Ashe sat to the speaker's right, outwardly attentive, inwardly ashamed
of his party and his chief. He himself belonged to a new generation, for
whom formulae that had satisfied their fathers were empty and dead. But
with these formulas Lord Parham was stuffed. A man of average intriguing
ability, he had been raised, at a moment of transition, to the place he
held, by a consummate command of all the meaner arts of compromise and
management, no less than by an invaluable power of playing to the
gallery. He led a party who despised him--and he complacently imagined
that he was the party. His speech on this occasion bristled with
himself, and had, in truth, no other substance; the I's swarmed out upon
the audience like wasps.
Ashe groaned in spirit, "We have the ideas," he thought, "but they are
damned little good to us--it is the Tories who have the men! Ye gods!
must we all talk like this at last?"...
Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, behind Lord Parham, he
noticed that Kitty and Eddie Helston were exchanging signs. Kitty drew
out a tablet, wrote upon it, and, leaning over some white-frocked
children of the Lord Lieutenant who sat behind her, handed the torn leaf
to Helston.
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