LITMIR.BIZ

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creed, of course, they were all on their priest’s side, but the lama was the guest and the novelty. His gentle kindliness, and his impressive Chinese quotations, that sounded like spells, delighted them hugely; and in this sympathetic, simple air, he expanded like the Bodhisat’s own lotus, speaking of his life in the great hills of Such-zen, before, as he said, ‘I rose up to seek enlightenment.’

      Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a master-hand at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family priest led him on to describe his methods; each giving the planets names that the other could not understand, and pointing upwards as the big stars sailed across the dark. The children of the house tugged unrebuked at his rosary; and he clean forgot the Rule which forbids looking at women as he talked of enduring snows, landslips, blocked passes, the remote cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful upland road that leads at last into Great China itself.

      ‘How thinkest thou of this one?’ said the cultivator aside to the priest.

      ‘A holy man—a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but his feet are upon the Way,’ was the answer. ‘And his methods of nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure.’

      ‘Tell me,’ said Kim lazily, ‘whether I find my Red Bull on a green field, as was promised me.’

      ‘What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?’ the priest asked, swelling with importance.

      ‘Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May.’

      ‘Of what year?’

      ‘I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the great earthquake in Srinagur which is in Kashmir.’ This Kim had from the woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball O’Hara. The earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood a leading date in the Punjab.

      ‘Ai!’ said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim’s supernatural origin more certain. ‘Was not such an one’s daughter born then—’

      ‘And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years—all likely boys,’ cried the cultivator’s wife, sitting outside the circle in the shadow.

      ‘None reared in the knowledge,’ said the family priest, ‘forget how the planets stood in their Houses upon that night.’ He began to draw in the dust of the courtyard. ‘At least thou hast good claim to a half of the House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?’

      ‘Upon a day,’ said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was creating, ‘I shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a green field, but first there will enter two men making all things ready.’

      ‘Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place. Then begins the Sight. Two men—thou sayest? Ay, ay. The Sun, leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins. Hence the two men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me a twig, little one.’

      He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again in the dust mysterious signs—to the wonder of all save the lama, who, with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.

      At the end of half an hour, he tossed the twig from him with a grunt.

      ‘Hm. Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to make all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign over against him is the sign of War and armed men.’

      ‘There was indeed a man of the Ludhiana Sikhs in the carriage from Lahore,’ said the cultivator’s wife hopefully.

      ‘Tck! Armed men—many hundreds. What concern hast thou with war?’ said the priest to Kim. ‘Thine is a red and an angry sign of War to be loosed very soon.’

      ‘None—none,’ said the lama earnestly. ‘We seek only peace and our River.

      Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the dressing-room. Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.

      The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. ‘More than this I cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, bay.’

      ‘And my River, my River,’ pleaded the lama. ‘I had hoped his Bull would lead us both to the River.’

      ‘Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother,’ the priest replied. ‘Such things are not common.’

      Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and nearly three annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.

      ‘Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from the Wheel of Things,’ said the lama.

      ‘Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who would give us meat and shelter?’ quoth Kim, stepping merrily under his burden.

      ‘Yonder is a small stream. Let us look,’ said the lama, and he led from the white road across the fields; walking into a very hornets’-nest of pariah dogs.

       CHAPTER 3

      Yea, voice of every Soul that clung

      To Life that strove from rung to rung

      When Devadatta’s rule was young,

      The warm wind brings Kamakura.

      Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a market-gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers for Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed.

      ‘Such an one,’ said the lama, disregarding the dogs, ‘is impolite to strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned by his demeanour, my disciple.’

      ‘Ho, shameless beggars!’ shouted the farmer ‘Begone! Get hence!’

      ‘We go,’ the lama returned, with quiet dignity. ‘We go from these unblessed fields.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Kim, sucking in his breath. ‘If the next crops fail, thou canst only blame thy own tongue.’

      The man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. ‘The land is full of beggars,’ he began, half apologetically.

      ‘And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O Mali?’ said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener least likes. ‘All we sought was to look at that river beyond the field there.’

      ‘River, forsooth!’ the man snorted. ‘What city do ye hail from not to know a canal-cut? It runs as straight as an arrow, and I pay for the water as though it were molten silver. There is a branch of a river beyond. But if ye need water I can give that—and milk.’

      ‘Nay, we will go to the river,’ said the lama, striding out.

      ‘Milk and a meal,’ the man stammered, as he looked at the strange tall figure. ‘I—I would not draw evil upon myself—or my crops; but beggars are so many in these hard days.’

      ‘Take notice,’ the lama turned to Kim. ‘He was led to speak harshly by the Red Mist of anger. That clearing from his eyes, he becomes courteous and of an affable heart. May his fields be blessed. Beware not to judge men too hastily, O farmer.’

      ‘I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone to byre,’ said Kim to the abashed man. ‘Is he not wise and holy? I am his disciple.’

      He cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the narrow field-borders with great dignity.

      ‘There is no pride,’ said the lama, after a pause, ‘there is no pride among such as follow the Middle Way.’

      ‘But thou hast said he was low caste and discourteous.’

      ‘Low caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not? Afterwards he amended his discourtesy,

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