I

SILVER SPEECH

"It is not only the interest of India--now the most considerable part of the British Empire--but the credit and honour of the British nation itself, will be decided by this division. We are to decide by this judgment whether the crimes of individuals are to be turned into public guilt and national ignominy; or whether this nation will convert the very offences which have thrown a transient shade upon its government into something that will reflect a permanent lustre upon the honour, justice and humanity of the kingdom! My lords! There is yet another consideration equal to those other two great interests I have stated--those of our Empire, of our national character--something that, if possible, comes more home to the hearts and feelings of every Englishman--I mean the interests of our constitution itself, which is deeply involved in this case."

In the audience, a young man, fair of face, blue of eye, looked up suddenly, then muttered under his breath:

"Hard cheek! What the deuce has he got to do with the British constitution?"

"Do be quiet, Tom!" blushed the girl who sat next him in a whisper; "they'll hear you."

Tom relapsed into bored silence, and the stream of words went on--

"But the crimes we charge against him are not lapses, defects, errors of common human frailty which, as we know and feel, we can allow for. There are no crimes that have not arisen from passions which it is criminal to harbour, no offences that have not their root in avarice, rapacity, pride, insolence, ferocity, treachery, cruelty, malignity of temper; in short, in nothing that does not argue a total extinction of all moral principle, that does not manifest an inveterate blackness of heart dyed ingrain with malice, vitiated, corrupted, gangrened to the very core."

"Confound his Billingsgate!" murmured Tom Gordon softly. "What good does it do--anybody?"

"H'sh!" came the warning feminine whisper; "his accent is really very good."

Tom shifted uneasily, and once again the strenuous, eager voice, struggling bravely against the harshness of the English language, was the only sound held in the white walls of the Mission School at Ilmpur, a little Punjab town set in a waste of sand. The hot sunshine slanted across it in broad, golden rays from the upper windows, to lay broad, yellow squares on the cool whitewash. Through the doors, set open to the air on all sides, the same hot, yellow sunshine slanted in on the upturned faces of the students, all bent--with elation in their looks--on the prize English speaker, who was declaiming his set speech out of Burke's famous impeachment of Warren Hastings. Declaiming it before, as the local paper put it, "Mr. Commissioner Gordon and his good lady, Mr. Tom Gordon, a fine young man worthy of his great father who has lately entered India from Eton in quest of police post, the beautiful Miss Gordon, and many others of European renown, including natives of high official positions, who have honoured the Reverends Freemantle and Smith with attendance at their mission-school prizegiving."

They sat in a semicircle on the dais. A quaint company. Mr. Commissioner Gordon, with a painstakingly pious expression on his grizzly red-bearded face, inwardly rehearsing the speech he would have to make in his turn; his good lady nervously eyeing the gilt books which she would have to give away, spread out on the table before her. It was covered with a royal red cloth, and on it stood a packed posy of jasmine blossoms and marigolds. The odour of the crushed blossoms mingled with the confused scent of cocoanut oil, roses, and curry powder which is inseparable from every Indian assembly. On one side of the Commissioner sat the Reverend Freemantle, a gentleman with a beard grown white in the service of education. Mild, placid, benevolent, his face beamed out over his students. They were all doing well, and Gunpat-Rai was simply excelling himself by showing complete mastery over both vowels and consonants. Indeed, in the whole semicircle of eager teachers and approvers upon the platform there was not to be seen a dissentient expression; and one zenana-worker positively wept tears of joy, because it was through her dreary daily drudgery amongst fetid alleys and sunless back courts that the prize pupil had originally come to the mission-school.

Otherwise he might have remained as his father had remained all his life, proprietor of an odd little shop right away from all other shops, where they sold matches and oil, flour and earthenware dishes, string and pipe-bowls--everything, in fact, which might suddenly be wanted in the big, high, tenement houses that elbowed and shouldered the little dark lane.

"The law is the security of the people of England! It is the security of the people of India!"

