There was a stir of feet round the door.
'There he is,' said Mr. Flaxman, craning round to see, and Robert entered.
He started as he saw them, flashed a smile to Rose, shook his head at Mr. Flaxman, and passed up the room.
'He looks pale and nervous,' said Lady Charlotte grimly, pouncing at once on the unpromising side of things. 'If he breaks down are you prepared, Hugh, to play Elisha?'
Flaxman was far too much interested in the beginnings of the performance to answer.
Robert was standing forward on the platform, the chairman of the meeting at his side, members of the committee sitting behind on either hand. A good many men put down their pipes, and the hubbub of talk ceased. Others smoked on stolidly.
The chairman introduced the lecturer. The subject of the address would be, as they already knew, 'The Claim of Jesus upon Modern Life.' It was not very likely, he imagined, that Mr. Elsmere's opinions would square with those dominant in the club; but, whether or no, he claimed for him, as for everybody, a patient hearing, and the Englishman's privilege of fair play.
The speaker, a cabinetmaker dressed in a decent brown suit, spoke with fluency, and at the same time with that accent of moderation and savoir faire which some Englishmen in all classes have obviously inherited from centuries of government by discussion. Lady Charlotte, whose Liberalism was the mere varnish of an essentially aristocratic temper, was conscious of a certain dismay at the culture of the democracy as the man sat down. Mr. Flaxman, glancing to the right, saw a group of men standing, and amongst them a slight sharp-featured thread-paper of a man, with a taller companion, whom he identified as the pair he had noticed on the night of the story-telling. The little gasfitter was clearly all nervous fidget and expectation; the other, large and gaunt in figure, with a square impassive face, and close-shut lips that had a perpetual mocking twist in the corners, stood beside him like some clumsy modern version, in a commoner clay, of Goethe's 'spirit that denies.'
Robert came forward with a roll of papers in his hand.
His first words were hardly audible. Rose felt her colour rising, Lady Charlotte glanced at her nephew, the standing group of men cried, 'Speak up!' The voice in the distance rose at once, braced by the touch of difficulty, and what it said came firmly down to them.