Kim (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Rudyard Kipling [70]
He rejoiced that he had not betrayed his knowledge of the Colonel’s house; and when, on his return to barracks, he discovered that no cheroot-case had been left behind, he beamed with delight. Here was a man after his own heart—a tortuous and indirect person playing a hidden game. Well, if he could be a fool, so could Kim.
He showed nothing of his mind when Father Victor, for three long mornings, discoursed to him of an entirely new set of Gods and Codlings—notably of a Goddess called Mary, who, he gathered, was one with Bibi Miriam183 of Mahbub Ali’s theology. He betrayed no emotion when, after the lecture, Father Victor dragged him from shop to shop buying articles of outfit, nor when envious drummer-boys kicked him because he was going to a superior school did he complain, but awaited the play of circumstances with an interested soul. Father Victor, good man, took him to the station, put him into an empty second-class next to Colonel Creighton’s first, and bade him farewell with genuine feeling.
‘They’ll make a man o’ you, O’Hara, at St. Xavier‘s—a white man, an’ I hope, a good man. They know all about your comin’, an’ the Colonel will see that ye’re not lost or mislaid anywhere on the road. I’ve given you a notion of religious matters,—at least I hope so,—and you’ll remember, when they ask you your religion, that you’re a Cath‘lic. Better say Roman Cath’lic,184 tho’ I’m not fond of the word.’
Kim lit a rank cigarette—he had been careful to buy a stock in the bazar—and lay down to think. This solitary passage was very different from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the lama. ‘Sahibs get little pleasure of travel,’ he reflected. ‘Hai mai! I go from one place to another as it might be a kick-ball. It is my Kismet. No man can escape his Kismet. But I am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib.’ He looked at his boots ruefully. ‘No; I am Kim. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?’ He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.
Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. So far as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey of India as a chain-man. If he were very good, and passed the proper examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen years old, and Colonel Creighton would see that he found suitable employment.
Kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of this talk. Then the Colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent and picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented. No man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs.
‘Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers—to carry these pictures in thine eye till a suitable time comes to set them down upon paper. Perhaps some day, when thou art a chain-man,185 I may say to thee when we are working together: “Go across those hills and see what lies beyond.” Then one will say: “There are bad people living in those hills who will slay the chain-man if he be seen to look like a Sahib.” What then?’
Kim thought. Would it be safe to return the Colonel’s lead?
‘I would tell what that other man had said.’
‘But if I answered: “I will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge of what is behind those hills—for a picture of a river and a little news of what the people say in the villages there”?’
‘How can I tell? I am only a boy. Wait till I am a man.’ Then, seeing the Colonel’s brow clouded, he went on: ‘But I think I should in a few days earn the hundred rupees.’
‘By what road?