To my deep regret this interesting discussion was here brought to a sudden termination by the appearance of my father, the lecturer, and the committee upon the platform. Instantly there was a deep silence, for country audiences, in that respect, are far better bred than town ones, in the midst of which my father, in a few kindly, well-chosen words, introduced the lecturer to them.
When he resumed his chair there was a burst of applause (Devonshire men are generous with their hands and feet), at the conclusion of which the lecturer, a retired linen-draper from Minehead, stepped forward. Of course his doing so was the signal for another little round of cheering, during which he stood rustling his papers about, edging down his cuffs, and making desperate efforts to appear at his ease, which he most certainly was not. At last he made a start, and in less than five minutes I found myself devoutly wishing that he would look sharp and finish. The land question may be an immensely interesting one—no doubt it is; but when it consists in having long strings of depressing statistics hurled mercilessly at you by a nervous little ex-vendor of calico, who made a point of dropping his h's, you can very soon have enough of it. Before long I saw my father politely stifle a yawn—a piece of delicacy which I, not being upon the platform, did not think it necessary to imitate. The audience behaved admirably. The painful efforts written on the faces of most of them to appear intelligently interested were quite affecting, and at exactly the proper moments they never failed to bring in a little encouraging applause. I'm quite sure there wasn't one of them who understood a word of what the man was saying, but they were evidently charitably inclined to put this down to their own stupidity rather than to the incompetence of the lecturer.
He had been droning on for about half-an-hour, when a slight commotion caused by the noisy entrance of some late-comers led me to turn my head. Instantly my spirits rose, for I foresaw a row. The new-comers were all Luccombe men, and between the men of Luccombe and the men of Porlock there existed a deadly enmity. They were rivals in sport and also in politics, for whilst Luccombe boasted a Radical club, Porlock was distinctly Conservative. The arrival of these Luccombites, therefore, was most promising, for they certainly had not come out of compliment to their neighbours, and I took an early opportunity of changing my seat for one nearer the back of the room, so as to be in the fun in case there should be any.
It certainly seemed as though something would come of it. There were several strangers amongst the new-comers, and one of them in particular attracted my attention. He was a big, white-faced man, with continually blinking eyes and stupid, vacuous face, and every now and then he gave vent to his feelings by a prolonged animal cry which afforded the most exquisite amusement to his companions, and never failed to produce the utmost consternation in the lecturer's startled face. I don't know why it was so, but I took a violent dislike to that man the moment I saw him. He was so ugly, so like an animal, besides which he was evidently half drunk. He seemed of a different species altogether to the broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced, good-humoured Devonshire men by whom he was surrounded, and a very inferior species too.
After a while my attention was distracted from him to the other Luccombites, who were evidently bent upon breaking up the meeting. The lecturer was by no means the sort of man to defy the uproar, and insist upon finishing what he had to say. After a very mild protest, the meekness of which caused a howl of derision from the peace-breakers, he brought his lecture to an abrupt close and sat down.
Then my father rose, and spoke a few stern reproving words which had an infinitely better effect. But I was too occupied in watching the extraordinary behaviour of the white-faced man from Luccombe to listen to them. He had half risen to his feet, and was leaning over the back of one of the benches with his eyes and mouth wide open, staring with a stupidly-bewildered look at my father. Suddenly he turned round to his companions.
"Say, lads, should you like to see me shut that joker up?"
I felt hot with indignation, but I kept still.
"Ay, Jack, or Thomas, or whatever your name is," answered one of the Luccombites, "give him a cock-a-doodle-do."
The man smiled an ugly, sickly smile.