Kangaroo

CHAPTER 1. TORESTIN.

A bunch of workmen were lying on the grass of the park beside Macquarie Street, in the dinner hour. It was winter, the end of May, but the sun was warm, and they lay there in shirt–sleeves, talking. Some were eating food from paper packages. They were a mixed lot—taxi–drivers, a group of builders who were putting a new inside into one of the big houses opposite, and then two men in blue overalls, some sort of mechanics. Squatting and lying on the grassy bank beside the broad tarred road where taxis and hansom cabs passed continually, they had that air of owning the city which belongs to a good Australian.

Sometimes, from the distance behind them, came the faintest squeal of singing from out of the “fortified” Conservatorium of Music. Perhaps it was one of these faintly wafted squeals that made a blue–overalled fellow look round, lifting his thick eyebrows vacantly. His eyes immediately rested on two figures approaching from the direction of the conservatorium, across the grass–lawn. One was a mature, handsome, fresh–faced woman, who might have been Russian. Her companion was a smallish man, pale–faced, with a dark beard. Both were well–dressed, and quiet, with that quiet self–possession which is almost unnatural nowadays. They looked different from other people.

A smile flitted over the face of the man in the overalls—or rather a grin. Seeing the strange, foreign–looking little man with the beard and the absent air of self–possession walking unheeding over the grass, the workman instinctively grinned. A comical–looking bloke! Perhaps a Bolshy.

The foreign–looking little stranger turned his eyes and caught the workman grinning. Half–sheepishly, the mechanic had eased round to nudge his mate to look also at the comical–looking bloke. And the bloke caught them both. They wiped the grin off their faces. Because the little bloke looked at them quite straight, so observant, and so indifferent. He saw that the mechanic had a fine face, and pleasant eyes, and that the grin was hardly more than a city habit. The man in the blue overalls looked into the distance, recovering his dignity after the encounter.

So the pair of strangers passed on, across the wide asphalt road to one of the tall houses opposite. The workman looked at the house into which they had entered.

“What d’you make of them, Dug?” asked the one in the overalls.

“Dunnow! Fritzies, most likely.”

“They were talking English.”

“Would be, naturally—what yer expect?”

“I don’t think they were German.”

“Don’t yer, Jack? Mebbe they weren’t then.”

Dug was absolutely unconcerned. But Jack was piqued by the funny little bloke.

Unconsciously he watched the house across the road. It was a more–or–less expensive boarding–house. There appeared the foreign little bloke dumping down a gladstone bag at the top of the steps that led from the porch to the street, and the woman, the wife apparently, was coming out and dumping down a black hat–box. Then the man made another excursion into the house, and came out with another bag, which he likewise dumped down at the top of the steps. Then he had a few words with the wife, and scanned the street.

“Wants a taxi,” said Jack to himself.

There were two taxis standing by the kerb near the open grassy slope of the park, opposite the tall brown houses. The foreign–looking bloke came down the steps and across the wide asphalt road to them. He looked into one, and then into the other. Both were empty. The drivers were lying on the grass smoking an after–luncheon cigar.

“Bloke wants a taxi,” said Jack.

“Could ha’ told YOU that,” said the nearest driver. But nobody moved.

The stranger stood on the pavement beside the big, cream–coloured taxi, and looked across at the group of men on the grass. He did not want to address them.

“Want a taxi?” called Jack.

“Yes. Where are the drivers?” replied the stranger, in unmistakable English: English of the old country.

“Where d’you want to go?” called the driver of the cream–coloured taxi, without rising from the grass.

“Murdoch Street.”

“Murdoch Street? What number?”

“Fifty–one.”

“Neighbour of yours, Jack,” said Dug, turning to his mate.

“Taking it furnished, four guineas a week,” said Jack in a tone of information.

“All right,” said the driver of the cream–coloured taxi, rising at last from the grass. “I’ll take you.”

“Go across to 120 first,” said the little bloke, pointing to the house. “There’s my wife and the bags. But look!” he added quickly. “You’re not going to charge me a shilling each for the bags.”

“What bags? Where are they?”

“There at the top of the steps.”

“All right, I’ll pull across and look at ’em.”

The bloke walked across, and the taxi at length curved round after him. The stranger had carried his bags to the foot of the steps: two ordinary–sized gladstones, and one smallish square hat–box. There they stood against the wall. The taxi–driver poked out his head to look at them. He surveyed them steadily. The stranger stood at bay.

“Shilling apiece, them bags,” said the driver laconically.

“Oh no. The tariff is three–pence,” cried the stranger.

“Shilling apiece, them bags,” repeated the driver. He was one of the proletariat that has learnt the uselessness of argument.

“That’s not just, the tariff is threepence.”

“All right, if you don’t want to pay the fare, don’t engage the car, that’s all. Them bags is a shilling apiece.”

“Very well, I don’t want to pay so much.”

“Oh, all right. If you don’t, you won’t. But they’ll cost you a shilling apiece on a taxi, an’ there you are.”

“Then I don’t want a taxi.”

“Then why don’t you say so. There’s no harm done. I don’t want to charge you for pulling across here to look at the bags. If you don’t want a taxi, you don’t. I suppose you know your own mind.”

Thus saying he pushed off the brakes and the taxi slowly curved round on the road to resume its previous stand.

The strange little bloke and his wife stood at the foot of the steps beside the bags, looking angry. And then a hansom–cab came clock–clocking slowly along the road, also going to draw up for the dinner hour at the quiet place opposite. But the driver spied the angry couple.

“Want a cab, sir?”

“Yes, but I don’t think you can get the bags on.”

“How many bags?”

“Three. These three,” and he kicked them with his toe, angrily.

The hansom–driver looked down from his Olympus. He was very red–faced, and a little bit humble.

“Them three? Oh yes! Easy! Easy! Get ’em on easy. Get them on easy, no trouble at all.” And he clambered down from his perch, and resolved into a little red–faced man, rather beery and henpecked–looking. He stood gazing at the bags. On one was printed the name: “R.L. Somers.”

“R.L. SOMERS! All right, you get in, sir and madam. You get in. Where d’you want to go? Station?”

“No. Fifty–one Murdoch Street.”

“All right, all right, I’ll take you. Fairish long way, but we’ll be there under an hour.”

Mr. Somers and his wife got into the cab. The cabby left the doors flung wide open, and piled the three bags there like a tower in front of his two fares. The hat–box was on top, almost touching the brown hairs of the horse’s tail, and perching gingerly.

“If you’ll keep a hand on that, now, to steady it,” said the cabby.

“All right,” said Somers.

The man climbed to his perch, and the hansom and the extraneous tower began to joggle away into the town. The group of workmen were still lying on the grass. But Somers did not care about them. He was safely jogging with his detested baggage to his destination.

“Aren’t they VILE!” said Harriet, his wife.

“It’s God’s Own Country, as they always tell you,” said Somers. “The hansom–man was quite nice.”

“But the taxi–drivers! And the man charged you eight shillings on Saturday for what would be two shillings in London!”

“He rooked me. But there you are, in a free country, it’s the man who makes you pay who is free—free to charge you what he likes, and you’re forced to pay it. That’s what freedom amounts to. They’re free to charge, and you are forced to pay.”

In which state of mind they jogged through the city, catching a glimpse from the top of a hill of the famous harbour spreading out with its many arms and legs. Or at least they saw one bay with warships and steamers lying between the houses and the wooded, bank–like shores, and they saw the centre of the harbour, and the opposite squat cliffs—the whole low wooded table–land reddened with suburbs and interrupted by the pale spaces of the many–lobed harbour. The sky had gone grey, and the low table–land into which the harbour intrudes squatted dark–looking and monotonous and sad, as if lost on the face of the earth: the same Australian atmosphere, even here within the area of huge, restless, modern Sydney, whose million inhabitants seem to slip like fishes from one side of the harbour to another.

Murdoch Street was an old sort of suburb, little squat bungalows with corrugated iron roofs, painted red. Each little bungalow was set in its own hand–breadth of ground, surrounded by a little wooden palisade fence. And there went the long street, like a child’s drawing, the little square bungalows dot–dot–dot, close together and yet apart, like modern democracy, each one fenced round with a square rail fence. The street was wide, and strips of worn grass took the place of kerb–stones. The stretch of macadam in the middle seemed as forsaken as a desert, as the hansom clock–clocked along it.

Fifty–one had its name painted by the door. Somers had been watching these names. He had passed “Elite” and “Tres Bon” and “The Angels’ Roost’ and “The Better ‘Ole’”. He rather hoped for one of the Australian names, Wallamby or Wagga–Wagga. When he had looked at the house and agreed to take it for three months, it had been dusk, and he had not noticed the name. He hoped it would not be U–An–Me, or even Stella Maris.

“Forestin,” he said, reading the flourishing T as an F. “What language do you imagine that is?”

“It’s T, not F,” said Harriet.

“Torestin,” he said, pronouncing it like Russian. “Must be a native word.”

“No,” said Harriet. “It means ‘To rest in’.” She didn’t even laugh at him. He became painfully silent.

Harriet didn’t mind very much. They had been on the move for four months, and she felt if she could but come to anchor somewhere in a corner of her own, she wouldn’t much care where it was, or whether it was called Torestin or Angels Roost or even Tres Bon.

It was, thank heaven, quite a clean little bungalow, with just commonplace furniture, nothing very preposterous. Before Harriet had even taken her hat off she removed four pictures from the wall, and the red plush tablecloth from the table. Somers had disconsolately opened the bags, so she fished out an Indian sarong of purplish shot colour, to try how it would look across the table. But the walls were red, of an awful deep bluey red, that looks so fearful with dark–oak fittings and furniture: or dark–stained jarrah, which amounts to the same thing; and Somers snapped, looking at the purple sarong—a lovely thing in itself:

“Not with red walls.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Harriet, disappointed. “We can easily colour–wash them white—or cream.”

“What, start colour–washing walls?”

“It would only take half a day.”

“That’s what we come to a new land for—to God’s Own Country—to start colour–washing walls in a beastly little suburban bungalow? That we’ve hired for three months and mayn’t live in three weeks!”

“Why not? You must have walls.”

“I suppose you must,” he said, going away to inspect the two little bedrooms, and the kitchen, and the outside. There was a scrap of garden at the back, with a path down the middle, and a fine Australian tree at the end, a tree with pale bark and no leaves, but big tufts of red, spikey flowers. He looked at the flowers in wonder. They were apparently some sort of bean flower, in sharp tufts, like great red spikes of stiff wisteria, curving upwards, not dangling. They looked handsome against the blue sky: but again, extraneous. More like scarlet cockatoos perched in the bare tree, than natural growing flowers. Queer burning red, and hard red flowers! They call it coral tree.

There was a little round summer–house also, with a flat roof and steps going up. Somers mounted, and found that from the lead–covered roof of the little round place he could look down the middle harbour, and even see the low gateway, the low headlands with the lighthouse, opening to the full Pacific. There was the way out to the open Pacific, the white surf breaking. A tramp steamer was just coming in, under her shaft of black smoke.

But near at hand nothing but bungalows—street after street. This was one of the old–fashioned bits of Sydney. A little further off the streets of proper brick houses clustered. But here on this hill the original streets of bungalow places remained almost untouched, still hinting at the temporary shacks run up in the wilderness.

Somers felt a little uneasy because he could look down into the whole range of his neighbours’ gardens and back premises. He tried not to look at them. But Harriet had come climbing after him to survey the world, and she began:

“Isn’t it lovely up here! Do you see the harbour?—and the way we came in! Look, look, I remember looking out of the porthole and seeing that lighthouse, just as we came in—and those little brown cliffs. Oh, but it’s a wonderful harbour. What it must have been when it was first discovered. And now all these little dog–kennelly houses, and everything. But this next garden is lovely; have you seen the—what are they, the lovely flowers?”

“Dahlias.”

“But did ever you see such dahlias! Are you sure they’re dahlias? They’re like pink chrysanthemums—and like roses—oh, lovely! But all these little dog–kennels—awful piggling suburban place—and sort of lousy. Is this all men can do with a new country? Look at those tin cans!”

“What do you expect them to do. Rome was not built in a day.”

“Oh, but they might make it nice. Look at all the little backs: like chicken houses with chicken runs. They call this making a new country, do they?”

“Well, how would you start making a new country yourself?” asked Somers, a little impatiently.

“I wouldn’t have towns—and corrugated iron—and millions of little fences—and empty tins.”

“No, you’d have old chateaus and Tudor manors.”

They went down, hearing a banging at the back door, and seeing a tradesman with a basket on his arm. And for the rest of the day they were kept busy going to the door to tell the inexhaustible tradespeople that they were now fixed up with grocer and butcher and baker and all the rest. Night came on, and Somers sat on his tub of a summer–house looking at the lights glittering thick in swarms in the various hollows down to the water, and the lighthouses flashing in the distance, and ship lights on the water, and the dark places thinly sprinkled with lights. It wasn’t like a town, it was like a whole country, with towns and bays and darknesses. And all lying mysteriously within the Australian underdark, that peculiar lost, weary aloofness of Australia. There was the vast town of Sydney. And it didn’t seem to be real, it seemed to be sprinkled on the surface of a darkness into which it never penetrated.

Somers sighed and shivered and went down to the house. It was chilly. Why had he come? Why, oh why? What was he looking for? Reflecting for a moment, he imagined he knew what he had come for. But he wished he had not come to Australia, for all that.

He was a man with an income of four hundred a year, and a writer of poems and essays. In Europe, he had made up his mind that everything was done for, played out, finished, and he must go to a new country. The newest country: young Australia. Now he had tried Western Australia, and had looked at Adelaide and Melbourne. And the vast, uninhabited land frightened him. It seemed so hoary and lost, so unapproachable. The sky was pure, crystal pure and blue, of a lovely pale blue colour: the air was wonderful, new and unbreathed: and there were great distances. But the bush, the grey, charred bush. It scared him. As a poet, he felt himself entitled to all kinds of emotions and sensations which an ordinary man would have repudiated. Therefore he let himself feel all sorts of things about the bush. It was so phantom–like, so ghostly, with its tall pale trees and many dead trees, like corpses, partly charred by bush fires: and then the foliage so dark, like grey–green iron. And then it was so deathly still. Even the few birds seemed to be swamped in silence. Waiting, waiting—the bush seemed to be hoarily waiting. And he could not penetrate into its secret. He couldn’t get at it. Nobody could get at it. What was it waiting for?

And then one night at the time of the full moon he walked alone into the bush. A huge electric moon, huge, and the tree–trunks like naked pale aborigines among the dark–soaked foliage, in the moonlight. And not a sign of life—not a vestige.

Yet something. Something big and aware and hidden! He walked on, had walked a mile or so into the bush, and had just come to a clump of tall, nude, dead trees, shining almost phosphorescent with the moon, when the terror of the bush overcame him. He had looked so long at the vivid moon, without thinking. And now, there was something among the trees, and his hair began to stir with terror, on his head. There was a presence. He looked at the weird, white, dead trees, and into the hollow distances of the bush. Nothing! Nothing at all. He turned to go home. And then immediately the hair on his scalp stirred and went icy cold with terror. What of? He knew quite well it was nothing. He knew quite well. But with his spine cold like ice, and the roots of his hair seeming to freeze, he walked on home, walked firmly and without haste. For he told himself he refused to be afraid, though he admitted the icy sensation of terror. But then to experience terror is not the same thing as to admit fear into the conscious soul. Therefore he refused to be afraid.

But the horrid thing in the bush! He schemed as to what it would be. It must be the spirit of the place. Something fully evoked to–night, perhaps provoked, by that unnatural West–Australian moon. Provoked by the moon, the roused spirit of the bush. He felt it was watching, and waiting. Following with certainty, just behind his back. It might have reached a long black arm and gripped him. But no, it wanted to wait. It was not tired of watching its victim. An alien people—a victim. It was biding its time with a terrible ageless watchfulness, waiting for a far–off end, watching the myriad intruding white men.

This was how Richard Lovat Somers figured it out to himself, when he got back into safety in the scattered township in the clearing on the hill–crest, and could see far off the fume of Perth and Fremantle on the sea–shore, and the tiny sparkling of a farther–off lighthouse on an island. A marvellous night, raving with moonlight—and somebody burning off the bush in a ring of sultry red fire under the moon in the distance, a slow ring of creeping red fire, like some ring of fireflies, upon the far–off darkness of the land’s body, under the white blaze of the moon above.

It is always a question whether there is any sense in taking notice of a poet’s fine feelings. The poet himself has misgivings about them. Yet a man ought to feel something, at night under such a moon.

Richard S. had never quite got over that glimpse of terror in the Westralian bush. Pure foolishness, of course, but there’s no telling where a foolishness may nip you. And, now that night had settled over Sydney, and the town and harbour were sparkling unevenly below, with reddish–seeming sparkles, whilst overhead the marvellous Southern Milky Way was tilting uncomfortably to the south, instead of crossing the zenith; the vast myriads of swarming stars that cluster all along the milky way, in the Southern sky, and the Milky Way itself leaning heavily to the south, so that you feel all on one side if you look at it; the Southern sky at night, with that swarming Milky Way all bushy with stars, and yet with black gaps, holes in the white star–road, while misty blotches of star–mist float detached, like cloud–vapours, in the side darkness, away from the road; the wonderful Southern night–sky, that makes a man feel so lonely, alien: with Orion standing on his head in the west, and his sword–belt upside down, and his Dog–star prancing in mid–heaven, high above him; and with the Southern Cross insignificantly mixed in with the other stars, democratically inconspicuous; well then, now that night had settled down over Sydney, and all this was happening overhead, for R.L. Somers and a few more people, our poet once more felt scared and anxious. Things seemed so different. Perhaps everything WAS different from all he had known. Perhaps if St. Paul and Hildebrand and Darwin had lived south of the equator, we might have known the world all different, quite different. But it is useless iffing. Sufficient that Somers went indoors into his little bungalow, and found his wife setting the table for supper, with cold meat and salad.

“The only thing that’s really cheap,” said Harriet, “is meat. That huge piece cost two shillings. There’s nothing to do but to become savage and carnivorous—if you can.”

“The kangaroo and the dingo are the largest fauna in Australia,” said Somers. “And the dingo is probably introduced.”

“But it’s very good meat,” said Harriet.

“I know that,” said he.

The hedge between number fifty–one and number fifty was a rather weary hedge with a lot of dead branches in it, on the Somers’ side. Yet it grew thickly, with its dark green, slightly glossy leaves. And it had little pinky–green flowers just coming out: sort of pink pea–flowers. Harriet went nosing round for flowers. Their garden was just trodden grass with the remains of some bushes and a pumpkin vine. So she went picking sprigs from the intervening hedge, trying to smell a bit of scent in them, but failing. At one place the hedge was really thin, and so of course she stood to look through into the next patch.

“Oh, but these dahlias are really marvellous. You MUST come and look,” she sang out to Somers.

“Yes, I know, I’ve seen them,” he replied rather crossly, knowing that the neighbours would hear her. Harriet was so blithely unconscious of people on the other side of hedges. As far as she was concerned, they ought not to be there: even if they were in their own garden.

“You must come and look, though. Lovely! Real plum colour, and the loveliest velvet. You must come.”

He left off sweeping the little yard, which was the job he had set himself for the moment, and walked across the brown grass to where Harriet stood peeping through the rift in the dead hedge, her head tied in a yellow, red–spotted duster. And of course, as Somers was peeping beside her, the neighbour who belonged to the garden must come backing out of the shed and shoving a motor–cycle down the path, smoking a short little pipe meanwhile. It was the man in blue overalls, the one named Jack. Somers knew him at once, though there were now no blue overalls. And the man was staring hard at the dead place in the hedge, where the faces of Harriet and Richard were seen peeping. Somers then behaved as usual on such occasions, just went stony and stared unseeing in another direction; as if quite unaware that the dahlias had an owner with a motor–cycle: any other owner than God, indeed. Harriet nodded a confused and rather distant “Good morning.” The man just touched his cap, very cursory, and nodded, and said good morning across his pipe, with his teeth clenched, and strode round the house with his machine.

“Why must you go yelling for other people to hear you?” said Somers to Harriet.

“Why shouldn’t they hear me!” retorted Harriet.

The day was Saturday. Early in the afternoon Harriet went to the little front gate because she heard a band: or the rudiments of a band. Nothing would have kept her indoors when she heard a trumpet, not six wild Somerses. It was some very spanking Boy Scouts marching out. There were only six of them, but the road was hardly big enough to hold them. Harriet leaned on the gate in admiration of their dashing broad hats and thick calves. As she stood there she heard a voice:

“Would you care for a few dahlias? I believe you like them.”

She started and turned. Bold as she was in private, when anybody addressed her in the open, any stranger, she wanted to bolt. But it was the fifty neighbour, the female neighbour, a very good–looking young woman, with loose brown hair and brown eyes and a warm complexion. The brown eyes were now alert with question and with offering, and very ready to be huffy, or even nasty, if the offering were refused. Harriet was too well–bred.

“Oh, thank you very much,” she said, “but isn’t it a pity to cut them?”

“Oh, not at all. My husband will cut you some with pleasure. Jack!—Jack!” she called.

“Hello!” came the masculine voice.

“Will you cut a few dahlias for Mrs—er—I don’t know your name”—she flashed a soft, warm, winning look at Harriet, and Harriet flushed slightly. “For the people next door,” concluded the offerer.

“Somers—S–O–M–E–R–S.” Harriet spelled it out.

“Oh, Somers!” exclaimed the neighbour woman, with a gawky little jerk, like a schoolgirl. “Mr. and Mrs. Somers,” she reiterated, with a little laugh.

“That’s it,” said Harriet.

“I saw you come yesterday, and I wondered—we hadn’t heard the name of who was coming.” She was still rather gawky and schoolgirlish in her manner, half shy, half brusque.

“No, I suppose not,” said Harriet, wondering why the girl didn’t tell her own name now.

“That’s your husband who has the motor–bike?” said Harriet.

“Yes, that’s right. That’s him. That’s my husband, Jack, Mr. Callcott.”

“Mr. Callcott, oh!” said Harriet, as if she were mentally abstracted trying to spell the word.

Somers, in the little passage inside his house, heard all this with inward curses. “That’s done it!” he groaned to himself. He’d got neighbours now.

And sure enough, in a few minutes came Harriet’s gushing cries of joy and admiration: “Oh, how lovely! how marvellous! but can they really be dahlias? I’ve never seen such dahlias! they’re really too beautiful! But you shouldn’t give them me, you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” cried Mrs. Callcott in delight.

“So many. And isn’t it a pity to cut them?” This, rather wistfully, to the masculine silence of Jack.

“Oh no, they want cutting as they come, or the blooms get smaller,” said Jack, masculine and benevolent.

“And scent!—they have scent!” cried Harriet, sniffing at her velvety bouquet.

“They have a little—not much though. Flowers don’t have much scent in Australia,” deprecated Mrs. Callcott.

“Oh, I must show them to my husband,” cried Harriet, half starting from the fence. Then she lifted up her voice:

“Lovat!” she called. “Lovat! You MUST come. Come here! Come and see! Lovat!”

“What?”

“Come. Come and see.”

This dragged the bear out of his den: Mr. Somers, twisting sour smiles of graciousness on his pale, bearded face, crossed the verandah and advanced towards the division fence, on the other side of which stood his Australian neighbour in shirt–sleeves, with a comely young wife very near to him, whilst on this side stood Harriet with a bunch of pink and purple ragged dahlias, and an expression of joyous friendliness, which Somers knew to be false, upon her face.

“Look what Mrs. Callcott has given me! Aren’t they exquisite?” cried Harriet, rather exaggerated.

“Awfully nice,” said Somers, bowing slightly to Mrs. Callcott, who looked uneasy, and to Mr. Callcott—otherwise Jack.

“Got here all right in the hansom, then?” said Jack.

Somers laughed—and he could be charming when he laughed—as he met the other man’s eye.

“My wrist got tired, propping up the luggage all the way,” he replied.

“Ay, there’s not much waste ground in a hansom. You can’t run up a spare bed in the parlour, so to speak. But it saved you five bob.”

“Oh, at least ten, between me and a Sydney taxi driver.”

“Yes, they’ll do you down if they can—that is, if you let ’em. I have a motor–bike, so I can afford to let ’em get the wind up. Don’t depend on ’em, you see. That’s the point.”

“It is, I’m afraid.”

The two men looked at each other curiously. And Mrs. Callcott looked at Somers with bright, brown, alert eyes, like a bird that has suddenly caught sight of something. A new sort of bird to her was this little man with a beard. He wasn’t handsome and impressive like his wife. No, he was odd. But then he had a touch of something, the magic of the old world that she had never seen, the old culture, the old glamour. She thought that, because he had a beard and wore a little green house–jacket, he was probably a socialist.

The Somers now had neighbours: somewhat to the chagrin of Richard Lovat. He had come to this new country, the youngest country on the globe, to start a new life and flutter with a new hope. And he started with a rabid desire not to see anything and not to speak one single word to any single body—except Harriet, whom he snapped at hard enough. To be sure, the mornings sometimes won him over. They were so blue and pure: the blue harbour like a lake among the land, so pale blue and heavenly, with its hidden and half–hidden lobes intruding among the low, dark–brown cliffs, and among the dark–looking tree–covered shores, and up to the bright red suburbs. But the land, the ever–dark bush that was allowed to come to the shores of the harbour! It was strange that, with the finest of new air dimming to a lovely pale blue in the distance, and with the loveliest stretches of pale blue water, the tree–covered land should be so gloomy and lightless. It is the sun–refusing leaves of the gum–trees that are like dark, hardened flakes of rubber.

He was not happy, there was no pretending he was. He longed for Europe with hungry longing: Florence, with Giotto’s pale tower: or the Pincio at Rome: or the woods in Berkshire—heavens, the English spring with primroses under the bare hazel bushes, and thatched cottages among plum blossom. He felt he would have given anything on earth to be in England. It was May—end of May—almost bluebell time, and the green leaves coming out on the hedges. Or the tall corn under the olives in Sicily. Or London Bridge, with all the traffic on the river. Or Bavaria with gentian and yellow globe flowers, and the Alps still icy. Oh God, to be in Europe, lovely, lovely Europe that he had hated so thoroughly and abused so vehemently, saying it was moribund and stale and finished. The fool was himself. He had got out of temper, and so had called Europe moribund: assuming that he himself, of course, was not moribund, but sprightly and chirpy and too vital, as the Americans would say, for Europe. Well, if a man wants to make a fool of himself, it is as well to let him.

Somers wandered disconsolate through the streets of Sydney, forced to admit that there were fine streets, like Birmingham for example; that the parks and the Botanical Gardens were handsome and well–kept; that the harbour, with all the two–decker brown ferry–boats sliding continuously from the Circular Quay, was an extraordinary place. But oh, what did he care about it all! In Martin Place he longed for Westminster, in Sussex Street he almost wept for Covent Garden and St. Martin’s Lane, at the Circular Quay he pined for London Bridge. It was all London without being London. Without any of the lovely old glamour that invests London. This London of the Southern hemisphere was all, as it were, made in five minutes, a substitute for the real thing. Just a substitute—as margarine is a substitute for butter. And he went home to the little bungalow bitterer than ever, pining for England.

But if he hated the town so much, why did he stay? Oh, he had a fanciful notion that if he was really to get to know anything at all about a country, he must live for a time in the principal city. So he had condemned himself to three months at least. He told himself to comfort himself that at the end of three months he would take the steamer across the Pacific, homewards, towards Europe. He felt a long navel string fastening him to Europe, and he wanted to go back, to go home. He would stay three months. Three month’s penalty for having forsworn Europe. Three months in which to get used to this Land of the Southern Cross. Cross indeed! A new crucifixion. And then away, homewards!

The only time he felt at all happy was when he had reassured himself that by August, he would be taking his luggage on to a steamer. That soothed him.

He understood now that the Romans had preferred death to exile. He could sympathise now with Ovid on the Danube, hungering for Rome and blind to the land around him, blind to the savages. So Somers felt blind to Australia, and blind to the uncouth Australians. To him they were barbarians. The most loutish Neapolitan loafer was nearer to him in pulse than these British Australians with their aggressive familiarity. He surveyed them from an immense distance, with a kind of horror.

Of course he was bound to admit that they ran their city very well, as far as he could see. Everything was very easy, and there was no fuss. Amazing how little fuss and bother there was—on the whole. Nobody seemed to bother, there seemed to be no policemen and no authority, the whole thing went by itself, loose and easy, without any bossing. No real authority—no superior classes—hardly even any boss. And everything rolling along as easily as a full river, to all appearances.

That’s where it was. Like a full river of life, made up of drops of water all alike. Europe is really established upon the aristocratic principle. Remove the sense of class distinction, of higher and lower, and you have anarchy in Europe. Only nihilists aim at the removal of all class distinction, in Europe.

But in Australia, it seemed to Somers, the distinction was already gone. There was really no class distinction. There was a difference of money and of “smartness”. But nobody felt BETTER than anybody else, or higher; only better–off. And there is all the difference in the world between feeling BETTER than your fellow man, and merely feeling BETTER–OFF.

Now Somers was English by blood and education, and though he had no antecedents whatsoever, yet he felt himself to be one of the RESPONSIBLE members of society, as contrasted with the innumerable IRRESPONSIBLE members. In old, cultured, ethical England this distinction is radical between the responsible members of society and the irresponsible. It is even a categorical distinction. It is a caste distinction, a distinction in the very being. It is the distinction between the proletariat and the ruling classes.

But in Australia nobody is supposed to rule, and nobody does rule, so the distinction falls to the ground. The proletariat appoints men to administer the law, not to rule. These ministers are not really responsible, any more than the housemaid is responsible. The proletariat is all the time responsible, the only source of authority. The will of the people. The ministers are merest instruments.

Somers for the first time felt himself immersed in real democracy—in spite of all disparity in wealth. The instinct of the place was absolutely and flatly democratic, a terre democratic. Demos was here his own master, undisputed, and therefore quite calm about it. No need to get the wind up at all over it; it was a granted condition of Australia, that Demos was his own master.

And this was what Richard Lovat Somers could not stand. You may be the most liberal Englishman, and yet you cannot fail to see the categorical difference between the responsible and the irresponsible classes. You cannot fail to admit the necessity for RULE. Either you admit yourself an anarchist, or you admit the necessity for RULE—in England. The working classes in England feel just the same about it as do the upper classes. Any working man who sincerely feels himself a responsible member of society feels it his duty to exercise authority in some way or other. And the irresponsible working man likes to feel there is a strong boss at the head, if only so that he can grumble at him satisfactorily. Europe is established on the instinct of authority: “Thou shalt.” The only alternative is anarchy.

Somers was a true Englishman, with an Englishman’s hatred of anarchy, and an Englishman’s instinct for authority. So he felt himself at a discount in Australia. In Australia authority was a dead letter. There was no giving of orders here; or, if orders were given, they would not be received as such. A man in one position might make a suggestion to a man in another position, and this latter might or might not accept the suggestion, according to his disposition. Australia was not yet in a state of anarchy. England had as yet at least nominal authority. But let the authority be removed, and then! For it is notorious, when it comes to constitutions, how much there is in a name.

Was all that stood between Australia and anarchy just a name?—the name of England, Britain, Empire, Viceroy, or Governor General, or Governor? The shadow of the old sceptre, the mere sounding of a name? Was it just the hollow word “Authority”, sounding across seven thousand miles of sea, that kept Australia from Anarchy? Australia—Authority—Anarchy: a multiplication of the alpha.

So Richard Lovat cogitated as he roamed about uneasily. Not that he knew all about it. Nobody knows all about it. And those that fancy they know ALMOST all about it are usually most wrong. A man must have SOME ideas about the thing he’s up against, otherwise he’s a simple wash–out.

But Richard WAS wrong. Given a good temper and a genuinely tolerant nature—both of which the Australians seem to have in a high degree—you can get on for quite a long time without “rule”. For quite a long time the thing just goes by itself.

Is it merely running down, however, like a machine running on but gradually running down?

Ah, questions!

CHAPTER 2. NEIGHBOURS.

THE Somers–Callcott acquaintance did not progress very rapidly, after the affair of the dahlias. Mrs. Callcott asked Mrs. Somers across to look at their cottage, and Mrs. Somers went. Then Mrs. Somers asked Mrs. Callcott back again. But both times Mr. Somers managed to be out of the way, and managed to cast an invisible frost over the rencontre. He was not going to be dragged in, no, he was not. He very much wanted to borrow a pair of pincers and a chopper for an hour, to pull out a few nails, and to split his little chunks of kindling that the dealer had sent too thick. And the Callcotts were very ready to lend anything, if they were only asked for it. But no, Richard Lovat wasn’t going to ask. Neither would he buy a chopper, because the travelling expenses had reduced him to very low water. He preferred to wrestle with the chunks of jarrah every morning.

Mrs. Somers and Mrs. Callcott continued, however, to have a few friendly words across the fence. Harriet learned that Jack was foreman in a motor–works place, that he had been wounded in the jaw in the war, that the surgeons had not been able to extract the bullet, because there was nothing for it to “back up against”—and so he had carried the chunk of lead in his gizzard for ten months, till suddenly it had rolled into his throat and he had coughed it out. The jeweller had wanted Mrs. Callcott to have it mounted in a brooch or a hatpin. It was a round ball of lead, from a shell, as big as a marble, and weighing three or four ounces. Mrs. Callcott had recoiled from this suggestion, so an elegant little stand had been made, like a little lamp–post on a polished wood base, and the black little globe of lead dangled by a fine chain like an arc–lamp from the top of the toy lamp–post. It was now a mantelpiece ornament.

All this Harriet related to the indignant Lovat, though she wisely suppressed the fact that Mrs. Callcott had suggested that “perhaps Mr. Somers might like to have a look at it.”

Lovat was growing more used to Australia—or to the “cottage” in Murdoch Road, and the view of the harbour from the tub–top of his summer–house. You couldn’t call that all “Australia”—but then one man can’t bite off a continent in a mouthful, and you must start to nibble somewhere. He and Harriet took numerous trips in the ferry steamers to the many nooks and corners of the harbour. One day their ferry steamer bumped into a collier that was heading for the harbour outlet—or rather, their ferry boat headed across the nose of the collier, so the collier bumped into them and had his nose put out of joint. There was a considerable amount of yelling, but the ferry boat slid flatly away towards Manly, and Harriet’s excitement subsided.

It was Sunday, and a lovely sunny day of Australian winter. Manly is the bathing suburb of Sydney—one of them. You pass quite close to the wide harbour gate, The Heads, on the ferry steamer. Then you land on the wharf, and walk up the street, like a bit of Margate with sea–side shops and restaurants, till you come out on a promenade at the end, and there is the wide Pacific rolling in on the yellow sand: the wide fierce sea, that makes all the built–over land dwindle into non–existence. At least there was a heavy swell on, so the Pacific belied its name and crushed the earth with its rollers. Perhaps the heavy, earth–despising swell is part of its pacific nature.

Harriet, of course, was enraptured, and declared she could not be happy till she had lived beside the Pacific. They bought food and ate it by the sea. Then Harriet was chilled, so they went to a restaurant for a cup of soup. When they were again in the street Harriet realized that she hadn’t got her yellow scarf: her big, silky yellow scarf that was so warm and lovely. She declared she had left it in the eating–house, and they went back at once for it. The girls in the eating–house—the waitresses—said, in their cheeky Cockney Australian that they “hedn’t seen it”, and that the “next people who kyme arfter must ’ev tyken it”.

Anyhow, it was gone—and Harriet furious, feeling as if there had been a thief in the night. In this unhappy state of affairs Somers suggested they should sit on the tram–car and go somewhere. They sat on the tram–car and ran for miles along a coast with ragged bush loused over with thousands of small promiscuous bungalows, built of everything from patchwork of kerosene tin up to fine red brick and stucco, like Margate. Not far off the Pacific boomed. But fifty yards inland started these bits of swamp, and endless promiscuity of “cottages”.

