Kim

well-remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger--'over the stables

which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I forget

honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists into his

belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: "Here is the pain!"

ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the hakim's medicine. He

sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as Shiv's own bull. He

does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because of the

in-auspicious colour of the bottles.'

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness

towards the room prepared.

'Thou hast angered him, belike,' said Kim.

'Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but

a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for

bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he

will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's

drugs.'

'Who is the hakim, Maharanee?'

'A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca--a master

of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a

small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He travels about now,

vending preparations of great value. He has even papers, printed in

Angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack

women. He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (hakims

and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it,

gone to cover.'

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting

unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: 'This house is a

cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and--priests. Let the boy

stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?' He

raised his voice respectfully: 'Sahiba, the hakim sleeps after his

meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote.'

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down-talk a

Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a good

game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself,

should be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those curious bastard

English advertisements at the backs of native newspapers. St Xavier's

boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their

mates; for the language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms

is most simple and revealing. The Oorya, not unanxious to play off one

parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecote.

'Yes,' said Kim, with measured scorn. 'Their stock-in-trade is a

little coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are

broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in

children--who are not born.' The old lady chuckled. 'Do not be

envious. Charms are better, eh? I never gainsaid it. See that thy

Holy One writes me a good amulet by the morning.'

'None but the ignorant deny'--a thick, heavy voice boomed through the

darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting--'None but the ignorant

deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the value of

medicines.'

'A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: "I will open a grocer's

shop,"' Kim retorted.

Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to

attention.

'The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says

he: "Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones."'

Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went

on: 'I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the

wisdom of the Sahibs.'

'The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children

when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,' piped the voice

inside the palanquin.

'I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and

angry men. Sina well compounded when the moon stands in the proper

House; yellow earths I have--arplan from China that makes a man renew

his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir, and the

best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before--'

'That I surely believe,' said Kim.

'They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere ink

in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend

and wrestle with the evil.'

'Very mightily they do so,' sighed the old lady.

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy,

studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. 'But for my fate,

which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ. I bear a

degree from the great school at Calcutta--whither, maybe, the son of

this House shall go.'

'He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years be made

an F A' (First Arts--she used the English word, of which she had heard

so often), 'how much more shall children clever as some that I know

bear away prizes at rich Calcutta.'

'Never,' said the voice, 'have I seen such a child! Born in an

auspicious hour, and--but for that colic which, alas! turning into

black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon--destined to many years,

he is enviable.'

'Hai mai!' said the old lady. 'To praise children is inauspicious, or

I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is unguarded,

and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we

know ... The child's father is away too, and I must be chowkedar

[watchman] in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. Let the

hakim and the young priest settle between them whether charms or

medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the

guests, and--round the homestead go I!'

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of

dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba--her failings, her tongue, and

her large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial

custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction

for any gift under heaven. None the less, she made great parade of her

formal inspections, the riot of which could be heard half-way to

Mussoorie.

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The hakim, still

squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim pulled at

the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional debate, and

perhaps a little free doctoring.

'To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching

the peacock to sing,' said the hakim.

'True courtesy,' Kim echoed, 'is very often inattention.'

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

'Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,' cried a scullion. 'Look at it!'

'Get hence! Remove!' said the hakim. 'Is it the habit of the place

to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.'

'If the Sahiba knew--' Kim began.

'Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young

Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to--'

'The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the

money-lender's head. Who speaks against her?' The old servitor curled

his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'I am

responsible for the honour of this house. Go!' and he drove the

underlings before him.

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips: 'How

do you do, Mister O'Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.'

Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road,

perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet