“Mr. Craddock, like good wine, needs no bush. You all know him, and an introduction is superfluous. Still it is customary on such an occasion to say a few words on behalf of the candidate, and I have great pleasure, &c., &c....”
Now Edward rose to his feet, and Bertha’s blood ran cold. She dared not look at the audience. He advanced with his hands in his pockets—he had insisted on dressing himself up in a frock-coat and the most dismal pepper-and-salt trousers.
“Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen—Unaccustomed to public speaking as I am....”
Bertha looked up with a start. Could a man at the end of the nineteenth century, seriously begin an oration with those words! But he was not joking; he went on gravely, and, looking around, Bertha caught not the shadow of a smile. Edward was not in the least nervous, he quickly got into the swing of his speech—and it was terrible! He introduced every hackneyed phrase he knew, he mingled slang incongruously with pompous language; and his silly jokes, chestnuts of great antiquity, made Bertha writhe and shudder. She wondered that he could go on with such self-possession. Did he not see that he was making himself perfectly absurd! She dared not look up for fear of catching the sniggers of Mrs. Branderton and of the Hancocks: “One sees what he was before he married Miss Ley. Of course he’s a quite uneducated man.... I wonder his wife did not prevent him from making such an exhibition of himself. The grammar of it, my dear; and the jokes, and the stories!!!”
Bertha clenched her hands, furious because the flush of shame would not leave her cheeks. The speech was even worse than she had expected. He used the longest words, and, getting entangled in his own verbosity, was obliged to leave his sentence unfinished. He began a period with an elaborate flourish and waddled in confusion to the tamest commonplace: he was like a man who set out to explore the Andes and then, changing his mind, took a stroll in the Burlington Arcade. How long would it be, asked Bertha, before the audience broke into jeers and hisses? She blessed them for their patience. And what would happen afterwards? Would Mr. Bacot ask Edward to withdraw from the candidature? And supposing Edward refused, would it be necessary to tell him that he was really too great a fool? Bertha saw already the covert sneers of her neighbours.
“Oh, I wish he’d finish!” she muttered between her teeth. The agony, the humiliation of it, were unendurable.
But Edward was still talking, and gave no signs of an approaching termination. Bertha thought miserably that he had always been long-winded: if he would only sit down quickly the failure might not be irreparable. He made a vile pun and every one cried, Oh! Oh! Bertha shivered and set her teeth; she must bear it to the end now—why wouldn’t he sit down? Then Edward told an agricultural story, and the audience shouted with laughter. A ray of hope came to Bertha: perhaps his absolute vulgarity might save him with the vulgar people who formed the great body of the audience. But what must the Brandertons, and the Molsons, and the Hancocks, and all the rest of them, be saying? They must utterly despise him.
But worse was to follow. Edward came to his peroration, and a few remarks on current politics (of which he was entirely ignorant) brought him to his Country, England, Home and Beauty. He turned the tap of patriotism full on; it gurgled in a stream. He blew the penny trumpets of English purity, and the tin whistles of the British Empire, and he beat the big drum of the Great Anglo-Saxon Race. He thanked God he was an Englishman, and not as others are. Tommy Atkins, and Jack Tar, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, danced a jig to the strains of the British Grenadiers; and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain executed a pas seul to the air of Yankee Doodle. Lastly, he waved the Union Jack.
The hideous sentimentality, and the bad taste and the commonness made Bertha ashamed: it was horrible to think how ignoble must be the mind of a man who could foul his mouth with the expression of such sentiments.
Finally Edward sat down. For one moment the audience were silent—for the shortest instant; and then with one throat, broke into thunderous applause. It was no perfunctory clapping of hands; they rose as one man, and shouted and yelled with enthusiasm.