The tram took them five or six miles, to the terminus. This was the end of everywhere, with new “stores”—that is, flyblown shops with corrugated iron roofs—and with a tramshelter, and little house–agents’ booths plastered with signs—and more “cottages”; that is, bungalows of corrugated iron or brick—and bits of swamp or “lagoon” where the sea had got in and couldn’t get out. The happy couple had a drink of sticky aerated waters in one of the “stores”, then walked up a wide sand–road dotted on either side with small bungalows, beyond the backs of which lay a whole aura of rusty tin cans chucked over the back fence. They came to the ridge of sand, and again the pure, long–rolling Pacific.

“I love the sea,” said Harriet.

“I wish,” said Lovat, “it would send a wave about fifty feet high round the whole coast of Australia.”

“You are so bad–tempered,” said Harriet. “Why don’t you see the lovely things!”

“I do, by contrast.”

So they sat on the sands, and he peeled pears and buried the peel in the yellow sand. It was winter, and the shore was almost deserted. But the sun was warm as an English May.

Harriet felt she absolutely must live by the sea, so they wandered along a wide, rutted space of deep sand, looking at the “cottages” on either side. They had impossible names. But in themselves, many of them were really nice. Yet there they stood like so many forlorn chicken–houses, each on its own oblong patch of land, with a fence between it and its neighbour. There was something indescribably weary and dreary about it. The very ground the houses stood on seemed weary and drabbled, almost asking for rusty tin cans. And so many pleasant little bungalows set there in an improvised road, wide and weary—and then the effort had lapsed. The tin shacks were almost a relief. They did not call for geraniums and lobelias, as did the pretty Hampstead Garden Suburb “cottages”. And these latter might call, but they called in vain. They got bits of old paper and tins.

Yet Harriet absolutely wanted to live by the sea, so they stopped before each bungalow that was to be let furnished. The estate agents went in for abbreviations. On the boards at the corner of the fences it said either “4 Sale” or “2 Let”. Probably there was a colonial intention of jocularity. But it was almost enough for Somers. He would have died rather than have put himself into one of those cottages.

The road ended on the salt pool where the sea had ebbed in. Across was a state reserve—a bit of aboriginal Australia, with gum trees and empty spaces beyond the flat salt waters. Near at hand a man was working away, silently loading a boat with beach–sand, upon the lagoon. To the right the sea was rolling on the shore, and spurting high on some brown rocks. Two men in bathing suits were running over the spit of sand from the lagoon to the surf, where two women in “waders”, those rubber paddling–drawers into which we bundle our children at the seaside, were paddling along the fringe of the foam. A blond young man wearing a jacket over his bathing suit walked by with two girls. He had huge massive legs, astonishing. And near at hand Somers saw another youth lying on the warm sand–hill in the sun. He had rolled in the dry sand while he was wet, so he was hardly distinguishable. But he lay like an animal on his face in the sun, and again Somers wondered at the thick legs. They seemed to run to leg, these people. Three boys, one a lad of fifteen or so, came out of the warm lagoon in their bathing suits to roll in the sand and play. The big lad crawled on all fours and the little one rode on his back, and pitched off into the sand. They were extraordinarily like real young animals, mindless as opossums, lunging about.

This was Sunday afternoon. The sun was warm. The lonely man was just pushing off his boat on the lagoon. It sat deep in the water, half full of sand. Somers and Harriet lay on the sand–bank. Strange it was. And it HAD a sort of fascination. Freedom! That’s what they always say. “You feel free in Australia.” And so you do. There is a great relief in the atmosphere, a relief from tension, from pressure. An absence of control or will or form. The sky is open above you, and the air is open around you. Not the old closing–in of Europe.

But what then? The VACANCY of this freedom is almost terrifying. In the openness and the freedom this new chaos, this litter of bungalows and tin cans scattered for miles and miles, this Englishness all crumbled out into formlessness and chaos. Even the heart of Sydney itself—an imitation of London and New York, without any core or pith of meaning. Business going on full speed: but only because it is the other end of English and American business.

The absence of any inner meaning: and at the same time the great sense of vacant spaces. The sense of irresponsible freedom. The sense of do–as–you–please liberty. And all utterly uninteresting. What is more hopelessly uninteresting than accomplished liberty? Great swarming, teeming Sydney flowing out into these myriads of bungalows, like shallow waters spreading, undyked. And what then? Nothing. No inner life, no high command, no interest in anything, finally.

Somers turned over and shut his eyes. New countries were more problematic than old ones. One loved the sense of release from old pressure and old tight control, from the old world of water–tight compartments. This was Sunday afternoon, but with none of the surfeited dreariness of English Sunday afternoons. It was still a raw loose world. All Sydney would be out by the sea or in the bush, a roving, unbroken world. They all rushed from where they were to somewhere else, on holidays. And to–morrow they’d all be working away, with just as little meaning, working without any meaning, playing without any meaning; and yet quite strenuous at it all. It was just dazing. Even the rush for money had no real pip in it. They really cared very little for the power that money can give. And except for the sense of power, that had no real significance here. When all is said and done, even money is not much good where there is no genuine culture. Money is a means to rising to a higher, subtler, fuller state of consciousness, or nothing. And when you flatly don’t want a fuller consciousness, what good is your money to you? Just to chuck about and gamble with. Even money is a European invention—European and American. It has no real magic in Australia.

Poor Richard Lovat wearied himself to death struggling with the problem of himself, and calling it Australia. There was no actual need for him to struggle with Australia: he must have done it in the hedonistic sense, to please himself. But it wore him to rags.

Harriet sat up and began dusting the sand from her coat—Lovat did likewise. Then they rose to be going back to the tram–car. There was a motor–car standing on the sand of the road near the gate of the end house. The end house was called St. Columb, and Somers’ heart flew to Cornwall. It was quite a nice little place, standing on a bluff of sand sideways above the lagoon.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Harriet, looking up at St. Columb.

But Somers did not answer. He was shut against any of these humiliating little bungalows. “Love’s Harbour” he was just passing by, and it was “4 Sale”. It would be. He ploughed grimly through the sand. “Arcady”—“Stella Maris”—“Racketty–Coo.”

“I say!” called a voice from behind.

It was Mrs. Callcott running unevenly over the sand after them, the colour high in her cheeks. She wore a pale grey crepe de chine dress and grey suede shoes. Some distance behind her Jack Callcott was following, in his shirt–sleeves.

“Fancy you being here!” gasped Mrs. Callcott, and Harriet was so flustered she could only cry:

“Oh, how do you do!”—and effusively shake hands, as if she were meeting some former acquaintance on Piccadilly. The shaking hands quite put Mrs. Callcott off her track. She felt it almost an affront, and went red. Her husband sauntered up and put his hands in his pockets, to avoid mistakes.

“Ha, what are YOU doing here,” he said to the Somers pair. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea?”

Harriet glanced at Richard Lovat. He was smiling faintly.

“Oh, we should LOVE it,” she replied to Mr. Callcott. “But where?—have you got a house here?”

“My sister has the end house,” said he.

“Oh, but—will she want us?” cried Harriet, backing out.

The Callcotts stood for a moment silent.

“Yes, if you like to come,” said Jack. And it was evident he was aware of Somers’ desire to avoid contact.

“Well, I should be awfully grateful,” said Harriet. “Wouldn’t you, Lovat?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling to himself, feeling Jack’s manly touch of contempt for all this hedging.

So off they went to “St. Columb”. The sister was a brown–eyed Australian with a decided manner, kindly, but a little suspicious of the two newcomers. Her husband was a young Cornishman, rather stout and short and silent. He had his hair cut round at the back, in a slightly rounded line above a smooth, sunburnt, reddened nape of the neck. Somers found out later that this young Cornishman—his name was Trewhella—had married his brother’s widow. Mrs. Callcott supplied Harriet later on with all the information concerning her sister–in–law. The first Trewhella, Alfred John, had died two years ago, leaving his wife with a neat sum of money and this house, “St. Columb”, and also with a little girl named Gladys, who came running in shaking her long brown hair just after the Somers appeared. So the present Trewhellas were a newly–married couple. The present husband, William James, went round in a strange, silent fashion helping his wife Rose to prepare tea.

The bungalow was pleasant, a large room facing the sea, with verandahs and other little rooms opening off. There were many family photographs, and a framed medal and ribbon and letter praising the first Trewhella. Mrs. Trewhella was alert and watchful, and decided to be genteel. So the party sat around in the basket chairs and on the settles under the windows, instead of sitting at table for tea. And William James silently but willingly carried round the bread and butter and the cakes.

He was a queer young man, with an Irish–looking face, rather pale, an odd kind of humour in his grey eye and in the corners of his pursed mouth. But he spoke never a word. It was hard to decide his age—probably about thirty—a little younger than his wife. He seemed silently pleased about something—perhaps his marriage. Somers noticed that the whites of his eyes were rather bloodshot. He had been in Australia since he was a boy of fifteen—he had come with his brother—from St. Columb, near Newquay—St. Columb Major. So much Somers elicited.

“Well, how do you like Sydney?” came the inevitable question from Mrs. Trewhella.

“The harbour, I think, is wonderful,” came Somers’ invariable answer.

“It is a fine harbour, isn’t it. And Sydney is a fine town. Oh yes, I’ve lived there all my life.”

The conversation languished. Callcott was silent, and William James seemed as if he were never anything else. Even the little girl fluttered into a whisper and went still again. Everybody was a little embarrassed, rather stiff: too genteel, or not genteel enough. And the men seemed absolute logs.

“You don’t think much of Australia, then?” said Jack to Somers.

“Why,” answered the latter, “how am I to judge! I haven’t even seen the fringe of it.”

“Oh, it’s mostly fringe,” said Jack. “But it hasn’t made a good impression on you?”

“I don’t know yet. My feelings are mixed. The COUNTRY seems to me to have a fascination—strange—.”

“But you don’t take to the Aussies, at first sight. Bit of a collision between their aura and yours,” smiled Jack.

“Maybe that’s what it is,” said Somers. “That’s a useful way of putting it. I can’t help my aura colliding, can I?”

“Of course you can’t. And if it’s a tender sort of aura, of course it feels the bump.”

“Oh, don’t talk about it,” cried Harriet. “He must be just one big bump, by the way he grumbles.”

They all laughed—perhaps a trifle uneasily.

“I thought so,” said Jack. “What made you come here? Thought you’d like to write about it?”

“I thought I might like to live here—and write here,” replied Somers smiling.

“Write about the bushrangers and the heroine lost in the bush and wandering into a camp of bullies?” said Jack.

“Maybe,” said Somers.

“Do you mind if I ask you what sort of things you do write?” said Jack, with some delicacy.

“Oh—poetry—essays.”

“Essays about what?”

“Oh—rubbish mostly.”

There was a moment’s pause.

“Oh, Lovat, don’t be so silly. You KNOW you don’t think your essays rubbish,” put in Harriet. “They’re about life, and democracy, and equality, and all that sort of thing,” Harriet explained.

“Oh, yes?” said Jack. “I’d like to read some.”

“Well,” hesitated Harriet, “He can lend you a volume—you’ve got some with you, haven’t you?” she added, turning to Somers.

“I’ve got one,” admitted that individual, looking daggers at her.

“Well, you’ll lend it to Mr. Callcott, won’t you?”

“If he wants it. But it will only bore him.”

“I might rise up to it, you know,” said Jack laconically, “if I bring all my mental weight to bear on it.”

Somers flushed, and laughed at the contradiction in metaphor.

“It’s not the loftiness,” he said, rather amused. “It’s that people just don’t care to hear some things.”

“Well, let me try,” said Jack. “We’re a new country—and we’re out to learn.”

“That’s exactly what we’re not,” broke out William James, with a Cornish accent and a blurt of a laugh. “We’re out to show to everybody that we know everything there is to be known.”

“That’s some of us,” said Jack.

“And most of us,” said William James.

“Have it your own way, boy. But let us speak for the minority. And there’s a minority that knows we’ve got to learn a big lesson—and that’s willing to learn it.”

Again there was silence. The women seemed almost effaced.

“There’s one thing,” thought Somers to himself, “when these Colonials DO speak seriously, they speak like men, not like babies.” He looked up at Jack.

“It’s the world that’s got to learn a lesson,” he said. “Not only Australia.” His tone was acid and sinister. And he looked with his hard, pale blue eyes at Callcott. Callcott’s eyes, brown and less concentrated, less hard, looked back curiously at the other man.

“Possibly it is,” he said. “But my job is Australia.”

Somers watched him. Callcott had a pale, clean–shaven, lean face with close–shut lips. But his lips weren’t bitten in until they just formed a slit, as they so often are in Colonials. And his eyes had a touch of mystery, of aboriginal darkness.

“Do you care very much for Australia?” said Somers, a little wistfully.

“I believe I do,” said Jack. “But if I was out of a job like plenty of other unlucky diggers, I suppose I should care more about getting a job.”

“But you care very much about your Australia?”

“My Australia? Yes, I own about seven acres of it, all told. I suppose I care very much about that. I pay my taxes on it, all right.”

“No, but the future of Australia.”

“You’ll never see me on a platform shouting about it.”

The Lovats said they must be going.

“If you like to crowd in,” said Jack, “we can take you in the car. We can squeeze in Mr. Somers in front, and there’ll be plenty of room for the others at the back, if Gladys sits on her Dad’s knee.”

This time Somers accepted at once. He felt the halting refusals were becoming ridiculous.

They left at sunset. The west, over the land, was a clear gush of light up from the departed sun. The east, over the Pacific, was a tall concave of rose–coloured clouds, a marvellous high apse. Now the bush had gone dark and spectral again, on the right hand. You might still imagine inhuman presences moving among the gum trees. And from time to time, on the left hand, they caught sight of the long green rollers of the Pacific, with the star–white foam, and behind that the dusk–green sea glimmered over with smoky rose, reflected from the eastern horizon where the bank of flesh–rose colour and pure smoke–blue lingered a long time, like magic, as if the sky’s rim were cooling down. It seemed to Somers characteristic of Australia, this far–off flesh–rose bank of colour on the sky’s horizon, so tender and unvisited, topped with the smoky, beautiful blueness. And then the thickness of the night’s stars overhead, and one star very brave in the last effulgence of sunset, westward over the continent. As soon as night came, all the raggletaggle of amorphous white settlements disappeared, and the continent of the Kangaroo reassumed its strange, unvisited glamour, a kind of virgin sensual aloofness.

Somers sat in front between Jack and Victoria Callcott, because he was so slight. He made himself as small as he could, like the ham in the sandwich. When he looked her way, he found Victoria watching him under her lashes, and as she met his eyes, she flared into a smile that filled him with wonder. She had such a charming, innocent look, like an innocent girl, naive and a little gawky. Yet the strange exposed smile she gave him in the dusk. It puzzled him to know what to make of it. Like an offering—and yet innocent. Perhaps like the sacred prostitutes of the temple: acknowledgement of the sacredness of the act. He chose not to think of it, and stared away across the bonnet of the car at the fading land.

Queer, thought Somers, this girl at once sees perhaps the most real me, and most women take me for something I am not at all. Queer to be recognized at once, as if one were of the same family.

He had to admit that he was flattered also. She seemed to see the wonder in him. And she had none of the European women’s desire to make a conquest of him, none of that feminine rapacity which is so hateful in the old world. She seemed like an old Greek girl bringing an offering to the altar of the mystic Bacchus. The offering of herself.

Her husband sat steering the car and smoking his short pipe in silence. He seemed to have something to think about. At least he had considerable power of silence, a silence which made itself felt. Perhaps he knew his wife much better than anyone else. At any rate he did not feel it necessary to keep an eye on her. If she liked to look at Somers with a strange, exposed smile, that was her affair. She could do as she liked in that direction, so far as he, Jack Callcott, was concerned. She was his wife: she knew it, and he knew it. And it was quite established and final. So long as she did not betray what was between her and him, as husband and wife, she could do as she liked with the rest of herself. And he could, quite rightly, trust her to be faithful to that undefinable relation which subsisted between them as man and wife. He didn’t pretend and didn’t want to occupy the whole field of her consciousness.

And in just the same way, that bond which connected himself with her, he would always keep unbroken for his part. But that did not mean that he was sworn body and soul to his wife. Oh no. There was a good deal of him which did not come into the marriage bond, and with all this part of himself he was free to make the best he could, according to his own idea. He loved her, quite sincerely, for her naive sophisticated innocence which allowed him to be unknown to her, except in so far as they were truly and intimately related. It was the innocence which has been through the fire, and knows its own limitations. In the same way he quite consciously chose not to know anything more about her than just so much as entered into the absolute relationship between them. He quite definitely did not want to absorb her, or to occupy the whole field of her nature. He would trust her to go her own way, only keeping her to the pledge that was between them. What this pledge consisted in he did not try to define. It was something indefinite: the field of contact between their two personalities. Where their two personalities met and joined, they were one, and pledged to permanent fidelity. But that part in each of them which did not belong to the other was free from all enquiry or even from knowledge. Each silently consented to leave the other in large part unknown, unknown in word and deed and very being. They didn’t WANT to know—too much knowledge would be like shackles.

Such marriage is established on a very subtle sense of honour and of individual integrity. It seems as if each race and continent has its own marriage instinct. And the instinct that develops in Australia will certainly not be the same as the instinct that develops in America. And each people must follow its own instinct, if it is to live, not matter whether the marriage law be universal or not.

The Callcotts had come to no agreement, verbally, as to their marriage. They had not thought it out. They were Australians, of strongly, subtly–developed desire for freedom, and with considerable indifference to old formulae and the conventions based thereon. So they took their stand instinctively and calmly. Jack had defined his stand as far as he found necessary. If his wife was good to him and satisfied him in so far as HE went, then he was pledged to trust her to do as she liked outside his ken, outside his range. He would make a cage for nobody. This he openly propounded to his mates: to William James, for example, and later to Somers. William James said yes, but thought the more. Somers was frankly disturbed, not liking the thought of applying the same prescription to his own marriage.

They put down the Trewhellas at their house in North Sydney, and went on to Murdoch Road over the ferry. Jack had still to take the car down to the garage in town. Victoria said she would prepare the high tea which takes the place of dinner and supper in Australia, against his return. So Harriet boldly invited them to this high tea—a real substantial meal in her own house. Victoria was to help her prepare it, and Jack was to come straight back to Torestin. Victoria was as pleased as a lamb with two tails over this arrangement, and went in to change her dress.

Somers knew why Harriet had launched this invitation. It was because she had had a wonderfully successful cooking morning. Like plenty of other women Harriet had learned to cook during war–time, and now she loved it, once in a while. This had been one of the whiles. Somers had stoked the excellent little stove, and peeled the apples and potatoes and onions and pumpkin, and looked after the meat and the sauces, while Harriet had lashed out in pies and tarts and little cakes and baked custard. She now surveyed her prize Beeton shelf with love, and began to whisk up a mayonnaise for potato salad.

Victoria appeared in a pale gauze dress of pale pink with little dabs of gold—a sort of tea–party dress—and with her brown hair loosely knotted behind, and with innocent sophistication pulled a bit untidy over her womanly forehead, she looked winsome. Her colour was very warm, and she was gawkily excited. Harriet put on an old yellow silk frock, and Somers changed into a dark suit. For tea there was cold roast pork with first–class brown crackling on it, and potato salad, beetroot, and lettuce, and apple chutney; then a dressed lobster—or crayfish, very good, pink and white; and then apple pie and custard–tarts and cakes and a dish of apples and passion fruits and oranges, a pine–apple and some bananas: and of course big cups of tea, breakfast–cups.

Victoria and Harriet were delighted, Somers juggled with colour–schemes on the table, the one central room in the bungalow was brilliantly lighted, and the kettle sang on the hearth. After months of India, with all the Indian decorum and two silent men–servants waiting at table: and after the old–fashioned gentility of the P. and O. steamer, Somers and Harriet felt this show rather a come–down maybe, but still good fun. Victoria felt it was almost “society”. They waited for Jack.

Jack arrived bending forward rather in the doorway, a watchful look on his pale, clean–shaven face, and that atmosphere of silence about him which is characteristic of many Australians.

“Kept you waiting?” he asked.

“We were just ready for you,” said Harriet.

Jack had to carve the meat, because Somers was so bad at it and didn’t like doing it. Harriet poured the great cups of tea. Callcott looked with a quick eye round the table to see exactly what he wanted to eat, and Victoria peeped through her lashes to see exactly how Harriet behaved. As Harriet always behaved in the vaguest manner possible, and ate her sweets with her fish–fork and her soup with her pudding spoon, a study of her table manners was not particularly profitable.

To Somers it was like being back twenty–five years, back in an English farm–house in the Midlands, at Sunday tea. He had gone a long way from the English Midlands, and got out of the way of them. Only to find them here again, with hardly a change. To Harriet it was all novel and fun. But Richard Lovat felt vaguely depressed.

The pleasant heartiness of the life he had known as a boy now depressed him. He hated the promiscuous mixing in of all the company, the lack of reserve in manner. He had preferred India for that: the gulf between the native servants and the whites kept up a sort of tone. He had learned to be separate, to talk across a slight distance. And that was an immense relief to him, because it was really more his nature. Now he found himself soused again in the old familiar jolly and cosy, spirit of his childhood and boyhood, and he was depressed.

Jack, of course, had a certain reserve. But of a different sort. Not a physical reserve. He did keep his coat on, but he might as well have sat there in his shirt–sleeves. His very silence was, so to speak, in its shirt–sleeves.

There was a curious battle in silence going on between the two men. To Harriet, all this familiar shirt–sleeve business was just fun, the charades. In her most gushing genial moments she was still only masquerading inside her class—the “upper” class of Europe. But Somers was of the people himself, and he had that alert INSTINCT of the common people, the instinctive knowledge of what his neighbour was wanting and thinking, and the instinctive necessity to answer. With the other classes, there is a certain definite breach between individual and individual, and not much goes across except what is intended to go across. But with the common people, and with most Australians, there is no breach. The communication is silent and involuntary, the give and take flows like waves from person to person, and each one knows: unless he is foiled by speech. Each one knows in silence, reciprocates in silence, and the talk as a rule just babbles on, on the surface. This is the common people among themselves. But there is this difference in Australia. Each individual seems to feel himself pledged to put himself aside, to keep himself at least half out of count. The whole geniality is based on a sort of code of “You put yourself aside, and I’ll put myself aside.” This is done with a watchful will: a sort of duel. And above this, a great geniality. But the continual holding most of himself aside, out of count, makes a man go blank in his withheld self. And that, too, is puzzling.

Probably this is more true of the men than of the women. Probably women change less, from land to land, play fewer “code” tricks with themselves. At any rate, Harriet and Victoria got on like a house on fire, and as they were both beautiful women, and both looking well as they talked, everything seemed splendid. But Victoria was really paying just a wee bit of homage all the time, homage to the superior class.

As for the two men: Somers SEEMED a gentleman, and Jack didn’t want to be a gentleman. Somers SEEMED a real gentleman. And yet Jack recognized in him at once the intuitive response which only subsists, normally, between members of the same class: between the common people. Perhaps the best of the upper classes have the same intuitive understanding of their fellow–man: but there is always a certain reserve in the response, a preference for the non–intuitive forms of communication, for deliberate speech. What is not said is supposed not to exist: that is almost code of honour with the other classes. With the true common people, only that which is NOT said is of any vital significance.

Which brings us back to Jack and Somers. The one thing Somers had kept, and which he possessed in a very high degree, was the power of intuitive communication with others. Much as he wanted to be alone, to stand clear from the weary business of unanimity with everybody, he had never chosen really to suspend this power of intuitive response: not till he was personally offended, and then it switched off and became a blank wall. But the smallest act of real kindness would call it back to life again.

Jack had been generous, and Somers liked him. Therefore he could not withhold his soul from responding to him, in a measure. And Jack, what did he want? He saw this other little fellow, a gentleman, apparently, and yet different, not exactly a gentleman. And he wanted to know him, to talk to him. He wanted to get at the bottom of him. For there was something about Somers—he might be a German, he might be a bolshevist, he might be anything, and he MUST be something, because he was different, a gentleman and not a gentleman. He was different because, when he looked at you, he knew you more or less in your own terms, not as an outsider. He looked at you as if he were one of your own sort. He answered you intuitively as if he were one of your own sort. And yet he had the speech and the clear definiteness of a gentleman. Neither one thing nor the other. And he seemed to know a lot, Jack was sure that Somers knew a lot, and could tell him a lot, if he would but let it out.

If he had been just a gentleman, of course, Jack would never have thought of wanting him to open out. Because a gentleman has nothing to open towards a man of the people. He can only talk, and the working man can only listen across a distance. But seeing that this little fellow was born a gentleman and not a gentleman; seeing he was just like one of yourselves, and yet had all the other qualities of a gentleman: why, you might just as well get the secret out of him.

Somers knew the attitude, and was not going to be drawn. He talked freely and pleasantly enough—but never as Jack wanted. He knew well enough what Jack wanted: which was that they should talk together as man to man—as pals, you know, with a little difference. But Somers would never be pals with any man. It wasn’t in his nature. He talked pleasantly and familiarly—fascinating to Victoria, who sat with her brown eyes watching him, while she clung to Jack’s arm on the sofa. When Somers was talking and telling, it was fascinating, and his quick, mobile face changed and seemed full of magic. Perhaps it was difficult to locate any definite SOMERS, any one individual in all this ripple of animation and communication. The man himself seemed lost in the bright aura of his rapid consciousness. This fascinated Victoria: she of course imagined some sort of God in the fiery bush. But Jack was mistrustful. He mistrusted all this bright quickness. If there was an individual inside the brightly–burning bush of consciousness, let him come out, man to man. Even if it was a sort of God in the bush, let him come out, man to man. Otherwise let him be considered a sort of mountebank, a show–man, too clever by half.

Somers knew pretty well Jack’s estimation of him. Jack, sitting there smoking his little short pipe, with his lovely wife in her pink georgette frock hanging on to his side, and the watchful look on his face, was the manly man, the consciously manly man. And he had just a bit of contempt for the brilliant little fellow opposite, and he felt just a bit uneasy because the same little fellow laughed at his “manliness”, knowing it didn’t go right through. It takes more than “manliness” to make a man.

Somers’ very brilliance had an overtone of contempt in it, for the other man. The women, of course, not demanding any orthodox “manliness”, didn’t mind the knock at Jack’s particular sort. And to them Somers’ chief fascination lay in the fact that he was never “pals”. They were too deeply women to care for the sham of pals.

So Jack went home after a whisky and soda with his nose a little bit out of joint. The little man was never going to be pals, that was the first fact to be digested. And he couldn’t be despised as a softy, he was too keen; he just laughed at the other man’s attempt at despising him. Yet Jack did want to get at him, somehow or other.

CHAPTER 3. LARBOARD WATCH AHOY!

“What do you think of things in general?” Callcott asked of Somers one evening, a fortnight or so after their first encounter. They were getting used to one another: and they liked one another, in a separated sort of way. When neither of them was on the warpath, they were quite happy together. They played chess together now and then, a wild and haphazard game. Somers invented quite brilliant attacks, and rushed in recklessly, occasionally wiping Jack off the board in a quarter of an hour. But he was very careless of his defence. The other man played at this. To give Callcott justice, he was more accustomed to draughts than to chess, and Somers had never played draughts, not to remember. So Jack played a draughts game, aiming at seizing odd pieces. It wasn’t Somers’ idea of chess, so he wouldn’t take the trouble to defend himself. His men fell to this ambush, and he lost the game. Because at the end, when he had only one or two pieces to attack, Jack was very clever at cornering, having the draughts moves off by heart.

“But it isn’t chess,” protested Somers.

“You’ve lost, haven’t you?” said Jack.

“Yes. And I shall always lose that way. I can’t piggle with those draughtsmen dodges.”

“Ah well, if I can win that way, I have to do it. I don’t know the game as well as you do,” said Jack. And there was a quiet sense of victory, “done you down”, in his tones. Somers required all his dignity not to become angry. But he shrugged his shoulders.

Sometimes, too, if he suggested a game, Callcott would object that he had something he must do. Lovat took the slight rebuff without troubling. Then an hour or an hour and a half later, Callcott would come tapping at the door, and would enter saying:

“Well, if you are ready for a game.”

And Lovat would unsuspectingly acquiesce. But on these occasions Jack had been silently, secretly accumulating his forces; there was a silence, almost a stealth in his game. And at the same time his bearing was soft, as it were submissive, and Somers was put quite off his guard. He began to play with his usual freedom. And then Jack wiped the floor with his little neighbour: simply wiped the floor with him, and left him gasping. One, two, three games—it was the same every time.

“But I can’t see the board,” cried Somers, startled. “I can hardly distinguish black from white.”

He was really distressed. It was true what he said. He was as if stupefied, as if some drug had been injected straight into his brain. For his life he could not gather his consciousness together—not till he realised the state he was in. And then he refused to try. Jack gave a quiet little laugh. There was on his face a subtle little smile of satisfaction. He had done his high–flying opponent down. He was the better man.

After the first evening that this had taken place, Somers was much more wary of his neighbour, much less ready to open towards him than he had been. HE NEVER AGAIN INVITED JACK TO A GAME OF CHESS. And when Callcott suggested a game, Somers played, but coldly, without the recklessness and the laughter which were the chief charm of his game. And Jack was once more snubbed, put back into second place. Then once he was reduced, Somers began to relent, and the old guerilla warfare started again.

The moment Somers heard this question of Jack’s: “What do you think of things in general?”—he went on his guard.

“The man is trying to draw me, to fool me,” he said to himself. He knew by a certain quiet, almost sly intention in Jack’s voice, and a certain deference in his bearing. It was this false deference he was most wary of. This was the Judas approach.

“How in general?” he asked. “Do you mean the cosmos?”

“No,” said Jack, foiled in his first move. He had been through the Australian high–school course, and was accustomed to think for himself. Over a great field he was quite indifferent to thought, and hostile to consciousness. It seemed to him more manly to be unconscious, even blank, to most of the great questions. But on his own subjects, Australian politics, Japan, and machinery, he thought straight and manly enough. And when he met a man whose being puzzled him, he wanted to get at the bottom of that, too. He looked up at Somers with a searching, penetrating, inimical look, that he tried to cover with an appearance of false deference. For he was always aware of the big empty spaces of his own consciousness; like his country, a vast empty “desert” at the centre of him.

“No,” he repeated. “I mean the world—economics and politics. The welfare of the world.”

“It’s no good asking me,” said Somers. “Since the war burst my bubble of humanity I’m a pessimist, a black pessimist about the present human world.”

“You think it’s going to the bad?” said Jack, still drawing him with the same appearance of deference, of wanting to hear.

“Yes, I do. Faster or slower. Probably I shall never see any great change in my lifetime, but the tendency is all downhill, in my opinion. But then I’m a pessimist, so you needn’t bother about my opinion.”

Somers wanted to let it all go at that. But Callcott persisted.

“Do you think there’ll be more wars? Do you think Germany will be in a position to fight again very soon?”

“Bah, you bolster up an old bogey out here. Germany is the bogey of yesterday, not of to–morrow.”

“She frightened us out of our sleep before,” said Jack, resentful.

“And now, for the time being, she’s done. As a war–machine she’s done, and done for ever. So much scrap–iron, her iron fist.”

“You think so?” said Jack, with all the animosity of a returned hero who wants to think his old enemy the one and only bugbear, and who feels quite injured if you tell him there’s no more point in his old hate.

“That’s my opinion. Of course I may be wrong.”

“Yes, you may,” said Jack.

“Sure,” said Somers. And there was silence. This time Somers smiled a little to himself.

“And what do you consider, then, is the bogey of to–morrow?” asked Jack at length, in a rather small, unwilling voice.

“I don’t really know. What should you say?”

“Me? I wanted to hear what you have to say.”

“And I’d rather hear what you have to say,” laughed Somers.

There was a pause. Jack seemed to be pondering. At last he came out with his bluff, manly Australian self.

“If you ask me,” he said, “I should say that Labour is the bogey you speak of.”

Again Somers knew that this was a draw. “He wants to find out if I’m socialist or anti,” he thought to himself.

“You think Labour is a menace to society?” he returned.

“Well,” Jack hedged. “I won’t say that Labour is the menace, exactly. Perhaps the state of affairs forces Labour to be the menace.”

“Oh, quite. But what’s the state of affairs?”

“That’s what nobody seems to know.”

“So it’s quite safe to lay the blame on,” laughed Somers. He looked with real dislike at the other man, who sat silent and piqued and rather diminished: “Coming here just to draw me and get to know what’s inside me!” he said to himself angrily. And he would carry the conversation no further. He would not even offer Jack a whisky and soda. “No,” he thought to himself. “If he trespasses on my hospitality, coming creeping in here, into my house, just to draw me and get the better of me, underhandedly, then I’ll pour no drink for him. He can go back to where he came from.” But Somers was mistaken. He only didn’t understand Jack’s way of leaving seven–tenths of himself out of any intercourse. Richard wanted the whole man there, openly. And Jack wanted his own way, of seven–tenths left out.

So that after a while Jack rose slowly, saying:

“Well, I’ll be turning in. It’s work to–morrow for some of us.”

“If we’re lucky enough to have jobs,” laughed Somers.

“Or luckier still, to have the money so that we don’t need a job,” returned Jack.

“Think how bored most folks would be on a little money and no settled occupation,” said Somers.

“Yes, I might be myself,” said Jack, honestly admitting it, and at the same time slightly despising the man who had no job, and therefore no significance in life.

“Why, of course.”

When Callcott came over to Torestin, either Victoria came with him, or she invited Harriet across to Wyewurk. Wyewurk was the name of Jack’s bungalow. It had been built by a man who had inherited from an aunt a modest income, and who had written thus permanently his retort against society on his door.

“Wyewurk?” said Jack. “Because you’ve jolly well got to.”

The neighbours nearly always spoke of their respective homes by their elegant names. “Won’t Mrs. Somers go across to Wyewurk, Vicky said. She’s making a blouse or something, sewing some old bits of rag together—or new bits—and I expect she’ll need a pageful of advice about it.” This was what Jack had said. Harriet had gone with apparent alacrity, but with real resentment. She had never in all her life had “neighbours”, and she didn’t know what neighbouring really meant. She didn’t care for it, on trial. Not after she and Victoria had said and heard most of the things they wanted to say and hear. But they liked each other also. And though Victoria could be a terribly venomous little cat, once she unsheathed her claws and became rather “common”, still, so long as her claws were sheathed her paws were quite velvety and pretty, she was winsome and charming to Harriet, a bit deferential before her, which flattered the other woman. And then, lastly, Victoria had quite a decent piano, and played nicely, whereas Harriet had a good voice, and played badly. So that often, as the two men played chess or had one of their famous encounters, they would hear Harriet’s strong, clear voice singing Schubert or Schumann or French or English folk songs, whilst Victoria played. And both women were happy, because though Victoria was fond of music and had an instinct for it, her knowledge of songs was slight, and to be learning these old English and old French melodies, as well as the German and the Italian songs, was a real adventure and a pleasure to her.

They were still singing when Jack returned.

“Still at it!” he said manfully, from the background chewing his little pipe.

Harriet looked round. She was just finishing the joyous moan of Plaisir d’amour, a song she loved because it tickled her so. “Dure toute la vie—i—i—ie—i—e,” she sang the concluding words at him, laughing in his face.

“You’re back early,” she said.

“Felt a mental twilight coming on,” he said, “so thought we’d better close down for the night.”

Harriet divined that, to use her expression, Somers had been “disagreeable to him”.

“Don’t you sing?” she cried.

“Me! Have you ever heard a cow at a gate when she wants to come in and be milked?”

“Oh, he does!” cried Victoria. “He sang a duet at the Harbour Lights Concert.”

“There!” cried Harriet. “How exciting! What duet did he sing?”

“Larboard Watch ahoy!”

“Oh! Oh! I know that,” cried Harriet remembering a farmer friend of Somers’, who had initiated her into the thrilling harmony, down in Cornwall.

“There wasn’t a soul left in the hall, when we’d finished, except Victoria and the other chap’s wife,” said Jack.

“Oh, what a fib. They applauded like anything, and made you give an encore.”

“Ay, and we didn’t know another bally duet between us, so we had to sing Larboard Watch over again. It was Larboard Alarum Clock by the time we got to the end of it, it went off with such a rattle.”

“Oh, do let us sing it,” said Harriet. “You must help me when I go wrong, because I don’t know it well.”

“What part do you want to sing?” said Jack.

“Oh, I sing the first part.”

“Nay,” said Jack. “I sing that part myself. I’m a high tenor, I am, once I get the wind up.”

“I couldn’t possibly sing the alto,” said Harriet.

“Oh, Jack, do sing the alto,” said Victoria. “Go on, do! I’ll help you.”

“Oh well, if you’ll go bail for me, I don’t care what I do,” said Jack.

And very shortly Somers heard a gorgeous uproar in Wyewurk. Harriet breaking down occasionally and being picked up. She insisted on keeping on till she had it perfect, and the other two banged and warbled away with no signs of fatigue. So that they were still hailing the Larboard Watch Ahoy when the clock struck eleven.

Then when silence did ensue for a moment, Mrs. Callcott came flying over to Torestin.

“Oh, Mr. Somers, won’t you come and have a drink with Jack? Mrs. Somers is having a glass of hop bitters.”

When Somers entered the living room of Wyewurk, Jack looked up at him with a smile and a glow in his dark eyes, almost like love.

“Beer?” he said.

“What’s the alternative?”

“Nothing but gas–water.”

“Then beer.”

Harriet and Victoria were still at the piano, excitedly talking songs. Harriet was teaching Victoria to pronounce the words of a Schubert song: for there was still one person in the world unacquainted with: “Du bist wie eine Blume.” And Victoria was singing it in a wavering, shy little voice.

“Let’s drink our beer by the kitchen fire,” said Jack. “Then we shall be able to hear ourselves speak, which is more than we can do in this aviary.”

Somers solemnly followed into the tiny kitchen, and they sat in front of the still hot stove.

“The women will keep up the throat–stretching for quite a time yet,” said Jack.

“If we let them. It’s getting late.”

“Oh, I’ve just started my second awakening—feel as sharp as a new tin–tack.”

“Talking about pessimism,” he resumed after a pause. “There’s some of us here that feels things are pretty shaky, you know.” He spoke in a subdued, important sort of voice.

“What is shaky—Australian finance?”

“Ay, Australian everything.”

“Well, it’s pretty much the same in every country. Where there’s such a lot of black smoke there’s not a very big fire. The world’s been going to the dogs ever since it started to toddle, apparently.”

“Ay, I suppose it has. But it’ll get there one day. At least Australia will.”

“What kind of dogs?”

“Maybe financial smash, and then hell to pay all round. Maybe, you know. We’ve got to think about it.”

Somers watched him for some moments with serious eyes. Jack seemed as if he were a little bit drunk. Yet he had only drunk a glass of lager beer. He wasn’t drunk. But his face had changed, it had a kind of eagerness, and his eyes glowed big. Strange, he seemed, as if in a slight ecstasy.

“It may be,” said Somers slowly. “I am neither a financier nor a politician. It seems as if the next thing to come a cropper were capital: now there are no more kings to speak of. It may be the middle classes are coming smash—which is the same thing as finance—as capital. But also it may not be. I’ve given up trying to know.”

“What will be will be, eh,” said Jack with a smile.

“I suppose so, in this matter.”

“Ay, but, look here, I believe it’s right what you say. The middle classes ARE coming down. What do they sit on?—they sit on money, on capital. And this country is as good as bankrupt, so then what have they left to stand on?”

“They say most countries are really bankrupt. But if they agree among themselves to carry on, the word doesn’t amount to much.”

“Oh, but it does. It amounts to a hell of a lot, here in this country. If it ever came to the push, and the state was bankrupt, there’d be no holding New South Wales in.”

“The state never will be bankrupt.”

“Won’t it? Won’t there be a financial smash, a proper cave–in, before we’re much older? Won’t there? We’ll see. But look here, do you care if there is?”

“I don’t know what it means, so I can’t say. Theoretically I don’t mind a bit if international finance goes bust: if it can go bust.”

“Never mind about theoretically. You’d like to see the power of money, the power of capital, BROKE. Would you or wouldn’t you?”

Somers watched the excited, handsome face opposite him, and answered slowly:

“Theoretically, yes. Actually, I really don’t know.”

“Oh to hell with your theoretically. Drown it. Speak like a man with some feeling in your guts. You either would or wouldn’t. Don’t leave your shirt–tail hanging out, with a theoretically. Would you or wouldn’t you?”

Somers laughed.

“Why, yes, I would,” he said, “and be damned to everything.”

“Shake,” cried Jack, stretching over. And he took Somers’ small hand between both his own. “I knew,” he said in a broken voice, “that we was mates.”

Somers was rather bewildered.

“But you know,” he said, “I never take any part in politics at all. They aren’t my affair.”

“They’re not! They’re not! You’re quite right. You’re quite right, you are. You’re a damned sight too good to be mixing up in any dirty politics. But all I want is that your feelings should be the same as mine, and they are, thank my stars, they are.”

By this time Somers was almost scared.

“But why should you care?” he said, with some reserve. The other however did not heed him.

“You’re not with the middle classes, as you call them, the money–men, as I call them, and I know you’re not. And if you’re not with them you’re against them.”

“My father was a working–man. I come from the working people. My sympathy is with them, when it’s with anybody, I assure you.”

Jack stared at Somers wide–eyed, a smile gathering round his mouth.

“Your father was a working–man, was he? Is that really so? Well, that IS a surprise! And yet,” he changed his tone, “no, it isn’t. I might have known. Of course I might. How should I have felt for you as I did, the very first minute I saw you, if it hadn’t been so. Of course you’re one of us: same flesh and blood, same clay. Only you’ve had the advantages of a money–man. But you’ve stuck true to your flesh and blood, which is what most of them don’t do. They turn into so much dirt, like the washings in the pan, a lot of dirt to a very little gold. Well, well, and your father was a working man! And you now being as you are! Wonderful what we may be, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed,” said Somers, who was infinitely more amazed at the present Jack, than ever Jack could be at him.

“Well, well, that brings us a great deal nearer than ever, that does,” said Callcott, looking at Somers with glowing, smiling eyes which the other man could not quite understand, eyes with something desirous, and something perhaps fanatical in them. Somers could not understand. As for the being brought nearer to Callcott, that was apparently entirely a matter of Jack’s own feeling. Somers himself had never felt more alone and far off. Yet he trembled at the other man’s strange fervour. He vibrated helplessly in some sort of troubled response.

The vibration from the two men had by this time quite penetrated into the other room and into the consciousness of the two women. Harriet came in all wondering and full of alert curiosity. She looked from one to the other, saw the eyes of both men shining, saw the puzzled, slightly scared look on her husband’s face, and the glowing handsomeness on Jack’s, and she wondered more than ever.

“What are you two men talking about?” she asked pointedly. “You look very much moved about something.”

“Moved!” laughed Jack, “We’re doing fifty miles an hour, and not turning a hair.”

“I’m glad I’m not going with you then,” said Harriet. “It’s much too late at night for me for that sort of thing.”

Victoria went over to her husband and stood close at his side, ruffling up his brown, short, crisp, bright hair.

“Doesn’t he talk nonsense, Mrs. Somers, doesn’t he talk nonsense,” the young wife crooned, in her singing, contralto voice, as she looked down at him.

Harriet started at the sudden revelation of palpitating intimacy. She wanted to go away, quick. So did Somers. But neither Jack nor Victoria wanted them to go.

Jack was looking up at Victoria with a curious smile, touched with a leer. It gave his face, his rather long, clean–shaven face with the thick eyebrows, most extraordinarily the look of an old mask. One of those old Greek masks that give a fixed mockery to every feeling. Leering up at his young wife with the hearty leer of a player masked as a faun that is at home, on its own ground. Both Harriet and Somers felt amazed, as if they had strayed into the wrong wood.

“You talk all the sense, don’t you, kiddie?” he said, with a strong Australian accent again. And as he spoke with his face upturned to her, his Adam’s apple moved in his strong white throat as if it chuckled.

“Of course I do,” she crooned in her mocking, crooning contralto. “Of course I do.”

He put his arm round her hips. They continued to look into each other’s faces.

“It’s awfully late. We shall have simply to fly to bed. I’m so sleepy now. Good–night. Thank you so much for the singing. I enjoyed it awfully. Good–night!”

Victoria looked up with a brightly–flushed face, entirely unashamed, her eyes glowing like an animal’s. Jack relaxed his grip of her, but did not rise. He looked at the Somers pair with eyes gone dusky, as if unseeing, and the mask–like smile lingering on his face like the reflection from some fire, curiously natural, not even grotesque.

“Find your way across all right?” he said. “Good–night! Good–night!” But he was as unaware of them, actually, as if they did not exist within his ken.

“Well,” said Harriet, as they closed the door of Torestin. “I think they might have waited just TWO minutes before they started their love making. After all, one doesn’t want to be implicated, does one?”

“One emphatically doesn’t,” said Somers.

“Really, it was as if he’d got his arm round all the four of us! Horrid!” said Harriet resentfully.

“He felt he had, I’m sure,” said Somers.

It was a period when Sydney was again suffering from a bubonic plague scare: a very mild scare, some fifteen cases to a million people, according to the newspapers. But the town was placarded with notices “Keep your town clean,” and there was a stall in Martin Place where you could write your name down and become a member of a cleanliness league, or something to that effect.

The battle was against rats, fleas, and dirt. The plague affects rats first, said the notices, then fleas, and then man. All citizens were called upon to wage war with the vermin mentioned. Alas, there was no need to call on Somers to wage the war. The first morning they had awakened in Torestin, it was to a slight uneasy feeling of uncleanliness. Harriet, who hated the thought of contamination, found the apples gnawed, when she went to take one to eat before breakfast. And rat dirts, she said, everywhere.

Then had started such a cleaning, such a scouring, such a stopping of holes, as Torestin had never known. Somers sourly re–christened the house Toscrubin. And after that, every night he had the joyful business of setting two rat–traps, those traps with the powerful fly–back springs. Which springs were a holy terror to him, for he knew his fingers would break like pipe–stems if the spring flew back on them. And almost every morning he had the nauseous satisfaction of finding a rat pinned by its nose in the trap, its eyes bulging out, a blot of deep red blood just near. Sometimes two rats. They were not really ugly, save for their tails. Smallish rats, perhaps only half grown, and with black, silky fur. Not like the brown rats he had known in the English country.

But big or little, ugly or not ugly, they were very objectionable to him, and he hated to have to start the day by casting one or more corpses gingerly, by the tip of the tail, into the garbage tin. He railed against the practice of throwing cans and everything promiscuously on to any bit of waste ground. It seemed to his embittered fancy that Sydney harbour, and all the coast of New South Wales, was moving with this pest. It reminded him of the land of Egypt, under the hand of the Lord: plagues of mice and rats and rabbits and snails and all manner of crawling things. And then he would say: “Perhaps it must be so in a new country.” For all that, the words “new country” had become like acid between his teeth. He was always recalling what Flinders Petrie says somewhere: “A colony is no younger than the parent country.” Perhaps it is even older, one step further gone.

This evening—or rather midnight—he went to the back kitchen to put every scrap of any sort of food beyond rat–reach, and to bait the two traps with bits of cheese–rind. Then he bent back the two murderous springs, and the traps were ready. He washed his hands hard from the contamination of them. Then he went into the garden, even climbed the tub–like summer house, to have a last look at the world. There was a big slip of very bright moon risen, and the harbour was faintly distinct.

Now that night had fallen, the wind was from the land, and cold. He turned to go indoors. And as he did so he heard a motor–car run quickly along the road, and saw the bright lights come to a stop at the gate of Wyewurk. Wyewurk was in darkness already. But a man left the car and came along the path to the house, giving a peculiar whistle as he did so. He went round to the back door and knocked sharply, once, twice, in a peculiar way. Then he whistled and knocked again. After which he must have heard an answer, for he waited quietly.

In a few minutes more the lights switched on and the door opened; Jack was there in his pyjamas.

“That you, Jaz boy?” he said in a quiet tone. “Why the blazes didn’t you come half an hour sooner, or half a minute later? You got me just as I’d taken the jump, and I fell all over the bloomin’ hedge. Come in. You’ll make a nervous wreck of me between you.”

The figure entered. It was William James, the brother–in–law. Somers heard him go again in about ten minutes. But Harriet did not notice.

CHAPTER 4. JACK AND JAZ.

The following evening Somers could feel waves of friendliness coming across the hedge, from Victoria. And she kept going out to the gate to look for Jack, who was late returning home. And as she went, she always looked long towards the verandah of Torestin, to catch sight of the Somers.

Somers felt the yearning and amicable advance in the atmosphere. For some time he disregarded it. Then at last he went out to look at the nightfall. It was early June. The sun had set beyond the land, casting a premature shadow of night. But the eastern sky was very beautiful, full of pure, pure light, the light of the southern seas, next the Antarctic. There was a great massive cloud settling low, and it was all gleaming, a golden, physical glow. Then across the upper sky trailed a thin line of little dark clouds, like a line of porpoises swimming in the extremely beautiful clarity.

“Isn’t it a lovely evening again?” Victoria called to him as he stood on the summer–house top.

“Very lovely. Australia never ceases to be a wonderland for me, at nightfall,” he answered.

“Aha!” she said. “You are fond of the evening?”

He had come down from his point of vantage, and they stood near together by the fence.

“In Europe I always like morning best—much best. I can’t say what it is I find so magical in the evening here.”

“No!” she replied, looking upwards round the sky. “It’s going to rain.”

“What makes you think so?” he asked.

“It looks like it—and it feels like it. I expect Jack will be here before it comes on.”

“He’s late to–night, is he?”

“Yes. He said he might be. Is it six o’clock?”

“No, it’s only a little after five.”

“Is it? I needn’t be expecting him yet, then. He won’t be home till quarter past six.” She was silent for a while. “We shall soon have the shortest day,” she said. “I am glad when it has gone. I always miss Jack so much when the evening comes, and he isn’t home. You see I was used to a big family, and it seems a bit lonely to me yet, all alone in the cottage. That’s why we’re so glad to have you and Mrs. Somers next door. We get on so well, don’t we? Yes, it’s surprising. I always felt nervous of English people before. But I love Mrs. Somers. I think she’s lovely.”

“You haven’t been married long?” asked Somers.

“Not quite a year. It seems a long time in some ways. I wouldn’t be without Jack, not for anything. But I do miss my family. We were six of us all at home together, and it makes such a difference, being all alone.”

“Was your home in Sydney?”

“No, on the South Coast—dairy–farming. No, my father was a surveyor, so was his father before him. Both in New South Wales. Then he gave it up and started this farm down south. Oh yes, I liked it—I love home. I love going down home. I’ve got a cottage down there that father gave me when I got married. You must come down with us some time when the people that are in it go. It’s right on the sea. Do you think you and Mrs. Somers would like it?”

“I’m sure we should.”

“And will you come with us for a week–end? The people in it are leaving next week. We let it furnished.”

“We should like to very much indeed,” said Somers, being polite over it because he felt a little unsure still, whether he wanted to be so intimate. But Victoria seemed so wistful.

“We feel so ourselves with you and Mrs. Somers,” said Victoria. “And yet you’re so different from us, and yet we feel so much ourselves with you.”

“But we’re not different,” he protested.

“Yes, you are—coming from home. It’s mother who always called England home. She was English. She always spoke so prettily. She came from Somerset. Yes, she died about five years ago. Then I was mother of the family. Yes, I am the eldest, except Alfred. Yes, they’re all at home. Alfred is a mining engineer—there are coal mines down the South Coast. He was with Jack in the war, on the same job. Jack was a Captain and Alfred was a Lieutenant. But they drop all the army names now. That’s how I came to know Jack: through Alfred. Jack always calls him Fred.”

“You didn’t know him before the war?”

“No, not till he came home. Alfred used to talk about him in his letters, but I never thought then I should marry him. They are great friends yet, the two of them.”

The rain that she had prophesied now began to fall—big straight drops, that resounded on the tin roofs of the houses.

“Won’t you come in and sit with us till Jack comes?” asked Somers. “You’ll feel dreary, I know.”

“Oh, don’t think I said it for that,” said Victoria.

“Come round, though,” said Somers. And they both ran indoors out of the rain. Lightning had started to stab in the south–western sky, and clouds were shoving slowly up.

Victoria came round and sat talking, telling of her home on the south coast. It was only about fifty miles from Sydney, but it seemed another world to her. She was so quiet and simple, now, that both the Somers felt drawn to her, and glad that she was sitting with them.

They were talking still of Europe. Italy, Switzerland, England, Paris—the wonderworld to Victoria, who had never been out of New South Wales in her life, in spite of her name—which name her father had given her to annoy all his neighbours, because he said the State of Victoria was run like a paradise compared to New South Wales—although he too never went a yard out of his home state, if he could help it; they were talking still of Europe when they heard Jack’s voice calling from the opposite yard.

“Hello,” cried Victoria, running out. “Are you there, Jack? I was listening for the motor–bike. I remember now, you went by tram.”

Sometimes she seemed a little afraid of him—physically afraid—though he was always perfectly good–humoured with her. And this evening she sounded like that—as if she feared his coming home, and wanted the Somers to shelter her.

“You’ve found a second home over there, apparently,” said Jack, advancing towards the fence. “Well, how’s things?”

It was dark, so they could not see his face. But he sounded different. There was something queer, unknown about him.

“I’ll come over for a game of chess to–night, old man, if you’ll say the word,” he said to Somers. “And the ladies can punish the piano again meanwhile, if they feel like it. I bought something to sweeten the melodies with, and give us a sort of breathing–space now and then: sort of little ear–rest, you know.”

“That means a pound of chocolates,” said Victoria, like a greedy child. “And Mrs. Somers will come and help me to eat them. Good!” And she ran in home. Somers thought of a picture advertisement in the Bulletin.

“Madge: I can’t think what you see in Jack. He is so unintellectual.”

“Gladys: Oh, but he always brings a pound of Billyer’s chocolates.”

Or else: “Sweets to the Sweet. Give her Billyer’s chocolates”; or else: “Billyer’s chocolates sweeten the home.”

The game of chess was a very quiet one. Jack was pale and subdued, silent, tired, thought Somers, after his long day and short night. Somers too played without any zest. And yet they were satisfied, just sitting there together, a curious peaceful ease in being together. Somers wondered at it, the rich, full peace that there seemed to be between him and the other man. It was something he was not used to. As if one blood ran warm and rich between them. “Then shall thy peace be as a river.”

“There was nothing wrong at the Trewhellas’, was there, that made William James come so late?” asked Somers.

Jack looked up with a tinge of inquiry in his dark eyes at this question: as if he suspected something behind it. Somers flushed slightly.

“No, nothing wrong,” said Jack.

“I beg your pardon for asking,” said Somers hastily. “I heard a whistle when I’d just done setting the rat–traps, and I looked out, and heard you speak to him. That’s how I knew who it was. I only wondered if anything was wrong.”

“No, nothing wrong,” repeated Jack laconically.

“That’s all right,” said Somers. “It’s your move. Mind your queen.”

“Mind my queen, eh? She takes some minding, that lady does. I feel I need a special eye at the end of my nose, to keep track of her. Come out of it, old lady. I’m not very bright at handling royalty, that’s a fact.”

Somers was now silent. He felt he had made a faux pas, and was rebuffed. They played for some time, Jack talking to himself mostly in that facetious strain which one just had to get used to in him, though Somers occasionally found it tiring.

Then after a time Jack put his hands into his lap, and looked up at Somers.

“You mustn’t think I get the wind up, you know,” he said, “if you ask me a question. You can ask me what you like, you know. And when I can tell you, I’ll tell you. I know you’d never come shoving your nose in like a rat from under the skirting board when nobody’s looking.”

“Even if I SEEM to,” said Somers, ironically.

“No, no, you don’t seem to. And when I CAN tell you, I’ll do so. I know I can trust you.”

Somers looked up wondering, and met the meditative dark eyes of the other man resting on his face.

“There’s some of us chaps,” said Jack, “who’ve been through the war and had a lick at Paris and London, you know, who can tell a man by the smell of him, so to speak. If we can’t see the COLOUR of his aura, we can jolly well size up the QUALITY of it. And that’s what we go by. Call it instinct or what you like. If I like a man, slap out, at the first sight, I’d trust him into hell, I would.”

“Fortunately you haven’t anything VERY risky to trust him with,” laughed Somers.

“I don’t know so much about that,” said Jack. “When a man feels he likes a chap, and trusts him, he’s risking all he need, even by so doing. Because none of us likes to be taken in, and to have our feelings thrown back in our faces, as you may say, do we?”

“We don’t,” said Somers grimly.

“No, we don’t. And you know what it means to HAVE them thrown back in your face. And so do I. There’s a lot of the people here that I wouldn’t trust with a thank–you, I wouldn’t. But then there’s some that I would. And mind you, taking all for all, I’d rather trust an Aussie, I’d rather trust an Australian than an Englishman, I would, and a lot rather. Yet there’s some of the rottenest people in Sydney that you’d find even if you sifted hell over. Rotten—absolute yellow rotten. And many of them in public positions, too. Simply white–anting society, that’s what they’re doing. Talk about public affairs in Sydney, talk about undercurrents of business in Sydney: the wickedest crew on God’s earth, bar none. All the underhanded tricks of a Chink, a blooming yellow Chinaman, and all the barefaced fair talk of an Englishman. There you are. And yet, I’m telling you, I’d rather trust even a Sydney man, and he’s a special sort of wombat, than an Englishman.”

“So you’ve told me before: for my good, I suppose,” laughed Somers, not without irony.

“No, now don’t you go running away with any wrong ideas,” said Jack, suddenly reaching out his hand and laying it on Somers’ arm. “I’m not hinting at anything. If I was I’d ask you to kick me out of your house. I should deserve it. No, you’re an Englishman. You’re a European, perhaps I ought to say, for you’ve lived about all over that old continent, and you’ve studied it, and you’ve got tired of it. And you’ve come to Australia. Your instinct brought you here, however much you may rebel against rats and tin cans and a few other things like that. Your instinct brought you here—and brought you straight up against me. Now that I call fate.”

He looked at Somers with dark, burning, questioning eyes.

“I suppose following one’s deepest instinct IS one’s fate,” said Somers, rather flatly.

“There—you know what I mean, you see. Well then, instinct brings us together. I knew it the minute I set eyes on you when I saw you coming across from the Botanical Gardens, and you wanted a taxi. And then when I heard the address, 51 Murdoch Street, I said to myself, ‘That chap is coming into my life.’ And it is so. I’m a believer in fate, absolute.”

“Yes,” said Somers, non–committal.

“It’s fate that you left Europe and came to Australia, bit by bit, and unwilling to come, as you say yourself. It’s fate that brings you to Sydney, and makes me see you that dinner–hour coming from the Botanical Gardens. It’s fate that brings you to this house. And it’s fate that sets you and me here at this minute playing chess.”

“If you call it playing chess,” laughed Somers.

Jack looked down at the board.

“I’m blest if I know whose move it is,” he said. “But never mind. I say that fate meant you and Mrs. Somers to come here: her as much as you. I say fate meant me and you and Victoria and her to mean a lot to one another. And when I feel my fate, I absolutely give myself up to it. That’s what I say. Do you think I’m right?”

His hand, which held Somers’ arm lightly, now gripped the biceps of that arm hard, while he looked into the other man’s face.

“I should say so,” said Somers, rather uncomfortably.

Jack hardly heeded the words. He was watching the face.

“You’re a stranger here. You’re from the old country. You’re different from us. But you’re a man we want, and you’re a man we’ve got to keep. I know it. What? What do you say? I can trust you, can’t I?”

“What with?” asked Somers.

“What with?” Jack hesitated. “Why everything!” he blurted. “Everything! Body and soul and money and every blessed thing. I can trust you with EVERYTHING! Isn’t that right?”

Somers looked with troubled eyes into the dark, dilated glowing eyes of the other man.

“But I don’t know what it means,” he stammered. “EVERYTHING! It means so much, that it means nothing.”

Jack nodded his head slowly.

“Oh yes it does,” he reiterated. “Oh yes it does.”

“Besides,” said Somers, “why should you trust me with ANYTHING, let alone everything. You’ve no occasion to trust me at all—except—as one neighbour trusts another, in common honour.”

“Common honour!” Jack just caught up the words, not heeding the sense. “It’s more than common honour. It’s most uncommon honour. But look here,” he seemed to rouse himself. “Supposing I came to you, to ask you things, and tell you things, you’d answer me man to man, wouldn’t you?—with common honour? You’d treat everything I say with common honour, as between man and man?”

“Why, yes, I hope so.”

“I know you would. But for the sake of saying it, say it. I can trust you, can’t I? Tell me now, can I trust you?”

Somers watched him. Was it any good making reservations and qualifications? The man was in earnest. And according to standards of commonplace honour, the so–called honour of man to man, Somers felt that he would trust Callcott, and that Callcott might trust him. So he said simply:

“Yes.”

A light leaped into Jack’s eyes.

“That means you trust me, of course?” he said.

“Yes,” replied Somers.

“Done!” said Jack, rising to his feet and upsetting the chessmen. Somers also pushed his chair, and rose to his feet, thinking they were going across to the next house. But Jack came to him and flung an arm round his shoulders and pressed him close, trembling slightly, and saying nothing. Then he let go, and caught Somers by the hand.

“This is fate,” he said, “and we’ll follow it up.” He seemed to cling to the other man’s hand. And on his face was a strange light of purpose and of passion, a look at once exalted and dangerous.

“I’ll soon bring the others to see it,” he said.

“But you know I don’t understand,” said Somers, withdrawing his hand and taking off his spectacles.

“I know,” said Jack. “But I’ll let you know everything in a day or two. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if William James—if Jaz came here one evening—or you wouldn’t mind having a talk with him over in my shack.”

“I don’t mind talking to anybody,” said the bewildered Somers.

“Right you are.”

They still sat for some time by the fire, silent; Jack was pondering. Then he looked up at Somers.

“You and me,” he said in a quiet voice, “in a way we’re mates and in a way we’re not. In a way—it’s different.”

With which cryptic remark he left it. And in a few minutes the women came running in with the sweets, to see if the men didn’t want a macaroon.

On Sunday morning Jack asked Somers to walk with him across to the Trewhellas. That is, they walked to one of the ferry stations, and took the ferry steamer to Mosman’s Bay. Jack was a late riser on Sunday morning. The Somers, who were ordinary half–past seven people, rarely saw any signs of life in Wyewurk before half–past ten on the Sabbath—then it was Jack in trousers and shirt, with his shirt–sleeves rolled up, having a look at his dahlias while Vicky prepared breakfast.

So the two men did not get a start till eleven o’clock. Jack rolled along easily beside the smaller, quieter Somers. They were an odd couple, ill–assorted. In a colonial way, Jack was handsome, well–built, with strong, heavy limbs. He filled out his expensively tailored suit and looked a man who might be worth anything from five hundred to five thousand a year. The only lean, delicate part about him was his face. See him from behind, his broad shoulders and loose erect carriage and brown nape of the neck, and you expected a good square face to match. He turned, and his long lean rather pallid face really didn’t seem to belong to his strongly animal body. For the face wasn’t animal at all, except perhaps in a certain slow, dark, lingering look of the eyes, which reminded one of some animal or other, some patient, enduring animal with an indomitable but naturally passive courage.

Somers, in a light suit of thin cloth, made by an Italian tailor, and an Italian hat, just looked a foreign sort of little bloke—but a gentleman. The chief difference was that he looked sensitive all over, his body, even its clothing, and his feet, even his brown shoes, all equally sensitive with his face. Whereas Jack seemed strong and insensitive in the body, only his face vulnerable. His feet might have been made of leather all the way through, tramping with an insentient tread. Whereas Somers put down his feet delicately, as if they had a life of their own, mindful of each step of contact with the earth. Jack strode along: Somers seemed to hover along. There was decision in both of them, but oh, of such different quality. And each had a certain admiration of the other, and a very definite tolerance. Jack just barely tolerated the quiet finesse of Somers, and Somers tolerated with difficulty Jack’s facetious familiarity and heartiness.

Callcott met quite a number of people he knew, and greeted them all heartily. “Hello Bill, old man, how’s things?” “New boots pinchin’ yet, Ant’ny? Hoppy sort of look about you this morning. Right ’o! So long, Ant’ny!” “Different girl again, boy! go on, Sydney’s full of yer sisters. All right, goodbye, old chap.” The same breezy intimacy with all of them, and the moment they had passed by, they didn’t exist for him any more than the gull that had curved across in the air. They seemed to appear like phantoms, and disappear in the same instant, like phantoms. Like so many Flying Dutchmen the Australian’s acquaintances seemed to steer slap through his consciousness, and were gone on the wind. What was the consecutive thread in the man’s feelings? Not his feeling for any particular human beings, that was evident. His friends, even his loves, were just a series of disconnected, isolated moments in his life. Somers always came again upon this gap in the other man’s continuity. He felt that if he knew Jack for twenty years, and then went away, Jack would say: “Friend o’ mine, Englishman, rum sort of bloke, but not a bad sort. Dunno where he’s hanging out just now. Somewhere on the surface of the old humming–top, I suppose.”

The only consecutive thing was that facetious attitude, which was the attitude of taking things as they come, perfected. A sort of ironical stoicism. Yet the man had a sort of passion, and a passionate identity. But not what Somers called human. And threaded on this ironical stoicism.

They found Trewhella dressed and expecting them. Trewhella was a coal and wood merchant, on the north side. He lived quite near the wharf, had his sheds at the side of the house, and in the front a bit of garden running down to the practically tideless bay of the harbour. Across the bit of blue water were many red houses, and new, wide streets of single cottages, seaside–like, disappearing rather forlorn over the brow of the low hill.

William James, or Jas, Jaz, as Jack called him, was as quiet as ever. The three men sat on a bench just above the brown rocks of the water’s edge, in the lovely sunshine, and watched the big ferry steamer slip in and discharge its stream of summer–dressed passengers, and embark another stream: watched the shipping of the middle harbour away to the right, and the boats loitering on the little bay in front. A motor–boat was sweeping at a terrific speed, like some broom sweeping the water, past the little round fort away in the open harbour, and two tall white sailing boats, all wing and no body, were tacking across the pale blue mouth of the bay. The inland sea of the harbour was all bustling with Sunday morning animation: and yet there seemed space, and loneliness. The low, coffee–brown cliffs opposite, too low for cliffs, looked as silent and as aboriginal as if white men had never come.

The little girl Gladys came out shyly. Somers now noticed that she wore spectacles.

“Hello kiddie!” said Jack, “Come here and make a footstool of your uncle, and see what your Aunt Vicky’s been thinking of. Come on then, amble up this road.”

He took her on his knee, and fished out of his pocket a fine sort of hat–band that Victoria had contrived with ribbon and artificial flowers and wooden beads. Gladys sat for a moment shyly on her uncle’s knee, and he held her there as if she were a big pillow he was scarcely conscious of holding. Her stepfather sat exactly as if the child did not exist, or were not present. It was neutrality brought to a remarkable pitch. Only Somers seemed actually aware that the child was a little human being—and to him she seemed so absent that he didn’t know what to make of her.

Rose came out bringing beer and sausage rolls, and the girl vanished away again, seemed to evaporate. Somers felt uncomfortable, and wondered what he had been brought for.

“You know Cornwall, do you?” said William James, the Cornish singsong still evident in his Australian speech. He looked with his light–grey, inscrutable eyes at Somers.

“I lived for a time near Padstow,” said Somers.

“Padstow! Ay, I’ve been to Padstow,” said William James. And they talked for a while of the bleak, lonely northern coast of Cornwall, the black huge cliffs, with the gulls flying away below, and the sea boiling, and the wind blowing in huge volleys: and the black Cornish nights, with nothing but the violent weather outside.

“Oh, I remember it, I remember it,” said William James. “Though I was a half–starved youngster on a bit of a farm out there, you know, for everlasting chasing half a dozen heifers from the cliffs, where the beggars wanted to fall over and kill themselves, and hunting for a dozen sheep among the gorsebushes, and wading up to my knees in mud most part of the year, and then in summer, in the dry times, having to haul water for a mile over the rocks in a wagon, because the well had run dry. And at the end of it my father gave me one new suit in two years, and sixpence a week. Ay, that was a life for you. I suppose if I was there still he’d be giving me my keep and five shillin’ a week—if he could open his heart as wide as two half–crowns, which I’m doubting very much.”

“You have money out here, at least,” said Somers. “But there was a great fascination for me, in Cornwall.”

“Fascination! And where do you find the fascination? In a little Wesleyan chapel of a Sunday night, and a girl with her father waiting for her with a strap if she’s not in by nine o’clock? Fascination, did you say?”

“It had a great fascination for me—a magic—a magic in the atmosphere.”

“All the fairy tales they’ll tell you,” said William James, looking at the other man with a smile of slow ridicule. “Why ye didn’t go and believe them, did ye?”

“More or less. I could more easily have believed them there than anywhere else I’ve been.”

“Ay, no doubt. And that shows what sort of a place it be. Lot of damn silly nonsense.” He stirred on his seat impatiently.

“At any rate, you’re well out of it. You’re set up all right here,” said Somers, who was secretly amused. The other man did not answer for some time.

“Maybe I am,” he said at last, “I’m not pining to go back and work for my father, I tell you, on a couple of pasties and a lot of abuse. No, after that, I’d like you to tell me what’s wrong with Australia.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Somers, “Probably nothing at all.”

Again William James was silent. He was a short, thick man, with a little felt hat that sat over his brow with a half humorous flap. He had his knees wide apart, and his hands clasped between them. And he looked for the most part down at the ground. When he did cock his eye at Somers, it was with a look of suspicion marked with humour and troubled with a certain desire. The man was restless, desirous, craving something—heaven knows what.

“You thinking of settling out here then, are you?” he asked.

“No,” said Somers. “But I don’t say I won’t. It depends.”

William James fidgeted, tapping his feet rapidly on the ground, though his body was silent. He was not like Jack. He too, was sensitive all over, though his body looked so thick it was silently alive, and his feet were still uneasy. He was young too, with a youth that troubled him. And his nature was secretive, maybe treacherous. It was evident Jack only half liked him.

“You’ve got the money, you can live where you like and go where you like,” said William James, looking up at Somers. “Well, I might do the same. If I cared to do it, I could live quietly on what I’ve got, whether here or in England.” Somers recognized the Cornishman in this.

“You could very easily have as much as I’ve got,” he said laughing.

“The thing is, what’s the good of a life of idleness?” said William James.

“What’s the good of a life of work?” laughed Somers.

Shrewdly, with quick grey eye, Trewhella looked at the other man to see if he were laughing at him.

“Yet I expect you’ve got some purpose in coming to Australia,” said William James, a trifle challenging.

“Maybe I had—or have—maybe it was just whim.”

Again the other man looked shrewdly, to see if it were the truth.

“You aren’t investing money out here, are you?”

“No, I’ve none to invest.”

“Because if you was, I’d advise you not to.” And he spat into the distance, and kept his hands clasped tight.

All this time Jack sat silent and as if unconcerned, but listening attentively.

“Australians have always been croakers,” he said now.

“What do you think of this Irish business?” asked William James.

“I? I really don’t think much at all. I don’t feel Ireland is my job, personally. If I had to say, offhand, what I’d do myself, why, if I could I’d just leave the Irish to themselves, as they want, and let them wipe each other out or kiss and make friends as they please. They bore me rather.”

“And what about the Empire?”

“That again isn’t my job. I’m only one man, and I know it. But personally, I’d say to India and Australia and all of them the same—if you want to stay in the Empire, stay; if you want to go out, go.”

“And suppose they went out?”

“That’s their affair.”

“Supposing Australia said she was coming out of the Empire and governing herself, and only keeping a sort of entente with Britain. What do you think she’d make of it?”

“By the looks of things, I think she’d make a howling mess of it. Yet it might do her good if she were thrown entirely on her own resources. You’ve got to have something to keep you steady. England has really kept the world steady so far—as steady as it’s been. That’s my opinion. Now she’s not keeping it very steady, and the world’s sick of being bossed, anyhow. Seems to me you may as well sink or swim on your own resources.”

“Perhaps we’re too likely to find ourselves sinking.”

“Then you’ll come to your senses, after you’ve sunk for the third time.”

“What, about England? Cling to England again, you mean?”

“No, I don’t. I mean you can’t put the brotherhood of man on a wage basis.”

“That’s what a good many people say here,” put in Jack.

“You don’t trust socialism then?” said Jaz, in a quiet voice.

“What sort of socialism? Trades unionism? Soviet?”

“Yes, any.”

“I really don’t care about politics. Politics is no more than your country’s housekeeping. If I had to swallow my whole life up in housekeeping, I wouldn’t keep house at all; I’d sleep under a hedge. Same with a country and politics. I’d rather have no country than be gulfed in politics and social stuff. I’d rather have the moon for a motherland.”

Jaz was silent for a time, contemplating his knuckles.

“And that,” he said, “is how the big majority of Australians feel, and that’s why they care nothing about Australia. It’s cruel to the country.”

“Anyhow, no sort of POLITICS will help the country,” said Somers.

“If it won’t, then nothing will,” retorted Jaz.

“So you’d advise us all to be like seven–tenths of us here, not care a blooming hang about anything except your dinner and which horse gets in?” asked Jack, not without sarcasm.

Now Richard was silent, driven into a corner.

“Why,” he said, “there’s just this difference. The bulk of Australians don’t care about Australia—that is, you say they don’t. And why don’t they? Because they care about nothing at all, neither in earth below or heaven above. They just blankly don’t care about anything, and they live in defiance, a sort of slovenly defiance of care of any sort, human or inhuman, good or bad. If they’ve got one belief left, now the war’s safely over, it’s a dull, rock–bottom belief in obstinately not caring, not caring about anything. It seems to me they think it manly, the only manliness, not to care, not to think, not to attend to life at all, but just to tramp blankly on from moment to moment, and over the edge of death without caring a straw. The final manliness.”

The other two men listened in silence, the distant colonial silence that hears the voice of the old country passionately speaking against them.

“But if they’re not to care about politics, what are they to care about?” asked Jaz, in his small, insinuating voice.

There was a moment’s pause. Then Jack added his question:

“Do you yourself really care about anything, Mr. Somers?”

Richard turned and looked him for a moment in the eyes. And then, knowing the two men were trying to corner him, he said coolly:

“Why, yes. I care supremely.”

“About what?” Jack’s question was soft as a drop of water falling into water, and Richard sat struggling with himself.

“That,” he answered, “you either know or don’t know. And if you don’t know, it would only be words my trying to tell.”

There was a silence of check–mate.

“I’m afraid, for myself, I don’t know,” said Jack.

But Somers did not answer, and the talk, rather lamely, was turned off to other things.

The two men went back to Murdoch Street rather silent, thinking their own thoughts. Jack only blurted once:

“What do you make of Jaz, then?”

“I like him. He lives by himself and keeps himself pretty dark—which is his nature.”

“He’s a cleverer man than you’d take him for—figures things out in a way that surprises me. And he’s better than a detective for getting to know things. He’s got one or two Cornish pals down town, you see—and they tip one another the wink. They’re like the Irish in many ways. And they’re not uncommonly unlike a Chink. I always feel as if Jaz had got a bit of Chinese blood in him. That’s what makes the women like him, I suppose.”

“But do the women like him?”

“Rose does. I believe he’d make any woman like him, if he laid himself out to do it. Got that quiet way with him, you know, and a sly sort of touch–the–harp–gently, that’s what they like on the quiet. But he’s the sort of chap I don’t exactly fancy mixing my broth with, and drinking out of the same can with.”

Somers laughed at the avowal of antipathy between the two men.

They were not home till two o’clock. Somers found Harriet looking rather plaintive.

“You’ve been a long time,” she said. “What did you do?”

“Just talked.”

“What about?”

“Politics.”

“And did you like them?”

“Yes, quite well.”

“And have you promised to see them again to–day?”

“Who?”

“Why, any of them—the Callcotts.”

“No.”

“Oh. They’re becoming rather an institution.”

“You like them too?”

“Yes, they’re all right. But I don’t want to spend my life with them. After all, that sort of people isn’t exactly my sort—and I thought you used to pretend it wasn’t yours.”

“It isn’t. But then no sort of people is my sort.”

“Yes, it is. Any sort of people, so long as they make a fuss of you.”

“Surely they make an even greater fuss of you.”

“Do they! It’s you they want, not me. And you go as usual, like a lamb to the slaughter.”

“Baa!” he said.

“Yes, baa! You should hear yourself bleat.”

“I’ll listen,” he said.

But Harriet was becoming discontented. They had been in their house only six weeks: and she had had enough of it. Yet it was paid for for three months: at four guineas a week. And they were pretty short of money, and would be for the rest of the year. He had already overdrawn.

Yet she began to suggest going away: away from Sydney. She felt humiliated in that beastly little Murdoch Street.

“What did I tell you?” he retorted. “The very look of it humiliated me. Yet you wanted it, and you said you liked it.”

“I did like it—for the fun of it. But now there’s all this intimacy and neighbouring. I just can’t stand it. I just can’t.”

“But you began it.”

“No, I didn’t; you began it. And your beastly sweetness and gentleness with such people. I wish you kept a bit of it for me.”

He went away in silence, knowing the uselessness of argument. And to tell the truth he was feeling also a revulsion from all this neighbouring, as Harriet called it, and all this talk. It was usually the same. He started by holding himself aloof then gradually he let himself get mixed in, and then he had revulsions. And to–day was one of his revulsions. Coming home from Mosman’s Bay, he had felt himself dwindle to a cipher in Jack’s consciousness. Then, last evening, there had been all this fervour and protestation. And this morning all the cross–examination by Trewhella. And he, Somers, had plainly said all he thought. And now, as he walked home with Jack, Jack had no more use for him than for the stump of cigar which he chewed between his lips merely because he forgot to spit it away. Which state of affairs did not go at all well with OUR friend’s sense of self–importance.

Therefore, when he got home, his eyes opened once more to the delicacy of Harriet’s real beauty, which he knew as none else knew it, after twelve years of marriage. And once more he realized her gay, undying courage, her wonderful fresh zest in front of life. And all these other little people seemed so common in comparison, so common. He stood still with astonishment, wondering how he could have come to betray the essential reality of his life and Harriet’s to the common use of these other people with their watchful, vulgar wills. That scene of last evening: what right had a fellow like Callcott to be saying these things to him? What right had he to put his arm round his, Richard’s shoulder, and give him a tight hug? Somers winced to think of it. And now Callcott had gone off with his Victoria in Sunday clothes to some other outing. Anything was as good as anything else: why not!

A gulf there was between them, really, between the Somers and the Callcotts. And yet the easy way Callcott flung a flimsy rope of intimacy across the gulf, and was embracing the pair of his neighbours in mid–air, as it were, without a grain of common foothold. And Somers let himself be embraced. So he sat pale and silent and mortified in the kitchen that evening thinking of it all, and wishing himself far away, in Europe.

“Oh, how I detest this treacly democratic Australia,” he said. “It swamps one with a sort of common emotion like treacle, and before one knows where one is, one is caught like a fly on a flypaper, in one mess with all the other buzzers. How I hate it! I want to go away.”

“It isn’t Australia,” said Harriet. “Australia’s lonely. It’s just the people. And it isn’t even the people—if you would only keep your proper distance, and not make yourself cheap to them and get into messes.”

“No, it’s the country. It’s in the air. I want to leave it.”

But he was not very emphatic. Harriet wanted to go down to the South Coast, of which she had heard from Victoria.

“Think,” she said, “it must be lovely there—with the mountain behind, and steep hills, and blackberries, and lovely little bays of sand.”

“There’ll be no blackberries. It’s end of June—which is their mid–winter.”

“But there’ll be the other things. Let’s do that, and never mind the beastly money for this pokey Torestin.”

“They’ve asked us to go with them to Mullumbimby in a fortnight. Shall we wait till then and look?”

Harriet sat in silence for some moments.

“We might,” she said reluctantly. She didn’t want to wait. But what Victoria had told her of Mullumbimby, the township on the South Coast, so appealed to her that she decided to abide by her opportunity.

And then curiously enough, for the next week the neighbours hardly saw one another. It was as if the same wave of revulsion had passed over both sides of the fence. They had fleeting glimpses of Victoria as she went about the house. And when he could, Jack put in an hour at his garden in the evening, tidying it up finally for the winter. But the weather was bad, it rained a good deal; there were fogs in the morning, and foghorns on the harbour; and the Somers kept their doors continually blank and shut.

Somers went round to the shipping agents and found out about boats to San Francisco, and talked of sailing in July, and of stopping at Tahiti or at Fiji on the way, and of cabling for money for the fares. He figured it all out. And Harriet mildly agreed. Her revulsion from Australia had passed quicker than his, now that she saw herself escaping from town and from neighbours to the quiet of a house by the sea, alone with him. Still she let him talk. Verbal agreement and silent opposition is perhaps the best weapon on such occasions.

Harriet would look at him sometimes wistfully, as he sat with his brow clouded. She had a real instinctive mistrust of other people—all other people. In her heart of hearts she said she wanted to live alone with Somers, and know nobody, all the rest of her life. In Australia, where one can be lonely, and where the land almost calls to one to be lonely—and then drives one back again on one’s fellow–men in a kind of frenzy. Harriet would be quite happy, by the sea, with a house and a little garden and as much space to herself as possible, knowing nobody, but having Lovat always there. And he could write, and it would be perfect.

But he wouldn’t be happy—and he said so—and she knew it. She saw it like a doom on his brow.

“And why couldn’t we be happy in this wonderful new country, living to ourselves. We could have a cow, and chickens—and then the Pacific, and this marvellous new country. Surely that is enough for any man. Why must you have more?”

“Because I feel I MUST fight out something with mankind yet. I haven’t finished with my fellow–men. I’ve got a struggle with them yet.”

“But what struggle? What’s the good? What’s the point of your struggle? And what’s your struggle for?”

“I don’t know. But it’s inside me, and I haven’t finished yet. To make some kind of an opening—some kind of a way for the afterwards.”

“Ha, the afterwards will make its own way, it won’t wait for you. It’s a kind of nervous obstinacy and self–importance in you. You DON’T like people. You always turn away from them and hate them. Yet like a dog to his vomit you always turn back. And it will be the same old game here again as everywhere else. What are these people after all? Quite nice, but just common and—and not in your line at all. But there you are. You stick your head into a bush like an ostrich, and think you’re doing wonders.”

“I intend to move with men and get men to move with me before I die,” he said. Then he added hastily: “Or at any rate I’ll try a bit longer yet. When I make up my mind that it’s really no good, I’ll go with you and we’ll live alone somewhere together, and forget the world. And in Australia too. Just like a business man retiring. I’ll retire away from the world, and forget it. But not yet. Not till I feel I’ve finished. I’ve got to struggle with men and the world of men for a time yet. When it’s over I’ll do as you say.”

“Ah, you and your men, men! What do these Callcotts and these little Trewhella people mean to you after all? Are they men? They are only something you delude yourself about. And then you’ll come a cropper, and fall back on me. Just as it always is. You fall back on me, and I’m expected to like it. I’m good enough to fall back on, when you’ve made a fool of yourself with a lot of tuppenny little people, imagining you’re doing something in the world of MEN. Much men there is about it. Common little street–people, that’s all.”

He was silent. He heard all she had to say: and he knew that as far as the past went, it was all quite true. He had started off on his fiery courses: always, as she said, to fall back rather the worse for the attempt on her. She had no use at all for fiery courses and efforts with the world of men. Let all that rubbish go.

“Well,” he said. “It’s my need to make these tries, yet. Wait till I’ve exhausted the need, and we’ll have a little place of our own and forget the world, really. I know I can do it. I could almost do it now: and here in Australia. The country appeals to me that way: to lose oneself and have done with this side of life. But wait a bit longer.”

“Ah, I suppose I shall have to,” she said recklessly. “You’ll have to go on making a fool of yourself till you’re tired. Wives are SUPPOSED to have to take their husbands back a little damaged and repentant from their LOVE AFFAIRS with other women. And I’m hanged if it wouldn’t be more fun than this business of seeing you come back once more fooled from your attempts with MEN—the world of men, as you call it. If they WERE real men I wouldn’t mind. But look at your Jack Callcott. Really, and you’re supposed to have had some experience of life. ‘Clip in, old man!’” She imitated Jack’s voice and manner. “And you stand it all and think it’s wonderful! Nay, men are too foolish for me to understand them; I give them up.”

He laughed, realizing that most of what she said was true.

“You see,” he said, “I have the roots of my life with you. But I want if possible to send out a new shoot in the life of mankind—the effort man makes forever, to grow into new forms.”

She looked at him. And somehow she wanted to cry, because he was so silly in refusing to be finally disappointed in his efforts with mankind, and yet his silliness was pathetic, in a way beautiful. But then it WAS so silly—she wanted to shake him.

“Send out a new shoot then. Send it out. You do it in your writing already!” she cried. “But getting yourself mixed up with these impudent people won’t send any shoots, don’t you think it. They’ll nip you in the bud again, as they always do.”

He pondered this also, stubbornly, and knew it was true. But he had set his will on something, and wasn’t going to give way.

“I want to do something with living people, somewhere, somehow, while I live on the earth. I write, but I write alone. And I live alone. Without any connection whatever with the rest of men.”

“Don’t swank, you don’t live alone. You’ve got ME there safe enough, to support you. Don’t swank to me about being alone, because it insults me, you see. I know how much alone you are, with me always there keeping you together.”

And again he sulked and swallowed it, and obstinately held out.

“None the less,” he retorted, “I do want to do something along with men. I AM alone and cut off. As a man among men, I just have no place. I have my life with you, I know: et praeterea nihil.”

“Et praeterea nihil! And what more do you want? Besides, you liar, haven’t you your writing? Isn’t that all you want, isn’t that DOING all there is to be done? Men! Much MEN there is about them! Bah, when it comes to that, I have to be even the only man as well as the only woman.”

“That’s the whole trouble,” said he bitingly.

“Bah, you creature, you ought to be grateful,” cried Harriet.

William James arrived one morning when the Callcotts were both out, and brought a little basket of persimmons and passion fruits for Harriet. As it happened, Somers also was out.

“I remember you said you like these date–plums, Mrs. Somers. Over at our place we don’t care for them, so if you like to have them you’re welcome. And these are about the last of the passion fruit, seemingly.”

The persimmons were good big ones, of that lovely suave orange–red colour which is perhaps their chief attraction, and they were just beginning to go soft. Harriet of course was enchanted. William James came in and sat down for a few minutes, wondering what had become of Victoria. He looked round the room curiously. Harriet had, of course, arranged it to her own liking, taken away all the pictures and ornaments, hung a Tunis curtain behind the couch, stood two tall red lacquer candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and altogether given the room that air of pleasant distinction which a woman who knows how to do it finds so easy, especially if she has a few shawls and cushion–covers and bits of interesting brass or china. Harriet insisted on travelling with a few such things. She was prepared to camp in a furnished bungalow or cottage on any continent, but a few of her own things she must have about her. Also she wore a dress of Bavarian peasant stuff, very thin black woollen material, sprinkled all over with tiny pink roses with green leaves. And on her feet she had heelless sandals of plaited strips of leather, from Colombo. William James noticed every one of these things. They had a glamour like magic for him.

“This is quite a pleasant room you have here,” he said in his Cornish voice, with the alert, subtle, faintly smiling look of wonder on his face.

“It isn’t bad,” said Harriet. “But a bit poky.”

“Poky you call it? Do you remember the little stone holes they have for rooms in those old stone Cornish cottages?”

“Yes—but we had a lovely one. And the great thick granite walls and the low ceilings.”

“Walls always letting the damp in, can’t keep it out, because all the chinks and spaces are just stuffed with plain earth, and a bit of mortar smeared over the outside like butter scraped on bread. Don’t I remember it! I should think I do.”

“Cornwall had a great charm for me.”

“Well, I don’t know where you found it, I’m sure. But I suppose you’ve got a way of your own with a place, let it be Cornwall or where it may, to make it look well. It all depends where you’re born and where you come from.”

“Perhaps,” said Harriet.

“I’ve never seen an Australian cottage looking like this, now. And yet it isn’t the number of things you’ve put into it.”

“The number I’ve taken out,” laughed Harriet.

William James sat there with his quiet slumberous–seeming body, watching her: watching the quick radiance of her fair face, and the charm of her bearing. There was something quick and sure and, as it were, beyond the ordinary clay, about her, that exercised a spell over him. She was his real Cornish idea of a lady: simple, living among people as if one of themselves, and yet not one of themselves: a sort of magic about her. He could almost see a glow in the air around her. And he could see that for her he was just a nice fellow who lived in another world and on another plane than herself, and that he could never come up or she come down. She was the queen that slumbers somewhere in every Cornish imagination, the queen ungrudged. And perhaps, in the true Celtic imagination slumbers the glamorous king as well. The Celt needs the mystic glow of real kingliness. Hence his loneliness in the democratic world of industry, and his social perversity.

“I don’t suppose Rose could ever learn to do this with a room, could she now?” he asked, making a slight gesture with his hand. He sat with his clear, queer, light grey eyes fixed on Harriet’s face.

“I think so,” cried Harriet; then she met the watchful eyes. “In her own way she could. Every woman has her own way, you know.”

“Yes, I do know,” he answered.

“And you see,” said Harriet, “we’re more or less lazy people who have no regular work in the world. If we had, perhaps we should live in a different way.”

William James shook his head.

“It’s what’s bred into you,” he said, “that comes out. Now if I was a really rich man, I think I could learn to carry it off with the best of them, out here. But when it comes to being the real thing, why, I know it would be beyond me, so there you are.”

“But can one be sure?” she cried.

“I think I can. I can see the difference between common and uncommon. I can do more than that. I can see the difference between gentlemen who haven’t got the gift, and those that have. Take Lord Washburn, for example. He’s a gentleman all right—he comes of an old family, they tell me. But I doubt very much if he’s any better than I am.”

“Why should he be?” cried Harriet.

“What I mean is,” said William James, “he hasn’t got the gift, you know.”

“The gift of what?” said Harriet, puzzled.

“How shall I put it? The gift that you’ve got, now: and that Mr. Somers has as well: and that people out here don’t have.”

“But that may only be manner,” said Harriet.

“No, it’s more than manner. It’s the gift of being superior, there now: better than most folks. You understand me, I don’t mean swank and money. That’ll never give it you. Neither is it THINKING yourself superior. The people that are superior don’t think it, and don’t even seem to feel it, in a way. And yet in a way they know it. But there aren’t many of them out here. And what there are go away. This place is meant for all one dead level sort of people.”

He spoke with curious sarcasm.

“But,” said Harriet, “you are Australian yourself now, aren’t you? Or don’t you feel it?”

“Oh yes, I suppose I feel it,” he said shifting uneasily on his seat. “I AM Australian. And I’m Australian partly because I know that in Australia there WON’T be anybody any better than me. There now.”

“But,” laughed Harriet, “aren’t you glad then?”

“Glad?” he said. “It’s not a matter for gladness. It’s a fact. But I’m not one of the fools who think there’s nobody any better than me in the world. I know there are.”

“How queer to hear you say so!”

“But this isn’t the place for them. Here in Australia we don’t want them. We want the new–fashioned sort of people who are all dead–level as good as one another. You’re going to Mullumbimby this week–end with Jack and Victoria, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And I thought if we liked it we might stay down there for a while—by the sea—away from the town.”

“You please yourselves, of course. Perhaps better there than here. But—it’s no business of mine, you know that”—he shrugged his shoulders. “But there’s something comes over me when I see Mr. Somers thinking he can live out here, and work with the Australians. I think he’s wrong—I really do. They’ll drag him down to their level, and make what use they can of him—and—well, in my opinion you’d both be sorry for it.”

“How strange that you should say so, you who are one of them.”

“I am one of them, and I’m not. I’m not one of anybody. But I haven’t got only just the two eyes in my head that can tell the kettle from the teapot. I’ve got another set of eyes inside me somewhere that can tell real differences, when there are any. And that’s what these people don’t seem to have at all. They’ve only got the outside eyes.”

Harriet looked at him in wonder. And he looked at her—at her queer, rather large, but thin–skinned, soft hands.

“You need a thick skin to live out here,” he said.

But still she sat with her hands folded, lost in meditation.

“But Lovat wants so much to do something in the world, with other men,” she said at last. “It’s not MY urging, I assure you.”

“He’s making a mistake. He’s making a mistake to come out here, tell him from me. They’ll take him at their own level, not at his.”

“But perhaps he wants to be taken at their level,” said Harriet, rather bitterly, almost loving the short, thick man opposite for his quiet, Cornish voice and his uncanny grey eyes, and his warning.

“If he does he makes the mistake of his life, tell him from me.” And William James rose to his feet. “You’ll excuse me for stopping talking like this, over things that’s no business of mine,” he added.

“It’s awfully good of you,” said Harriet.

“Well, it’s not often I interfere with people’s doings. But there was just something about you and Mr. Somers—.”

“Awfully good of you.”

He had taken his little black felt hat. He had an almost Italian or Spanish look about him—from one of the big towns, Barcelona or even Palermo.

“I suppose I’ll have to be getting along,” he said.

She held out her hand to him to bid him good–bye. But he shook hands in a loose, slack way, and was gone, leaving Harriet uneasy as if she had received warning of a hidden danger.

She hastened to show Somers the persimmons when he came home, and to tell of her visitor.

“And he’s queer, Lovat, he’s awfully queer—nice too. He told me we were superior people, and that we made a mistake coming here, because they’d bring us down to their level.”

“Not if we don’t let them.”

“He says we can’t help it.”

“Why did he come to tell you that, I wonder.”

They were going down to Mullumbimby in two days’ time—and they had hardly seen anything of Jack and Victoria since the Sunday at Mosman’s Bay. But Victoria called across the fence, rather hesitatingly:

“You’re going with us on Saturday, aren’t you, Mrs. Somers?”

“Oh yes, we’re looking forward to it immensely—if it really suits you.”

“I’m so glad. I thought perhaps you didn’t want to go.”

That same evening Jack and Victoria came across for a few minutes.

“Look at the lovely cacchi,” said Harriet, giving the persimmons their Italian name. “William James brought them me this morning.”

“William James brought them!” cried Victoria and Jack in a breath. “Why, whatever have you done to him?”

“Nothing,” laughed Harriet. “I hope not, I’m sure.”

“You must have given him a glad eye,” said Jack. “Did he come in?”

“Yes, he came in and talked to me quite a long time. He said he would see you to–morrow in town.”

“Wonders never cease! I tell you, you’ve done it on him. What did he talk to you about, then?”

“Oh. Australia. He said he didn’t think we should really like it.”

“He did, did he? Wanted to warn you off, so to speak.”

“Perhaps,” laughed Harriet.

“The little mingo. He’s as deep as a five hundred feet boring, and I’ve never got down to sweet water in him yet.”

“Don’t you trust him?” said Harriet.

“Trust him? Oh yes, he’d never pick my pocket.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“That’s the only way I have of trusting folks,” said Jack.

“Then you don’t trust them far,” mocked Harriet.

“Perhaps I don’t. And perhaps I’m wise of it.”

CHAPTER 5. COO–EE.

They went to Mullumbimby by the two o’clock train from Sydney on the Friday afternoon, Jack having managed to get a day off for the occasion. He was a sort of partner in the motor–works place where he was employed, so it was not so difficult. And work was slack.

Harriet and Victoria were both quite excited. The Somers had insisted on packing one basket of food for the house, and Victoria had brought some dainties as well. There were few people in the train, so they settled themselves right at the front, in one of those long open second–class coaches with many cane seats and a passage down the middle.

“This is really for the coal miners,” said Victoria. “You’ll see they’ll get in when we get further down.”

She was rather wistful, after the vague coolness that had subsisted between the two households. She was so happy that Somers and Harriet were coming with her and Jack. They made her feel—she could hardly describe it—but so safe, so happy and safe. Whereas often enough, in spite of the stalwart Jack, she felt like some piece of fluff blown about on the air, now that she was taken from her own home. With Somers and Harriet she felt like a child that is with its parents, so lovely and secure, without any need ever to look round. Jack was a man, and everything a man should be, in her eyes. But he was also like a piece of driftwood drifting on the strange unknown currents in an unexplored nowhere, without any place to arrive at. Whereas to Victoria, Harriet seemed to be rooted right in the centre of everything, at last she could come to perfect rest in her, like a bird in a tree that remains still firm when the floods are washing everything else about.

If only Somers would let her rest in Harriet and him. But he seemed to have a strange vindictiveness somewhere in his nature, that turned round on her and terrified her worse than before. If he would only be fond of her, that was what she wanted. If he would only be fond of her, and not ever really leave her. Not love. When she thought of lovers she thought of something quite different. Something rather vulgar, rather common, more or less naughty. Ah no, he wasn’t like that. And yet—since all men are potential lovers to every woman—wouldn’t it be terrible if he asked for love. Terrible—but wonderful. Not a bit like Jack—not a bit. Would Harriet mind? Victoria looked at Harriet with her quick, bright, shy brown eyes. Harriet looked so handsome and distant: she was a little afraid of her. Not as she was afraid of Somers. Afraid as one woman is of another fierce woman. Harriet was fierce, Victoria decided. Somers was demonish, but could be gentle and kind.

It came on to rain, streaming down the carriage windows. Jack lit a cigarette, and offered one to Harriet. She, though she knew Somers disliked it intensely when she smoked, particularly in a public place like this long, open railway carriage, accepted, and sat by the closed window smoking.

The train ran for a long time through Sydney, or the endless outsides of Sydney. The town took almost as much leaving as London does. But it was different. Instead of solid rows of houses, solid streets like London, it was mostly innumerable detached bungalows and cottages, spreading for great distances, scattering over hills, low hills and shallow inclines. And then waste marshy places, and old iron, and abortive corrugated iron “works”—all like the Last Day of creation, instead of a new country. Away to the left they saw the shallow waters of the big opening where Botany Bay is: the sandy shores, the factory chimneys, the lonely places where it is still Bush. And the weary half established straggling of more suburb.

“Como”, said the station sign. And they ran on bridges over two arms of water from the sea, and they saw what looked like a long lake with wooded shores and bungalows: a bit like Lake Como, but oh, so unlike. That curious sombreness of Australia, the sense of oldness, with the forms all worn down low and blunt, squat. The squat–seeming earth. And then they ran at last into real country, rather rocky, dark old rocks, and sombre bush with its different pale–stemmed dull–leaved gumtrees standing graceful, and various healthy–looking undergrowth, and great spiky things like zuccas. As they turned south they saw tree–ferns standing on one knobbly leg among the gums, and among the rocks ordinary ferns and small bushes spreading in glades and up sharp hill–slopes. It was virgin bush, and as if unvisited, lost, sombre, with plenty of space, yet spreading grey for miles and miles, in a hollow towards the west. Far in the west, the sky having suddenly cleared, they saw the magical range of the Blue Mountains. And all this hoary space of bush between. The strange, as it were, INVISIBLE beauty of Australia, which is undeniably there, but which seems to lurk just beyond the range of our white vision. You feel you can’t SEE—as if your eyes hadn’t the vision in them to correspond with the outside landscape. For the landscape is so unimpressive, like a face with little or no features, a dark face. It is so aboriginal, out of our ken, and it hangs back so aloof. Somers always felt he looked at it through a cleft in the atmosphere; as one looks at one of the ugly–faced, distorted aborigines with his wonderful dark eyes that have such an incomprehensible ancient shine in them, across gulfs of unbridged centuries. And yet, when you don’t have the feeling of ugliness or monotony, in landscape or in nigger, you get a sense of subtle, remote, FORMLESS beauty more poignant than anything ever experienced before.

“Your wonderful Australia!” said Harriet to Jack. “I can’t tell you how it moves me. It feels as if no one had ever loved it. Do you know what I mean? England and Germany and Italy and Egypt and India—they’ve all been loved so passionately. But Australia feels as if it had never been loved, and never come out into the open. As if man had never loved it, and made it a happy country, a bride country—or a mother country.”

“I don’t suppose they ever have,” said Jack.

“But they will?” asked Harriet. “Surely they will. I feel that if I were Australian, I should love the very earth of it—the very sand and dryness of it—more than anything.”

“Where should we poor Australian wives be?” put in Victoria, leaning forward her delicate, frail face—that reminded one of a flickering butterfly in its wavering.

“Yes,” said Harriet meditatively, as if they had to be considered, but were not as important as the other question.

“I’m afraid most Australians come to hate the Australian earth a good bit before they’re done with it,” said Jack. “If you call the land a bride, she’s the sort of bride not many of us are willing to tackle. She drinks your sweat and your blood, and then as often as not lets you down, does you in.”

“Of course,” said Harriet, “it will take time. And of course a LOT of love. A lot of fierce love, too.”

“Let’s hope she gets it,” said Jack. “They treat the country more like a woman they pick up on the streets than a bride, to my thinking.”

“I feel I could LOVE Australia,” declared Harriet.

“Do you feel you could love an Australian?” asked Jack, very much to the point.

“Well,” said Harriet, arching her eyes at him, “that’s another matter. From what I see of them I rather doubt it,” she laughed, teasing him.

“I should say you would. But it’s no good loving Australia if you can’t love the Australian.”

“Yes, it is. If as you say Australia is like the poor prostitute, and the Australian just bullies her to get what he can out of her and then treats her like dirt.”

“It’s a good deal like that,” said Jack.

“And then you expect me to approve of you.”

“Oh, we’re not all alike, you know.”

“It always seems to me,” said Somers, “that somebody will have to water Australia with their blood before it’s a real man’s country. The soil, the very plants seem to be waiting for it.”

“You’ve got a lurid imagination, my dear man,” said Jack.

“Yes, he has,” said Harriet. “He’s always so extreme.”

The train jogged on, stopping at every little station. They were near the coast, but for a long time the sea was not in sight. The land grew steeper—dark, straight hills like cliffs, masked in sombre trees. And then the first plume of colliery smoke among the trees on the hill–face. But they were little collieries, for the most part, where the men just walked into the face of the hill down a tunnel, and they hardly disfigured the land at all. Then the train came out on the sea—lovely bays with sand and grass and trees, sloping up towards the sudden hills that were like a wall. There were bungalows dotted in most of the bays. Then suddenly more collieries, and quite a large settlement of bungalows. From the train they looked down on many many pale–grey zinc roofs, sprinkled about like a great camp, close together, yet none touching, and getting thinner towards the sea. The chimneys were faintly smoking, there was a haze of smoke and a sense of home, home in the wilds. A little way off, among the trees, plumes of white steam betrayed more collieries.

A bunch of schoolboys clambered into the train with their satchels, at home as schoolboys are. And several black colliers, with tin luncheon boxes. Then the train ran for a mile and a half, to stop at another little settlement. Sometimes they stopped at beautiful bays in a hollow between hills, and no collieries, only a few bungalows. Harriet hoped Mullumbimby was like that. She rather dreaded the settlements with the many many iron roofs, and the wide, unmade roads of sandy earth running between, down to the sea, or skirting swamp–like little creeks.

The train jogged on again—they were there. The place was half and half. There were many tin roofs—but not SO many. There were the wide, unmade roads running so straight as it were to nowhere, with little bungalow homes half–lost at the side. But they were pleasant little bungalow homes. Then quite near, inland, rose a great black wall of mountain, or cliff, or tor, a vast dark tree–covered tor that reminded Harriet of Matlock, only much bigger. The town trailed down from the foot of this mountain towards the railway, a huddle of grey and red–painted iron roofs. Then over the railway, towards the sea, it began again in a scattered, spasmodic fashion, rather forlorn bungalows and new “stores” and fields with rail fences, and more bungalows above the fields, and more still running down the creek shallows towards the hollow sea, which lay beyond like a grey mound, the strangest sight Harriet had ever seen.

Next to the railway was a field, with men and youths playing football for their lives. Across the road from the football field was a barber’s shop, where a man on horseback was leaning chattering to the barber, a young intelligent gentleman in eye–glasses. And on the broad grass of the roadside grew the trees with the bright scarlet flowers perching among the grey twigs.

Going towards the sea they were going away from the town that slid down at the bush–covered foot of the dark tor. The sun was just sinking to this great hill face, amid a curdle of grey–white clouds. The faintest gold reflected in the more open eastern sky, in front. Strange and forlorn, the wide sandy–rutted road with the broad grass margin and just one or two bungalows. “Verdun” was the first, a wooden house painted dark red. But some had quite wide grass round them, inside their fences, like real lawns.

Victoria had to dart to the house–agent for the key. The other three turned to the left, up another wide road cut in the almost nothingness, past two straying bungalows perched on brick supports—then across a piece of grass–land as yet unoccupied, where small boys were kicking a football—then round the corner of another new road, where water lay in a great puddle so that they had to climb on to the grass beside the fence of a big red–painted bungalow. Across the road was a big bungalow built with imitation timbered walls and a red corrugated roof and red huge water–tanks. The sea roared loudly, but was not in sight. Next along the forlorn little road nestled a real bright red–tiled roof among a high bushy hedge, and with a white gate.

“I do hope it’s that,” said Harriet to herself. She was so yearning to find another home.

Jack stood waiting at the corner on the tall bit of grassy land above the muddy, cut–out road. There came Victoria running in her eager way across the open space up the slight incline. Evening was beginning to fall.

“Got ’em?” called Jack.

“Yes. Mrs. Wynne was just washing herself, so I had to wait a minute.” Victoria came panting up.

“Is that it?” said Harriet timidly at last, pointing to the bright red roof.

“Yes, that’s it,” said Victoria, pleased and proprietary. A boy from the big red bungalow called to ask if he should bring milk across. The big red bungalow was a dairy. But Harriet followed eagerly on Jack’s footsteps across the road. She peeped over the white gate as he unfastened it. A real lovely brick house, with a roof of bright red tiles coming down very low over dark wooden verandahs, and huge round rain–tanks, and a bit of grass and a big shed with double doors. Joy! The gate was open, and she rushed in, under the tall, over–leaning hedge that separated them from the neighbour, and that reached almost to touch the side of her house. A wooden side verandah with bedsteads—old rusty bedsteads patched with strip and rope—and then grass, a little front all of grass, with loose hedges on either side—and the sea, the great Pacific right there and rolling in huge white thunderous rollers not forty yards away, under her grassy platform of a garden. She walked to the edge of the grass. Yes, just down the low cliff, really only a bank, went her own little path, as down a steep bank, and then was smooth yellow sand, and the long sea swishing up its incline, and rocks to the left, and incredible long rollers furling over and crushing down on the shore. At her feet! At her very feet, the huge rhythmic Pacific.

She turned to the house. There it crouched, with its long windows and its wide verandah and its various slopes of low, red–tiled roofs. Perfect! Perfect! The sun had gone down behind the great front of black mountain wall which she could still see over the hedge. The house inside was dark, with its deep verandahs like dark eyelids half closed. Somebody switched on a light. Long cottage windows, and a white ceiling with narrow dark beams. She rushed indoors. Once more in search of a home, to be alone with Lovat, where he would be happy. How the sea thundered!

Harriet liked the house immensely. It was beautifully built, solid, in the good English fashion. It had a great big room with dark jarrah timbering on the roof and the walls: it had a dark jarrah floor, and doors, and some solid, satisfactory jarrah furniture, a big, real table and a sideboard and strong square chairs with cane seats. The Lord had sent her here, that was certain.

And how delighted Victoria was with her raptures. Jack whipped his coat off and went to the shed for wood and coal, and soon had a lavish fire in the open hearth. A boy came with milk, and another with bread and fresh butter and eggs, ordered by Mrs. Wynne. The big black kettle was on the fire. And Harriet took Lovat’s arm, she was so moved.

Through the open seaward door, as they sat at the table, the near sea was glimmering pale and greenish in the sunset, and breaking with a crash of foam right, as it seemed, under the house. If the house had not stood with its little grassy garden some thirty or forty feet above the ocean, sometimes the foam would have flown to the doorstep, or to the steps of the loggia. The great sea roaring at one’s feet!

After the evening meal the women were busy making up beds and tidying round, while the men sat by the fire. Jack was quiet, he seemed to brood, and only smoke abstractedly, vaguely. He just sucked his pipe and stared in the fire, while the sea boomed outside, and the voices of the women were heard eager in the bedrooms. When one of the doors leading on to the verandahs was opened, the noise of the sea came in frightening, like guns.

The house had been let for seven months to a man and wife with eleven children. When Somers got up at sunrise, in the morning, he could well believe it. But the sun rose golden from a low fume of haze in the north–eastern sea. The waves rolled in pale and bluey, glass–green, wonderfully heavy and liquid. They curved with a long arch, then fell in a great hollow thud, and a spurt of white foam and a long, soft, snow–pure rush of forward flat foam. Somers watched the crest of fine, bristling spume fly back from the head of the waves as they turned and broke. The sea was all yellow–green light.

And through the light came a low, black tramp steamer, lurching up and down on the waves, disappearing altogether in the lustrous water, save for her bit of yellow–banded funnel and her mast–tips: then emerging like some long, out–of–shape dolphin on a wave–top. She was like some lost mongrel running over a furrowed land. She bellowed and barked forlornly, and hung round on the up–and–down waves.

Somers saw what he wanted. At the south end of the shallow bay was a long, high jetty straddling on great treetrunk poles out on to the sea, and carrying a long line of little red coal–trucks, the sort that can be tipped up. Beyond the straddling jetty was a spit of low, yellow–brown land, grassy, with a stiff little group of trees like ragged Noah’s ark trees, and further in, a little farm–place with two fascinating big gum–trees that stuck out their clots of foliage in dark tufts at the end of slim, up–starting branches.

But the lines from the jetty ran inland for two hundred yards, to where a tiny colliery was pluming steam and smoke from beyond a marsh–like little creek. The steamer wanted to land. She saw the line of little trucks full and ready. She bellowed like a miserable cow, sloping up and down and turning round on the waters of the bay. Near the jetty the foam broke high on some sheltering rocks. The steamer seemed to watch yearningly, like a dog outside a shut door. A little figure walked along the jetty, slowly, unconcernedly. The steamer bellowed again. The figure reached the end of the jetty, and hung out a red flag. Then the steamer shouted no more, but slowly, fearfully turned and slunk up and down the waves back towards Sydney.

The jetty—the forlorn pale–brown grassy bank running out to sea, with the clump of sharp, hard–pointed dark conifers, trees of the southern hemisphere, stiff and mechanical; then the foreshore with yellow sand and rollers; then two bungalows, and a bit of waste ground full of tins; that was the southern aspect. Northwards, next door, was the big imitation black and white bungalow, with a tuft of wind–blown trees and half–dead hedge between it and the Somers’ house. That was north. And the sun was already sloping upwards and northwards. It gave Somers an uneasy feeling, the northward travelling of the climbing sun: as if everything had gone wrong. Inland, lit up dark grey with its plumy trees in the morning light, was the great mountain or tor, with bare, greying rock showing near the top, and above the ridge–top the pure blue sky, so bright and absolutely unsullied, it was always a wonder. There was an unspeakable beauty about the mornings, the great sun from the sea, such a big, untamed, proud sun, rising into a sky of such tender delicacy, blue, so blue, and yet so frail that even blue seems too coarse a colour to describe it, more virgin than humanity can conceive; the land inward lit up, the prettiness of many painted bungalows with tin roofs clustering up the low up–slopes of the grey–treed bush; and then rising like a wall, facing the light and still lightless, the tor face, with its high–up rim so grey, having tiny trees feathering against the most beautiful frail sky in the world. Morning!

But Somers turned to the house. It stood on one of the regulation lots, probably fifty feet by a hundred and fifty. The bit of level grass in front was only fifty feet wide, and perhaps about the same from the house to the brim of the sea–bank, which dropped bushily down some forty feet to the sand and the flat shore–rocks and the ocean. But this grassy garden was littered with bits of rag, and newspapers, sea–shells, tins and old sponges. And the lot next to it was a marvellous constellation of tin cans in every stage of rustiness, if you peeped between the bushes.

“You’ll take the ashes and the rubbish too?” said Somers to the sanitary–man who came to take the sanitary tin of the earth–closet every Monday morning.

“No,” responded that individual briefly: a true Australian Cockney answer, impossible to spell. A sort of neow sound.

“Does anybody take them?”

“Neow. We take no garbage.”

“Then what do I do with them?”

“Do what you like with ’em.” And he marched off with the can. It was not rudeness. It was a kind of colonial humour.

After this Somers surveyed the cans and garbage of the next lot, under the bushes and everywhere, with colonial hopelessness. But he began at once to pick up rags and cans from his own grass.

The house was very pretty, and beautifully built. But it showed all signs of the eleven children. On the verandah at the side, on either side of the “visitors” door, was a bed: one a huge family iron bedstead with an indescribably rusty, saggy wire mattress, the other a single iron bedstead with the wire mattress all burst and so mended with a criss–cross of ropes. These beds were screened from the sea–wind by sacks, old pieces of awful carpeting, and pieces of linoleum tacked to the side of the verandah. The same happened on the third side of the house: two more rope–mended iron bedsteads, and a nailed–up lot of unspeakable rags to screen from the wind.

The house had three little bedrooms, one opening from each of the side verandahs, and one from the big central room. Each contained two saggy single beds. That was five people. Remained seven, with the father and mother. Three children must have gone into the huge bed by the side entrance door, and the other four must have been sprinkled over the other three outside, rope–mended beds.

The bungalow contained only the big room with five doors: one on each side the fire–place, opening into the inner bedroom and the kitchen respectively, and on each of the other three sides a door opening on to the verandah. From the kitchen opened a little pantry and a zinc–floored cubby–hole fitted with the inevitable Australian douche and a little sinkhole to carry off the water. This was the bathroom. There it was, all compact and nice, two outer bedrooms on the wings, and for the central block, the big room in front, the bedroom and kitchen at the back. The kitchen door opened on to the bit of grass at the back, near the shed.

It was a well–built little place, amazing in a world of wood and tin shacks. But Somers would not have liked to live in it with a thirteen–people family. There were eleven white breakfast cups, of which nine had smashed handles and broad tin substitutes quite cannily put on. There were two saucers only. And all the rest to match: seven large brown teapots, of which five had broken spouts: not one whole dish or basin of any sort, except a sauce boat. And rats! Torestin was a clean and ratless spot compared with Coo–ee. For the house was called Coo–ee, to fetch the rats in, Jack said.

The women flew at the house with hot water and soda. Jack and Somers spent the morning removing bedsteads into the shed, tearing down the horrid rag–and–dirt screens, pulling out the nails with which these screens had been held in place, and pulling out the hundreds of nails which had nailed down the dirt–grey, thin–carpet as if forever to the floor of the big room. Then they banged and battered this thin old patternless carpet, and washed it with soda and water. And then they banged and battered the two sofas, that were like sandbags, so full of sand and dust. And they took down all the ugly, dirt–filmed pictures of the Dana Gibson sort, and the “My refuge is in God” text.

“I should think so,” said Jack. “Away from the muck they’d made down here.”

Like demons the four of them flew at this Coo–ee house, and afternoon saw Jack and Somers polishing floors with a stuff called glowax, and Harriet and Victoria putting clean papers on all the shelves, and arranging the battered remnant of well–washed white crockery.

“The crockery is the worst item here,” said Victoria. “You pay three–and–six and four shillings for one of these cups and saucers, and four–and–six for a common brown quart jug, and twelve guineas for a white dinner service.”

Harriet looked at the horrid breakable stuff aghast.

“I feel like buying a tin mug at once,” she said.

But Victoria did not bother. She took it all as it came. The people with the eleven children had paid three and a half guineas a week for seven months for the house.

At three o’clock Victoria’s brother, a shy youth of seventeen, arrived in a buggy and drove Jack and Victoria the four miles to the home of the latter. Somers and Harriet had tea alone.

“But I love and adore the place,” said Harriet. “Victoria says we can have it for thirty shillings a week, and if they’d let you off even half of the month for Torestin, we should be saving.”

The Callcotts arrived home in the early dark.

“Oh, but doesn’t the house smell different,” cried Victoria.

“Beeswax and turps,” said Jack. “Not a bad smell.”

Again the evening passed quietly. Jack had not been his own boisterous self at all. He was silent, and you couldn’t get at him. Victoria looked at him curiously, wondering, and tried to draw him out. He laughed and was pleasant enough, but relapsed into silence, as if he were sad, or gloomy.

In the morning sunlight Harriet and Somers were out first, after Somers had made the fire, having a frightened dip in the sandy foam. They kept far back from the great rollers, which, as the two sat in the dribbling back–wash, reared up so huge and white and fanged in a front attack, that Harriet always rose and ran, and it was long before she got really wet. And then when they did venture to sit in a foot of water, up came a sudden flush and flung them helpless rolling a dozen yards in, and banged them against the pebbles. It was distinctly surprising. Somers had never known that he weighed so little, that he was such a scrap of unimportance. And he still dared not quite imagine the whole of the blind, invisible force of that water. It was so different being in it, even on the edge of it, from looking at it from the outside.

As they came trembling and panting up the bank to the grass–plot, dripping and smelling so strong and sticky of the Pacific, they saw Jack standing smoking and watching.

“Are you going to try it?” said Somers.

He shook his head, and lit a cigarette.

“No. It’s past my bathing season,” he said.

They ran to the little tub–house and washed the sand and salt and sea–stickiness off with fresh water.

Somers wondered whether Jack was going to say anything to him or not. He was not sure. Perhaps Jack himself was not sure. And Somers had that shrinking feeling one has from going to see the doctor. In a quiet sort of way, the two men kept clear of one another. They loitered about in the sun and round the house during the morning, mending the broken deck–chairs and doing little jobs. Victoria and Harriet were cooking roast pork and apple sauce, and baking little cakes. It had already been arranged that the Somers should come and live in Coo–ee, and Victoria was quite happy and determined to leave a supply of nice eatables behind her.

In the afternoon they all went strolling down the sands, Somers and Victoria, Jack and Harriet. They picked up big, iridescent abalone shells, such as people had on their mantelpieces at home: and bits of purplish coral stuff. And they walked across two fields to have a look at an aeroplane which had come down with a broken propeller. Jack of course had to talk about it to the people there, while Somers hung back and tried to make himself invisible, as he always did when there were strange onlookers.

Then the four turned home. Jack and Victoria were leaving by the seven train next morning, Somers and Harriet were staying on a few days, before they returned to Sydney to pack up. Harriet was longing to have the house to themselves. So was Somers. He was also hoping that Jack wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t want anything of him. And at the same time he was waiting for some sort of approach.

The sea’s edge was smoking with the fume of the waves like a mist, and the high shore ahead, with the few painted red–roofed bungalows, was all dim, like a Japanese print. Tier after tier of white–frost foam piled breaking towards the shore, in a haste. The tide was nearly high. Somers could hardly see beyond over the white wall–tops of the breaking waves, only on the clear horizon, far away, a steamer like a small black scratch, and a fantastic thread of smoke.

He lingered behind the rest, they were nearly home. They were at the wide sandy place where the creek left off. Its still brackish waters just sank into the sands, without ever running to meet the waves. And beyond the sands was a sort of marsh, bushes and tall stark dead gum–trees, and a few thin–tufted trees. Half wild ponies walked heavily from the bush to the sands, and across to the slope where the low cliff rose again. In the depths of the marsh–like level was the low chimney of the mine, and tips of roofs: and beyond, a long range of wire–like trees holding up tufts of foliage in handfuls, in front of the pale blue, diminishing range of the hills in the distance. It was a weird scene, full of definite detail, fascinating detail, yet all in the funeral–grey monotony of the bush.

Somers turned to the piled–up, white–fronted sea again. On the tip of a rock above him sat a little bird with hunched–up shoulders and a long beak: an absurd silhouette. He went towards it, talking to it. It seemed to listen to him: really to listen. That is another of the charms of Australia: the birds are not really afraid, and one can really communicate with them. In West Australia Somers could sit in the bush and talk to the flocks of big, handsome, black–and–white birds that they call magpies, but which are a sort of butcher bird, apparently. And they would gurgle little answers in their throats, and cock their heads on one side. Handsome birds they were, some with mottled grey breasts like fish. And the boldest would even come and take pieces of bread from his hands. Yet they were quite wild. Only they seemed to have a strange power of understanding the human psyche.

Now this little kingfisher by the sea. It sat and looked at Somers, and cocked its head and listened. It LIKED to be talked to. When he came quite near, it sped with the straight low flight of kingfishers to another boulder, and waited for him. It was beautiful too: with a sheeny sea–green back and a pale breast touched with burnt yellow. A beautiful, dandy little fellow. And there he waited for Somers like a little penguin perching on a brown boulder. And Somers came softly near, talking quietly. Till he could almost touch the bird. Then away it sped a few yards, and waited. Sheeny greyish green, like the gum–leaves become vivid: and yellowish breast, like the suave gum–tree trunks. And listening, and waiting, and wanting to be talked to. Wanting the contact.

The other three had disappeared from the sea–side. Somers walked slowly on. Then suddenly he saw Jack running across the sand in a bathing suit, and entering the shallow rim of a long, swift upwash. He went in gingerly—then threw himself into a little swell, and rolled in the water for a minute. Then he was rushing back, before the next big wave broke. He had gone again by the time Somers came to climb the cliff–bank to the house.

They had a cup of tea on the wooden verandah. The air had begun to waft icily from the inland, but in the sheltered place facing the sea it was still warm. This was only four o’clock—or to–day, five o’clock tea. Proper tea was at six or half–past, with meat and pies and fruit salad.

The women went indoors with the cups. Jack was smoking his pipe. There was something unnatural about his stillness.

“You had a dip after all,” said Somers.

“Yes. A dip in and out.”

Then silence again. Somers’ thoughts wandered out to the gently darkening sea, and the bird, and the whole of vast Australia lying behind him flat and open to the sky.

“You like it down here?” said Jack.

“I do indeed.”

“Let’s go down to the rocks again, I like to be near the waves.”

Somers rose and followed him. The house was already lit up. The sea was bluey. They went down the steps cut in the earth of the bank top, and between the bushes to the sand. The tide was full, and swishing against a flat ledge of rocks. Jack went to the edge of this ledge, looking in at the surging water, white, hissing, heavy. Somers followed again. Jack turned his face to him.

“Funny thing it should go on doing this all the time, for no purpose,” said Jack, amid all the noise.

“Yes.”

Again they watched the heavy waves unfurl and fling the white challenge of foam on the shore.

“I say,” Jack turned his face. “I shan’t be making a mistake if I tell you a few things in confidence, shall I?”

“I hope not. But judge for yourself.”

“Well, it’s like this,” shouted Jack—they had to shout at one another in unnaturally lifted voices, because of the huge noise of the sea. “There’s a good many of us chaps as has been in France, you know—and been through it all—in the army—we jolly well know you can’t keep a country going on the vote–catching system—as you said the other day. We know it can’t be done.”

“It can’t,” said Somers, with a shout, “for ever.”

“If you’ve got to command, you don’t have to ask your men first if it’s right, before you give the command.”

“Of course not,” yelled Somers.

But Jack was musing for the moment.

“What?” he shouted, as he woke up.

“No,” yelled Somers.

A further muse, amid the roar of the waves.

“Do the men know better than the officers, or do the officers know better than the men?” he barked.

“Of course,” said Somers.

“These damned politicians—they invent a cry—and they wait to see if the public will take it up. And if it won’t, they drop it. And if it will, they make a mountain of it, if it’s only an old flower–pot.”

“They do,” yelled Somers.

They stood close side by side, like two mariners in a storm, amid the breathing spume of the foreshore, while darkness slowly sank. Right at the tip of the flat, low rocks they stood, like pilots.

“It’s no good,” barked Jack, with his hands in his pockets.

“Not a bit.”

“If you’re an officer, you study what is best, for the cause and for the men. You study your men. But you don’t ask THEM what to do. If you do you’re a wash–out.”

“Quite.”

“And that’s where it is in politics. You see the papers howling and blubbering for a statesman. Why, if they’d got the finest statesman the world ever saw, they’d chuck him on to the scrap heap the moment he really wanted his own way, doing what he saw was the best. That’s where they’ve got anybody who’s any good—on the scrap–heap.”

“Same the world over.”

“It’s got to alter somewhere.”

“It has.”

“When you’ve been through the army, you know that what you depend on is a GENERAL, and on DISCIPLINE, and on OBEDIENCE. And nothing else is the slightest bit of good.”

“But they say the civil world is NOT an army: it’s the will of the people,” cried Somers.

“Will of my grandmother’s old tom–cat. They’ve got no will, except to stop anybody else from having any.”

“I know.”

“Look at Australia. Absolutely fermenting rotten with politicians and the will of the people. Look at the country—going rottener every day, like an old pear.”

“All the democratic world the same.”

“Of course it’s the same. And you may well say Australian soil is waiting to be watered with blood. It’s waiting to be watered with our blood, once England’s got too soft to help herself, let alone us, and the Japs come down this way. They’d squash us like a soft pear.”

“I think it’s quite likely.”

“What?”

“Likely.”

“It’s pretty well a certainty. And would you blame them? If you was thirsty, wouldn’t you pick a ripe pear if it hung on nobody’s tree? Why, of course you would. And who’d blame you.”

“Blame myself if I didn’t,” said Somers.

“And then their coloured labour. I tell you, this country’s too far from Europe to risk it. They’ll swallow us. As sure as guns is guns, if we let in coloured labour, they’ll swallow us. They hate us. All the other colours hate the white. And they’re only waiting till we haven’t got the pull over them. They’re only waiting. And then what about poor little Australia?”

“Heaven knows.”

“There’ll be the Labour Party, the Socialists, uniting with the workers of the world. THEY’LL be the workers, if ever it comes to it. Those black and yellow people’ll make ’em work—not half. It isn’t one side only that can keep slaves. Why, the fools, the coloured races don’t have any FEELING for liberty. They only think you’re a fool when you give it to them, and if they got a chance, they’d drive you out to work in gangs, and fairly laugh at you. All this world’s–worker business is simply playing their game.”

“Of course,” said Somers. “What is Indian Nationalism but a strong bid for power—for tyranny. The Brahmins want their old absolute caste–power—the most absolute tyranny—back again, and the Mohammedans want their military tyranny. That’s what they are lusting for—to wield the rod again. Slavery for millions. Japan the same. And China, in part, the same. The niggers the same. The real sense of liberty only goes with white blood. And the ideal democratic liberty is an exploded ideal. You’ve got to have wisdom and authority somewhere, and you can’t get it out of any further democracy.”

“There!” said Jack. “That’s what I mean. We’ll be wiped out, wiped out. And we know it. Look here, as man to man, you and me here: if you were an Australian, wouldn’t you do something if you could do something?”

“I would.”

“Whether you got shot or whether you didn’t! We went to France to get ourselves shot, for something that didn’t touch us very close either. Then why shouldn’t we run a bit of risk for what does touch us very close. Why, you know, with things as they are, I don’t want Victoria and me to have any children. I’d a jolly sight rather not—and I’ll watch it too.”

“Same with me,” yelled Somers.

Jack had come closer to him, and was now holding him by the arm.

“What’s a man’s life for, anyhow? Is it just to save up like rotten pears on a shelf, in the hopes that one day it’ll rot into a pink canary or something of that?”

“No,” said Somers.

“What we want in Australia,” said Jack, “isn’t a statesman, not yet. It’s a set of chaps with some guts in them, who’ll obey orders when they find a man who’ll give the orders.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ve got such men—we’ve got them. But we want to see our way clear. We don’t never feel quite SURE enough over here. That’s where it is. We sound as sure as a gas–explosion. But it’s all bang and no bump. We’ll never raise no lids. We shall only raise the roof—or our politicians will—with shouting. Because we’re never quite sure. We know it when we meet you English people. You’re a lot surer than we are. But you’re mostly bigger fools as well. It takes a fool to be sure of himself, sometimes.”

“Fact.”

“And there’s where it is. Most Englishmen are too big cocked–up fools for us. And there you are. Their sureness may help them along to the end of the road, but they haven’t the wit to turn a corner: not a proper corner. And we can see it. They can only go back on themselves.”

“Yes.”

“You’re the only man I’ve met who seems to me sure of himself and what he means. I may be mistaken, but that’s how it seems to me. And William James knows it too. But it’s my belief William James doesn’t want you to come in, because it would spoil his little game.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t. Now, look here. This is absolutely between ourselves, now, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Certain?”

“Yes.”

Jack was silent for a time. Then he looked round the almost dark shore. The stars were shining overhead.

“Give me your hand then,” said Jack.

Somers gave him his hand, and Jack clasped it fast, drawing the smaller man to him and putting his arm round his shoulders and holding him near to him. It was a tense moment for Richard Lovat. He looked at the dark sea, and thought of his own everlasting gods, and felt the other man’s body next to his.

“Well now,” he said in Somers’ ear, in a soothed tone. “There’s quite a number of us in Sydney—and in the other towns as well—we’re mostly diggers back from the war—we’ve joined up into a kind of club—and we’re sworn in—and we’re sworn to OBEY the leaders, no matter what the command, when the time is ready—and we’re sworn to keep silent till then. We don’t let out much, nothing of any consequence, to the general run of the members.”

Richard listened with his soul. Jack’s eager, conspirator voice seemed very close to his ear, and it had a kind of caress, a sort of embrace. Richard was absolutely motionless.

“But who are your leaders?” he asked, thinking of course that it was his own high destiny to be a leader.

“Why, the first club got fifty members to start with. Then we chose a leader and talked things over. And then we chose a secretary and a lieutenant. And every member quietly brought in more chaps. And as soon as we felt we could afford it, we separated, making the next thirty or so into a second club, with the lieutenant for a leader. Then we chose a new lieutenant—and the new club chose a secretary and a lieutenant.”

Richard didn’t follow all this lieutenant and club business very well. He was thinking of himself entering in with these men in a dangerous, desperate cause. It seemed unreal. Yet there he was, with Jack’s arm round him. Jack would want him to be his “mate”. Could he? His cobber. Could he ever be mate to any man?

“You sort of have a lot of leaders. What if one of them let you down?” he asked.

“None of them have yet. But we’ve arranged for that.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you later. But you get a bit of the hang of the thing, do you?”

“I think so. But what do you call yourselves? How do you appear to the public?”

“We call ourselves the digger clubs, and we go in chiefly for athletics. And we do spend most of the time in athletics. But those that aren’t diggers can join, if a pal brings them in and vouches for them.”

Richard was now feeling rather out of it. Returned soldiers, and clubs, and athletics—all unnatural things to him. Was he going to join in with this? How could he? He was so different from it all.

“And how do you work—I mean together?” he faltered.

“We have a special lodge of the leaders and lieutenants and secretaries from all the clubs, and again in every lodge they choose a master, that’s the highest; and then a Jack, he’s like a lieutenant; and a Teller, he’s the sort of secretary and president. We have lodges in all the biggish places. And then all the masters of the lodges of the five states of Australia keep in touch, and they choose five masters who are called the Five, and these five agree among themselves which order they shall stand in: first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. When once they’ve chosen the first, then he has two votes towards the placing of the other four. And so they settle it. And then they grade the five Jacks and the five Tellers. I tell it you just in rough, you know.”

“Yes. And what are you?”

“I’m a master.”

Richard was still trying to see himself in connection with it all. He tried to piece together all that Jack had been letting off at him. Returned soldiers’ clubs, chiefly athletics, with a more or less secret core to each club, and all the secret cores working together secretly in all the state under one chief head, and apparently with military penalties for any transgression. It was not a bad idea. And the aim, apparently, a sort of revolution and a seizing of political power.

“How long have you been started?” he asked.

“About eighteen months—nearly two years altogether.”

Somers was silent, very much impressed, though his heart felt heavy. Why did his heart feel so heavy? Politics—conspiracy—political power: it was all so alien to him. Somehow, in his soul he always meant something quite different, when he thought of action along with other men. Yet Australia, the wonderful, lonely Australia, with her seven million people only—it might begin here. And the Australians, so queer, so absent, as it were, leaving themselves out all the time—they might be capable of a beautiful unselfishness and steadfastness of purpose. Only—his heart refused to respond.

“What is your aim, though? What do you want, finally?” he asked rather lamely.

Jack hesitated, and his grip on the other man’s arm tightened.

“Well,” he said. “It’s like this. We don’t talk a lot about what we intend: we fix nothing. But we start certain talks, and we listen, so we know more or less what most of the ordinary members feel like. Why, the plan is more or less this. The Labour people, the reds, are always talking about a revolution, and the Conservatives are always talking about a disaster. Well, we keep ourselves fit and ready for as soon as the revolution comes—or the disaster. Then we step in, you see, and we are the revolution. We’ve got most of the trained fighting men behind us, and we can MAKE the will of the people, don’t you see: if the members stand steady. We shall have ‘Australia’ for the word. We stand for Australia, not for any of your parties.”

Somers at once felt the idea was a good one. Australia is not too big—seven millions or so, and the biggest part of the seven concentrated in the five or six cities. Get hold of your cities and you’ve got hold of Australia. The only thing he mistrusted was the dryness in Jack’s voice: a sort of that’s–how–it’s–got–to–be dryness, sharp and authoritative.

“What d’yer think of it?” said Jack.

“Good idea,” said Somers.

“I know that—if we can bite on to it. Feel like joining in, d’yer think?”

Somers was silent. He was thinking of Jack even more than of the venture. Jack was trying to put something over him—in some way, to get a hold over him. He felt like an animal that is being lassooed. Yet here was his chance, if he wanted to be a leader of men. He had only to give himself, give himself up to it and to the men.

“Let me think about it a bit, will you?” he replied, “and I’ll tell you when I come up to Sydney.”

“Right O!” said Jack, a twinge of disappointment in his acquiescence. “Look before you leap, you know.”

“Yes—for both sides. You wouldn’t want me to jump in, and then squirm because I didn’t like it.”

“Right you are, old man. You take your own time—I know you won’t be wagging your jaw to anybody.”

“No. Not even to Harriet.”

“Oh, bless you, no. We’re not having the women in, if we can help it. Don’t believe in it, do you?”

“Not in real politics, I don’t.”

They stood a moment longer by the sea. Then Jack let go Somers’ arm.

“Well,” he said, “I’d rather die in a forlorn hope than drag my days out in a forlorn mope. Besides, damn it, I do want to have a shot at something, I do. These politicians absolutely get my wind up, running the country. If I can’t do better than that, then let me be shot, and welcome.”

“I agree,” said Somers.

Jack put his hand on his shoulder, and pressed it hard.

“I knew you would,” he said, in moved tones. “We want a man like you, you know—like a sort of queen bee to a hive.”

Somers laughed, rather startled by the metaphor. He had thought of himself as many things, but never as a queen bee to a hive of would–be revolutionaries. The two men went up to the house.

“Wherever have you been?” said Victoria.

“Talking politics and red–hot treason,” said Jack, rubbing his hands.

“Till you’re almost frozen, I’m sure,” said Victoria.

Harriet looked at the two men in curiosity and suspicion, but she said nothing. Only next morning when the Callcotts had gone she said to Lovat:

“What were you and Mr. Callcott talking about, really?”

“As he said, politics and hot treason. An idea that some of them have got for making a change in the constitution.”

“What sort of change?” asked Harriet.

“Why—don’t bother me yet. I don’t know myself.”

“Is it so important you mustn’t tell me?” she asked sarcastically.

“Or else so vague,” he answered.

But she saw by the shut look on his face that he was not going to tell her: that this was something he intended to keep apart from her: forever apart. A part of himself which he was not going to share with her. It seemed to her unnecessary, and a breach of faith on his part, wounding her. If their marriage was a real thing, then anything very serious was her matter as much as his, surely. Either her marriage with him was not very important, or else this Jack Callcott stuff wasn’t very important. Which probably it wasn’t. Yet she hated the hoity–toity way she was shut out.

“Pah!” she said. “A bit of little boys’ silly showing off.”

But he had this other cold side to his nature, that could keep a secret cold and isolated till Doomsday. And for two or three years now, since the war, he had talked like this about doing some work with men alone, sharing some activity with men. Turning away from the personal life to the hateful male impersonal activity, and shutting her out from this.

She continued bright through the day. Then at evening he found her sitting on her bed with tears in her eyes and her hands in her lap. At once his heart became very troubled: because after all she was all he had in the world, and he couldn’t bear her to be really disappointed or wounded. He wanted to ask her what was the matter, and to try to comfort her. But he knew it would be false. He knew that her greatest grief was when he turned away from their personal human life of intimacy to this impersonal business of male activity for which he was always craving. So he felt miserable, but went away without saying anything. Because he was determined, if possible, to go forward in this matter with Jack. He was also determined that it was not a woman’s matter. As soon as he could he would tell her about it: as much as it was necessary for her to know. But, once he had slowly and carefully weighed a course of action, he would not hold it subject to Harriet’s approval or disapproval. It would be out of her sphere, outside the personal sphere of their two lives, and he would keep it there. She emphatically opposed this principle of her externality. She agreed with the necessity for impersonal activity, but oh, she insisted on being identified with the activity, impersonal or not. And he insisted that it could not and should not be: that the pure male activity should be womanless, beyond woman. No man was beyond woman. But in his one quality of ultimate maker and breaker, he was womanless. Harriet denied this, bitterly. She wanted to share, to join in, not to be left out lonely. He looked at her in distress, and did not answer. It is a knot that can never be untied; it can only, like a navel string, be broken or cut.

For the moment, however, he said nothing. But Somers knew from his dreams what she was feeling: his dreams of a woman, a woman he loved, something like Harriet, something like his mother, and yet unlike either, a woman sullen and obstinate against him, repudiating him. Bitter the woman was, grieved beyond words, grieved till her face was swollen and puffy and almost mad or imbecile, because she had loved him so much, and now she must see him betray her love. That was how the dream woman put it: he had betrayed her great love, and she must go down desolate into an everlasting hell, denied, and denying him absolutely in return, a sullen, awful soul. The face reminded him of Harriet, and of his mother, and of his sister, and of girls he had known when he was younger—strange glimpses of all of them, each glimpse excluding the last. And at the same time in the terrible face some of the look of that bloated face of a madwoman which hung over Jane Eyre in the night in Mr. Rochester’s house.

The Somers of the dream was terribly upset. He cried tears from his very bowels, and laid his hand on the woman’s arm saying:

“But I love you. Don’t you BELIEVE in me? Don’t you BELIEVE in me?” But the woman, she seemed almost old now—only shed a few bitter tears, bitter as vitriol, from her distorted face, and bitterly, hideously turned away, dragging her arm from the touch of his fingers; turned, as it seemed to the dream–Somers, away to the sullen and dreary, everlasting hell of repudiation.

He woke at this, and listened to the thunder of the sea with horror. With horror. Two women in his life he had loved down to the quick of life and death: his mother and Harriet. And the woman in the dream was so awfully his mother, risen from the dead, and at the same time Harriet, as it were, departing from this life, that he stared at the night–paleness between the window–curtains in horror.

“They neither of them believed in me,” he said to himself. Still in the spell of the dream, he put it in the past tense, though Harriet lay sleeping in the next bed. He could not get over it.

Then he tried to come right awake. In his full consciousness, he was a great enemy of dreams. For his own private life, he found his dreams were like devils. When he was asleep and off his guard, then his own weaknesses, especially his old weaknesses that he had overcome in his full, day–waking self, rose up again maliciously to take some picturesque form and torment and overcome his sleeping self. He always considered dreams as a kind of revenge which old weaknesses took on the victorious healthy consciousness, like past diseases come back for a phantom triumph. So he said to himself: “The dream is one of these larvae of my past emotions. It means that the danger is passed, the evil is overcome, so it has to resort to dreams to terrify me. In dreams the diseases and evil weaknesses of the soul—and of our relations with other souls—take form to triumph falsely over the living, healthy, onward–struggling spirit. This dream means that the actual danger is gone.” So he strengthened his spirit, and in the morning when he got up, and remembered, he was no longer afraid. A little uneasy still, maybe, especially as to what Harriet would do. But surely his mother was not hostile in death! And if she were a little bit hostile at this forsaking, it was not permanent, it was only the remains of a weakness, an unbelief which haunted the soul in life.

So he reasoned with himself. For he had an ingrained instinct or habit of thought which made him feel that he could never take the move into activity unless Harriet and his dead mother believed in him. They both loved him: that he knew. They both believed in him terribly, in personal being. In the individual man he was, and the son of man, they believed with all the intensity of undivided love. But in the impersonal man, the man that would go beyond them, with his back to them, away from them into an activity that excluded them, in this man they did not find it so easy to believe.

Harriet, however, said nothing for two days. She was happy in her new house, delighted with the sea and the being alone, she loved her Coo–ee bungalow, and loved making it look nice. She loved having Lovat alone with her, and all her desires, as it were, in the hollow of her hand. She was bright and affectionate with him. But underneath lurked this chagrin of his wanting to go away from her, for his activity.

“You don’t take Callcott and his politics seriously, do you?” she said to him at evening.

“Yes,” he said, rather hesitatingly.

“But what does he want?”

“To have another sort of government for the Commonwealth—with a sort of Dictator: not the democratic vote–cadging sort.”

“But what does that matter to you?”

“It does matter. If you can start a new life–form.”

“You know quite well you say yourself life doesn’t START with a form. It starts with a new feeling, and ends with a form.”

“I know. But I think there is a new feeling.”

“In Callcott?” She had a very sceptical intonation.

“Yes.”

“I very much doubt it. He’s a returned war hero, and he wants a chance of keeping on being a hero—or something like that.”

“But even that is a new feeling,” he persisted.

“Yah!” she said, rather wearily sceptical. “I’d rather even believe in William James. There seems to me more real feeling even in him: deeper, at any rate. Your Jacks are shallow really.”

“Nay, he seemed a man to me.”

“I don’t know what you mean by your MEN. Really, I give it up, I don’t know what you do want. You change so. You’ve always said you despise politics, and yet here you are.” She tailed off as if it were hopeless.

“It’s not the politics. But it IS a new life–form, a new social form. We’re pot–bound inside democracy and the democratic feeling.”

“But you know what you’ve said yourself. You didn’t change the Roman Empire with a revolution. Christianity grew up for centuries without having anything at all to do with politics—just a FEELING, and a belief.”

This was indeed what he had said himself, often enough: that a new religious inspiration, and a new religious idea must gradually spring up and ripen before there could be any constructive change. And yet he felt that preaching and teaching were both no good, at the world’s present juncture. There must be action, brave, faithful action: and in the action the new spirit would arise.

“You see,” he said, “Christianity is a religion which preaches the despising of the material world. And I don’t believe in that part of it, at least, any longer. I believe that the men with the real passion for life, for truth, for LIVING and not for HAVING, I feel they now must seize control of the material possessions, just to safeguard the world from all the masses who want to seize material possessions for themselves, blindly, and nothing else. The men with soul and with passionate truth in them must control the world’s material riches and supplies: absolutely put possessions out of the reach of the mass of mankind, and let life begin to live again, in place of this struggle for existence, or struggle for wealth.”

“Yah, I don’t believe it’s so all–important who controls the world’s material riches and supplies. That’ll always be the same.”

“It won’t.”

“It will. Conservatives or bolshevists or Labour Party—they’re all alike: they all want to grab and have things in their clutches, and they’re devilish with jealousy if they haven’t got them. That’s politics. You’ve said thousands of times that politics are a game for the base people with no human soul in them. Thousands of times you’ve said it. And yet now—.”

He was silent for a while.

