He sat there unmoved by the applause which greeted his speech, and when it had ceased he rose. The tellers were being named, and as he passed out into the lobby a few minutes later his name was on every tongue. Men saluted him, but he only bowed slightly on either side in acknowledgment with haughty courtesy; he held to the imperious, patrician code of his Norman race, and the plaudits of his fellows were almost as indifferent to him, almost as much disdained by him, as their censure.
Dudley Chisholm had much of the despot, but nothing of the demagogue, in his character. He had come to the front quickly. Certainly no man was more surprised at his own success in the world of politics than he himself; and certainly no man in London was considered by mothers more eligible as a husband.
Perhaps it is fortunate for Members of the House that their female friends are discreetly hidden away behind that heavy iron grille over the Press Gallery, so that they are invisible save for a neatly gloved hand which sometimes shows upon the ironwork, or a flash of bright colour in the deep shadow, caused by bobbing millinery. Many a husband or lover addressing the House would waver beneath the critical eyes of his womenkind. Indeed, on the night in question, Dudley Chisholm would certainly not have delivered his telling words so calmly had he been aware of the presence of certain persons hidden away behind that Byzantine grating.
The Ladies’ Gallery was crowded by Members’ wives and daughters, enthusiastic Primrose League workers, dowagers, and a few of the smarter set. Among the latter, at the extreme end of the gallery, sat a well-preserved, elderly woman of rather aristocratic bearing, accompanied by a blue-eyed girl in lavender, wearing a costly opera cloak trimmed with sable, a girl with a countenance so charming that she would cause a sensation anywhere. The black toilette of the elder woman and the lavender “creation” worn by her daughter, spoke mutely to the other women near them of an atelier in the Rue de la Paix, but as to their names, these were unknown to every person in the gallery.
When Chisholm had risen to address the House the elder had bent to the younger and whispered something in her ear. Then both women had pressed their faces eagerly to the grille, and, sitting bent forward, listened to every word that fell so deliberately from the speaker’s lips.
Again the aristocratic-looking woman with the white hair whispered to the girl beside her, so low that no one overheard:
“There, Muriel! That is the man. I have not exaggerated his qualities, have I? You must marry him, my dear—you must marry him!”