He heard a woman sob somewhere in front of him, and far down the left gallery, in the glare and glitter, he saw a noble head, white-haired, but still wearing the flush of manhood’s prime upon his cheeks, leaning on a hand, and turned towards him, with unchecked tears coursing silently from its upraised eyes; he saw a little girl clasping the neck of her mother and father, as she sat half on the laps of each, and heard the soft lisp of her kisses on their brows; he saw the almost saturnine face of a dowager stonily gazing at the speaker, and, most strangely, he detected on her finger a topaz ring cut in relievo with the head of Queen Victoria; and yet, while his senses reported these trifles with startling keenness, they were also all enlisted in catching every gesture, every movement, every accent of the man whose plastic power of eloquence was there engaged in pleading for English abdication.
How the words rang in his ears, how persuasively the voice sank and rose, and with what a soaring melody some of the cadences seemed to linger in the scented air. “Let us,” it said, “bow before the revelation of our own destiny. The ordination of Nature is the express reflection—nay, it is the objective expression of Divine will. Accept it with submission, with the subserviency of faith, and act on that condition with the abundance of that native resolution that from the time of Alfred has made our path upward, outward, onward.
“I do not, sir, under-estimate the tremendous ordeal; I cannot be blind to the colossal undertaking. It resumes in one herculean exertion, all the efforts of our race through two thousand years. It is without precedent, or else it shall only be reverently compared to the exodus of the Children of God from Egypt. And in that light, sir, without subterfuge or apology, without extenuation of rhetoric, without ribaldry or vanity, I do regard it. We are solemnized by some vast scheme in the order of things to carry with us the genius of our civilization to another home, where its power and beauty shall both benefit others, and become themselves more powerful and more beautiful. We have lived through a stadium of progress and achievement. We certainly advance to the opening of another. Let the gathered multitudes of our race, here at its ancestral hearth, gird up their loins and accept the august command to go forth.
“From the Witan of the Angles and the Saxons, through a feudal hierarchy to Magna Charta, through the provisions of Oxford, the Model Parliament of Edward I., by the rise in political privileges by the Towns, by Merchant gild and Craft gild, by the Good Parliament of 1376, by the relentless rebukes of Richard in the Merciless Parliament, by reason of popular censure and the eloquence of common men as with John Ball and the revolts of 1380, in the insurrection of Wat Tyler—followed as it was by shameless, mad ventures—through Wickliff, by the glories of the Tudors, the overthrow of the Stuarts, by Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, by William of Orange, by parliamentary reform and legislative extension—from the first glimmerings of civic life, to the light of the modern day, this nation has grown in strength, in reason, in the deliberate purpose of holding even the scales of Justice.
“But, sir, with new positions, new prospects, new opportunities in illimitable areas of expansion, we enter upon undreamed of material enlargements. A greater London will, in the coming centuries appear, in which through the phase of exaltation we shall assume, will be seen the Miracle of Time, in which all we have learned, the highest technical skill, our loftiest constructive, creative mind will be realized.
“The social power, the redemptive agencies, the final product of his thought, aspirations, skill, will be incorporated in this City of Man for men—the City of the Future—and it will be ours—all ours—London rediviva, London redux, London sempieterna, et ne plus ultra. A greater England shall be gathered within its walls. It will hold our sanctified patriotism, our emancipated reason, our ennobled, disciplined applied science, the embodyment of our imagination, and to its doors the world will gather, too, in fealty, in trust, in homage.
“‘O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.’”
The voice ceased, the speaker dropped dumbly into his seat, and for an instant, held his hands over features convulsed with feeling. The surprising thing then was—the awful silence, the deadness of that living, throbbing, almost frantic audience, who looking out upon a blackness of uncertainty felt the happy past, radiant with ease and fame, ceremonial and cultured luxury, slipping out of their possession forever, and uttered no sound.
The Speaker of the House rose; there was a shifting of heads, the rustle of turning bodies, a simultaneous orientation, but no other sound, and Leacraft scanned the multitude more. Again the portentous silence; the Speaker with quite unusual ardor alluded to the imposing power and beauty of the speech, and put the motion.
And then another thing more astonishing happened, that House of Commons leaped to its feet and shouted in one long, vibrant roar, “Aye! Aye! Aye!” The eager agony of the assemblage then split and tore the proud repression that had almost strangled it. Cry upon cry started from various points, and the clamor grew, the agitation took on the aspect of disorder and panic, and then it resolved itself into thundering cheers for the King, and then, with electrifying unanimity the multitude sang the national anthem.