“Now,” he said slowly. “Now I see that you don’t have only to give all your possessions to the poor. You’ve got to HAVE no poor that can be saved just by possessions. You’ve got to put the control of all supplies into the hands of sincere, sensible men who are still men enough to know that manhood isn’t the same thing as goods. We don’t want possessions. Nobody wants possessions—more than just the immediate things: as you say yourself, one trunk for you, one for me, and one for the household goods. That’s about all. We don’t want anything else. And the world is ours—Australia or India, Coo–ee or Ardnaree, or where you like. You have got to teach people that, by withholding possessions and stopping the mere frenzy for possession which runs the world to–day. You’ve got to do that FIRST, not last.”

“And you think Jack Callcott will do it?”

“I did think so, as he talked to me.”

“Well, then let him. Why do you want to interfere? In my opinion he’s chiefly jealous because other people run the show, and he doesn’t have a look–in. Having once been a Captain with some power, he wants the same again, and more. I’d rather trust William James to be disinterested.”

“Nay, Jack Callcott is generous by nature, and I believe he’d be disinterested.”

“In his way, he’s generous. But that isn’t the same as being disinterested, for all that. He wants to have his finger in the pie, that’s what he wants.”

“To pull out plums? That’s not true.”

“Perhaps not to pull out money plums. But to be bossy. To be a Captain once more, feeling his feet and being a boss over something.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?”

“Why not? I don’t care if he bosses all Australia and New Zealand and all the lot. But I don’t see why you should call it disinterested. Because it isn’t.”

He paused, struck.

“Am I disinterested?” he asked.

“Not”—she hesitated—“not when you want just POWER.”

“But I don’t want just power. I only see that somebody must have power, so those should have it who don’t want it selfishly, and who have some natural gift for it, and some reverence for the sacredness of it.”

“Ha!—power! power! What does it all mean, after all! And especially in people like Jack Callcott. Where does he see any sacredness. He’s a sentimentalist, and as you say yourself, nothing is sacred then.”

This discussion ended in a draw. Harriet had struck home once or twice, and she knew it. That appeased her for the moment. But he stuck to his essential position, though he was not so sure of the circumstantial standing.

Harriet loved Coo–ee, and was determined to be happy there. She had at last gradually realised that Lovat was no longer lover to her or anybody, or even anything: and amidst the chagrin was a real relief. Because he was her husband, that was undeniable. And if, as her husband, he had to go on to other things, outside of marriage: well, that was his affair. It only angered her when he thought these other things—revolutions or governments or whatnot—higher than their essential marriage. But then he would come to himself and acknowledge that his marriage WAS the centre of his life, the core, the root, however he liked to put it: and this other business was the inevitable excursion into his future, into the unknown, onwards, which man by his nature was condemned to make, even if he lost his life a dozen times in it. Well, so be it. Let him make the excursion: even without her. But she was not, if she could help it, going to have him setting off on a trip that led nowhere. No, if he was to excurse ahead, it must be ahead, and her instinct must be convinced as the needle of a mariner’s compass is convinced. And regarding this Australian business of Callcott’s, she had her doubts.

However, she had for the moment a home, where she felt for the moment as rooted, as central as the tree of life itself. She wasn’t a bit of flotsam, and she wasn’t a dog chained to a dog–kennel. Coo–ee might be absurd—and she knew it was only a camp. But then where she camped with Lovat Somers was now the world’s centre to her, and that was enough.

She loved to wake in the morning and open the bedroom door—they had the north bedroom, on the verandah, the room that had the sun all day long; then she liked to lie luxuriously in bed and watch the lovely, broken colours of the Australian dawn: always strange, mixed colours, never the primary reds and yellows. The sun rose on the north–east—she could hardly see it. But she watched the first yellow of morning, and then the strange, strong smoky red–purple of floating pieces of cloud: then the rose and mist blue of the horizon, and the sea all reddish, smoky flesh–colour, moving under a film of gold like a glaze; then the sea gradually going yellow, going primrose, with the foam breaking blue as forget–me–nots or frost, in front. And on the near swing of the bluey primrose, sticking up through the marvellous liquid pale yellow glaze, the black fins of sharks. The triangular, black fins of sharks, like small, hard sails of hell–boats, amid the swimming luminousness. Then she would run out on the verandah. Sharks! Four or five sharks, skulking in the morning glow, and so near, she could almost have thrown bread to them. Sharks, slinking along quite near the coast, as if they were walking on the land. She saw one caught in the heave of a breaker, and lifted. And then she saw him start, saw the quick flurry of his tail as he flung himself back. The land to him was horror—as to her the sea, beyond that wall of ice–blue foam. She made Lovat come to look. He watched them slowly, holding the brush in his hand. He had made the fire, and was sweeping the hearth. Coffee was ready by the time Harriet was dressed: and he was crouching making toast. They had breakfast together on the front verandah, facing the sea, eastwards. And the much–washed red–and–white tablecloth that had been in so many lands with them and that they used out–doors, looked almost too strongly coloured in the tender–seeming atmosphere. The coffee had a lot of chicory in it, but the butter and milk were good, and the brownish honey, that also, like the landscape, tasted queer, as if touched with unkindled smoke. It seemed to Somers as if the people of Australia OUGHT to be dusky. Think of Sicilian honey—like the sound of birds singing: and now this with a dusky undertone to it. But good too—so good!

CHAPTER 6. KANGAROO.

They went back to Sydney on the Thursday, for two days, to pack up and return to Coo–ee. All the time, they could hear the sea. It seemed strange that they felt the sea so far away, in Sydney. In Sydney itself, there is no sea. It might be Birmingham. Even in Mullumbimby, a queer raw little place, when Somers lifted his head and looked down Main Street and saw, a mile away, the high level of the solid sea, it was almost a shock to him. Half a mile inland, the influence of the sea has disappeared, and the land–sense is so heavy, buried, that it is hard to believe that the dull rumble in the air is the ocean. It sounds like a coal–mine or something.

“You’ll let Mr. Somers and me have a little chat to ourselves, Mrs. Somers, won’t you?” said Jack, appearing after tea.

“Willingly. I assure you I don’t want to be bothered with your important affairs,” said Harriet. None the less she went over rather resentfully to Victoria, turned out of her own house. It wasn’t that she wanted to listen. She would really have hated to attend to all their high–and–mighty revolution stuff. She didn’t believe in revolutions—they were vieux jeu, out of date.

“Well,” said Jack, settling down in a wooden arm–chair and starting his pipe. “You’ve thought it over, have you?”

“Over and over,” laughed Somers.

“I knew you would.”

He sucked his pipe and thought for a time.

“I’ve had a long talk with Kangaroo about you to–day,” he said.

“Who’s Kangaroo?”

“He’s the First,” replied Jack slowly. And again there was silence. Somers kept himself well in hand, and said nothing.

“A lawyer—well up—I knew him in the army, though. He was one of my lieutenants.”

Still Somers waited, without speaking.

“He’d like to see you. Should you care to have lunch with him and me in town to–morrow?”

“Have you told him you’ve talked to me?”

“Oh yes—told him before I did it. He knows your writings—read all you’ve written, apparently. He’d heard about you too from a chap on the Naldera. That’s the boat you came by, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Somers.

“Yes,” echoed Jack. “He was all over me when I mentioned your name. You’d like Kangaroo. He’s a great chap.”

“What’s his name?”

“Cooley—Ben—Benjamin Cooley.”

“They like him on the Bulletin, don’t they? Didn’t I see something about Ben Cooley and his straight talk?”

“Yes. Oh, he can talk straight enough—and crooked enough as well, if it comes to that. You’ll come to lunch then? We lunch in his chambers.”

Somers agreed. Jack was silent, as if he had not much more to say. After a while he added reflectively:

“Yes, I’m glad to have brought you and Kangaroo together.”

“Why do they call him Kangaroo?”

“Looks like one.”

Again there was a silence, each man thinking his own thoughts.

“You and Kangaroo will catch on like wax, as far as ideas go,” Jack prognosticated. “But he’s an unfeeling beggar, really. And that’s where you WON’T cotton on to him. That’s where I come in.”

He looked at Somers with a faint smile.

“Come in to what?” laughed Somers.

Jack took his pipe from his mouth with a little flourish.

“In a job like this,” he said, “a man wants a mate—yes, a mate—that he can say ANYTHING to, and be absolutely himself with. Must have it. And as far as I go—for me—you don’t mind if I say it, do you?—Kangaroo could never have a mate. He’s as odd as any phoenix bird I’ve ever heard tell of. You couldn’t mate him to anything in the heavens above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth. No, there’s no female kangaroo of his species. Fine chap, for all that. But as lonely as a nail in a post.”

“Sounds something fatal and fixed,” laughed Somers.

“It does. And he IS fatal and fixed. Those eyeglasses of his, you know—they alone make a man into a sort of eye of God, rather glassy. But my idea is, in a job like this, every man should have a mate—like most of us had in the war. Mine was Victoria’s brother—and still is, in a way. But he got some sort of a sickness that seems to have taken all the fight out of him. Fooling about with the wrong sort of women. Can’t get his pecker up again now, the fool. Poor devil an’ all.”

Jack sighed and resumed his pipe.

“Men fight better when they’ve got a mate. They’ll stand anything when they’ve got a mate,” he went on again after a while. “But a mate’s not all that easy to strike. We’re a lot of decent chaps, stick at nothing once they wanted to put a thing through, in our lodge—and in my club. But there’s not one of them I feel’s quite up to me—if you know what I mean. Rattling good fellows—but nary one of ’em quite my cut.”

“That’s usually so,” laughed Somers.

“It is,” said Jack. Then he narrowed and diminished his voice. “Now I feel,” he said cautiously and intensely, “that if you and me was mates, we could put any damn mortal thing through, if we had to knock the bottom out of the blanky show to do it.”

Somers dropped his head. He liked the man. But what about the cause? What about the mistrust and reluctancy he felt? And at the same time, the thrill of desire. What was offered? He wanted so much. To be mates with Jack in this cause. Life and death mates. And yet he felt he couldn’t. Not quite. Something stopped him.

He looked up at Callcott. The other man’s face was alert and waiting: curiously naked a face too. Somers wished it had had even a moustache, anything rather than this clean, all–clean bare flesh. If Jack had only had a beard too—like a man—and not one of these clean–shaven too–much–exposed faces. Alert, waiting face—almost lurking, waiting for an answer.

“Could we ever be QUITE mates?” Somers asked gently.

Jack’s dark eyes watched the other man fixedly. Jack himself wasn’t unlike a kangaroo, thought Somers: a long–faced, smooth–faced, strangely watchful kangaroo with powerful hindquarters.

“Perhaps not as me and Fred Wilmot was. In a way you’re higher up than I am. But that’s what I like, you know—a mate that’s better than I am, a mate who I FEEL is better than I am. That’s what I feel about you: and that’s what makes me feel, if we was mates, I’d stick to you through hell fire and back, and we’d clear some land between us. I KNOW if you and me was mates, we could put any blooming thing through. There’d be nothing to stop us.”

“Not even Kangaroo?”

“Oh, he’d be our way, and we’d be his. He’s a sensible chap.” Somers was tempted to give Jack his hand there and then, and pledge himself to a friendship, or a comradeship, that nothing should ever alter. He wanted to do it. Yet something withheld him as if an invisible hand were upon him, preventing him.

“I’m not sure that I’m a mating man, either,” he said slowly.

“You?” Jack eyed him. “You are and you aren’t. If you’d once come over—why man, do you think I wouldn’t lay my life down for you?”

Somers went pale. He didn’t want anybody laying down their lives for him. “Greater love than this—.” But he didn’t want this great love. He didn’t BELIEVE in it: in that way of love.

“Let’s leave it, Jack,” he replied, laughing slowly and rising, giving his hand to the other man. “Don’t let us make any pledges yet. We’re friends, whatever else we are. As for being mates—wait till I feel sure. Wait till I’ve seen Kangaroo. Wait till I see my way clear. I feel I’m only six strides down the way yet, and you ask me to be at the end.”

“At the start you mean,” said Jack, gripping the other man’s hand, and rising too. “But take your time, old man.” He laid his hand on Somers’ shoulder. “If you’re slow and backward like a woman, it’s because it’s your nature. Not like me, I go at it in jumps like a kangaroo. I feel I could jump clean through the blooming tent–canvas sometimes.” As he spoke he was pale and tense with emotion, and his eyes were like black holes, almost wounds in the pallor of his face.

Somers was in a dilemma. Did he want to mix and make with this man? One part of him perhaps did. But not a very big part, since for his life he could not help resenting it when Jack put his hand on his shoulder, or called him “old man”. It wasn’t the commonness either. Jack’s “common” speech and manner was largely assumed—part of the colonial bluff. He could be accurate enough if he chose—as Somers knew already, and would soon know more emphatically. No, it was not the commonness, the vulgar touch in the approach. Jack was sensitive enough, really. And the quiet, well–bred appeal of upper–class young Englishmen, who have the same yearning for intimate comradeship, combined with a sensitive delicacy really finer than a woman’s, this made Somers shrink just the same. He half wanted to commit himself to this whole affection with a friend, a comrade, a mate. And then, in the last issue, he didn’t want it at all. The affection would be deep and genuine enough: that he knew. But—when it came to the point, he didn’t want any more affection. All his life he had cherished a beloved ideal of friendship—David and Jonathan. And now, when true and good friends offered, he found he simply could not commit himself, even to simple friendship. The whole trend of this affection, this mingling, this intimacy, this truly beautiful love, he found his soul just set against it. He couldn’t go along with it. He didn’t want a friend, he didn’t want loving affection, he didn’t want comradeship. No, his soul trembled when he tried to drive it along the way, trembled and stood still, like Balaam’s Ass. It did not want friendship or comradeship, great or small, deep or shallow.

It took Lovat Somers some time before he would really admit and accept this new fact. Not till he had striven hard with his soul did he come to see the angel in the way; not till his soul, like Balaam’s Ass, had spoken more than once. And then, when forced to admit, it was a revolution in his mind. He had all his life had this craving for an absolute friend, a David to his Jonathan, Pylades to his Orestes: a blood–brother. All his life he had secretly grieved over his friendlessness. And now at last, when it really offered—and it had offered twice before, since he had left Europe—he didn’t want it, and he realised that in his innermost soul he had never wanted it.

Yet he wanted SOME living fellowship with other men; as it was he was just isolated. Maybe a living fellowship!—but not affection, not love, not comradeship. Not mates and equality and mingling. Not blood–brotherhood. None of that.

What else? He didn’t know. He only knew he was never destined to be mate or comrade or even friend with any man. Some other living relationship. But what? He did not know. Perhaps the thing that the dark races know: that one can still feel in India: the mystery of lordship. That which white men have struggled so long against, and which is the clue to the life of the Hindu. The mystery of lordship. The mystery of innate, natural, sacred priority. The other mystic relationship between men, which democracy and equality try to deny and obliterate. Not any arbitrary caste or birth aristocracy. But the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority.

Before Somers went down to George Street to find Jack and to be taken by him to luncheon with the Kangaroo, he had come to the decision, or to the knowledge that mating or comradeship were contrary to his destiny. He would never pledge himself to Jack, nor to this venture in which Jack was concerned.

They arrived at Mr. Cooley’s chambers punctually. It was a handsome apartment with handsome jarrah furniture, dark and suave, and some very beautiful rugs. Mr. Cooley came at once: and he WAS a kangaroo. His face was long and lean and pendulous, with eyes set close together behind his pince–nez: and his body was stout but firm. He was a man of forty or so, hard to tell, swarthy, with short–cropped dark hair and a smallish head carried rather forward on his large but sensitive, almost shy body. He leaned forward in his walk, and seemed as if his hands didn’t quite belong to him. But he shook hands with a firm grip. He was really tall, but his way of dropping his head, and his sloping shoulders, took away from his height. He seemed not much taller than Somers, towards whom he seemed to lean the sensitive tip of his long nose, hanging over him as he scrutinised him sharply through his eye–glasses, and approaching him with the front of his stomach.

“Very glad to see you,” he said, in a voice half Australian, half official.

The luncheon was almost impressive: a round table with a huge bunch of violets in a queer old copper bowl, Queen Anne silver, a tablecloth with heavy point edging, Venetian wine–glasses, red and white wine in Venetian wine–jugs, a Chinaman waiting at table, offering first a silver dish of hors d’oeuvres and a handsome crayfish with mayonnaise.

“Why,” said Somers, equivocally, “I might be anywhere.”

Kangaroo looked at him sharply. Somers noticed that when he sat down, his thighs in his dark grey, striped trousers were very thick, making his shoulders seem almost slender; but though his stomach was stout, it was firm.

“Then I hope you feel at home,” said Kangaroo. “Because I am sure you are at home anywhere.” And he helped himself to olives, putting one in his queer, pursed, thick–lipped mouth.

“For which reason I’m never at home, presumably.”

“That may easily be the case. Will you take red or white wine?”

“White,” said Somers, oblivious of the poised Chinaman.

“You have come to a homely country,” said the Kangaroo, without the ghost of a smile.

“Certainly to a very hospitable one.”

“We rarely lock our doors,” said Kangaroo.

“Or anything else,” said Jack. “Though of course we may slay you in the scullery if you say a word against us.”

“I’m not going to be so indiscreet,” said Somers.

“Leave the indiscretion to us. We believe in it. Indiscretion is the better part of valour. You agree, Kangaroo?” said Jack, smiling over his plate directly at his host.

“I don’t think I’d care to see you turn discreet, boy,” returned the other. “Though your quotation isn’t new.”

“Even a crystal–gazer can’t gaze to the bottom of a deep well, eh? Never mind, I’m as shallow as a pie–dish, and proud of it. Red, please.” This to the Chink.

“That’s why it’s so nice knowing you,” said Kangaroo.

“And you, of course, are a glass finger–bowl with a violet floating on it, you’re so transparent,” said Jack.

“I think that describes me beautifully. Mr. Somers, help yourself to wine, that’s the most comfortable. I hope you are going to write something for us. Australia is waiting for her Homer—or her Theocritus.”

“Or even her Ally Sloper,” said Jack, “if I may be permitted to be so old–fashioned.”

“If I were but blind,” said Somers, “I might have a shot at Australian Homerics.”

“His eyes hurt him still, with looking at Sydney,” said Jack.

There certainly is enough of it to look at,” said Kangaroo.

“In acreage,” said Jack.

“Pity it spreads over so much ground,” said Somers.

“Oh, every man his little lot, and an extended tram–service.

“In Rome,” said Somers, “they piled up huge houses, vast, and stowed them away like grubs in a honeycomb.”

“Who did the stowing?” asked Jack sarcastically.

“We don’t like to have anybody overhead here,” said Kangaroo. “We don’t even care to go upstairs, because we are then one storey higher than our true, ground–floor selves.”

“Prop us up on a dozen stumps, and we’re cosy,” said Jack. “Just a little above the earth level, and no higher, you know. Australians in their heart of hearts hate anything but a bungalow. They feel it’s rock bottom, don’t you see. None of your stair–climbing shams and upstairs importance.”

“Good honest fellows,” said Kangaroo, and it was impossible to know if he were joking or not.

“Till it comes to business,” said Jack.

Kangaroo then started a discussion of the much–mooted and at the moment fashionable Theory of Relativity.

“Of course it’s popular,” said Jack. “It absolutely takes the wind out of anybody’s sails who wants to say “I’m IT.” Even the Lord Almighty is only relatively so and as it were.”

“How nice for us all,” laughed Somers. “It needed a Jew to lead us this last step in liberty.”

“Now we’re all little ITS, chirping like so many molecules one with another,” said Jack, eyeing the roast duck with a shrewd gaze.

The luncheon passed frivolously. Somers was bored, but he had a shrewd suspicion that the other two men really enjoyed it. They sauntered into the study for coffee. It was a smallish room, with big, deep leather chairs of a delicate brown colour, and a thick, bluey oriental carpet. The walls even had an upper panelling of old embossed cordovan leather, a bluish colouring with gilt, old and tarnished away. It was evident that law pays, even in a new country.

Everybody waited for everybody to speak. Somers, of course, knew it was not his business to begin.

“The indiscreet Callcott told you about our Kangaroo clubs,” said the host, smiling faintly. Somers thought that surely he had Jewish blood in him. He stirred his little gold coffee–cup slowly.

“He gave me a very sketchy outline.”

“It interested you?”

“Exceedingly.”

“I read your series of articles on Democracy,” said Kangaroo. “In fact they helped me to this attempt now.”

“I thought not a soul read them,” said Somers, “in that absurd international paper published at the Hague, that they said was run absolutely by spies and shady people.”

“It may have been. But I was a subscriber, and I read your essays here in Sydney. There was another man, too, writing on a new aristocracy. But it seemed to me there was too much fraternising in his scheme, too much reverence for the upper classes and passionate pity for the working classes. He wanted them all to be kind to one another, aristocrats of the spirit.” Kangaroo smiled slowly. And when he smiled like that, there came an exceedingly sweet charm into his face, for a moment his face was like a flower. Yet he was quite ugly. And surely, thought Somers, it is Jewish blood. The very best that is in the Jewish blood: a faculty for pure disinterestedness, and warm, physically warm love, that seems to make the corpuscles of the blood glow. And after the smile his face went stupid and kangaroo–like, pendulous, with the eyes close together above the long, drooping nose. But the shape of the head was very beautiful, small, light, and fine. The man had surely Jewish blood. And he was almost purely KIND, essential kindliness, embodied in an ancient, unscrupulous shrewdness. He was so shrewd, so clever. And with a rogue or a mean man, absolutely unscrupulous. But for any human being who showed himself sincere and vulnerable, his heart was pure in kindness. An extraordinary man. This pure kindliness had something Jehovah–like in it. And in every difficulty and every stress, he would remember it, his kindly love for real, vulnerable human beings. It had given his soul an absolute direction, whatever he said about relativity. Yet once he felt any man or woman was cold, mean, barren of this warmth which was in him, then he became at once utterly unscrupulous in defeating the creature. He was not angry or indignant. He was more like a real Jehovah. He had only to turn on all the levers and forces of his clever, almost fiendishly subtle will, and he could triumph. And he knew it. Somers had once had a Jewish friend with this wonderful, Jehovah–like kindliness, but also, without the shrewd fiendish subtlety of will. But it helped him to understand Cooley.

“Yes—I think the man sent me his book,” said Somers. “I forget his name. I only remember there was a feverish adulation of Lord Something–or–other, and a terrible cri du coeur about the mother of the people, the poor elderly woman in a battered black bonnet and a shawl, going out with sixpence ha’penny to buy a shillings–worth of necessaries for the home.”

“Just so,” said Kangaroo, smiling again. “No doubt her husband drank. If he did, who can wonder.”

“The very sight of her makes one want to shove her out of the house—or out of the world, for that matter,” said Somers.

“Nay,” said Jack. “She’s enjoying her misery, dear old soul. Don’t envy her bits of pleasures.

“Not envy,” laughed Somers. “But I begrudge them her.”

“What would you do with her?” asked Kangaroo.

“I wouldn’t do anything. She mostly creeps in the East End. where one needn’t bother about her. And she’s as much at home there as an opossum is in the bush. So don’t bother me about her.”

“Just so,” smiled Kangaroo. “I’d like to provide public kitchens where the children can get properly fed—and make the husband do a certain amount of state labour to pay for it. And for the rest, leave them to go their own way.”

“But their minds, their souls, their spirits?” said Somers.

“They must more or less look after them themselves. I want to keep ORDER. I want to remove physical misery as far as possible. That I am sure of. And that you can only do by exerting strong, just POWER from above. There I agree with you.”

“You don’t believe in education?”

“Not much. That is to say, in ninety per cent of the people it is useless. But I do want those ninety per cent none the less to have full, substantial lives: as even slaves had under certain masters and as our people hardly have at all. That again, I think, is one of your ideas.”

“It is,” said Somers. But his heart sank. “You want a kind of benevolent tyranny, then?”

“Not exactly. You see my tyrant would be so much circumscribed by the constitution I should establish. But in a sense, he would be a tyrant. Perhaps it would be nearer to say he would be a patriarch, or a pope: representing as near as possible the wise, subtle spirit of life. I should try to establish my state of Australia as a kind of Church, with the profound reverence for life, for life’s deepest urges, as the motive power. Dostoevsky suggests this: and I believe it can be done.”

“Perhaps it might be done here,” blurted Somers. “Every continent has its own way, and its own needs.”

“I agree,” said Kangaroo. “I have the greatest admiration for the Roman Catholic Church, as an institution. But the creed and the theology are not natural to me, quite. Not quite. I think we need something more flexible, and a power less formal and dogmatic; more generous, shall I say. A GENEROUS power, that sees all the issue here, not in the after–life, and that does not concern itself with sin and repentance and redemption. I should try to teach my people what it is truly to be a MAN, and a woman. The salvation of souls seems too speculative a job. I think if a man is truly a man, true to his own being, his soul saves itself in that way. But no two people can save their souls alive, in the same way. As far as possible, we must leave it to them. Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt.”

“I believe that too.”

“Yet there must be law, and there must be authority. But law more human, and authority much wiser. If a man loves life, and feels the sacredness and the mystery of life, then he knows that life is full of strange and subtle and even conflicting imperatives. And a wise man learns to recognize the imperatives as they arise—or nearly so—and to obey. But most men bruise themselves to death trying to fight and overcome their own new, life–born needs, life’s ever–strange new imperatives. The secret of all life is in obedience: obedience to the urge that arises in the soul, the urge that is life itself, urging us on to new gestures, new embraces, new emotions, new combinations, new creations. It is a subtle and conflicting urge away from the thing we are. And there lies the pain. Because man builds himself in to his old house of life, builds his own blood into the roads he lays down, and to break from the old way, and to change his house of life, is almost like tearing him to pieces: a sacrilege. Life is cruel—and above all things man needs to be reassured and suggested into his new issues. And he needs to be relieved from this terrible responsibility of governing himself when he doesn’t know what he wants, and has no aim towards which to govern himself. Man again needs a father—not a friend or a brother sufferer, a suffering Saviour. Man needs a quiet, gentle father who uses his authority in the name of living life, and who is absolutely stern against anti–life. I offer no creed. I offer myself, my heart of wisdom, strange warm cavern where the voice of the oracle steams in from the unknown; I offer my consciousness, which hears the voice; and I offer my mind and my will, for the battle against every obstacle to respond to the voice of life, and to shelter mankind from the madness and the evil of anti–life.”

“You believe in evil?”

“Ah, yes. Evil is the great principle that opposes life in its new urges. The principle of permanency, everlastingness is, in my opinion, the root of evil. The Ten Commandments which Moses heard were the very voice of life. But the tablets of stone he engraved them on are millstones round our necks. Commandments should fade as flowers do. They are no more divine than flowers are. But our divine flowers—look at those hibiscus—they don’t want to immortalise themselves into stone. If they turned into stone on my table, my heart would almost stop beating, and lose its hope and its joy. But they won’t. They will quietly, gently wither. And I love them for it. And so should all creeds, all gods, quietly and gently curl up and wither as their evening approaches. That is the only way of true holiness, in my opinion.”

The man had a beautiful voice, when he was really talking. It was like a flute, a wood–instrument. And his face, with that odd look of a sheep or a kangaroo, took on an extraordinary beauty of its own, a glow as if it were suffused with light. And the eyes shone with a queer, holy light, behind the eyeglasses. And yet it was still the kangaroo face.

Somers watched the face, and dropped his head. He sat feeling rebuked. He was so impatient and outrageous himself. And the steady loveliness of this man’s warm, wise heart was too much for him. He was abashed before it.

“Ah, yes,” Kangaroo re–echoed. “There is a principle of evil. The principle of resistance. Malignant resistance to the life principle. And it uses the very life–force itself against life, and sometimes seems as if it were absolutely winning. Not only Jesus rose from the dead. Judas rose as well, and propagated himself on the face of the earth. He has many children now. The life opposers. The life–resisters. The life–enemies. But we will see who wins. We will see. In the name of life, and the love of life, as man is almost invincible. I have found it so.”

“I believe it also,” said Somers.

They were silent, and Kangaroo sat there with the rapt look on his face: a pondering, eternal look, like the eternity of the lamb of God grown into a sheep. This rather wicked idea came into Somers’ mind: the lamb of God grown into a sheep. So the man sat there, with his wide–eyed, rapt face sunk forward to his breast, very beautiful, and as eternal as if it were a dream: so absolute.

A wonderful thing for a sculptor. For Kangaroo was really ugly: his pendulous Jewish face, his forward shoulders, his round stomach in its expensively tailored waistcoat and dark grey, striped trousers, his very big thighs. And yet even his body had become beautiful, to Somers—one might love it intensely, every one of its contours, its roundnesses and downward–drooping heaviness. Almost a grotesque, like a Chinese Buddha. And yet not a grotesque. Beautiful, beautiful as some half–tropical, bulging flower from a tree.

Then Kangaroo looked with a teasing little smile at Somers.

“But you have your OWN idea of power, haven’t you?” he said, getting up suddenly, with quick power in his bulk, and gripping the other man’s shoulder.

“I thought I had,” said Somers.

“Oh, you have, you have.” There was a calm, easy tone in the voice, slightly fat, very agreeable. Somers thrilled to it as he had never thrilled.

“Why, the man is like a god, I love him,” he said to his astonished self. And Kangaroo was hanging forward his face and smiling heavily and ambiguously to himself, knowing that Somers was with him.

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night”

he quoted in a queer, sonorous voice, like a priest. “The lion of your might would be a tiger, wouldn’t it. The tiger and the unicorn were fighting for the crown. How about me for a unicorn?—if I tied a bayonet on my nose?” He rubbed his nose with a heavy playfulness.

“Is the tiger your principle of evil?”

“The tiger? Oh dear, no. The jackal, the hyaena, and dear, deadly humanity. No, no. The tiger stands on one side of the shield, and the unicorn on the other, and they don’t fight for the crown at all. They keep it up between them. The pillars of the world! The tiger and the kangaroo!” he boomed this out in a mock heroic voice, strutting with heavy playfulness. Then he laughed, looking winsomely at Somers. Heaven, what a beauty he had!

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” he resumed, sing–song, abstracted. “I knew you’d come. Ever since I read your first book of poems—how many years is it ago?—ten?—eleven? I knew you’d come.

‘Your hands are five–branded flames—
Noli me tangere.’

Of course you had to come.”

“Well, here I am, anyhow,” said Somers.

“You are. You ARE!” shouted the other, and Somers was quite scared. Then Kangaroo laughed again. “Get up,” he said. “Stand up and let me look at you.”

The two men stood facing one another: Kangaroo large, with his full stomach and his face hulking down, and his queer, glaring eyes: Somers slight and aloof–looking. Cooley eyed him up and down.

“A little bit of a fellow—too delicate for rough me,” he said, then started quoting again:

‘Your hands are five–branded flames—
Noli me tangere.’

I’ve got fat and bulky on all the poetry I never wrote. How do you do, Mr. Somers? How do you like Australia, and its national animal, the kangaroo?” Again he smiled with the sudden glow of warmth in his dark eyes, startling and wonderful.

“Australia is a weird country, and it’s national animal is beyond me,” Somers said, smiling rather palely.

“Oh no, it isn’t. You’ll be patting it on the back as soon as you’ve taken your hands out of your pockets.”

He stood silent a long while, with feet apart, looking abstractedly at Somers through his pince–nez.

“Ah, well,” he sighed at last. “We shall see. We shall see. But I’m very glad you came. You understand what I mean, I know, when I say we are birds of the same feather. Aren’t we?”

“In some ways I think we are.”

“Yes. In the feathery line. When shall I see you again?”

“We are going back to the South Coast on Saturday.”

“Then let me see you to–morrow. Let me call for you at your house—and bring you back into town for dinner in the evening. May I do that?”

“Thank you,” said Somers.

“What does ‘thank you’ mean? Danke! No, thank you.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Somers.

“Don’t thank ME, man,” suddenly shouted the other. “I’m the one to do the thanking.”

Somers felt simple startled amazement at these sudden shouts—loud shouts, that you might almost hear in the street.

At last Jack and Somers left. Jack had felt it his business to keep quiet: he knew his chief. But now he opened his mouth.

“What do you think of Kangaroo?” he asked.

“I’m beyond thinking,” said Somers.

“I know, that’s how he leaves you when he makes a set at you. But he’s a rattling fine sort, he is. He puts a heart into you when your chest’s as hollow as an old mustard tin. He’s a wonder, is Kangaroo: and he keeps on being a wonder.”

“Yes, he’s certainly a wonder.”

“My, the brain the man has! I say, though, talking about tigers and kangaroos reminded me of a thing I once saw. It was up in the North. I was going along when I heard snarls out of some long buffalo grass that made my hair stand on end. I had to see what it was, though, so into the grass goes I. And there I saw a full–grown male kangaroo backed up against a tree, with the flesh of one leg torn clean from the bone. He was gasping, but he was still fighting. And the other was a great big cat, we call ’em tiger–cats, as big as a smallish leopard, a beauty—grey and black stripes, and straighter than a leopard. And before you could breathe, a streak of black and grey shot at the ’roo’s throat, seemed to twist in mid air—and the ’roo slipped down to the ground with his entrails ripped right out. I was so dumbfounded I took a step in the grass, and that great hulking cat stopped and lifted his face from his warm food that he’d started on without ever looking up. He stood over the ’roo for ten seconds staring me in the eyes. Then the skin wrinkled back from his snout, and the fangs were so white and clean as death itself, and a low growl came out of his ugly throat. “Come on, you swine,” it said as plain as words. I didn’t, you bet. I backed out of that beastly grass.

“The next one I saw was a dead one. And beside him lay the boss’ best staghound, that had been trained to tackling wild boars since he was a pup: dead as well. The cat had come fossicking round our camp on the Madden River.

“My gad, though, but the size of the brute, and muscle like you couldn’t find in any other beast. I looked at the claws on the pads. They’re as sharp as a lancet, and they’d tear the guts out of a man before he could squeak. It was good–bye ’roo, that time.”

“They put that yarn in the Bulletin. And some chap wrote and said it was a stiff ’un, and the wild cat must be descended from escaped tame cats, because this country has no pussy aboriginal of any sort. Couldn’t say myself, except I saw that tiger–cat, and it didn’t look much like the son of a homely tissey, either. Wonder what put the thing in my head. Perhaps Kangaroo’s fat belly.”

“He’s not so very fat,” said Somers.

“No, he’s not got what you’d call a corporation and a whole urban council in front of him. Neither is he flat just there, like you and me.”

Kangaroo arrived the next day at Torestin with a large bunch of violets in his hand: pale, expensive, late winter violets. He took off his hat to Harriet and bowed quite deep, without shaking hands. He had been a student at Munich.

“Oh, how do you do!” cried Harriet. “Please don’t look at the horrid room, we leave in the morning.”

Kangaroo looked vacantly around. He was not interested, so he saw nothing: he might as well have been blind.

“It’s a very nice room,” he said. “May I give you the violets? The poet said you liked having them about.”

She took them in her two hands, smelling their very faint fragrance.

“They’re not like English violets—or those big dark fellows in Italy,” he said. “But still we persuade ourselves that they ARE violets.”

“They’re lovely. I feel I could warm my hands over them,” she said.

“And now they’re quite happy violets,” he replied, smiling his rare, sweet smile at her. “Why are you taking the poet away from Sydney?”

“Lovat? He wants to go.”

“Lovat! What a good name to call him by!” He turned to Somers, looking at him closely. “May I call you Lovat?”

“Better that than ‘the poet’,” said Somers, lifting his nose slightly with aversion.

The other man laughed, but softly and happily.

“His muse he’s not in love with,” he murmured to himself.

“No, he prefers his own name,” said Somers.

“But supposing now,” said Kangaroo, as if alert and interested, “your name was Cooley: Benjamin Cooley—Ben, for short. You’d prefer even Kangaroo to that.”

“In Australia the kangaroo is the king of beasts,” said Somers.

“The kangaroo is the king of beasts,
Inviting the other ones out to feasts,”

sang the big man continuing: “Won’t you both come to dinner with the king of beasts? Won’t you come too, Mrs. Somers?”

“You know you only want Lovat, to talk your MAN’S stuff.”

