Kim

still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That

night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an English word...

'Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,' he said,

about three o'clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking from

dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. 'The Jat will be here at

the light.'

'I am well answered. In my haste I would have done a wrong.' He sat

down on the cushions and returned to his rosary. 'Surely old folk are

as children,' he said pathetically. 'They desire a matter--behold, it

must be done at once, or they fret and weep! Many times when I was

upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at the hindrance

of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust. It was not so when I

was a man--a long time ago. None the less it is wrongful--'

'But thou art indeed old, Holy One.'

'The thing was done. A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or

young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the effect

of that Cause? Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it--or a

drunkard? Chela, this is a great and a terrible world.'

'I think it good,' Kim yawned. 'What is there to eat? I have not

eaten since yesterday even.'

'I had forgotten thy need. Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold rice.'

'We cannot walk far on such stuff.' Kim felt all the European's lust

for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple. Yet, instead

of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on

slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the farmer, voluble,

stuttering with gratitude.

'In the night the fever broke and the sweat came,' he cried. 'Feel

here--his skin is fresh and new! He esteemed the salt lozenges, and

took milk with greed.' He drew the cloth from the child's face, and it

smiled sleepily at Kim. A little knot of Jain priests, silent but

all-observant, gathered by the temple door. They knew, and Kim knew

that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. Being courteous

folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by presence, word, or

gesture. Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun rose.

'Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,' he said, not knowing how those

Gods were named. 'The fever is indeed broken.'

'Look! See!' The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of

three years. 'Was there ever such a chela? He follows our Lord the

Healer.'

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as

well as the Lingam and the Snake. They wear the Brahminical thread;

they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law. But, because they knew

and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he sought the

Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued long of

nights with the head-priest--as free-thinking a metaphysician as ever

split one hair into seventy--they murmured assent.

'Remember,'--Kim bent over the child--. 'this trouble may come again.'

'Not if thou hast the proper spell,' said the father.

'But in a little while we go away.'

'True,' said the lama to all the Jains. 'We go now together upon the

Search whereof I have often spoken. I waited till my chela was ripe.

Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of

my rest, O people of good will.'

'But I am not a beggar.' The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching

the child.

'Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One,' a priest cried.

'Go,' Kim whispered. 'Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and

for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food--curry, pulse,

cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be swift!'

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and slim,

in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the

other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama.

An English observer might have said that he looked rather like the

young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad

faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed.

The Seeker--he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-away

Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic--took no part in it, but

meditated, as always, alone among the images. The others were very

human; pressing small comforts upon the old man--a betel-box, a fine

new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such-like--warning him against the

dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the

Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and

swore to himself in the language of St Xavier's.

'But it is my own fault,' he concluded. 'With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub's

bread, or Lurgan Sahib's. At St Xavier's, three meals a day. Here I

must jolly-well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good

training. How I could eat a plate of beef now! ... Is it finished,

Holy One?'

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate

Chinese. 'I must lean on thy shoulder,' said he, as the temple gates

closed. 'We grow stiff, I think.'

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of

crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for the

way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

'Here we eat,' he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and

smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the other.

'Fall to, Holy Ones!' he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the

shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.)

'Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing

[asafoetida], curds and sugar. King of my fields,'--this to the small

son--'let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur can pay a

service ... I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that they had not

cooked, but truly'--he looked away politely over the broad

river--'where there is no eye there is no caste.'

'And we,' said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for the

lama, 'are beyond all castes.'

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had

licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff from his little finger did Kim

note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

'If our roads lie together,' he said roughly, 'I go with thee. One

does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak.

But I am not altogether a reed.' He picked up his lathi--a five-foot

male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron--and flourished it in

the air. 'The Jats are called quarrel-some, but that is not true.

Except when we are crossed, we are like our own buffaloes.'

'So be it,' said Kim. 'A good stick is a good reason.'

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged perspective

the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-ghats by the

river. Now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment

of a half-burned body bobbed by on the full current.

'But for thee,' said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his

hairy breast, 'I might today have gone thither--with this one. The

priests tell us that Benares is holy--which none doubt--and desirable

to die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for money; and

when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of none effect

except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour, drink, lave, and

scatter flowers--but always pay the priests. No, the Punjab for me,