Gunpat-Rai's voice, overtaxed, almost broke over the climax of Burke's rhodomontade, but the tumultuous, undisciplined applause which followed, covered the fact, and he sat down feeling dazed, confused. It was the first time he had ever spoken in public, and he had found that he had not been afraid. That, in itself, was disturbing--he had not felt afraid!

Meanwhile, Mr. Commissioner Gordon's loud voice was bombarding the wall with fitful explosions of words which reverberated amidst an echo of hesitating stutters.

"Gives me great pleasure, unalloyed pleasure to--er--er--er--to--to see Indian youth--er--er--er--taking their place with--with--er--er--er----" Here a glance at his son--who, after the manner of sons when their fathers are speaking, was burying his face in his hands--seemed to supply the lacking phrase--"with the youth of England."

"Good Heavens!" groaned Tom Gordon aside plaintively; "I say, Nell, how long do you think the Guv'nor will be on his legs, for I'll slope out, and have a smoke----"

"S--st, Tom!" reproved his sister severely. "You can't--and you've got to play in the cricket match, you know."

Tom groaned again, but less plaintively; and so the speechifying went on, the burden of all being the incalculable advantage of a good sound English education in every walk of life. Did they but choose, every student present--at any rate, students of the stamp of Gunpat-Rai--might "rise to higher things."

So, with a final and formal hand-shake to the lad who had so distinguished himself, the company trooped out into the sunshine and the mission-school lay empty. Only in the place where Gunpat-Rai had sat ere rising to speak, a tiny packet wrapped in silver-leaf betrayed its presence by shining like a star. It was the talisman which his little fifteen-year-old wife had given him that morning ere he started, with tears and laughter, because it was only the first half-chewed, half-sucked piece of dough-cake his firstborn had ever had. It had dropped from his nerveless hand when, in a dire funk, he had stood up in answer to the call of his name.

It did not, however, shine long, for an impudent sparrow soon discovered that it was but dough made silvern, and promptly carried it off.

Meanwhile the cricket match was in full swing, Tom Gordon captaining one side, and the Reverend Mr. Freemantle (who still cherished an old blue cap he had worn in his Oxford days) the other.

Youth, however, had to be allowed for, so the last-comer from Eton found himself, to his great delight, at the head of ten smaller boys--jolly little chaps with bright eyes and boundless obediences--while the big students, including Gunpat-Rai--who was cock at cricket as in English, ranged themselves under their master.

They won the toss, and Tom Gordon, as he suppled his hands with the ball, told himself the bowling must be good.

And good it was, especially in style. The tall young figure in white flannels, close clipped about the lean flanks with the light blue belt, reminded one of a flying Mercury as it poised in delivery. Every woman's eye was on it in admiration. As for the swift balls it sent, they were a revelation to these Indian boys, who had never seen real cricket. They crumpled up before them like agitated spiders when they came off the wicket, and when they came on it, they looked helplessly at the umpire to see if they were really out. The Reverend Mr. Freemantle made a good stand, the memory of many a past day coming back to give half-forgotten skill to his bat, his sheer delight in his youthful adversary's prowess making him bold. Still the score stood ominously at one figure when Gunpat-Rai took his place. Tom Gordon hitched up his belt and looked.

"I should say leg before," he muttered, "but they're so thin, they hardly count."

And then he let drive.

Now, whether the ball chose to hit Gunpat-Rai's bat or Gunpat-Rai's bat chose to hit the ball, is immaterial. Away it went beyond the boundary, and Gunpat-Rai's long legs scored four. A sharp, hissing roar of delight rose from the assembled school, and Tom Gordon frowned faintly; but he was far too good-humoured to withstand what followed. Heartened up by his absolutely unlooked-for success, Gunpat-Rai who, though his legs were thin, was a powerful enough young fellow, did everything and more than everything that could be expected of him. He gambolled out and slogged wildly, he pirouetted like a teetotum and nearly killed his wicket-keep, and finally let drive at his partner's wicket, demolishing all three stumps.

"Out!" cried the umpire ruefully, but with commendable impartiality, and when Tom Gordon had sufficiently recovered from his laughter to assert that no one but the stumps had suffered, another hissing roar of applause rose from the school.