“I’m not a man, I’m a kangaroo. Besides, yesterday I hadn’t seen you. If I had known, my dear Somers, that your wife, who is at this moment in her room hastily changing her dress, was such a beautiful person—I don’t say woman merely—I’d have invited you for her sake, and not for your own.”

“Then I wouldn’t have come,” said Somers.

“Hear them, what a haughty pair of individuals! I suppose you expect the king of beasts to go down on his knees to you, like the rest of democratic kings to their constituents. Won’t you get ready,” Mrs. Somers?”

“You are quite sure you want me to come?” said Harriet suspiciously.

“Why, if you won’t come, I shall ask Lovat—dear Lovat, by the happiest fluke in the world not Lovelace—to let me stay here to tea, dinner, or supper—that is, to the next meal, whatever name it may bear.”

At this Harriet disappeared to put on a proper dress.

“We will go as soon as you are ready,” called Kangaroo. “We can all squeeze into that automobile at your gate.”

When Harriet reappeared the men rose. Kangaroo looked at her with admiration.

“What a remarkably beautiful person you are,” he said. “But mind, I don’t say WOMAN. Dio liberi!” He scuttled hurriedly to the door.

They had a gay dinner. Kangaroo wasn’t really witty. But he had such an innocent charm, an extraordinary winsomeness, that it was much more delicious than wit. His presence was so warm. You felt you were cuddled cosily, like a child, on his breast, in the soft glow of his heart, and that your feet were nestling on his ample, beautiful “tummy”.

“I wonder you were never married,” said Harriet to him.

“I’ve been married several times,” he replied.

“Really!” she cried.

“First to Benny Cooley—then to immortal verse—after that to the law—once to a haughty lady—and now I’m wedded to my ideals. This time it is final. I don’t take another wife.”

“I don’t care about the rest. But were you ever married, really?”

“To a woman? A mere woman? Why yes indeed. A young Baroness too. And after seven months she told me she couldn’t stand me for another minute, and went off with Von Rumpeldorf.”

“Is it true?”

“Quite true.”

“And is there still a Mrs. Kangaroo?”

“Alas, no! Like the unicorn, the family knows no female.”

“But why couldn’t she stand you?” cried Harriet.

“Think of it now. Could ANY woman stand me?” he asked, with a slight shrug.

“I should have thought they’d have ADORED you,” she cried.

“Of course they do. They can’t stand me, though. And I thoroughly sympathize with them.”

Harriet looked at him thoughtfully.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You’re too much like Abraham’s bosom. One would feel nowhere.”

Kangaroo threw down his napkin and pushed back his chair and roared with laughter—roared and roared with laughter. The Chinese man–servant stood back perturbed. Harriet went very red—the dinner waited. Then suddenly he became quiet, looking comically at Harriet, and still sitting back from table. Then he opened his arms and held them outstretched, his head on one side.

“The way to nowhere,” he said, ironically.

She did not say any more, and he turned to the manservant.

“My glass is empty, John,” he said.

“Ah well,” he sighed, “if you please one woman you can’t please all women.”

“And you must please all women,” said Harriet, thoughtfully. “Yes, perhaps you must. Perhaps it is your mission.”

“Mission! Good God! Now I’m a fat missionary. Dear Mrs. Somers, eat my dinner, but don’t swallow ME in a mouthful. Eating your host for hors d’oeuvres. You’re a dangerous ogre, a Medusa with her hair under her hat. Let’s talk of Peach Melba. Where have you had the very best Peach Melba you ever tasted?”

After this he became quiet, and a little constrained, and when they had withdrawn for coffee, the talk went subduedly, with a little difficulty.

“I suppose your husband will have told you, Mrs. Somers, of our heaven–inspired scheme of saving Australia from the thieves, dingoes, rabbits, rats and starlings, humanly speaking.”

“No, he hasn’t told me. He’s only told me there was some political business going on.”

“He may as well put it that way as any other. And you advised him not to have anything to do with it?”

“No,” said Harriet, “I let him do as he likes.”

“Wonderful woman! Even the wind bloweth where it listeth.”

“So does he.”

“With your permission.”

“The wind has permission too,” said Harriet. “Everything goes by permission of something else, in this world.” But she went rather red.

“Bravo, a Daniel come to judgement!” Then his voice changed, became gentle and winning again. It was as if he had remembered to love her, in his way of love. “It’s not quite a political thing,” he said. “We want to take away the strain, the nervous tension out of life, and let folks be happy again unconsciously, instead of unhappy consciously. You wouldn’t say that was wrong, would you?”

“No,” she replied, rather unwilling.

“And if I have to be a fat old Kangaroo with—not an Abraham’s bosom, but a pouch to carry young Australia in—why—do you really resent it?”

Harriet laughed, glancing involuntarily at his lowest waistcoat button. It seemed such a true figure.

“Why should I resent it? It’s not my business.”

“Let it be your business just a little bit. I want your sympathy.”

“You mean you want Lovat?”

“Poor Lovat. Richard Lovat Somers! I do indeed want him. But just as much I want your sympathy.”

Harriet smiled enigmatically. She was being her most annoying. A look of almost vicious anger came over the man’s face as he leaned back in his chair, seeming to make his brows narrower, and a convulsion seemed to go through his belly. Then he recovered his calm, and seemed to forget. For a long time he lay silent, with a strange hypnotic stillness, as if he were thinking far away, quite far away. Both Harriet and Somers felt spellbound. Then from the distance came his small voice:

“Man that is born of woman is sick of himself. Man that is born of woman is tired of his day after day. And woman is like a mother with a tiresome child: what is she to do with him? What is she to do with him?—man, born of woman.

“But the men that are born like ants, out of the cold interval, and are womanless, they are not sick of themselves. They are full of cold energy, and they seethe with cold fire in the anthill, making new corridors, new chambers—they alone know what for. And they have cold, formic–acid females, as restless as themselves, and as active about the ant–hill, and as identical with the dried clay of the building. And the active, important, so–called females, and the active, cold–blooded, energetic males, they shift twig after twig, and lay crumb of earth upon crumb of earth, and the females deposit cold white eggs of young. This is the world, and the people of the world. And with their cold, active bodies the ant–men and the ant–women swarm over the face of the earth.

“And where then are the sons of men? Where are the sons of men, and man that is born of woman? Man that is born of woman is a slave in the cold, barren corridors of the ant–hill. Or if he goes out, the open spaces are but spaces between ant–hill and ant–hill. And as he goes he hears voices claiming him, saying: “Hello, here comes a brother ant.” And they hail him as a brother ant. And from this there is no escape. None. Not even the lap of woman.

“But I am a son of man. I was once a man born of woman. And by the warm heart of the mother that bore me, even if fifty wives denied me, I would still go on fighting with a warm heart to break down the ant–hill. I can fight them with their own weapons: the hard mandibles and the acid sting of the cold ant. But that is not how I fight them. I fight them with the warm heart. Deep calls to deep, and fire calls out fire. And for warmth, for the fire of sympathy, to burn out the ant heap with the heat of fiery, living hearts: that is what I stand for.

“And if I can make no one single woman happy, I will make none unhappy either. But if I can let out the real fire of happiness from the heart and bowels of man that is born of woman and woman that is born of man.” Then suddenly he broke off: “And whether I can or not, I LOVE them,” he shouted, in a voice suddenly become loud and passionate. “I love them. I LOVE you, you woman born of man, I do, and I defy you to prevent me. Fiery you are, and fiery am I, and fire should be friends with fire. And when you make me angry, with your jealousy and mistrust like the ants, I remember, I remind myself: “But see the beauty of the fire in her! And think how the ants have tortured her and filled her with fear and with horror!” And then the rage goes down again, and I know I love you, and I know that fire loves fire, and that therefore you love me. And I chalk up another mark against the ants, who have tortured you with their cold energy and their conscious formic–acid that stings like fire. And I love you because you’ve suffered from them as I have. And I love you because you and your husband cherish the fire between you, sacred, apart from the ants. A bas les fourmis.

“I have been like a man buried up to his neck in an ant–heap: so buried in the daily world, and stung and stung and stung again, because I wouldn’t change and grow cold, till now their poison is innocuous, and the formic–acid of social man has no effect on me. And I’ve kept my warmth. And I will keep it, till I give it up to the unknown, out of my poor fat body. And it is my banner, and my wife and my children and my God—just a flicker that is in my heart like a fire, and that I live by. I CAN’T speculate about God. I can’t do it. It seems to me a cold, antish trick. But the fire that is in my heart is God, and I will not forswear it, no, not if you offer me all the world. And fire is full of seeds—full of seeds—and let them scatter. I won’t cherish it on a domestic hearth. I say I won’t. So don’t bring that up against me. I won’t cherish it on the domestic hearth. I will use it against the ants, while they swarm over everything. And I’ll call fire to my fire, and set the ant–heap at last in a blaze. Like kerosene poured in. It shall be so. It shall be so. Don’t oppose me. Believe the flame in your heart, once and for all, and don’t oppose me. Believe the flame of your own heart, and be with me. Remember I am with you against the ants. Remember that. And if I am Abraham’s bosom—isn’t it better than no bosom, in a world that simmers with busy ants? And would you leave every young, warm, naked thing on the ground for the ants to find. Would you?”

He looked at her searchingly. She was pale, and moved, but hostile. He swung round in his chair, swinging his heavy hips over and lying sideways.

“Shall I tell you a thing a man told me. He had it from the lady’s own lips. It was when the Prince of Wales was in India just now. There had been a show—and then a dinner given by the governor of the town—some capital or other. The Prince sat next to the governor’s lady, and he was glum, silent, tortured by them all a bit beyond bearance. And the governor’s lady felt she ought to make conversation, ought to say something to the poor devil, just for the show’s sake and the occasion. So she COULDN’T think what to tell him that would interest him. Then she had a brilliant idea. ‘Do you know what happened to me last week?’ she said. ‘You’ve seen my adorable little Pekinese, Chu? She had puppies—four darling queer little things—tiny little creepy–crawlies. Of course we loved them. But in the night I thought I heard them crying—I wasn’t sure. But at last I went down. And what do you think! There was a swarm of white ants, and they were just eating up the last bits of them. Wasn’t it awful.’ The Prince went white as death. And just then an ant happened to come on the tablecloth. He took his glass and banged it over it, and never spoke another word all evening. Now that story was told by the woman herself. And this was what she did to a poor nerve–racked lad she was supposed to honour. Now I ask you, where was the living heart in her? She was an ant, a white ant, too.”

He rolled over in his chair, bitterly, with massive bitterness, turning his back on Harriet. She sat with a pale, blenched face, and tears in her eyes.

“How cruel!” she said. “But she must have been a fool.”

“Vile! Vile! No fool! Quite brilliant ant–tactics. There was warmth in the lad’s heart, and she was out to do HER bit of the quenching. Oh, she gave him her nip and sting. Ants, social ants. Social creatures! Cold—I’m as cold as they are when it comes to them. And as cunning, and QUITE as vicious. But that’s not what I care for. I want to collect together all the fire in all the burning hearts in Australia: that’s what I want. Collect the heart–fire, and the fire will be our fire. That’s what I do want; apart from all antics and ant–tricks. ‘We have lighted such a fire this day, Master Latimer.’ Yes, and we’ll light another. You NEEDN’T be with me if you don’t want to—if you’re frightened of losing your monopoly over your precious husband. Take him home then—take him home.”

And he rolled his back on her more than ever, finishing in a sudden gust of anger and weariness. He lay there rolled in his chair, a big, queer, heavy figure, with his face almost buried in the soft leather, and his big hips sticking out. Her face was quivering, wanting to cry. Then suddenly she broke into a laugh, saying rather shakily, venomously:

“Well, anyhow, you needn’t turn the wrong end of you at me quite so undisguisedly.”

“How do you know it IS the wrong end of me?” he said, sitting up suddenly and letting his head hang, scowling.

“Facon de parler,” she said, laughing rather stiffly.

Somers was silent, and kept silent till the end. He was thankful that Kangaroo was fighting the battle this time.

Their host sent them home in his motor–car. Neither of them had anything to say. Then, as Harriet shut the door of Torestin, and they were quite alone, she said:

“Yes, he’s right. I absolutely believe in him. I don’t care WHAT he does with you.”

“I do, though,” said Somers.

The next day they went to Mullumbimby. And the day after that, each of them wrote a letter to Kangaroo.

“Dear Kaiser Kangaroo,” began Harriet, “I must thank you very much for the dinner and the violets, which are still quite fresh and blue in Coo–ee. I think you were very horrid to me, but also very nice, so I hope you don’t think the worst of me. I want to tell you that I DO sympathize, and that I am awfully glad if I can be of any use to you in any way. I have a holy terror of ants since I heard you, but I know what you mean by the fire. Lovat will hand over my portion when he comes to see you. But I shall make myself into a Fire Brigade, because I am sure you will be kindling fires all over everywhere, under the table and in the clothes–cupboard, and I, poor domestic wretch, shall have to be rushing to put them out. Being only a poor domestic female, I really don’t feel safe with fires anywhere except in fire–places and in grates with hearths. But I do want you to know you have my sympathy—and my Lovat.” She then signed herself Harriet Somers, and felt even more fluttered than when she had signed the marriage register.

She received for answer:

“Dear Mrs. Somers: I am much honoured and very grateful for the assurance of your sympathy. I have put a one–and–sixpenny government stamp under your signature, to make your letter a legal document, and have further forged the signatures of two witnesses to your deed of gift of Lovat, so I am afraid there is no court of law in New South Wales in which you could now substantiate a further claim over him. I am sorry to take this mean advantage over you, but we lawyers know no scruples.

“I should be more than delighted if I could have the honour of entertaining once more in Sydney—say next Thursday—a beautiful person and remarkable woman (one and the same individual) who tells me to my nose that I am a Jew and that my name, instead of Benjamin, should be Abraham. Do please come again and call me Abraham’s Bosom, but don’t fail to bring your husband, for the simple look of the thing.”

“The Kangaroo is a fighting beast, I believe,” said Somers, looking at Harriet and laughing. He was not sorry when for once some other person gave her a dig.

“I think he’s rather foolish,” she said briefly.

These days Somers, too, was filled with fury. As for loving mankind, or having a fire of love in his heart, it was all rot. He felt almost fierily cold. He liked the sea, the pale sea of green glass that fell in such cold foam. Ice–fiery, fish–burning. He went out on to the low flat rocks at low tide, skirting the deep pock–holes that were full of brilliantly clear water and delicately–coloured shells and tiny, crimson anemones. Strangely sea–scooped sharp sea–bitter rock–floor, all wet and sea–savage. And standing at the edge looking at the waves, rather terrifying, rolling at him, where he stood low and exposed, far out from the sand–banks, and as he watched the gannets gleaming white, then falling with a splash like white sky–sparrows into the waves, he wished as he had never wished before that he could be cold, as sea–things are cold, and murderously fierce. To have oneself exultantly ice–cold, not one spark of this wretched warm flesh left, and to have all the terrific, ice energy of a fish. To surge with that cold exultance and passion of a sea thing! Now he understood the yearning in the seal–woman’s croon, as she went back to the sea, leaving her husband and her children of warm flesh. No more cloying warmth. No more of this horrible stuffy heat of human beings. To be an isolated swift fish in the big seas, that are bigger than the earth; fierce with cold, cold life, in the watery twilight before sympathy was created to clog us.

These were his feelings now. Mankind? Ha, he turned his face to the centre of the seas, away from any land. The noise of waters, and dumbness like a fish. The cold, lovely silence, before crying and calling were invented. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, as if it had relapsed away from speech altogether.

He did not care a straw what Kangaroo said or felt, or what anybody said or felt, even himself. He had no feelings, and speech had gone out of him. He wanted to be cold, cold, and alone like a single fish, with no feeling in his heart at all except a certain icy exultance and wild, fish–like rapacity. “Homo sum!” All right. Who sets a limit to what a man is? Man is also a fierce and fish–cold devil, in his hour, filled with cold fury of desire to get away from the cloy of human life altogether, not into death, but into that icily self–sufficient vigour of a fish.

CHAPTER 7. THE BATTLE OF TONGUES.

As a rule the jetty on its poles straddling a little way into the sea was as deserted as if it were some relic left by an old invader. Then it had spurts of activity, when steamer after steamer came blorting and hanging miserably round, like cows to the cowshed on a winter afternoon. Then a little engine would chuff along the pier, shoving a string of tip–up trucks, and little men would saunter across the sky–line, and there would be a fine dimness of black dust round the low, red ship and the end of the jetty. Luckily it was far enough away, so that Harriet need not fear for her beautiful white washing. She washed her linen herself for the sheer joy of it, and loved nothing so much as thinking of it getting whiter and whiter, like the Spenserian maid, in the sun and sea, and visiting it on the grass every five minutes, and finding it every time really whiter, till Somers said it would reach a point of whiteness where the colours would break up, and she’d go out and find pieces of rainbow on the grass and bushes, instead of towels and shirts.

“Shouldn’t I be startled!” she said, accepting it as quite a possible contingency, and adding thoughtfully: “No, not really.”

One of these afternoons when Somers was walking down on the sands, looking at the different shells, their sea–colours of pink and brown and rainbow and brilliant violet and shrimp–red, and when the boats were loading coal on the moderately quiet sea, he noticed the little engine standing steaming on the jetty, just overhead where he was going to pass under. Then his attention was drawn away to the men picking up the rounded, sea–smooth pebbles of coal in one little place where the beach was just a black slope of perfectly clean coal–pebbles: just like any other pebbles. There were usually some men, or women or children, picking here, putting the bigger pebbles of sea–coal into sacks. From the edge of the small waves Somers heard one man talking to another, and the English tones—unconsciously he expected a foreign language—and particularly the peculiar educated–artisan quality, almost a kind of uppishness that there is in the speech of Australian working men, struck him as incongruous with their picking up the coal–cobs from the shore. He watched them, in the chill of the shadow. Yes, they thought as much of themselves as anybody. But one was palpably a Welshman, and loved picking up something for nothing; and the other mixed his democratic uppishness with a queer lousy quality, like a bushranger. “They are ten times more foreign to me,” said Somers, “than Italian scoundrels, or even Indians. They are so FOREIGN to me. And yet their manner of life, their ordinary way of living is almost exactly what I was used to as a boy. Why are they so foreign to me?”

They silently objected to his looking, so he went on. He had come to the huge, high timbers of the tall jetty. There stood the little engine still overhead: and in the gloom among the timbers underneath water was dripping down from her, which gave Somers a distaste for passing just then. He looked up. There was the engine–driver in his dirty shirt and dirty bare arms, talking to another man. The other man saluted—and to Somers’ surprise it was William James. He stood quite still, and a surprised smile of recognition greeted the other man, who saluted.

“Why, what are you doing here?” called Somers.

William James came to the edge of the jetty, but could not hear, because of the noise of the sea. His face had that small, subtle smile that was characteristic of him, and which Somers was never quite sure of, whether it was really jeering or in a cunning way friendly.

“Won’t you come up a minute?” roared William James.

So Somers scrambled round up the banks, on to the railway track.

“I couldn’t come down for the moment,” said William James. “I’ll have to see the manager, then I’m off on this boat. We’re ready to go. You heard her blowing.”

“Where are you going? Back to Sydney.”

“Yes. I come down occasionally on this coal–business, and if I like I go back on the collier. The sea is quiet, and I needn’t wait for a train. Well, an’ how’re you gettin’ on, like? Pleased with it down here all by yourselves?”

“Very.”

“A bit lonely for you. I suppose you wouldn’t like to know the manager here—Mr. Thomas? He’s a decent chap—from South Wales originally.”

“No. I like it best when I don’t know anybody.”

“That’s a compliment for some of us. However—I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Jack tells me you saw Kangaroo. Made quite a fuss of you, I hear. I knew he would. Oh, Kangaroo knew all about you: all he wanted to know, anyhow. I say, if ye think of stoppin’ down here, you might get in a ton of coal. It looks as if this strike might come off. That Arbitration Board’s a fine failure, what?”

“As far as I can gather.”

“Oh, bound to be. Bound to be. They talk about scraps of paper, why, every agreement that’s ever come to in this country, you could wrap your next red herring in it, for all it’s worth.”

“I suppose it’s like Ireland, they don’t want to agree.”

“That’s about it. The Labour people want this revolution of theirs. What?”—and he looked at Somers with a long, smiling, sardonic leer, like a wink. “There’s a certain fact,” he continued, “as far as any electioneering success goes, they’re out of the running for a spell. What do you think of Trades Unions, one way and another?”

“I dislike them on the whole rather intensely. They’re just the nastiest profiteering side of the working man—they make a fool of him too, in my opinion.”

“Just my opinion. They make a fool of him. Wouldn’t it be nice to have them for bosses of the whole country? They very nearly are. But I doubt very much if they’ll ever cover the last lap—what?”

“Not if Kangaroo can help it,” said Somers.

“No!” William James flashed a quick look at him from his queer grey eyes. “What did you make of him then? Could you make him out?”

“Not quite. I never met anyone like him. The wonder to me is, he seems to have as much spare time for entertaining and amusing his guests, as if he had no work at all on hand.”

“Oh, that was just a special occasion. But he’s a funny sort of Saviour, isn’t he? Not much crown of thorns about him. Why, he’d look funny on a cross, what?”

“He’s no intention of being on one, I think,” said Somers stiffly.

“Oh, I don’t know. If the wrong party got hold of him. There’s many mites in a pound of cheese, they say.”

“Then I’ll toast my cheese.”

“Ha–ha! Oh yes, I like a bit of toasted cheese myself—or a Welsh rabbit, as well as any man.”

“But you don’t think they’d ever let him down, do you?—these Australians?”

“No–o,” said William James. “I doubt if they’d ever let him down. But if he happened to FALL down, you know, they’d soon forget him.”

“You don’t sound a very warm follower yourself.”

“Oh, warm isn’t my way, in anything. I like to see what I’m about. I can see that Kangaroo’s a wonder. Oh yes, he’s a world wonder. And I’d rather be in with him than anybody, if it was only for the sake of the spree, you know. Bound to be a spree some time—and before long, I should say, things going as they are. I wouldn’t like to be left out of the fun.”

“But you don’t feel any strong devotion to your leader?”

“Why, no; I won’t say it’s exactly strong devotion. But I think he’s a world wonder. He’s not quite the SHAPE of a man that I should throw away my eyes for, that’s all I mean.” Again William James looked at Somers with that long, perhaps mocking little smile in his grey eyes.

“I thought even his shape beautiful, when he talked to me.”

“Oh yes, it’s wonderful what a spell he can cast over you. But I’m a stuggy fellow myself, maybe that’s how it is I can’t ever quite see him in the same light as the thin chaps do. But that’s just the looks of the thing. I can see there isn’t another man in the world like him, and I’d cross the seas to join in with him, if only for the fun of the thing!”

“But what about the end of the fun?” asked Somers.

“Oh, that I don’t know. And nobody does, for that matter.”

“But surely if one believes—.”

“One believes a lot, and one believes very little, seems to me. Taking all in all, seems to me we live from hand to mouth, as far as beliefs go.”

“You never WOULD believe,” said Somers, laughing.

“Not till I was made to,” replied Jaz, twisting his face in his enigmatic smile.

Somers looked at the thick, stocky, silent figure in the well–made dark clothes that didn’t in the least belong to him. There was something about him like a prisoner in prison uniform, in his town clothes—and something of that in his bearing. A stocky, silent, unconquerable prisoner. And in his imprisoned soul another kind of mystery, another sort of appeal.

The two men stood still in the cold wind that came up the sands to the south–west. To the left, as they faced the wind, went the black railway track on the pier, and the small engine stood dribbling. On the right the track ran curiously black past a little farm–place with a corrugated iron roof, and past a big field where the stubble of maize or beans stood ragged and sere, on into the little hollow of bush, where the mine was, beyond the stagnant creek. It was curious how intensely black, velvety and unnatural, the railway–track looked on this numb coast–front. The steamer hooted again.

“Cold it is up here,” said Somers.

“It is cold. He’s coming now, though,” replied William James.

They stood together still another minute, looking down the pale sands at the foam and the dark–blue sea, the sere grass scattered with bungalows.

It was a strange, different bond of sympathy united them, from that that subsisted between Somers and Jack, or Somers and Kangaroo. Hardly sympathy at all, but an ancient sort of root–knowledge.

“Well, good–bye,” said Somers, wanting to be gone before the manager came up with the papers. He shook hands with William James—but as usual, Jaz gave him a slack hand. Their eyes met—and the look, something like a taunt, in Trewhella’s secretive grey eye, made Somers stiffen his back, and a kind of haughtiness flew into his soul.

“Different men, different ways, Mr. Trewhella,” he said.

William James did not answer, but smiled rather stubbornly. It seemed to Somers the man would be smiling that stubborn, taunting smile till the crack of doom.

“I told Mrs. Somers what I think about it,” said Jaz, with a very Cornish accent. “I doubt if she’ll ever do much more believin’ than I shall.” And the taunt was forked this time.

“She says she believes entirely in Kangaroo.”

“Does she now? Who did she tell it to?”

“Me.”

Trewhella still stood with that faint grin on his face, short and stocky and erect like a little post left standing. Somers looked at him again, frowning, and turned abruptly down the bank. The smile left the face of the Cornishman, and he just looked obstinate, indifferent, and curiously alone, as if he stood there all alone in the world. He watched Somers emerge on the sands below, and go walking slowly among the sea–ragged flat shelves of the coast–bed rocks, his head dropping, looking in the pools, his hands in his pockets. And the obstinate light never changed in the eyes of the watcher, not even when he turned to the approaching manager.

Perhaps it was this meeting which made Somers want to see Kangaroo once more. Everything had suddenly become unreal to him. He went to Sydney and to Cooley’s rooms. But during the first half hour, the revulsion from the First persisted. Somers disliked his appearance, and the kangaroo look made him feel devilish. And then the queer, slow manner of approach. Kangaroo was not really ready for his visitor, and he seemed dense, heavy, absent, clownish. It was that kangarooish clownishness that made a vicious kind of hate spring into Somers’ face. He talked in a hard, cutting voice.

“Whom can you depend on, in this world?” he was saying. “Look at these Australians—they’re awfully nice, but they’ve got no inside to them. They’re hollow. How are you going to build on such hollow stalks? They may well call them corn–stalks. They’re marvellous and manly and independent and all that, outside. But inside, they are not. When they’re QUITE alone, they don’t exist.”

“Yet many of them have been alone a long time, in the bush,” said Kangaroo, watching his visitor with slow, dumb, unchanging eyes.

“Alone, what sort of alone? Physically alone. And they’ve just gone hollow. They’re never alone in spirit: quite, quite alone in spirit. And the people who are are the only people you can depend on.”

“Where shall I find them?”

“Not here. It seems to me, least of all here. The Colonies make for OUTWARDNESS. Everything is outward—like hollow stalks of corn. The life makes this inevitable: all that struggle with bush and water and what–not, all the mad struggle with the material necessities and conveniences—the inside soul just withers and goes into the outside, and they’re all just lusty robust stalks of people.”

“The corn–stalks bear the corn. I find them generous to recklessness—the greatest quality. The old world is cautious and forever bargaining about its soul. Here they don’t bother to bargain.”

They’ve no soul to bargain about. But they’re even more full of conceit. What do you expect to do with such people. Build a straw castle?”

“You see I believe in them—perhaps I know them a little better than you do.”

“Perhaps you do. It’ll be cornstalk castle, for all that. What DO you expect to build on?”

“They’re generous—generous to recklessness,” shouted Kangaroo. “And I love them. I love them. Don’t you come here carping to me about them. They are my children, I love them. If I’m not to believe in their generosity, am I to believe in your cautious, old–world carping, do you think, I WON’T!” he shouted fiercely. “I WON’T. Do you hear that!” And he sat hulked in his chair glowering like some queer dark god at bay. Somers paused, and his heart failed.

“Then make me believe in them and their generosity,” he said dryly. “They’re nice. But they haven’t got the last everlasting central bit of soul, solitary soul, that makes a man himself. The central bit of himself. They all merge to the outside, away from the centre. And what can you do, PERMANENTLY, with such people? You can have a fine corn–stalk blaze. But as for anything permanent—.

“I tell you I HATE permanency,” barked Kangaroo. “The phoenix rises out of the ashes.” He rolled over angrily in his chair.

“Let her! Like Rider Haggard’s ‘She’, I don’t feel like risking it a second time,” said Somers, like the venomous serpent he was.

“Generous, generous men!” Kangaroo muttered to himself. “At least you can get a blaze out of them. Not like European wet matches, that will never again strike alight—as you’ve said yourself.”

“But a blaze for what? What’s your blaze for?”

“I don’t care,” yelled Kangaroo, springing with sudden magnificent swiftness to his feet, and facing Somers, and seizing him by the shoulders and shaking him till his head nearly fell off, yelling all the time: “I don’t care, I tell you, I don’t care. Where there’s fire there’s change. And where the fire is love, there’s creation. Seeds of fire. That’s enough for me! Fire, and seeds of fire, and love. That’s all I care about. Don’t carp at me, I tell you. Don’t carp at me with your old, European, damp spirit. If you can’t take fire, WE CAN. That’s all. Generous, passionate men—and you dare to carp at them. You. What have you to show?” And he went back to his chair like a great, sulky bear–god.

Somers sat rather stupefied than convinced. But he found himself again WANTING to be convinced, wanting to be carried away. The desire hankered in his heart. Kangaroo had become again beautiful: huge and beautiful like some god that sways and seems clumsy, then suddenly flashes with all the agility of thunder and lightning. Huge and beautiful as he sat hulked in his chair. Somers DID wish he would get up again, and carry him quite away.

But where to? Where to? Where is one carried to when one is carried away? He had a bitter mistrust of seventh heavens and all heavens in general. But then the experience. If Kangaroo had got up at that moment Somers would have given him heart and soul and body, for the asking, and damn all consequences. He longed to do it. He knew that by just going over and laying a hand on the great figure of the sullen god he could achieve it. Kangaroo would leap like a thunder–cloud and catch him up—catch him up and away into a transport. A transport that should last for life. He knew it.

But alas, it was just too late. In some strange way Somers felt he had come to the end of transports: they had no more mystery for him; at least this kind: or perhaps no more charm. Some bubble or other had burst in his heart. All his body and fibres wanted to go over and touch the other great being into a storm of response. But his soul wouldn’t. The coloured bubble had burst.

Kangaroo sat up and adjusted his eyeglasses.

“Don’t you run away with the idea, though,” he said, “that I am just an emotional fool.” His voice was almost menacing, and with a strange cold, intellectual quality that Somers had never heard before.

“I believe in the one fire of love. I believe it is the one inspiration of all creative activity. I trust myself entirely to the fire of love. This I do with my reason also. I don’t discard my reason. I use it at the service of love, like a sharp weapon. I try to keep it very sharp—and very dangerous. Where I don’t love, I use only my will and my wits. Where I love, I trust to love alone.” The voice came cold and static.

Somers sat rather blank. The change frightened him almost as something obscene. This was the reverse to the passionate thunder–god.

“But is love the only inspiration of creative activity?” he asked, rather feebly.

“This is the first time I have heard it questioned. Do you know of any other?”

Somers thought he did, but he was not going to give himself away to that sharp weapon of a voice, so he did not answer.

“IS there any other inspirational force than the force of love?” continued Kangaroo. “There is no other. Love makes the trees flower and shed their seed, love makes the animals mate and birds put on their best feather, and sing their best songs. And all that man has ever created on the face of the earth, or ever will create—if you will allow me the use of the word create, with regard to man’s highest productive activities.”

“It’s the word I always use myself,” said Somers.

“Naturally, since you know how to think inspiredly. Well then, all that man ever has created or ever will create, while he remains man, has been created in the inspiration and by the force of love. And not only man—all the living creatures are swayed to creation, to new creation, to the creation of song and beauty and lovely gesture, by love. I will go further. I believe the sun’s attraction for the earth is a form of love.”

“Then why doesn’t the earth fly into the sun?” said Somers.

“For the same reason. Love is mutual. Each attracts the other. But in natural love each tries at the same time to withhold the other, to keep the other true to its own beloved nature. To any true lover, it would be the greatest disaster if the beloved broke down from her own nature and self and began to identify herself with him, with his nature and self. I say, to any genuine lover this is the greatest disaster, and he tries by every means in his power to prevent this. The earth and sun, on their plane, have discovered a perfect equilibrium. But man has not yet begun. His lesson is so much harder. His consciousness is at once so complicated and so cruelly limited. This is the lesson before us. Man has loved the beloved for the sake of love, so far, but rarely, rarely has he CONSCIOUSLY known that he could only love her for her own separate, strange self: forever strange and a joyful mystery to him. Lovers henceforth have got to KNOW one another. A terrible mistake, and a self–delusion. True lovers only learn that as they know less, and less, and less of each other, the mystery of each grows more startling to the other. The tangible unknown: that is the magic, the mystery, and the grandeur of love, that it puts the tangible unknown in our arms, and against our breast: the beloved. We have made a fatal mistake. We have got to know so much ABOUT things, that we think we know the actuality, and contain it. The sun is as much outside us, and as eternally unknown, as ever it was. And the same with each man’s beloved: like the sun. What do the facts we know ABOUT a man amount to? Only two things we can know of him, and this by pure soul–intuition: we can know if he is true to the flame of life and love which is inside his heart, or if he is false to it. If he is true, he is friend. If he is wilfully false, and inimical to the fire of life and love in his own heart, then he is my enemy as well as his own.”

Somers listened. He seemed to see it all and hear it all with marvellous clarity. And he believed that it was all true.

“Yes,” he said, “I believe that is all true.”

“What is it then that you disbelieve?”

“I don’t quite believe that love is the one and only exclusive force or mystery of living inspiration. I don’t quite believe that. There is something else.”

Kangaroo looked at him for once overbearingly and with a sort of contempt.

“Tell me what it is,” he replied briefly.

“I am not very clear myself. And, you see, what I want to say, you don’t want to hear.”

“Yes, I do,” snapped Kangaroo.

“With your ears and your critical mind only.”

“Say it anyhow, say it.”

Richard sat feeling very stupid. The communicative soul is like the ass, you can lead him to the water, but you can’t make him drink.

“Why,” he said, “it means an end of us and what we are, in the first place. And then a re–entry into us of the great God, who enters us from below, not from above.”

Kangaroo sat bunched up like some creature watching round–eyed out of a darker corner.

“How do you mean, enters us from below?” he barked.

“Not through the spirit. Enters us from the lower self, the dark self, the phallic self, if you like.”

“Enters us from the phallic self?” snapped Kangaroo sharply.

“Sacredly. The god you can never see or visualise, who stands dark on the threshold of the phallic me.”

“The phallic you, my dear young friend, what is that but love?”

Richard shook his head in silence.

“No,” he said, in a slow, remote voice. “I know your love, Kangaroo. Working everything from the spirit, from the head. You work the lower self as an instrument of the spirit. Now it is time for the spirit to leave us again; it is time for the Son of Man to depart, and leave us dark, in front of the unspoken God: who is just beyond the dark threshold of the lower self, my lower self. There is a great God on the threshold of my lower self, whom I fear while he is my glory. And the spirit goes out like a spent candle.”

Kangaroo watched with a heavy face like a mask.

“It is time for the spirit to leave us,” he murmured in a somnambulist voice. “Time for the spirit to leave us.”

Somers, who had dropped his face, hiding it as he spoke, watched the other man from under his brows. Kangaroo, who still sat impassive, like a frozen, antagonised Buddha, gave himself a jerk of recovery.

“Ah well!” he sighed, with a weary, impatient, condescending sigh. “I was never able to follow mysticism and metaphysics. One of my many limitations. I don’t know what you mean.”

“But what is your ‘love’ but a mystical thing?” asked Richard indignantly.

“My love? Why, that is something I FEEL, as plain as toothache.”

“Well, so do I feel the other: and love has become like cardboard to me,” said Richard, still indignant.

“Like cardboard? Well, I don’t quite see love like cardboard, dear boy. For you ARE a dear boy, in spite of yourself. Oh yes, you are. There’s some demon inside you makes you perverse, and won’t let you be the dear, beautiful thing you are. But I’m going to exorcise that demon.”

