what wilt thou do?’
‘At the last I shall die.’
‘And after?’
‘Let the Gods order it. I have never pestered Them with prayers: I do not think they will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than three—ressaldar-majors all—in the regiments.’
‘And they likewise, bound upon the Wheel, go forth from life to life—from despair to despair,’ said the lama below his breath, ‘hot, uneasy, snatching.’
‘Ay,’ the old soldier chuckled. ‘Three ressaldar-majors in three regiments. Gamblers a little, but so am I. They must be well-mounted; and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took women. Well, well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It is a well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask save at the lance’s point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and they feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call me a toothless old ape.’
‘Hast thou never desired any other thing?’
‘Yes—yes—a thousand times! A straight back and a close-clinging knee once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that makes a man. Oh, the old days—the good days of my strength!’
‘That strength is weakness.’
‘It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it otherwise,’ the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into the pony’s lean flank.
‘But I know a River of great healing.’
‘I have drank [drunk] Gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. All she gave me was a flux, and no sort of strength.’
‘It is not Gunga. The River that I know washes from all taint of sin. Ascending the far bank one is assured of Freedom. I do not know thy life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and courteous. Thou hast clung to thy Way, rendering fidelity when it was hard to give, in that Black Year of which I now remember other tales. Enter now upon the Middle Way, which is the path to Freedom. Hear the Most Excellent Law, and do not follow dreams.’
‘Speak then, old man,’ the soldier smiled, half saluting. ‘We be all babblers at our age.’
The lama squatted under the shade of a mango, whose shadow played checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony; and Kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the crotch of the twisted roots.
There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. Slowly and impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes the old soldier slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the reins round his wrist. The lama’s voice faltered—the periods lengthened. Kim was busy watching a gray squirrel. When the little scolding bunch of fur, close pressed to the branch, disappeared, preacher and audience were fast asleep, the old officer’s strong-cut head pillowed on his arm, the lama’s thrown back against the tree bole, where it showed like yellow ivory. A naked child toddled up, stared, and, moved by some quick impulse of reverence, made a solemn little obeisance before the lama—only the child was so short and fat that it toppled over sideways, and Kim laughed at the sprawling, chubby legs. The child, scared and indignant, yelled aloud.
‘Hai! Hai!’ said the soldier, leaping to his feet. ‘What is it? What orders? … It is … a child! I dreamed it was an alarm. Little one—little one—do not cry. Have I slept? That was discourteous indeed!’
‘I fear! I am afraid!’ roared the child.
‘What is it to fear? Two old men and a boy? How wilt thou ever make a soldier, Princeling?’
The lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child, clicked his rosary.
‘What is that?’ said the child, stopping a yell midway. ‘I have never seen such things. Give them me.’
‘Aha,’ said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the grass:
‘This is a handful of cardamoms,
This is a lump of ghi:
This is millet and chillies and rice,
A supper for thee and me!’
The child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing beads.
‘Oho!’ said the old soldier. ‘Whence had thou that song, despiser of this world?’
‘I learned it in Pathânkot—sitting on a door-step,’ said the lama shyly. ‘It is good to be kind to babes.’
‘As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light, stumbling-blocks upon the way. Do children drop from heaven in thy country? Is it the Way to sing them songs?’
‘No man is all perfect,’ said the lama gravely, re-coiling the rosary. ‘Run now to thy mother, little one.’
‘Hear him!’ said the soldier to Kim. ‘He is ashamed for that he has made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in thee, my brother. Hai, child!’ He threw it a pice. ‘Sweetmeats are always sweet.’ And as the little figure capered away into the sunshine: ‘They grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I slept in the midst of thy preaching. Forgive me.’
‘We be two old men,’ said the lama. ‘The fault is mine. I listened to thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the next.’
‘Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And that song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the song of Nikal Seyn before Delhi—the old song.’
And they fared out from the gloom of the mango tope, the old man’s high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn (Nicholson)—the song that men sing in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama listened with deep interest.
‘Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead—he died before Delhi! Lances of North take vengeance for Nikal Seyn.’ He quavered it out to the end, marking the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony’s rump.
‘And now we come to the Big Road,’ said he, after receiving the compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. ‘It is long since I have ridden this way, but thy boy’s talk stirred me. See, Holy One—the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road—all hard—takes the quick traffic. In the days before rail-carriages the Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now there are only country-carts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road for the heavy carts—grain and cotton and timber, bhoosa, lime and hides. A man goes in safety here—for at every few kos is a police-station. The police are thieves and extortioners (I myself would patrol it with cavalry—young recruits under a strong captain), but at least they do not suffer any rivals. All castes and kinds of men move here. Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters—all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.’
the ressaldar
And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India’s traffic for fifteen hundred miles—such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. They looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed police-station opposite.