All things, however, must come to an end, and a skying block of Gunpat-Rai's was finally caught by Tom Gordon as it appeared to be descending on his mother's lap. But the score stood at thirty-six, and as the batsman walked past him proudly yet sheepishly, the Eton boy shook him by the hand.

"By George, you know," he said, "you'd be another Ranji, with practice! I never saw such an innings played--never!"

Gunpat-Rai flushed up under his dark skin and gave back the grip with all the curious, lissome strength of an Indian hand, in which the sinews seem made of iron, the bones of velvet.

After that it seemed of little count that Tom Gordon, who began the next innings, should, by a judicious foresight and the obedience of his small boys combined, carry out his last bat as last man with a score of seventy-two.

"You are too good for us, Gordon," laughed the Rev. Mr. Freemantle. "We must deport him from the station, or request him not to play again, mustn't we, boys?"

But the hissing roar which followed was of dissent, not assent, and when it had died away, Gunpat-Rai, as head of the school, spoke up, to his own surprise again, fluently.

"Cricket," he said, "is a noble game. We learn everything noble from England. So are we pleased to acquire proficiency at the hands of Mr. Tom Gordon, Esquire."

The soft dark eyes looked almost appealingly at the blue ones.

"All right," said their owner, curtly. "I'll come down and coach you a bit, if you like."

And he did.

II

GOLDEN SILENCE

"Why on earth can't you learn to hold your tongue, Gunpat?" said Tom Gordon roughly. "I thought you had more sense than to mix yourself up with those Arya Somajh agitators. You'll be getting yourself into trouble some day!"

The years had passed since the famous innings, making of the bowler an Assistant District Superintendent of Police, of the batsman a pleader in the High Court. Practically the balance of progress was all in favour of the latter. Coming from the house of a miserable merchant whose monthly earnings barely touched a living wage of the poorest description, he had risen far beyond his birthright, whereas Tom Gordon, on his pay of two hundred a month, with poor promotion before him, had, if anything, fallen from his. But discontent sat in the dark eyes and cheerful acquiescence in the blue ones. Perhaps the owner of the latter was a better appraiser of his own worth, for he knew he was not clever; knew that though he was "jolly good" at this, he was not "jolly good" at that. Not so Gunpat-Rai. Clever at school--the cleverness of imitation, of memory--and gifted with a fluency of words beyond even that of most of his class, he had spent the first years of his young manhood in waiting for an appointment which never came. How could it come when every school in India turns out dozens of applicants as capable as he for every Government post from Cape Comorin to Holy Himalaya? Yet resentment at this failure of the impossible ate into his soul. So he had turned pleader, had drifted into the editing of a native newspaper, a copy of which lay on Tom Gordon's office table as he looked with kindly contempt at the man who sat opposite him. For, though Gunpat-Rai had not turned out a second Ranji, the memory of the old days when he had coached the Ilmpur school still lingered with the Eton boy, and he had shaken hands as frankly as ever when Gunpat-Rai had called to welcome him to his new district.

"I'll tell you what it is, Gunpat," continued Tom Gordon, "you fellows don't know what anybody wants but yourselves. Now, take this district--it's a very fair sample." He turned over the leaves of the last Census report which lay on his table rapidly. "Hum--m--m, here we are, Jahilabad, population 560,000 odd--240,000 Jat cultivators of the soil, 35,000 Banyas, presumably moneylenders--literacy--let's take the average for all India if you like--it tells enormously against my argument, but it can stand it! Now think! At fifty-three per thousand we have twenty-nine--let's say 30,000 men who can scrawl their names and spell out a line or two in their own vernacular. How many of these are put out of court by the 35,000 moneylenders? More than half, I'll wager. There you are, you educated men, a negligible minority, taking India as a whole. So why don't you speak for yourselves, not for the country at large? Because you don't really mean anything, you don't know what you want yourselves." Tom Gordon paused in this unusual eloquence, and, with a laugh, turned to the handsome little fellow of six whom Gunpat-Rai had shown off with pride as his eldest son.

"Jolly little chap," said the Assistant Superintendent irrelevantly. "I suppose he's married?"

