第27章 Chapter 4(7)

If Kim had walked proudly the day before,disciple of a holy man,today he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal procession,with a recognized place under the patronage of an old lady of charming manners and infinite resource.The escort,their heads tied up native-fashion,fell in on either side the cart,shuffling enormous clouds of dust.

The lama and Kim walked a little to one side;Kim chewing his stick of sugar-cane,and making way for no one under the status of a priest.

They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker.

She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road;and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the curtains and peered out,her veil a third across her face.Her men did not eye her directly when she addressed them,and thus the proprieties were more or less observed.

A dark,sallowish District Superintendent of Police,faultlessly uniformed,an Englishman,trotted by on a tired horse,and,seeing from her retinue what manner of person she was,chaffed her.

'O mother,'he cried,'do they do this in the zenanas?Suppose an Englishman came by and saw that thou hadst no nose?'

'What?'she shrilled back.'Thine own mother has no nose?Why say so,then,on the open road?'

It was a fair counter.The Englishman threw up his hand with the gesture of a man hit at sword-play.She laughed and nodded.

'Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?'She withdrew all her veil and stared at him.

It was by no means lovely,but as the man gathered up his reins he called it a Moon of Paradise,a Disturber of Integrity,and a few other fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.

'That is a nut-cut [rogue],'she said.'All police-constables are nut-cuts ;but the police-wallahs are the worst.Hai ,my son,thou hast never learned all that since thou camest from Belait [Europe].Who suckled thee?'

'A pahareen -a hillwoman of Dalhousie,my mother.Keep thy beauty under a shade -O Dispenser of Delights,'and he was gone.

'These be the sort'-she took a fine judicial tone,and stuffed her mouth with pan -'These be the sort to oversee justice.They know the land and the customs of the land.The others,all new from Europe,suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books,are worse than the pestilence.They do harm to Kings.'Then she told a long,long tale to the world at large,of an ignorant young policeman who had disturbed some small Hill Rajah,a ninth cousin of her own,in the matter of a trivial land-case,winding up with a quotation from a work by no means devotional.

Then her mood changed,and she bade one of the escort ask whether the lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion.So Kim dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane.For an hour or more the lama's tam-o'-shanter showed like a moon through the haze;and,from all he heard,Kim gathered that the old woman wept.One of the Ooryas half apologized for his rudeness overnight,saying that he had never known his mistress of so bland a temper,and he ascribed it to the presence of the strange priest.Personally,he believed in Brahmins,though,like all natives,he was acutely aware of their cunning and their greed.Still,when Brahmins but irritated with begging demands the mother of his master's wife,and when she sent them away so angry that they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real reason of the second off-side bullock going lame,and of the pole breaking the night before),he was prepared to accept any priest of any other denomination in or out of India.To this Kim assented with wise nods,and bade the Oorya observe that the lama took no money,and that the cost of his and Kim's food would be repaid a hundred times in the good luck that would attend the caravan henceforward.He also told stories of Lahore city,and sang a song or two which made the escort laugh.As a town-mouse well acquainted with the latest songs by the most fashionable composers -they are women for the most part -Kim had a distinct advantage over men from a little fruit-village behind Saharunpore,but he let that advantage be inferred.

At noon they turned aside to eat,and the meal was good,plentiful,and well-served on plates of clean leaves,in decency,out of drift of the dust.They gave the scraps to certain beggars,that all requirements might be fulfilled,and sat down to a long,luxurious smoke.The old lady had retreated behind her curtains,but mixed most freely in the talk,her servants arguing with and contradicting her as servants do throughout the East.She compared the cool and the pines of the Kangra and Kulu hills with the dust and the mangoes of the South;she told a tale of some old local Gods at the edge of her husband's territory;she roundly abused the tobacco which she was then smoking,reviled all Brahmins,and speculated without reserve on the coming of many grandsons.