Philip instinctively realized that whatever the future held in store for him as a speaker (but, to be candid, the glories of the Premiership seemed speedily to dissipate), his talent lay rather in the field of inspiration than of discipline. He knew (and this confirmed his orientation towards the Laureateship) that he would invariably be a catspaw of circumstances either for success or failure, as soon as he had laid aside the pen for the tongue. For this reason he deliberately withheld from the Book of Pros and Cons for Debating Societies out of which, as his friend confessed, Harry made golden capital. As he sat again below the cart on the evening of his second public appearance, he made a strenuous effort to keep his mind as blank as possible. Overhead his precedent orator was thundering. The sanguine hues of his bellying and flamboyant tie had already won for him half his battle. Who could impeach the politics of a man whose neckwear flung a defiance in the teeth of sunset and whose eloquence paled both? With a consistent massacre of aitches he triumphed across the turbulent field, until at last, when he ended with "and your children will get down on their knees and praise God that their parents took the right path!", the crowd generally, and Philip in particular, were swept high and dry upon the beach of enthusiasm by the wave of the man's argument.
It was impossible to be self-conscious at such a moment. Philip sprang valiantly on to the cart and with tremendous effect his treble, like woodwind ardently repeating the theme of brass, reiterated "and your children will get down on their knees and praise God that their parents took the right path!"
There was no holding him back. Repeatedly he brought his left fist upon the palm of his right hand to clinch his indisputable conclusions. The other speakers on the platform were shocked out of mere admiration into submission to his cogency. Harry could hardly realize that this was the hesitant young friend who followed his lead with such blundering perseverance, and who was, when you came to think of it, rather a muff on the whole. It was a stranger, small, ungainly, irresistible. The crowd below stared, their mouths gaping, their heads swaying slightly to the rhythm of his gestures.
It was an incoherent enough medley, and perhaps the precocity of the youth was more exhibited in the uncanny earnestness of his manner than in the intellectual quality of the stuff he uttered. The crowd he was addressing consisted of serious artisans, night-school-educated clerks, filmy half-existent women, whose mental development at fifty would in all likehood not transcend Harry's at fifteen, to whom they listened indeed, not because they were interested in his crystal arguments, but because his wit, his adroitness, pleased them like the froth on their evening pints. They were therefore an easier prey to Philip's uncouth flood of undigested emotions. He attempted, as often as he remembered this episode, to reconstruct his speech, to examine what potent eloquence had carried himself away even more completely than the crowd. He only remembered the moment when he returned to the concluding remark of the last speaker. "Our fathers," he began, "our fathers have tried ... I say, our fathers ... our fathers ..."
The crowd breathed anxiously. What was happening to the young feller? Had he seen a ghost, he was that pale? He'd been as red as a turkey cock only just now, he had! There weren't no stopping him a minute ago, and now the words were sticking in the back of his throat. It was a shame, it was! It was too much to expect of a kid! Just like these Socialist fellers to put it across a kid once they got hold of him! Couldn't be more than fifteen, or sixteen at the most, he couldn't! It wasn't good enough, don't care what you say! He'd faint if they wasn't careful....
But look, he was starting again.
"Our fathers have tried for all they are worth. Your fathers and mine have tried..." The lad's eyes were starting from his head. He gulped and started again, "Have tried, I say..."
It was as if some spell of physical evocation resided in his words. Whilst his lips were still shaping the first vowel of "fathers," something black and aloof and ominous had drifted from the vague towards the limit of his audience. A tall shining silk hat, familiar symbol of repressions and disaster, threw a deep gloom over against his eyes.
"Our fathers have tried..."
But his own father was here, whose love for him was like hate, and whose hate pierced at once his son's heart and his own. What should he do? It was he, of course it was he! Whose else could those mournful and hostile eyes be, their orbs large with a stricken indignation? There passed across the fringe of his stupor a recollection like the vague white wing of an owl at dayfall. Hadn't his father said something about going to see Dorah up in Longton this evening? Why had he not taken warning and kept away? His father must have noticed from the road some hundred yards away the gathering on the croft against the railings of Longton Park. He must then have determined to go home through the croft instead of down the straight Blenheim Road, so to discover whether the proselytized one, the forbidden Harry Sewelson, was uttering his nefarious doctrine here, with Philip, perhaps, at his feet. And here he stood, his brow contracted with pent fury, biting his upper lip! With what dexterity of the sloping brush had he stroked the silky fibre of his hat to-day! How white, deathly white, was the white bow on his stiff white front! There were signs of white in his black beard. He was getting old, old. His eyes blazed. Old? He was young, proud, strong—younger than his son, young as his race, the eternal child, the stubborn stripling that would not change nor grow though God were visible, though the hills melted, though the stars cried across the void "Lo! you must change or you shall die!"