The lady looked surprised at being addressed.
“Indeed?” she replied, and her eyebrows added, “Well, what of it?”
Marjorie kept her hand pressed tightly over her heart. It thumped so heavily, she could scarcely hear what Raymond was saying. If he should forget his speech! If he should fail!
Gradually, the blur before her cleared, and she saw that he was standing quite at ease, one hand resting on his hip—a favourite and familiar attitude—and the other negligently grasping the back of his chair. His flat voice, carrying well for all its lack of resonancy, was perfectly steady, and his words were unhurried, clear; in fine, she realised that Raymond had no dread of what to her, was a scarifying experience, and, unimaginative though she was, there was borne upon her a strange, new consciousness of her husband’s power.
For the formal test of his ability to command the attention of the House, he had seized upon the Motion of a Representative from the West, calling upon the Government to adopt a vigourous policy in the construction of grain elevators and facilities for the transportation of wheat—Canada’s prime commodity in the markets of the world.
“. . . As I stand here, enveloped by the traditions of the past,” she heard him say, “listening to the echoes in this Chamber of the noble words and sound policies that have builded this great structure that is our Country, I am awed by the privilege that has come to me of taking a part, however small, in directing the national welfare of this Dominion. I seek not at this moment, Mr. Speaker, merely the glory of the Party to which I have the honour to belong, but I am ambitious to maintain a principle, to be worthy of the men who fashioned a nation out of chaos, out of a wilderness of local and parochial interests. I shall strive to be the force for good that such men would wish to see in every member in this legislative body to-day . . .”
Although he had known that Marjorie would be in the Gallery that afternoon, it was typical of Dilling to ignore the fact. Small acts of pretty gallantry were utterly foreign to his nature. He could no more have raised a woman’s glove to his lips before returning it to her, than he could have manicured his fingernails. To himself he termed such graces “la-di-da”, by which he probably meant foppish. If his personal vanity revealed itself in any one direction it was that he might appear superlatively masculine—even to the verge of brutality.
“. . . The cause I plead,” he continued, “is that which must appeal to every thinking man, to-day. I plead an economical policy for the guarding of our grain . . .”
“. . . Wheat!” she heard him say. “The West is crying for elevators, and for freighting facilities in order that she may distribute her vast resources. The East is crying for food. The world needs wheat. Wheat! The very word rings with a strange magic, flares with a golden gleam of prosperity.”
His eyes were fixed on his Chief’s profile, save when they leaped across the aisle to the “White Plume” of the grand Old Man who bent over his desk and scribbled with a slender yellow pencil, apparently quite oblivious to Dilling’s existence. Marjorie saw him through brimming eyes. She did not know that in the corridor men were saying, “Come on in! Dilling’s got the floor. He’s talking a good deal of rhetorical rot—as must be expected from an amateur—but the making of an orator is there. . . Come on in!” She was too nervous to notice that the empty benches which comprise the flattering audience usually accorded to a new speaker, were rapidly filling, that Members who discovered some trifling business to keep them in the Chamber, had stopped sorting the collection of visiting cards, forgotten appointments, and notes with which their pockets were stuffed. Laryngitical gentlemen forbore to snap their fingers at the bob-tailed pages for glasses of water—in short, Raymond was making an impression. He was receiving the attention of the House.