‘Yes, that am I—a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside when I come as thy disciple. I have accomplished the years appointed for a Sahib.’
‘As it were a novice?’ said the lama, nodding his head. ‘Art thou freed from the schools? I would not have thee unripe.’
‘I am all free. In due time I take service under the Government as a scribe——’
‘Not as a warrior. That is well.’
‘But first I come to wander—with thee. Therefore I am here. Who begs for thee, these days?’ he went on quickly. The ice was thin.
‘Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here, except when I come to look again at my disciple. From one end to another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain. A great and a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were in my own Bhotiyal.’
He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion gave him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-legged attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teak-wood table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups, was before him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily carved teak, bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and fronted by a lamp, an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-pots.
‘The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by giving me these a year since,’ he said, following Kim’s eye. ‘When one is far from one’s own land such things carry remembrance; and we must reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way. See!’ He pointed to a curiously built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic metal ornament. ‘When I was Abbot in my own place—before I came to better knowledge—I made that offering daily. It is the Sacrifice of the Universe to the Lord. Thus do we of Bhotiyal offer all the world daily to the Excellent Law. And I do it even now, though I know that the Excellent One is beyond all pinchings and pattings.’ He snuffed from his gourd.
‘It is well done, Holy One,’ Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the cushions, very happy and rather tired.
‘And also,’ the old man chuckled, ‘I write pictures of the Wheel of Life. Three days to a picture. I was busied on it—or it may be I shut my eyes a little—when they brought word of thee. It is good to have thee here: I will show thee my art—not for pride’s sake, but because thou must learn. The Sahibs have not all this world’s wisdom.’
He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of Indian ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens and Hells, and all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat Himself first drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His disciples the cause of things. Many ages have crystallised it into a most wonderful convention crowded with hundreds of little figures whose every line carries a meaning. Few can translate the picture-parable; there are not twenty in all the world who can draw it surely without a copy: of those who can both draw and expound are but three.
‘I have a little learned to draw,’ said Kim. ‘But this is a marvel beyond marvels.’
‘I have written it for many years,’ said the lama. ‘Time was when I could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. I will teach thee the art—after due preparation; and I will show thee the meaning of the Wheel.’
‘We take the Road, then?’
‘The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made plain to me in a hundred dreams—notably one that came upon the night of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut—that without thee I should never find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest, I put this from me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would not take thee with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes. I would not take thee till the time was ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to the Sea, from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain. Then I remembered the Jâtaka.’
He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had told it so often to the Jain priests.
‘Further testimony is not needed,’ he ended serenely. ‘Thou wast sent for an aid. That aid removed, my Search came to naught. Therefore we will go out again together, and our Search is sure.’
‘Whither go we?’
‘What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is sure. If need be, the River will break from the ground before us. I acquired merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave thee the jewel that is Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a follower of Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in Bhotiyal. It is sufficient. We are together, and all things are as they were—Friend of all the World—Friend of the Stars—my chela!’
Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the lama never demanded any details of life at St. Xavier’s, nor showed the faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs. His mind moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their wonderful first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling, till it pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old age.
Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played with his ghost-dagger and rosary. The clamour of Benares, oldest of all earth’s cities awake before the Gods, day and night, beat round the walls as the sea’s roar round a breakwater. Now and again, a Jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a living thing.276 A lamp twinkled, and there followed the sound of a prayer. Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the 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 c
hela? He follows our Lord the Healer.’
Now the Jains officially recognise all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as well as the Lingam277 and the Snake. They wear the Brahminical thread,278 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 sad-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 on 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 leaf-platter 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 quarrelsome, 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.279 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 to-day 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, and the soil of the Jullundur-doab280 for the best soil in it.’
‘I have said many times—in the Temple, I think—that if need be, the River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North,’ said the lama, rising. ‘I remember a pleasant place, set about with fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation—and the air is cooler there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.’
‘What is the name?’ said Kim.
‘How should I know? Didst thou not—no, that was after the Army rose out of the earth and took thee away. I abode there in meditation in a room against the dovecot—except when she talked eternally.’
‘Oho! the woman from Kulu. That is by Saharunpore.’ Kim laughed.
‘How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake of past sins?’ the Jat demanded cautiously. ‘It is a far cry to Delhi.’
‘No,’ said Kim. ‘I will beg a tikkut for the te-rain.’ One does not own to the possession of money in India.
‘Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage. My son is best in his mother’s arms. The Government has brought on us many taxes, but it gives us one good thing—the te-rain that joins friends and unites the anxious. A wonderful matter is the te-rain.’
They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand questions as to the lama’s walk and work in life, and received some curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat North-Western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of fellow-passengers. Even to-day, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark oppression to Indian rustics. They do not understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great pieces out of the charm. So, long and furious are the debates between travellers and Eurasian ticket-collectors. Kim assisted at two or three with grave advice, meant to darken counsel and to show off his wisdom before the lama and the admiring Kamboh. But at Somna Road the Fates sent him a matter to think upon. There tumbled into the compartment, as the train was moving off, a mean, lean little person—a Mahratta,281 so far as Kim could judge by the cock of the tight turban. His face was cut, his muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. He told them that a country-cart had upset and nearly slain him: he was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched him closely. If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on the earth, there should have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin. But all his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not cast a man into such extremity of terror. As, with shaking fingers, he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an amulet of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart. Now, amulets are common enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. There were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which luckily was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta’s face changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the amulet fairly on h
is breast.
‘Yes,’ he went on to the Kamboh, ‘I was in haste, and the cart, driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the harm done to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean. I was not a Son of the Charm [a lucky man] that day.’
‘That was a great loss,’ said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His experience of Benares had made him suspicious.
‘Who cooked it?’ said Kim.
‘A woman.’ The Mahratta raised his eyes.
‘But all women can cook tarkeean,’ said the Kamboh. ‘It is a good curry, as I know.’
‘Oh yes, it is a good curry,’ said the Mahratta.
‘And cheap,’ said Kim. ‘But what about caste?’
‘Oh, there is no caste where men go to—look for tarkeean,’ the Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. ‘Of whose service art thou?’
‘Of the service of this Holy One.’ Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.
‘Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me. He is called the Friend of all the World. He is also called the Friend of the Stars. He walks as a physician—his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom.’
‘And a Son of the Charm,’ said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh made haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.
‘And who is that?’ the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.
‘One whose child I—we have cured, who lies under great debt to us.—Sit by the window, man from Jullundur. Here is a sick one.’
‘Humph! I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. My ears are not long. I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.’ The Jat slid himself heavily into a far corner.
‘Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity,’ cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.