Kim (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Rudyard Kipling [78]
‘It is an order,’ said Kim blandly. ‘Who am I to dispute an order?’
‘A most finished Son of Eblis,’206 said Mahbub Ali. ‘But what is this tale of the thief and the search?’
‘That which I saw,’ said Kim, ‘the night that my lama and I lay next thy place in the Kashmir Serai. The door was left unlocked, which I think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He came in as one assured that thou wouldst not soon return. My eye was against a knot-hole in the plank. He searched as it were for something—not a rug, not stirrups, nor a bridle, nor brass pots—something little and most carefully hid. Else why did he prick with an iron between the soles of thy slippers?’
‘Ha!’ Mahbub Ali smiled gently. ‘And seeing these things, what tale didst thou fashion to thyself, Well of the Truth?’
‘None. I put my hand upon my amulet, which lies always next to my skin, and, remembering the pedigree of a white stallion that I had bitten out of a piece of Mussalmani bread, I went away to Umballa perceiving that a heavy trust was laid upon me. At that hour, had I chosen, thy head was forfeit. It needed only to say to that man, “I have here a paper concerning a horse which I cannot read.” And then?’ Kim peered at Mahbub under his eyebrows.
‘Then thou wouldst have drunk water twice—perhaps thrice, afterwards. I do not think more than thrice,’ said Mahbub simply.
‘It is true. I thought of that a little, but most I thought that I loved thee, Mahbub. Therefore I went to Umballa, as thou knowest, but (and this thou dost not know) I lay hid in the garden-grass to see what Colonel Creighton Sahib might do upon reading the white stallion’s pedigree.’
‘And what did he?’ for Kim had bitten off the conversation.
‘Dost thou give news for love, or dost thou sell it?’ Kim asked.
‘I sell and—I buy.’ Mahbub took a four-anna piece out of his belt and held it up.
‘Eight!’ said Kim, mechanically following the huckster instinct of the East.
Mahbub laughed, and put away the coin. ‘It is too easy to deal in that market, Friend of all the World. Tell me for love. Our lives lie in each other’s hand.’
‘Very good. I saw the Jang-i-Lat Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief] come to a big dinner. I saw him in Creighton Sahib’s office. I saw the two read the white stallion’s pedigree. I heard the very orders given for the opening of a great war.’
‘Hah!’ Mahbub nodded with deepest eyes afire. ‘The game is well played. That war is done now, and the evil, we hope, nipped before the flower—thanks to me—and thee. What didst thou later?’
‘I made the news as it were a hook to catch me victual and honour among the villagers in a village whose priest drugged my lama. But I bore away the old man’s purse, and the Brahmin found nothing. So next morning he was angry. Ho! Ho! And I also used the news when I fell into the hands of that white Regiment with their Bull!’
‘That was foolishness.’ Mahbub scowled. ‘News is not meant to be thrown about like dung-cakes, but used sparingly—like bhan .’207
‘So I think now, and moreover, it did me no sort of good. But that was very long ago,’—he made as to brush it all away with a thin brown hand,—‘and since then, and especially in the nights under the punkah at the madrissah, I have thought very greatly.’
‘Is it permitted to ask whither the Heaven-born’s thought might have led?’ said Mahbub, with an elaborate sarcasm, smoothing his scarlet beard.
‘It is permitted,’ said Kim, and threw back the very tone. ‘They say at Nucklao that no Sahib must tell a black man that he has made a fault.’
Mahbub’s hand shot into his bosom, for to call a Pathan a ‘black man’ [kala admi] is a blood-insult. Then he remembered and laughed. ‘Speak, Sahib. Thy black man hears.’
‘But,’ said Kim, ‘I am not a Sahib, and I say I made a fault to curse thee, Mahbub Ali, on that day at Umballa when I thought I was betrayed by a Pathan. I was senseless; for I was but newly caught, and I wished to kill that low-caste drummer-boy. I say now, Hajji,