"A fortnight--think! Remembrance of that suffering man flashed back to me the other night in the House. Nobody likes having to see physical pain; as for mental pain, the only way we treat it is to slur it over. Like St. Thomas, we can only understand wounds we can put our fingers into and probe.
"But you have imagination; you can guess what last night meant to Richard Farquharson and us all. He had been warned that some mischief was afloat, but he never dreamed how far it could go. He came in quite buoyant and undismayed; the first taunts and invective left him unmoved. He bore them down by sheer force of will; giving one rather the impression of facing his enemies 'with his tongue in his cheek,' as Shakespeare says. But presently he began to realize that matters were serious enough to bring the best he had in him to the fore, and then he did indeed give us the best he had of truth and sincerity. He shook off his cynicism and indifference like a cloak. The words sound cold--oh, if I could but make you hear the man's speech as we heard it, spell-bound, breathless! Old members of the House, who had been there for forty and fifty years, say they never heard any speech approach it. I suppose he actually reached the summit of his power in those few moments. Then downfall came.
"The panic that spread as the news about the Treaty filtered through the House was absolutely indescribable. Farquharson never flinched. That's where blood tells. A man of the people in a like crisis would have wavered and lost his head. But when our class is face to face with imminent peril, mental or physical, we are encompassed with a host of silent witnesses, before whom it is impossible to quail. Voices of our dead forbears murmur, 'We are watching you from the heights. We, too, knew danger in our day, and met it. And our blood flows in you, remember. Be true, not only to yourself, but to the dignity of your race.'
"You will remember the story of that Marquis in the Revolution who, driving to the guillotine with other aristocrats, finely attired, sniffed at a rose to the last, because, as he explained, the smell of the rabble so annoyed him?
"We found afterwards that influence had been at work undermining all one side of the House with suggestions and innuendoes. It appears that the whole of the Opposition was expecting some dramatic _dénoûment_ to Farquharson's speech; what it was they didn't know, but they were prepared for some great climax which would tell in their favour. Anonymous letters had been sent to individual members; the whole work had been done subtly. But for that I doubt if there would have been that instantaneous reaction, the sudden change of aspect between a great assembly hanging on a man's words, one with him in spite of themselves, and a body of men scenting treachery and dishonour, furious at having been fooled and tricked. It took one back to Pilate's house, to the judgment of Christ, when the crowd cried 'Crucify Him, crucify Him!'