Kim

native-fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling enormous

clouds of dust.

The lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of

sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest.

They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a

rice-husker. She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the

road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the

curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did

not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties

were more or less observed.

A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly

uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing from

her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.

'O mother,' he cried, 'do they do this in the zenanas? Suppose an

Englishman came by and saw that thou hast no nose?'

'What?' she shrilled back. 'Thine own mother has no nose? Why say

so, then, on the open road?'

It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the

gesture of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.

'Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?' She withdrew all her veil and

stared at him.

It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he

called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few other

fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.

'That is a nut-cut [rogue],' she said. 'All police-constables are

nut-cuts; but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou hast

never learned all that since thou camest from Belait [Europe]. Who

suckled thee?'

'A pahareen--a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty

under a shade--O Dispenser of Delights,' and he was gone.

'These be the sort'--she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her

mouth with pan--'These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the

land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe,

suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse

than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings.' Then she told a long,

long tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young policeman who had

disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin of her own, in the

matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a quotation from a work

by no means devotional.

Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether the

lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So Kim

dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. For an hour

or more the lama's tam-o'shanter showed like a moon through the haze;

and, from all he heard, Kim gathered that the old woman wept. One of

the Ooryas half apologized for his rudeness overnight, saying that he

had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it

to the presence of the strange priest. Personally, he believed in

Brahmins, though, like all natives, he was acutely aware of their

cunning and their greed. Still, when Brahmins but irritated with

begging demands the mother of his master's wife, and when she sent them

away so angry that they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real

reason of the second off-side bullock going lame, and of the pole

breaking the night before), he was prepared to accept any priest of any

other denomination in or out of India. To this Kim assented with wise

nods, and bade the Oorya observe that the lama took no money, and that

the cost of his and Kim's food would be repaid a hundred times in the

good luck that would attend the caravan henceforward. He also told

stories of Lahore city, and sang a song or two which made the escort

laugh. As a town-mouse well acquainted with the latest songs by the

most fashionable composers--they are women for the most part--Kim had a

distinct advantage over men from a little fruit-village behind

Saharunpore, but he let that advantage be inferred.

At noon they turned aside to eat, and the meal was good, plentiful, and

well-served on plates of clean leaves, in decency, out of drift of the

dust. They gave the scraps to certain beggars, that all requirements

might be fulfilled, and sat down to a long, luxurious smoke. The old

lady had retreated behind her curtains, but mixed most freely in the

talk, her servants arguing with and contradicting her as servants do

throughout the East. She compared the cool and the pines of the Kangra

and Kulu hills with the dust and the mangoes of the South; she told a

tale of some old local Gods at the edge of her husband's territory; she

roundly abused the tobacco which she was then smoking, reviled all

Brahmins, and speculated without reserve on the coming of many

grandsons.

Chapter 5

Here come I to my own again

Fed, forgiven, and known again

Claimed by bone of my bone again,

And sib to flesh of my flesh!

The fatted calf is dressed for me,

But the husks have greater zest for me ...

I think my pigs will be best for me,

So I'm off to the styes afresh.

The Prodigal Son.

Once more the lazy, string-tied, shuffling procession got under way,

and she slept till they reached the next halting-stage. It was a very

short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so Kim cast about for

means of amusement.

'But why not sit and rest?' said one of the escort. 'Only the devils

and the English walk to and fro without reason.'

'Never make friends with the Devil, a Monkey, or a Boy. No man knows

what they will do next,' said his fellow.

Kim turned a scornful back--he did not want to hear the old story how

the Devil played with the boys and repented of it and walked idly

across country.

The lama strode after him. All that day, whenever they passed a

stream, he had turned aside to look at it, but in no case had he

received any warning that he had found his River. Insensibly, too, the

comfort of speaking to someone in a reasonable tongue, and of being

properly considered and respected as her spiritual adviser by a

well-born woman, had weaned his thoughts a little from the Search. And

further, he was prepared to spend serene years in his quest; having

nothing of the white man's impatience, but a great faith.

'Where goest thou?' he called after Kim.

'Nowhither--it was a small march, and all this'--Kim waved his hands

abroad--'is new to me.'

'She is beyond question a wise and a discerning woman. But it is hard

to meditate when--'

'All women are thus.' Kim spoke as might have Solomon.

'Before the lamassery was a broad platform,' the lama muttered, looping

up the well-worn rosary, 'of stone. On that I have left the marks of

my feet--pacing to and fro with these.'

He clicked the beads, and began the 'Om mane pudme hum's of his

devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet, and the absence of dust.

One thing after another drew Kim's idle eye across the plain. There

was no purpose in his wanderings, except that the build of the huts

near by seemed new, and he wished to investigate.

They came out on a broad tract of grazing-ground, brown and purple in

the afternoon light, with a heavy clump of mangoes in the centre. It

struck Kim as curious that no shrine stood in so eligible a spot: the

boy was observing as any priest for these things. Far across the plain

walked side by side four men, made small by the distance. He looked

intently under his curved palms and caught the sheen of brass.

'Soldiers. White soldiers!' said he. 'Let us see.'