acquired merit⁠—”

“My merit. What is it? Old bag of bones making curries for men who do not ask ‘Who cooked this?’ Now if it were stored up for my grandson⁠—”

“He that had the belly-pain?”

“To think the Holy One remembers that! I must tell his mother. It is most singular honour! ‘He that had the belly-pain’⁠—straightway the Holy One remembered. She will be proud.”

“My chela is to me as is a son to the unenlightened.”

“Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years. If a child cries they say the heavens are falling. Now a grandmother is far enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of giving the breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or the wind. And since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the Holy One was here, maybe I offended in pressing for charms.”

“Sister,” said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist monk may sometimes employ towards a nun, “if