Gunpat-Rai flushed up under his dark skin as he had done five years before at the cricket match.

"The women----" he began.

"Oh, I know!" interrupted the young Englishman. "'Stri acchar,' and all that. But, I say, Gunpat! How the deuce are you going to govern India if you can't even settle your womenkind? No, my dear fellow! I haven't the faintest sympathy with you. You sail pretty near sedition in this copy." Here he laid his hand on the blurred, blotched broadsheet which called itself The Star of Hope. "But, by George! if you jib it the least bit more, I shall have to run you in. So don't be a fool. You're a good sort, Gunpat, and I shall never forget that innings of yours--never! If you would only have stuck to it instead of 'seeking a post in white clothing' you might have been----"

He paused, unable to say what; and Gunpat-Rai, feeling a like inability, the conversation ended uncomfortably.

And so it came to pass that not many more days afterwards, Tom Gordon sat once more in that curious atmosphere of cocoanut-oil and curry powder which is inseparable from Indian crowds, listening to Gunpat-Rai's voice. But he sat disguised in one of the front benches of the crowded hall, so that he had to look far back more than once to see that his constables were all in evidence. For a notable agitator on tour had stopped at the little town; and this was a meeting which must be reported upon, since here was no audience composed of peacefully seditious BengÂli clerks and irresponsible students, but of stalwart Jats, discontented over some new, but as yet untried, scheme of irrigation. Now, irrigation stands closer to the heart of a Jat that does wife and children. What! was the Sirkar to deny the land its drink?

The other speakers had been innocuous. Their very vehemence had passed by the slumbering passions of the long-bearded Jats who listened to them with ill-concealed yawns. But with Gunpat-Rai it was different. At the first word Tom Gordon felt that he was in the presence of a born orator. And yet--and yet--surely the words were vaguely familiar in their import, if not in their sound?

"The crimes we charge against this alien Government of India," came the liquid Indian voice, "are not lapses, defects, errors of common frailty which we, brethren, as we know them in ourselves, can allow for. They are no crimes that have not arisen from evil passions--passions which it is criminal to harbour"--an iron mailed stick held by a burly farmer fell with a clang as its owner shifted it to his right hand--"no offences that have not their root in avarice, rapacity, pride, insolence, ferocity, treachery, cruelty, malignity of temper----" Each epithet seemed punctuated by a growing stir amongst the audience. "In short, in nothing that does not argue a total extinction of all moral principle, that does not manifest an inveterate blackness of heart."

Tom Gordon had it now! The Billingsgate he had confounded years ago, of course--Burke's Billingsgate!

He had flung off his disguise and leapt to the dais in a second.

"Oh, hold your jaw! Do, there's a decent chap! Don't go spouting other folks' abuse!" he cried.

But Gunpat-Rai was helpless before the sudden need for decision. "Dyed ingrain with malice, vitiated----" he went on mechanically.

The young Assistant Superintendent of Police gave a sharp glance behind him. What he saw there was not reassuring. "Oh! do shut up! Tell them the meeting's over, or there'll be mischief."

"Corrupted, gangrened----"

"Constables," came the order keenly, "clear the room! For Heaven's sake, Gunpat, don't get yourself into trouble!"

They were the last words Tom Gordon spoke. His hand slipped from Gunpat-Rai's shoulder as he was struck full on the bare head from behind by an iron-bound staff which crashed into his skull.

Even then the tyranny of words held Gunpat-Rai, though the suddenness of the shock dislocated his sequence.

"Dyed ingrain, corrupted to the very core."

Then he stood staring at what lay before him, and a great silence--a golden silence from words--came to him at last.

He only broke it once, when he was on trial. The court was full of his friends, and on the dais sat Englishmen, so the conditions were nearly the same as they had been years ago when the hot sunshine had slanted from the Tipper windows at Ilmpur to lay broad squares on the cool whitewash.

"I learnt it at school," he said dully; and then he began: "But the crimes we charge against you----"

"Hush--h!" said the judge gravely. "We know what you learnt at school."

But that did not lessen the sentence.