Kim

‘And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on foot. So that we miss nothing—not even a little rivulet in a field-side.’

‘But thou hast a Search of thine own?’ The lama—very pleased that he remembered so well—sat bolt upright.

‘Ay,’ said Kim, humouring him. The boy was entirely happy to be out chewing pan and seeing new people in the great good-tempered world.

‘It was a bull—a Red Bull that shall come and help thee—and carry thee—whither? I have forgotten. A Red Bull on a green field, was it not?’

‘Nay, it will carry me nowhere,’ said Kim. ‘It is but a tale I told thee.’

‘What is this?’ the cultivator’s wife leaned forward, her bracelets clinking on her arm. ‘Do ye both dream dreams? A Red Bull on a green field, that shall carry thee to the Heavens—or what? Was it a vision? Did one make a prophecy? We have a Red Bull in our village behind Jullundur city, and he grazes by choice in the very greenest of our fields!’

‘Give a woman an old wife’s tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a thread, they will weave wonderful things,’ said the Sikh. ‘All holy men dream dreams, and by following holy men their disciples attain that power.’

‘A Red Bull on a green field, was it?’ the lama repeated. ‘In a former life it may be thou hast acquired merit, and the Bull will come to reward thee.’

‘Nay—nay—it was but a tale one told to me—for a jest belike. But I will seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy River and rest from the clatter of the train.’

‘It may be that the Bull knows—that he is sent to guide us both,’ said the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating Kim: ‘This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of this world.’

‘Beggars a plenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a yogi nor such a disciple,’ said the woman.

Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled. But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him their best.

And at last—tired, sleepy, and dusty—they reached Umballa City Station.

‘We abide here upon a law-suit,’ said the cultivator’s wife to Kim. ‘We lodge with my man’s cousin’s younger brother. There is room also in the courtyard for thy yogi and for thee. Will—will he give me a blessing?’

‘O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how we have been helped since the dawn!’

The lama bowed his head in benediction.

‘To fill my cousin’s younger brother’s house with wastrels—’ the husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.

‘Thy cousin’s younger brother owes my father’s cousin something yet on his daughter’s marriage-feast,’ said the woman crisply. ‘Let him put their food to that account. The yogi will beg, I doubt not.’

‘Ay, I beg for him,’ said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali’s Englishman and deliver himself of the white stallion’s pedigree.

‘Now,’ said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, ‘I go away for awhile—to—to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not stray abroad till I return.’

‘Thou wilt return? Thou will surely return?’ The old man caught at his wrist. ‘And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is it too late to look to-night for the River?’

‘Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on the road—an hundred kos from Lahore already.’

‘Yea—and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and terrible world.’

Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his own and a few score thousand other folk’s fate slung round his neck. Mahbub Ali’s directions left him little doubt of the house in which his Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dogcart home from the Club, made him quite sure. It remained only to identify his man, and Kim slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed grass close to the verandah. The house blazed with lights, and servants moved about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver. Presently forth came an Englishman, dressed in black and white, humming a tune. It was too dark to see his face, so Kim, beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.

‘Protector of the Poor!’

The man backed towards the voice.

‘Mahbub Ali says—’

‘Hah! What says Mahbub Ali?’ He made no attempt to look for the speaker, and that showed Kim that he knew.

‘The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established.’

‘What proof is there?’ The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge in the side of the drive.

‘Mahbub Ali has given me this proof.’ Kim flipped the wad of folded paper into the air, and it fell on the path beside the man, who put his foot on it as a gardener came round the corner. When the servant passed he picked it up, dropped a rupee,—Kim could hear the clink,—and strode into the house, never turning round.

Swiftly Kim took up the money; but, for all his training, he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of any game. What he desired was the visible effect of action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and wormed nearer to the house.

He saw—Indian bungalows are open through and through—the Englishman return to a small dressing-room, in a corner of the verandah, that was half-office, littered with papers and despatch-boxes, and sit down to study Mahbub Ali’s message. His face, by the full ray of the kerosene lamp, changed and darkened, and Kim, used as every beggar must be to watching countenances, took good note.

‘Will! Will, dear!’ called a woman’s voice. ‘You ought to be in the drawing-room. They’ll be here in a minute.’

The man still read intently.

‘Will!’ said the voice, five minutes later. ‘He’s come. I can hear the troopers in the drive.’

The man dashed out bareheaded as a big landau with four native troopers behind it halted at the verandah, and a tall, black-haired man, erect as an arrow, swung out, preceded by a young officer who laughed pleasantly.

Flat on his belly lay Kim, almost touching the high wheels. His man and the black stranger exchanged two sentences.

‘Certainly sir,’ said the young officer promptly. ‘Everything waits while a horse is concerned.’

‘We shan’t be more than twenty minutes,’ said Kim’s man. ‘You can do the honours—keep ‘em amused, and all that.’

‘Tell one of the troopers to wait,’ said the tall man, and they both passed into the dressing-room together as the landau rolled away. Kim saw their heads bent over Mahbub Ali’s message, and heard the voices—one low and deferential, the other sharp and decisive.

‘It isn’t a question of weeks. It is a question of days—hours almost,’ said the elder. ‘I’d been expecting it for some time, but this’—he tapped Mahbub Ali’s paper—‘clenches it. Grogan’s dining here to-night, isn’t he?’

‘Yes sir, and Macklin too.’

‘Very good. I’ll speak to them myself. The matter will be referred to the Council, of course, but this is a case where one is justified in assuming that we take action at once. Warn the Pindi and Peshawur brigades. It will disorganise all the summer reliefs, but we can’t help that. This comes of not smashing them thoroughly the first time. Eight thousand should be enough.’

‘What about artillery, sir?’

‘I must consult Macklin.’

‘Then it means war?’

‘No. Punishment. When a man is bound by the action of his predecessor—’

‘But C.25 may have lied.’

‘He bears out the other’s information. Practically, they showed their hand six months back. But Devenish would have it there was a chance of peace. Of course they used it to make themselves stronger. Send off those telegrams at once,—the new code, not the old,—mine and Wharton’s. I don’t think we need keep the ladies waiting any longer. We can settle the rest over the cigars. I thought it was coming. It’s punishment—not war.’