His first words justified the presence of the great audience. One of his hearers heard them with sickening dread. One by one, straight and to the point, the telling phrases fell, delivered in a quiet voice that carried even to the gallery, as fiery comments from that quarter testified. As an Imperialist, Evelyn rejoiced; the speech was historic, it would live: but as a woman, her heart fell, aware, as only the sensitive are aware, of every point the great leader made and how he made it.
What remote chance had Farquharson of making his mark to-night? The ground was being cut under his feet. How hard to follow on an expert speech like this, which seemed to say all that could be said, which dealt sharply and subtly with every argument against Protection in a voice that became ever the gentler and more penetrating after the characteristic pause which, to one versed in the ways of public speakers, invariably heralded some especially telling or sarcastic phrase.
Farquharson was to second an important resolution which followed the great Fiscal Reformer's speech, a resolution which Beadon was to propose. The Leader of the Opposition had pleaded influenza as an excuse for dealing with the subject very tersely, and leaving its actual explanation to a man who, should he win his political spurs to-night, would be his colleague in the House. He was giving Farquharson his chance in every sense of the word for Evelyn's sake.
And now the long-looked-for moment had come, and she trembled. That critical crowd! So eager to thrust at the one weak point in the armour even of its own knights. How would Farquharson face it? He had told her that he did not excel especially in public speaking; what if he failed? And why—why did it matter so to her of all people?
Beadon could always be relied upon to amuse his audience. He did not attempt to meet his leader on his own ground; the aim of his brief speech seemed to be merely to lighten the tension which succeeded the conclusion of the former speech, given in words of solemn warning, rendered the more intense in view of the speaker's having appeared so little in public of late years.
As the Leader of the Opposition took his seat a pleasurable flutter of anticipation moved the audience. Like women at a bargain sale, they eagerly watched the advent of the latest novelty. Hare, well to the fore amongst the critics, raised his field-glasses towards the platform. In the arena there was a little hum of expectation. Even the reporters below the platform laid their fountain pens and pencils down to stare up half in curiosity, half in interest, wondering what signs of nervousness the administrator of a place which had never been heard of until ten years ago would show as he rose to confront the largest concourse of people he had addressed, amidst the perfunctory applause of a few friends.
But there were no signs of nervousness to detect in Farquharson's assured step as he moved forward or in the glance he flashed over the hall. He had himself in hand from the first. So much Evelyn could see. Not a movement, not a tremor betrayed his emotion, yet the emotion was there, she knew. She knew that his heart beat to it; that, as before the eyes of a drowning man, a vision of past and present opened before him as he looked down upon the audience.
Evelyn caught her breath. Only once before had this wave of absolute momentary unconsciousness swept over her, leaving behind a definite physical sensation as though every drop of blood had ebbed from her body and the little torch of life was flickering out. All was dark. For the moment she heard nothing and saw nothing and could do nothing but pray. All her remaining will seemed concentrated on one point, a frantic appeal to God that this man, to whom it meant so much, and who had no near kith or kin at hand to ask for him, should do his best, that the crisis should prove no crisis at all, but triumph.
The wave of faintness passed; presently, out of a tangled confusion of sound she distinguished the notes of a voice familiar and yet strange, a voice whose magnetism seemed to have drawn every soul in the hall to one central spot on the platform. Her tired brain righted itself by sheer strength of will. She meant to notice every detail; next morning he would expect her to know just what portions of his speech had told, how the crowd had taken this and that dubious point. She called up every faculty of criticism and judgment in view of his demand, weighing and balancing, like an opponent, the new line Farquharson had taken, his methods, his choice of language, his rare actions—not with those of the average politician, not even with an acknowledged master of debate like Beadon, but with the orator of the evening, the man who, since Gladstone's death, had been known as the best speaker in the House of Commons.
And as she listened her thoughts swept back to all that she had read of other statesmen—Pitt, Burke, Peel, Palmerston, Bright, Cobden, Disraeli and Gladstone—men whose names lived still in England, and would live for ever. For Farquharson beat his leader. His was the real gift of oratory, form combined with substance, a flow of eloquence and imagination kept in check by reason—the Heaven-sent inspiration which comes, perhaps, to half-a-dozen men within the century. His audience did not applaud—applause would have interrupted. They listened spell-bound, every thought given up to the quiet figure on the platform, who made use neither of sensational phrase nor dramatic gesture, but held them by sheer force of brain and personality, as he marshalled an array of facts against which there seemed to be no appeal.