"Oh, he's very well in his way, as husbands go," said Mrs. Farquharson. "My father was certainly right in taking him up so warmly."
"That's the third time you've had to pick up that odious creature's bag," said Lady Wereminster in an undertone. "I never saw anybody's fingers shake so. I wish to goodness she was sitting further off. She makes me feel quite nervous."
"Oh, do be quiet now, there's a dear," said Evelyn. "Mr. Farquharson's rising. Ah!"
Farquharson's opening words were drowned in a low rumble of muttered comments and hisses. Then suddenly, as if at some preconcerted signal, the Labour Members, the Irish Party, and a great number of the Opposition, whose voices were never heard except on these occasions, broke into a clamour of groans. Evelyn grew pale. The scene was so overwhelming, coming as it did after a period of slackness and indifference, that even the Speaker's call to order was disregarded, and when eventually there came a lull, it was tense with envy and hatred.
Calvert was right. Farquharson faced the storm with the air of one who, at a policeman's bidding, is held up by street traffic. He looked perhaps a trifle bored at first; the delay was not serious, but inconvenient.
When at last he could make himself heard, he repressed the cheers of his colleagues with a gesture; Beadon, knowing his wishes, also hushed them down. There was a speck of dust on his right-hand shirt-cuff; he waited to flick it off deliberately with his handkerchief in the pause before he took up the broken thread of his speech.
When, in next day's papers, Evelyn read the report of his words, she wondered no longer at the spell he exercised over his audience, as, every nerve quickened by the strain he had just gone through, he spoke straight to the heart in simple language and a voice that even his enemies declared brought back memories of O'Connell in its passion and sweetness. The silence of the great hall is often broken by voices raucous and harsh and stammering; there were some who listened now for the mere sake of hearing the silver tongue ring unaccustomed echoes. Others, again, were swept away by the flow of easy words, chosen apparently with consummate care, yet which were in reality inspired by the moment's conflict; words carrying conviction because they were given with all the force of personal magnetism, and all the art of accomplished extempore oratory. Men shifted their positions as they listened; the anxious expression on Beadon's face and that of Farquharson's colleagues deepened into pride. On the Opposition benches lounging and brooding figures braced themselves. It was as though a clear flood and torrent had swept suddenly throughout the House, breaking down barriers, washing away envy and malice and lack of charity by sheer force of its onslaught, by reason of its purity and its wholesomeness.