Once more every one was looking at him in a silence broken only by a buzzing commentary on Millbank’s speech. Eric straightened his tie, pulled down his waistcoat and laid his watch on the table beside his finger-bowl. As he pushed back his chair and slowly drew himself erect, he caught sight of his reflection in three long mirrors: black-haired and white-cheeked, aquiline and thin, with deep-set brown eyes and lips tightly compressed, he could fancy that he was looking at his own dead body. The applause broke out again, ten times louder and longer than before; there was a blinding flash of silver light from a magnesium flare, followed by dense grey clouds of smoke. As they cleared away, he once more established the position of Carstairs and his wife, holding himself upright and only touching the table with the tips of his fingers. Though slightly built, he was tall enough to dominate an audience; in three years of public speaking he had acquired such composure that he could stand for a full minute without saying anything. It was a test of grip; if he could hold his company without speaking, he could do what he liked with it afterwards. Before he turned to Millbank, the great room was as silent as the Festspielhaus before the opening bar of Parsifal. Something seemed to have come to life within him, for he now felt that he must at all costs eclipse Millbank’s speech; if he could not match his slow stateliness of eloquence and diction, he would master him in pure lyrical fire and music....
“Mr. Millbank, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen...”
The voice was flexible and light, capable of infinite emotional variation, boyish and appealing after Millbank’s deep resonance. Eric had discarded and forgotten his rehearsed speech. Dreary months of stereotyped lecturing set him ablaze to speak his soul. The audience had surrendered to his presence and surrendered again to his voice; he could twist every man and woman round his finger....
Forty minutes had passed before he sat down. There was no applause, for none dared break the silence; but he had made them laugh and he had brought tears into the eyes of the woman opposite; the audience had quivered and gasped. Now, if they had not guessed it before, they knew how he inspired with his own genius the actors who interpreted his plays; henceforth they would recognize whose personality it was that spread magnetically across the foot-lights... He picked up the dead cigar from his plate and felt for a match. He would have liked to look at Carstairs, but it was unnecessary; Carstairs himself, with his unmistakable English drawl, broke the silence by exclaiming: “Oh, I say, that was devilish good, you know!” Thereat the pent storm of cheering gushed forth as though he had touched a spring.
There followed a presentation and more introductions. Eric stood bowing to congratulations and trying to answer five questions at a time until the chairman rescued him and took him back to the Majestic. Even there he was constrained to hold a new court and to accept the homage of those who had not found an opportunity of speaking to him before. Mid-night was striking as he shook the last hand and lighted his last cigar; with it came nervous exhaustion and an abrupt reaction, in which once more he seemed to have crossed the boundary between two lives and to be wandering alone in eternal emptiness....
As he walked back to the winter garden a woman rose from her chair and hurried up to him.
“Mr. Lane, I must thank you for that speech! It was wonderful! I’ve never heard anything like it. Aren’t you dreadfully tired?”
The cloak and scarf kept him for a moment from recognizing her as the woman who had sat opposite him at dinner.
“I am, rather,” he answered, leaning against the arm of a chair. “But it’s the last speech I shall ever make.”
“In America, you mean? It’s so glorious to feel that I’ve actually met you! You’re crossing on the Lithuania, aren’t you? So are we. I shall hope to see you on board. And I shall make a thorough nuisance of myself by asking you to write in my autograph book. Now I mustn’t keep you; I expect you’ve all sorts of packing to do.”