Previous - Next

But to
none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out
as it has to thee - thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something
of a small imp.'

'And I have never seen such a priest as thou.' Kim considered the
benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. 'It is less than three
days since we took the road together, and it is as though it were a
hundred years.'

'Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have
rendered thee some service. Maybe' - he smiled - 'I freed thee from
a trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was
not enlightened, cast thee back into the river.'

'Maybe,' said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation
again and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not
consider imaginative. 'Now, as regards that
woman in the bullock-cart. I think she needs a second son for her
daughter.'

'That is no part of the Way,' sighed the lama. 'But at least she is
from the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!'

He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to
come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he
caught were in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech
of the mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama
turned over in his mind before answering. Now and again he heard
the singsong cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was a strange
picture that Kim watched between drooped eyelids. The lama, very
straight and erect, the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed
with black in the light of the parao fires precisely as a knotted
tree-trunk is slashed with the shadows of the low sun, addressed a
tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a many-coloured jewel
in the same uncertain light. The patterns on the gold-worked
curtains ran up and down, melting and reforming as the folds shook
and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew more earnest
the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between
the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness
speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and
faces and shadows. The voices of early evening had settled down to
one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the
bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the
tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl's sitar. Most men had eaten and
pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full
blast sound like bull-frogs.

At last the lama returned. A hillman walked behind him with a
wadded cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire.

'She deserves ten thousand grandchildren,' thought Kim. 'None the
less, but for me, those gifts would not have come.'

'A virtuous woman - and a wise one.' The lama slackened off, joint
by joint, like a slow camel. 'The world is full of charity to those
who follow the Way.' He flung a fair half of the quilt over Kim.

'And what said she?' Kim rolled up in his share of it.

Previous - Next