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 a.s.sent, 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 n.o.ble game. We learn everything n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed since the famous innings, making of the bowler an a.s.sistant 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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.sistant 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 pa.s.s 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 Bengali 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 pa.s.sed by the slumbering pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sions--pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sistant Superintendent of Police gave a sharp glance behind him. What he saw there was not rea.s.suring. "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.
THE FOOTSTEPS OF A DOG
She pa.s.sed, smiling softly, though a vague trouble seemed to clutch at her heart. She had found him asleep so often of late, and if the driver slept, the oxen might well pause in their task of drawing water, and so the fields which needed it so much be deprived for yet another day of their life-giving draught. They were not, however, pausing now, at any rate. Their slow circling brought her sleeping husband to Sarsuti"s eyes, and carried him away again, wheeling round by the well from whose depths a stream of water splashed drowsily into a wooden trough and then hurried away--a little ribbed ribbon of light--out of the shade of the great banyan tree into the sun-saturated soil beyond where the young millet was sprouting.
How cool it was, after her hot walk from the village! No wonder he slept! She sat herself down beside the runnel of water where a jasmine bush threw wild whips of leaf and blossom over the damp earth. There was no need to wake him yet. The bullocks would not pause now that she was there to make them do their work.
That was her task in life!--to make them do their work.
She sighed, and yet she smiled again, as the slow-circling oxen brought her husband Prema almost to her feet once more. How handsome he was, his bare head lying on the turban he had pressed into the service of a pillow. And his slender limbs! How ingeniously he had curved them on the forked seat so as to gain a comfortable resting-place! Trust Prema to make himself and everyone else in the world comfortable! A sudden leap of her heart sent the blood to dye her dark face still darker, as she thought of the softness, the warmth, the colour he had brought into her life.
How long had they been married? Ten years--a whole ten years, and there was never a child yet. It was getting time. No! No! Not yet--not yet!
She need not look that in the face yet.
She rose suddenly as the wheeling oxen brought him to her once more, and staying them with one swift word, bent over the sleeping man.
"Prem!" she said. "Prema! I am here." His arms were round her in an instant, his lips on hers; for here, out in the shadow amongst the sunshine, they were alone.
"Sarsuti! Wife!" he murmured drowsily, then with a laugh, shook his long length and stood beside her, his arm still about her waist. Tall as he was, she was almost as tall, a straight, upstanding Jatni woman with eyebrows like a broad bar across her face.