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Page 39
When Mr Waller got up to speak on platform number three, his audience
consisted at first only of Psmith, Mike, and a fox-terrier. Gradually
however, he attracted others. After wavering for a while, the crowd
finally decided that he was worth hearing. He had a method of his own.
Lacking the natural gifts which marked Comrade Prebble out as an
entertainer, he made up for this by his activity. Where his colleagues
stood comparatively still, Mr Waller behaved with the vivacity
generally supposed to belong only to peas on shovels and cats on hot
bricks. He crouched to denounce the House of Lords. He bounded from
side to side while dissecting the methods of the plutocrats. During an
impassioned onslaught on the monarchical system he stood on one leg and
hopped. This was more the sort of thing the crowd had come to see.
Comrade Wotherspoon found himself deserted, and even Comrade Prebble's
shortcomings in the way of palate were insufficient to keep his flock
together. The entire strength of the audience gathered in front of the
third platform.
Mike, separated from Psmith by the movement of the crowd, listened with
a growing depression. That feeling which attacks a sensitive person
sometimes at the theatre when somebody is making himself ridiculous on
the stage--the illogical feeling that it is he and not the actor who is
floundering--had come over him in a wave. He liked Mr Waller, and it
made his gorge rise to see him exposing himself to the jeers of a
crowd. The fact that Mr Waller himself did not know that they were
jeers, but mistook them for applause, made it no better. Mike felt
vaguely furious.
His indignation began to take a more personal shape when the speaker,
branching off from the main subject of Socialism, began to touch on
temperance. There was no particular reason why Mr Waller should have
introduced the subject of temperance, except that he happened to be an
enthusiast. He linked it on to his remarks on Socialism by attributing
the lethargy of the masses to their fondness for alcohol; and the
crowd, which had been inclined rather to pat itself on the back during
the assaults on Rank and Property, finding itself assailed in its turn,
resented it. They were there to listen to speakers telling them that
they were the finest fellows on earth, not pointing out their little
failings to them. The feeling of the meeting became hostile. The jeers
grew more frequent and less good-tempered.
'Comrade Waller means well,' said a voice in Mike's ear, 'but if he
shoots it at them like this much more there'll be a bit of an
imbroglio.'
'Look here, Smith,' said Mike quickly, 'can't we stop him? These chaps
are getting fed up, and they look bargees enough to do anything.
They'll be going for him or something soon.'
'How can we switch off the flow? I don't see. The man is wound up. He
means to get it off his chest if it snows. I feel we are by way of
being in the soup once more, Comrade Jackson. We can only sit tight and
look on.'
The crowd was becoming more threatening every minute. A group of young
men of the loafer class who stood near Mike were especially fertile in
comment. Psmith's eyes were on the speaker; but Mike was watching this
group closely. Suddenly he saw one of them, a thick-set youth wearing a
cloth cap and no collar, stoop.
When he rose again there was a stone in his hand.
The sight acted on Mike like a spur. Vague rage against nobody in
particular had been simmering in him for half an hour. Now it
concentrated itself on the cloth-capped one.
Mr Waller paused momentarily before renewing his harangue. The man in
the cloth cap raised his hand. There was a swirl in the crowd, and the
first thing that Psmith saw as he turned was Mike seizing the would-be
marksman round the neck and hurling him to the ground, after the manner
of a forward at football tackling an opponent during a line-out from
touch.
There is one thing which will always distract the attention of a crowd
from any speaker, and that is a dispute between two of its units. Mr
Waller's views on temperance were forgotten in an instant. The audience
surged round Mike and his opponent.
The latter had scrambled to his feet now, and was looking round for his
assailant.
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