"All right, boy. They shan't get you,"
He strode through the crowd, putting men out of his way right and left. In sheer surprise they let him pass till he reached the negro, who cringed to him, catching at his hand.
Then a voice cried out, "Here, we're wastin' time. Muzzle the old boy!"
The Major turned and stared magnificently in the direction of his voice, nettled by the term "old boy."
"Evidently," he remarked, "the gentleman does not know who I am!"
Joan was seized with an hysterical desire to laugh. At such a moment the bombast of it was too much. Suppose they should inquire minstrel-fashion, "Well, then, Mr. Johnsing, who are you?"
But the crowd was not as used to her father as she was. They hesitated, impressed by his hauteur, his fine clothes, the waiting limousine. They stirred uneasily. A voice near her murmured, "Mebbe it's the Governor!"
Richard Darcy took instant advantage of the impression he had created, and began to speak. It was not the first time she had heard him make a speech, for he was frequently called upon to aid some friend in turning the tide of political battle. The Major, indeed, had rather a reputation for assisting his friends into office—It was typical of Joan that she listened critically despite her thumping heart; that she watched what she could see of the faces about her, picked out by the lights of the car; that she missed no expression on the gray, working features of the negro, darting wild glances about him like a newly caged wolf she had seen once at the Zoo, frantically eying the people who stood to stare at it.
Her father's voice poured out in a golden flood, running the gamut from anger to gentle suasion. It was the voice of the natural orator, which depends very little for its effect upon words. Once, passing a negro church, Joan had heard just such a voice rising and falling within, and though not a word of the sermon reached her, after a few moments she had been almost ready to sway and moan with the congregation as it muttered, "Yas, good Lawd!" "Be mussiful to us po' sinners" "Come, Jesus, come down and take me home!"
Some such effect began to be visible on the Major's audience. There were stirrings and murmurings that suggested applause. He rose to them. The eloquence that lies so close under the skin of Southern-born men—certainly of all Southern-born men of Irish stock—came to the surface and flowered. He showed this handful of rough farmers what it should mean to them to be natives of so great and glorious a commonwealth ("'Commonwealth'—what a splendid word, my friends!"); wearing in her bosom all the riches of the earth, nourishing at that bosom a race of supermen ("And superwomen, my friends! superwomen!"); carrying in her womb the greatness of the country's future.