Somers gave a short laugh, the very voice of the demon speaking.

“Oh yes I am,” said Kangaroo, in a steely voice. “I’m going to exorcise that demon, and release your beautiful Andromeda soul.”

“Try,” ejaculated Richard dryly, turning aside his face in distaste.

Kangaroo leapt to his feet and stood towering over the little enemy as if he would stoop over him and smother him in violent warmth and drive out the demon in that way. But Richard sat cold and withheld, and Kangaroo had not the power to touch him.

“I’m going to try,” shouted the lawyer, in his slightly husky roar. “You’ve made it my prerogative by telling me to try. I’m going to love you, and you won’t get away from that. I’m the hound of heaven after you, my boy, and I’m fatal to the hell hound that’s leading you. Do you know I love you?—that I loved you long before I met you?”

Richard, curled narrow in his chair like a snake, glanced up at the big man projecting over him. A sort of magnetic effusion seemed to come out of Kangaroo’s body, and Richard’s hand was almost drawn in spite of himself to touch the other man’s body. He had deliberately to refrain from laying his hand on the near, generous stomach of the Kangaroo, because automatically his hand would have lifted and sought that rest. But he prevented himself, and the eyes of the two men met. Kangaroo searched Lovat’s eyes: but they seemed to be of cloudy blue like hell–smoke, impenetrable and devilish. Kangaroo watched a long time: but the other man was the unchangeable. Kangaroo turned aside suddenly.

“Ah well,” he said. “I can see there is a beast in the way. There is a beast in your eyes, Lovat, and if I can’t conquer him then—then, woe betide you, my dear. But I love you, you see.”

“Sounds like a threat,” laughed Somers.

Kangaroo leaned and laid his hand gently on Lovat’s shoulder.

“Don’t say that,” his voice was small now, and very gentle. “I loved you before I knew you. My soul cries for you. And you hurt me with the demon that is in you.”

Richard became very pale, and was silent for some moments. The hand sank heavier, nearer, on his shoulder.

“You see,” said Somers, trying hard to be fair, “what you call my demon is what I identify myself with. It’s my best me, and I stick to it. I think love, all this love of ours, is a devilish thing now: a slow poison. Really, I know the dark god at the lower threshold—even if I have to repeat it like a phrase. And in the sacred dark men meet and touch, and it is a great communion. But it isn’t this love. There’s no love in it. But something deeper. Love seems to me somehow trivial: and the spirit seems like something that belongs to paper. I can’t help it—I know another God.”

The pressure of the hand became inert.

“But aren’t you merely inventing other terms for the same thing that I mean, and that I call love?” said Kangaroo, in a strange, toneless voice, looking aside.

“Does it seem to you that I am?” asked Lovat, gently and dispassionately.

The strange, great passionate cloud of Kangaroo still hung there, hovering over the pale, sharp isolation of Somers, who lay looking up. And then it seemed as if the glow and vibration left Kangaroo’s body, the cloud became grey and heavy. He sighed, and removed his hand, and turned away.

“Ah well?” he said. “Ah well!”

Somers rose, trembling now, and feeling frail.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“Yes, do go,” said Kangaroo.

And without another word Somers went, leaving the other man sunk in a great heap in his chair, as if defeated. Somers did not even pity him. His heart felt queer and cave–like and devoid of emotion.

He was spending the night at the Callcotts. Harriet, too, was there. But he was in no hurry to get back there. It was a clear and very starry night. He took the tram–car away from the centre of the town, then walked. As was always the case with him, in this country, the land and the world disappeared as night fell, as if the day had been an illusion, and the sky came bending down. There was the Milky Way, in clouds of star–fume, bending down right in front of him, right down till it seemed as if he would walk on to it, if he kept going. The pale, fumy drift of the Milky Way drooped down and seemed so near, straight in front, that it seemed the obvious road to take. And one would avoid the strange dark gaps, gulfs, in the way overhead. And one would look across to the floating isles of star–fume, to the south, across the gulfs where the sharp stars flashed like lighthouses, and one would be in a new way denizen of a new plane, walking by oneself. There would be a real new way to take. And the mechanical earth quite obliterated, sunk out.

Only he saw, on the sea’s high black horizon, the various reddish sore–looking lights of a ship. There they were—the signs of the ways of men—hot–looking and weary. He turned quickly away from the marks of the far–off ship, to look again at the downward slope of the great hill of the Milky Way. He wanted so much to get out of this lit–up cloy of humanity, and the exhaust of love, and the fretfulness of desire. Why not swing away into cold separation? Why should desire always be fretting, fretting like a tugged chain? Why not break the bond and be single, take a fierce stoop and a swing back, as when a gannet plunges like a white, metallic arrow into the sea, raising a burst of spray, disappearing, completing the downward curve of the parabola in the invisible underwater where it seizes the object of desire, then away, away with success upwards, back flashing into the air and white space? Why not? Why want to urge, urge, urge oneself down the causeways of desirous love, hard pavements of love? Even like Kangaroo. Why shouldn’t meeting be a stoop as a gannet stoops into the sea, or a hawk, or a kite, in a swift rapacious parabola downwards, to touch at the lowermost turn of the curve, then up again?

It is a world of slaves: all love–professing. Why unite with them? Why pander to them? Why go with them at all? Why not strike at communion out of the unseen, as the gannet strikes into the unseen underwater, or the kite from above at a mouse? One seizure, and away again, back away into isolation. A touch, and away. Always back, away into isolation. Why be cloyed and clogged down like billions of fish in water, or billions of mice on land? It is a world of slaves. Then why not gannets in the upper air, having two worlds? Why only one element? If I am to have a meeting it shall be down, down in the invisible, and the moment I re–emerge it shall be alone. In the visible world I am alone, an isolate instance. My meeting is in the underworld, the dark. Beneath every gannet that jumps from the water ten thousand fish are swimming still. But they are swimming in a shudder of silver fear. That is the magic of the ocean. Let them shudder the huge ocean aglimmer.

He arrived at Wyewurk at last, and found a little party. William James was there, and Victoria had made, by coincidence, a Welsh rarebit. The beer was on the table.

“Just in time,” said Jack. “As well you’re not half an hour later, or there might a’ been no booze. How did you come—tram?”

“Yes—and walked part of the way.”

“What kind of an evening did you have?” said Harriet.

He looked at her. A chill fell upon the little gathering, from his presence.

“We didn’t agree,” he replied.

“I knew you wouldn’t—not for long, anyhow,” she replied. “I don’t see you agreeing and playing second fiddle for long.”

“Do you see me as a fiddler at all?”

“I’ve seen you fiddling away hard enough many times,” retorted Harriet. “Why, what else do you do, all your life, but fiddle some tune or other?”

He did not reply, and there was a pause. His face was pale and very definite, as if it were some curious seashell.

“What did you get the wind up about, between you?” said Jack soothingly, pouring Somers a glass of beer.

“No wind. We’re only not the same pair of shoes.”

“I could have told you that before you went,” said Jaz with quiet elation in his tones.

Victoria looked at Somers with dark, bright eyes. She was quite fascinated by him, as an Australian bird by some adder.

“Isn’t Mr. Somers queer?” she said. “He doesn’t seem to mind a bit.”

Somers looked at her quickly, a smile round his eyes, and a curious, smiling devil inside them, cold as ice.

“Oh yes, he minds. Don’t take any notice of his pretence. He’s only in a bad temper,” cried Harriet. “I know him by now. He’s been in a temper for days.”

“Oh why?” cried Victoria. “I thought he was lovely this afternoon when he was here.”

“Yes,” said Harriet grimly. “Lovely! You should live with him.”

But again Victoria looked at his clear, fixed face, with the false smile round the eyes, and her fascination did not diminish.

“What an excellent Welsh rarebit,” he said. “If there were a little red pepper.”

“Red pepper?” cried Victoria. “There is!” And she sprang up to get it for him. As she handed it to him he looked into her dilated, dark bright eyes, and thanked her courteously. When he was in this state his voice and tone in speaking were very melodious. Of course it set Harriet on edge. But Victoria stood fluttering with her hands over the table, bewildered.

“What are you feeling for?” asked Jack.

She only gave a little blind laugh, and remembered that she was going to sit down. So she sat down, and then wondered what it was she was going to do after that.

“So you don’t cotton on to Kangaroo either?” said Jack easily.

“I have the greatest admiration for him.”

“You’re not alone there. But you don’t fall over yourself, loving him.”

“I only trip, and recover my balance for the moment.”

Jaz gave a loud laugh, across his cheese.

“That’s good!” he said.

“You trip, and recover your balance,” said Jack. “You’re a wary one. The rest of us falls right in, flop, and are never heard of again. And how did you part then?”

“We parted in mutual esteem. I said I would go, and he asked me please to do so as quickly as possible.”

Jack made round eyes, and even Jaz left off eating.

Did you QUARREL?” cried Harriet.

“Oh yes, violently. But, of course, not vulgarly. We parted, as I said, in mutual esteem, bowing each other out.”

“You ARE awful. You only went on purpose to upset him. I knew that all along. Why must you be so spiteful?” said Harriet. “You’re never happy unless you’re upsetting somebody’s apple–cart.”

“Am I doomed to agree with everybody, then?”

“No. But you needn’t SET OUT to be disagreeable. And to Mr. Cooley especially, who likes you and is such a warm, big man. You ought to be flattered that he CARES what you think. No, you have to go and try and undermine him. Ah—why was I ever pestered with such a viperish husband as you!” said Harriet.

Victoria made alert, frightened eyes. But Somers sat on with the same little smile and courteous bearing.

“I am, of course, immensely flattered at his noticing me,” he replied. “Otherwise, naturally, I should have resented being told to leave. As it was I didn’t resent it a bit.”

“Didn’t you!” cried Harriet. “I know you and your pretences. That is what has put you in such a temper.”

“But you remember I’ve been in a temper for days,” he replied calmly and gravely. “Therefore there could be no putting.”

“Oh, it only made you worse. I’m tired of your temper, really.”

“But Mr. Somers isn’t in a temper at all!” cried Victoria. “He’s nicer than any of us, really. Jack would be as angry as anything if I said all those things to him. Shouldn’t you, Jack?” And she cuddled his arm.

“You’d be shut up in the coal–shed for the night before you got half way through with it, if ever you started trying it on,” he replied, with marital humour.

“No, I shouldn’t either: or it would be the last door you’d shut on ME, so there. But anyhow you’d be in a waxy old temper.”

And she smiled at Somers as she cuddled her husband’s arm.

“If my hostess says I’m nice,” said Somers, “I am not going to feel guilty whatever my WIFE may say.”

“Oh yes, you do feel guilty,” said Harriet.

“Your hostess doesn’t find any fault with you at all,” cried Victoria. She was looking very pretty, in a brown chiffon dress. “She thinks you’re the nicest of anybody here, there.”

“What?” cried Jack. “When I’m here as well?”

“Whether you’re here or not. You’re not very nice to me to–night, and William James never is. But Mr. Somers is AWFULLY nice.” She blushed suddenly quite vividly, looking under her long lashes at him. He smiled a little more intensely to himself.

“I tell you what, Mrs. Somers,” said Jack. “We’d better make a swap of it, till they alter their opinion. You and me had better strike up a match, and let them two elope with one another for a bit.”

“And what about William James?” cried Victoria, with hurried, vivid excitement.

“Oh nobody need trouble themselves about William James,” replied that individual. “It’s about time he was rolling home.”

“No,” said Harriet, in answer to Jack. “I’m striking off no more matches, thank you. The game’s not worth the candle.”

“Why, maybe you’ve only struck on the rough side, you know,” said Jack. “You might strike on the smooth next time.”

“No,” said Harriet. “I’m going to bed, and leave you all to your striking and your bad tempers. Good–night!”

She rose roughly. Victoria jumped up to accompany her to her room. The Somers had had a room each in Torestin, so Victoria had put them each separately into a nice little room in her house.

“Is it right,” said Jack, “that you got the wind up to–night?”

“No,” said Somers. “At least we only quite lovingly agreed to differ. Nothing else.”

“I thought it would be like that,” said Jack. “He thinks the world of you, I can see that.”

William James stood ready to leave. He looked at Somers cunningly, as if reading into him with his light–grey, sceptical eyes.

“Mr. Somers doesn’t care to commit himself so easily,” he said.

“No,” said Jack. “You blighters from the old country are so mighty careful of risking yourselves. That’s what I’m not. When I feel a thing I jump up and go for it, and damn the consequences. There’s always plenty of time to think about a thing after you’ve done it. And then if you’re fool enough to wish you hadn’t done it, why, that shows you SHOULDN’T have. I don’t go in for regrets, myself. I do what I want. And if I wanted to do a thing, then it’s ALL RIGHT when it’s done. All a man’s got to do is to keep his mouth shut and his fist ready, and go down on his knees to NOTHING. Then he can damn well do as he pleases. And all he asks is that other folks shall do as they please, men or women. Damn all this careful stunt. I’ll step along as far as the tram with you, Jaz, I feel like walking the Welsh rabbit down into his burrow. Vicky prefers Mr. Somers to me pro tem.—and I don’t begrudge it her. Why should I?”

Victoria was putting away the dishes, and seemed not to hear. The two men went. Somers still sat in his chair. He was truly in a devil of a temper, with everybody and everything: a wicked, fiendish mood that made him LOOK quite handsome, as fate would have it. He had heard Jack’s hint. He knew Victoria was attracted to him: that she imagined no nonsense about love, she was too remote from the old world, and too momentary for that. The moment—that was all her feelings were to her. And at this moment she was fascinated, and when she said, in her slightly contralto voice:

“You’re not in a temper with ME, though, are you Mr. Somers?” she was so comely, like a maiden just ready for love, and like a comely, desirous virgin offering herself to the wayfarer, in the name of the god of bright desire, that Somers stretched out his hand and stroked her hot cheek very delicately with the tips of his fingers, replying:

“I could never be angry with you. You’re much too winsome.”

She looked at him with her dark eyes dilated into a glow, a glow of offering. He smiled faintly, rising to his feet, and desire in all his limbs like a power. The moment—and the power of the moment. Again he felt his limbs full of desire, like a power. And his days of anger seemed to culminate now in this moment, like bitter smouldering that at last leaps into flame. Not love—just weapon–like desire. He knew it. The god Bacchus. Iacchos! Iacchos! Bacchanals with weapon hands. She had the sacred glow in her eyes. Bacchus, the true Bacchus. Jack would not begrudge the god. And the fire was very clean and steely, after the smoke. And he felt the velvety fire from her face in his finger–tips.

And still his old stubborn self intervened. He decided almost involuntarily. Perhaps it was fear.

“Good–night,” he said to her. “Jack will be back in a moment. You look bonnie to–night.”

And he went to his room. When he had shut the door, he wondered if it was merely a sort of cowardice. Honour? No need as far as Jack was concerned, apparently. And Harriet? She was too honest a female. She would know that the dishonour, as far as she felt it, lay in the desire, not in the act. For her, too, honour did not consist in a pledged word kept according to pledge, but in a genuine feeling faithfully followed. He had not to reckon with honour there.

What then? Why not follow the flame, the moment sacred to Bacchus? Why not, if it was the way of life? He did not know why not. Perhaps only old moral habit, or fear, as Jack said, of committing himself. Perhaps only that. It was Victoria’s high moment; all her high moments would have this Bacchic, weapon–like momentaneity: since Victoria was Victoria. Why then deny it?

The pagan way, the many gods, the different service, the sacred moments of Bacchus. Other sacred moments: Zeus and Hera, for example, Ares and Aphrodite, all the great moments of the gods. Why not know them all, all the great moments of the gods, from the major moment with Hera to the swift short moments of Io or Leda or Ganymede? Should not a man know the whole range? And especially the bright, swift, weapon–like Bacchic occasion, should not any man seize it when it offered?

But his heart of hearts was stubbornly puritanical. And his innermost soul was dark and sullen, black with a sort of scorn. These moments bred in the head and born in the eye: he had enough of them. These flashes of desire for a visual object would no longer carry him into action. He had no use for them. There was a downslope into Orcus, and a vast, phallic, sacred darkness, where one was enveloped into the greater god as in an Egyptian darkness. He would meet there or nowhere. To the visual travesty he would lend himself no more.

Pondering and turning recklessly he heard Jack come back. Then he began to doze. He did not sleep well in Australia, it seemed as if the aboriginal daimon entered his body as he slept, to destroy its old constitution. Sleep was almost pain, and too full of dreams. This night he woke almost at once from a vivid little dream. The fact of the soonness troubled him too, for at home he never dreamed till morning.

But the dream had been just this. He was standing in the living room at Coo–ee, bending forward doing some little thing by the couch, perhaps folding the newspaper, making the room tidy at the last moment before going to bed, when suddenly a violent darkness came over him, he felt his arms pinned, and he heard a man’s voice speaking mockingly behind him, with a laugh. It was as if he saw the man’s face too—a stranger, a rough, strong sort of Australian. And he realised with horror: “Now they have put a sack over my head, and fastened my arms, and I am in the dark, and they are going to steal my little brown handbag from the bedroom, which contains all the money we have.” The shock of intense reality made him fight his way out of the depths of the first sleep, but it was some time before he could really lay hold of facts, like: “I am not at Coo–ee. I am not at Mullumbimby. I am in Sydney at Wyewurk, and the Callcotts are in the next room.” So he came really awake. But if the thing had really happened, it could hardly have happened to him more than in this dream.

In the morning they were returning to the South Coast. But Jack said to Somers, a little sarcastically:

“You aren’t altogether pleased with us, then?”

Somers hesitated before replying:

“I’m not altogether pleased with myself, am I?”

“You don’t have to be so particular, in this life,” said Jack.

“I may have to be.”

“You can’t have it all perfect beforehand, you know. You’ve got to sink a few times before you can swim.”

“Sink in what?”

“Why, it seems to me you want to have a thing all ready in your hand, know all about it, before you’ll try it. And there’s some things you can’t do that with. You’ve just got to flop into them, like when you chuck a dog into water.”

Somers received this rebuke rather sourly. This was the first wintry day they had really had. There was a cold fog in Sydney in the morning, and rain in the fog. In the hills it would be snow—away in the Blue Mountains. But the fog lifted, and the rain held off, and there was a wash of yellowish sunshine.

Harriet of course had to talk to a fellow–passenger in the train, because Lovat was his glummest. It was a red–moustached Welshman with a slightly injured look in his pale blue eyes, as if everything hadn’t been as good to him as he thought it ought, considering his merit. He said his name was Evans, and he kept a store. He had been sixteen years in the country.

And is it VERY hot in the summer?” said Harriet. “I suppose it is.”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s very hot. I’ve known the days when I’ve had to lie down at two o’clock in the afternoon, and not been able to move. Overpowered, that’s what it is, overpowered.”

Harriet was suitably impressed, having tried heat in India.

“And do you think it takes one long to get used to this country?” she asked after a while.

“Well, I should say it takes about four or five years for your blood properly to thin down. You can’t say you’ve begun, under two years.”

“Four or five years!” re–echoed Harriet. But what she was really turning over in her mind was this phrase: “For your blood to thin down.” To thin down! how queer! Lovat also heard the sentence, and realized that his blood took this thinning very badly, and still about four years of simmering ahead, apparently, if he stayed in this country. And when the blood had finished its thinning, what then? He looked at Mr. Evans, with the sharp pale nose and the reddish hair and the injured look in his pale–blue eyes. Mr. Evans seemed to find it sweet still to talk to people from the “old country”. “You’re from the old country?”—the inevitable question. The thinning down had left him looking as if he felt he lacked something. Yet he wouldn’t go back to South Wales. Oh no, he wouldn’t go back.

“The blood is thinner out here than in the old country.” The Australians seemed to accept this as a scientific fact. Richard felt he didn’t want his blood thinned down to the Australian constituency. Yet no doubt in the night, in his sleep, the metabolic change was taking place fast and furious.

It was raining a little in the late afternoon when Somers and Harriet got back to Coo–ee. With infinite relief she stepped across her own threshold.

“Ah!” she said, taking a long breath. “Thank God to be back.” She looked round, and went to rearrange on the sofa the cushions that they had whacked so hard to get the dust out.

Somers went to the edge of the grass to be near the sea. It was raving in long, rasping lines of hissing breakers—not very high ones, but very long. The sky hung grey, with veils of dark rain out to sea, and in the south a blackness of much rain blowing nearer in the wind. At the end of the jetty, in the mist of the sea–wind’s spray, a long, heavy coal–steamer was slowly toiling to cast loose and get away. The waves were so long and the current so strong, they would hardly let her turn and get clear of the misty–black jetty.

Under the dark–grey sky the sea looked bright, but coldly bright, with its yellow–green waves and its ramparts of white foam. There were usually three white ramparts, one behind the other, of rasping surf: and sometimes four. Then the long swish and surge of the shoreward wash. The coast was quite deserted: the steep sand wet as the backwash slid away: the rocks wet with rain: the low, long black steamer still laboured in the fume of the wind, indistinctly.

Somers turned indoors, and suddenly began taking off his clothes. In a minute he was running naked in the rain which fell with lovely freshness on his skin. Ah, he felt so stuffy after that sort of emotional heat in town. Harriet in amazement saw him whitely disappearing over the edge of the low cliff–bank, and came to the edge to look.

He ran quickly over the sands, where the wind blew cold but velvety, and the raindrops fell loosely. He walked straight into the fore–wash, and fell into an advancing ripple. At least it looked a ripple, but was enough to roll him over so that he went under and got a little taste of the Pacific. Ah, the fresh cold wetness!—the fresh cold wetness! The water rushed in the back–wash and the sand melted under him, leaving him stranded like a fish. He turned again to the water. The walls of surf were some distance off, but near enough to look rather awful as they raced in high white walls shattering towards him. And above the ridge of the raving whiteness the dimness of the labouring steamer, as if it were perched on a bough.

Of course he did not go near the surf. No, the last green ripples of the broken swell were enough to catch him by the scruff of the neck and tumble him rudely up the beach, in a pell–mell. But even the blow did one good, as the sea struck one heavily on the back, if one were fleeing; full on the chest, if one were advancing.

It was raining quite heavily as he walked out, and the skies hung low over the sea, dark over the green and white vigour of the ocean. The shore was so foam–white it almost suggested sun. The rain felt almost warm.

Harriet came walking across the grass with a towel.

“What a good idea!” she said. “If I’d known I’d have come. I wish I had.”

But he ignored the towel, and went into the little wash–place and under the shower, to wash off the sticky, strong Pacific. Harriet came along with the towel, and he put his hand to her face and nodded to her. She knew what he meant, and went wondering, and when he had rubbed the wet off himself he came to her.

To the end she was more wondering than anything. But when it was the end, and the night was falling outside, she laughed and said to him:

“That was done in style. That was chic. Straight from the sea, like another creature.”

Style and chic seemed to him somewhat ill suited to the occasion, but he brought her a bowl of warm water and went and made the tea. The wind was getting noisier, and the sea was shut out but still calling outside the house. They had tea and toast and quince jam, and one of the seven brown teapots with a bit off the spout shone quite nicely and brightly at a corner of the little red–and–white check tea–cloth, which itself occupied a corner of the big, polished jarrah table. But, thank God, he felt cool and fresh and detached, not cosy and domestic. He was so thankful not to be feeling cosy and “homely”. The room felt as penetrable to the outside influence as if it were a sea–shell lying on the beach, cool with the freshness and insistence of the sea, not a snug, cosy box to be secured inside.

And Jack Callcott’s rebuke stuck in his throat. Perhaps after all he was just a Pommy, prescribing things with overmuch emphasis, and wanting to feel God–Almighty in the face of unborn events. A Pommy is a newcomer in Australia, from the Old Country.

Teacher: Why did you hit him, Georgie?

Georgie: Please miss, he called me a Pommy.

Aussie (with a discoloured eye): Well, you’re one, ain’cher? Can I help it that ch’are one?

Pommy is supposed to be short for pomegranate. Pomegranate, pronounced invariably pommygranate, is a near enough rhyme to immigrant, in a naturally rhyming country. Furthermore, immigrants are known in their first months, before their blood “thins down,” by their round and ruddy cheeks. So we are told. Hence again, pomegranate, and hence Pommy. Let etymologists be appeased: it is the authorised derivation.

Perhaps, said Somers to himself, I am just a Pommy and a fool. If my blood had thinned down, I shouldn’t make all this fuss over sharing in with Kangaroo or being mates with Jack Callcott. If I am not a ruddy Pommy, I am a green one. Of course they take the thing as it comes to them, and they expect me to do the same. Yet there I am hopping and hissing like a fish in a frying–pan. Putting too much “soul” into it. Far too much. When your blood has thinned down, out here, there’s nothing but the merest sediment of a soul left, and your wits and your feelings are clear of it. You take things as they come, as Jack says. Isn’t that the sanest way to take them, instead of trying to drive them through the exact hole in the hedge that you’ve managed to poke your head through? Oh, you unlearn a lot as your blood thins down. But there’s an awful lot to be unlearnt. And when you’ve unlearnt it, you never say so. In the first place, because it’s dead against the sane old British tradition. And in the second place, because you don’t really care about telling what you feel, once your blood has thinned down and is clear of soul.

“Thin, you Australian burgundy,” said Somers to his own body, when he caught a glimpse of it unawares, reflected in the glass as he was going to bed. “You’re thin enough as a bottle, but the wine needs a lot of maturing. I’ve made a fool of myself latterly.”

Yet he said to himself: “Do I want my blood to thin down like theirs?—that peculiar emptiness that is in them, because of the thinning that’s gone out of them? Do I want this curious transparent blood of the antipodes, with its momentaneous feelings, and its sort of ABSENTNESS? But of course till my blood has thinned down I shan’t see with their eyes. And how in the name of heaven is this world–brotherhood mankind going to see with one eye, eye to eye, when the very blood is of different thickness on different continents, and with the difference in blood, the inevitable psychic difference? Different vision!”

CHAPTER 8. VOLCANIC EVIDENCE.

Richard Lovat Somers registered a new vow: not to take things with too overwhelming an amount of emotional seriousness, but to accept everything that came along with a certain sang froid, and not to sit frenziedly in judgment before he had heard the case. He had come to the end of his own tether, so why should he go off into tantrums if other folks strayed about with the broken bits of their tethers trailing from their ankles? Is it better to be savagely tugging at the end of your rope, or to wander at random tetherless? Matter of choice!

But the day of the absolute is over, and we’re in for the strange gods once more. “But when you get to the end of your tether you’ve nothing to do but die”—so sings an out–of–date vulgar song. But is it so? Why not all? When you come to the end of your tether you break the rope. When you come to the end of the lane you straggle on into the bush and beat about till you find a new way through, and no matter if you raise vipers or goannas or wallabies, or even only a stink. And if you see a man beating about for a new track you don’t immediately shout, “Perverted wretch!” or “Villain!” or “Vicious creature!” or even merely “The fool,” or mildly: “Poor dear!” You have to let him try. Anything is better than stewing in your own juice, or grinding at the end of your tether, or tread–milling away at a career. Better a “wicked creature” any day, than a mechanical tread–miller of a careerist. Better anything on earth than the millions of human ants.

In this way Mr. Somers had to take himself to task, for his Pommy stupidity and his pommigrant superiority, and kick himself rather severely, looking at the ends of the tether he presumed he had just broken. Why should people who are tethered to a post be so God–Almighty puffed up about their posts? It seems queer. Yet there they are, going round and round at the ends of their tethers, and being immensely sniffy about the people who stray loose trailing the broken end of their old rope, and looking for a new way through the bush. Yet so men are. They will set up inquisitions and every manner of torture chamber to COMPEL people to refrain from breaking their tethers. But once man has broken any old particular hobble–line, not God Himself can safely knot it together again.

Somers now left off standing on his head in front of the word love, and looking at it calmly, decided he didn’t care vastly either way. Harriet had on her dressing–table tray a painted wooden heart, painted red with dots round it, a Black Forest trifle which she had bought in Baden–Baden for a penny. On it was the motto:

Dem Mutigen gehort die Welt.

That was the motto to have on one’s red heart: not Love or Hope or any of those aspiring emotions: “The world belongs to the courageous.” To be sure, it was a rather two–edged motto just now for Germany. And Somers was not quite sure that it was the “world” that he wanted.

Yes it was. Not the tuppenny social world of present mankind: but the genuine world, full of life and eternal creative surprises, including of course destructive surprises: since destruction is part of creation. Somers did want the world. He did want to take it away from all the teeming human ants, human slaves, and all the successful, empty careerists. He wanted little that the present society can give. But the lovely other world that is in spite of the social man of to–day: that he wanted, to clear it, to free it.—Freedom! Not for this subnormal slavish humanity of democratic antics. But for the world itself, and the Mutigen.

Mut! Muth! A good word. Better even than “courage”. Virtue, virtus, manliness. Mut—manliness. Not braggaccio or insolence. De l’audace, at de l’audace, at encore de l’audace! Danton’s word. But it was more than daring. It was Mut, profound manliness, that is not afraid of anything except of being cowardly or barren.

Dem Mutigen gehort die Welt.
To the manly brave belongs the world.

Somers wrote to Kangaroo, and enclosed the red wooden heart, which had a little loop of ribbon so that it could be hung on the wall.

“Dear Kangaroo—I send you my red heart (never mind that it is wood, the wood once lived and was the tree of life) with its motto. I hope you will accept it, after all my annoying behaviour. It is not the love, but the Mut that I believe in, and join you in. Love may be an ingredient in Mut, so you have it all your own way. Anyhow, I send you my red motto–heart, and if you don’t want it you can send it back—I will be your follower, in reverence for your virtue—Virtus. And you may command me.”

The following day came the answer, in Kangaroo’s difficult scrawl:

“Dear Lovat—Love is in your name, notwithstanding. I accept the red heart gladly, and when I win, I will wear it for my Order of Merit, pinned on my swelling chest.

“But you are the one person in the world I can never command. I knew it would be so. Yet I am unspeakably glad to have your approval, and perhaps your allegiance.

“Come and see me as soon as it is your wish to do so: I won’t invite you, lest worse befall me. For you are either a terrible disappointment to me, or a great blessing in store. I wait for you.”

Somers also wrote to Jack, to ask him to come down with Victoria for the week–end. But Jack replied that he couldn’t get away this week–end, there was so much doing. Somers then invited him for the following one.

The newspapers were at this time full of the pending strike of coal–miners and shearers: that is, the Australian papers. The European papers were in a terrific stew about finance, and the German debt, and the more imposing Allied debt to America. Bolshevism, Communism, Labour, had all sunk into a sort of insignificance. The voice of mankind was against them for the time being, not now in hate and fear, as previously, but in a kind of bitter contempt: the kind of feeling one has when one has accepted a glib individual as a serious and remarkable man, only to find that he is a stupid vulgarian. Communism was a bubble that would never even float free and iridescent from the nasty pipe of the theorist.

What then? Nothing evident. There came dreary and fatuous letters from friends in England, refined young men of the upper middle–class writing with a guarded kind of friendliness, gentle and sweet, of course, but as dozy as ripe pears in their laisser aller heaviness. That was what it amounted to: they were over–ripe, they had been in the sun of prosperity too long, and all their tissues were soft and sweetish. How could they react with any sharpness to any appeal on earth? They wanted just to hang against the warmest wall they could find, as long as ever they could, till some last wind of death or disturbance shook them down into earth, mushy and overripe. A sardonic letter from a Jewish friend in London, amusing but a bit dreadful. Letters from women in London, friendly but irritable. “I have decided I am a comfort–loving conventional person, with just a dash of the other thing to keep me fidgety”—then accounts of buying old furniture, and gossip about everybody: “Verden Grenfel in a restaurant with TWO bottles of champagne, so he must be affluent just now.” A girl taking her honeymoon trip to Naples by one of the Orient boats, third class: “There are 800 people on board, but room for another 400, so that on account of the missing 400 we have a six–berth cabin to ourselves. It is a bit noisy and not luxurious, but clean and comfortable, and you can imagine what it is to me, to be on the glorious sea, and to go ashore at wonderful Gibraltar, and to see the blue hills of Spain in the distance. Frederick is struggling with a mass of Italian irregular verbs at the moment.” And in spite of all Somers’ love of the Mediterranean, the thought of sitting on a third class deck with eight hundred emigrants, including babies, made him almost sick. “The glorious sea—wonderful Gibraltar.” It takes quite a good eyesight even to SEE the sea from the deck of a liner, let alone out of the piled mass of humanity on the third–class deck. A letter from Germany, about a wedding and a pending journey into Austria and friends, written with a touch of philosophy that comes to a man when he’s fallen down and bumped himself, and strokes the bruise. A cheque for fifteen pounds seventeen shillings and fourpence, from a publisher: “Kindly acknowledge.” A letter from a farming friend who had changed places: “A Major Ashworth has got the farm, and has spent about 600 pounds putting it in order. He has started as a poultry–farm, but has had bad luck in losing 400 chicks straight away, with the cold weather. I hope our spell of bad luck doesn’t still hang over the place. I wish you would come back to England for the summer. Viv talks of getting a caravan, and then we might get two. Cold and wet weather for weeks. All work and no play, not good enough.” A letter from Paris, artist friends: “I have sold one of the three pictures that are in the last Salon.” A letter from Somers’ sister: “Louis has been looking round everywhere to buy a little farm, but there doesn’t seem to be a bit of land to be got anywhere. What do you think of our coming to Australia? I wish you would look for something for us, for we are terribly fed up with this place, nothing doing at all.” A letter from Sicily: “I have had my father and stepmother over from New York. I had got them rooms here, but when I said so, the face of Anna, my stepmother, was a sight. She took me aside and told me that father was spoiling the trip entirely by his economies, and that she had set her heart on the Villa Igeia. Then Dad took me aside and said that he didn’t wish to be reckless, but he didn’t want to thwart Anna’s wishes entirely, and was there nothing in the way of compromise? It ended by their staying two days here, and Anna said she thought it was very nice FOR ME. Then they went to the Palmes, which is entirely up to Anna’s ideas of luxury, and she is delighted.”

Somers had fourteen letters by this mail. He read them with a sort of loathing, one after the other, piling them up on his left hand for Harriet, and throwing the envelopes in the fire. By the time he had done he wished that every mail–boat would go down that was bringing any letter to him, that a flood would rise and cover Europe entirely, that he could have a little operation performed that would remove from him for ever his memory of Europe and everything in it—and so on. Then he went out and looked at the Pacific. He hadn’t even the heart to bathe, and he felt so trite, with all those letters; he felt quite capable of saying “Good dog” to the sea: to quote one of the quips from the Bulletin. The sea that had been so full of potency, before the postman rode up on his pony and whistled with his policeman’s whistle for Somers to come to the gate for that mass of letters. Never had Richard Lovat Somers felt so filled with spite against everybody he had ever known in the old life, as now.

“And there was I, knave, fool, and ninny, whining to go back to Europe, and abusing Australia for not being like it. That horrible, horrible staleness of Europe, and all their trite consciousness, and their dreariness. The dreariness? The sterility of their feelings? And here was I carping at Kangaroo and at Jack Callcott, who are golden wonders compared with anything I have known in the old world. Australia has got some real, positive indifference to “questions”, but Europe is one big wriggling question and nothing else. A tangle of quibbles. I’d rather be shot here next week, than quibble the rest of my life away in over–upholstered Europe.”

He left off kicking himself, and went down to the shore to get away from himself. After all, he knew the endless water would soon make him forget. It had a language which spoke utterly without concern of him, and this utter unconcern gradually soothed him of himself and his world. He began to forget.

There had been a squall in the night. At the tip of the rock–shelves above the waves men and youths, with bare, reddish legs, were fishing with lines for blackfish. They looked like animal creatures perching there, and like creatures they were passive or darting in their movements. A big albatross swung slowly down the surf: albatross or mollyhawk, with wide, waving wings.

The sea had thrown up, all along the surf–line, queer glittery creatures that looked like thin blown glass. They were bright transparent bladders of the most delicate ink–blue, with a long crest of deeper blue, and blind ends of translucent purple. And they had bunches of blue, blue strings, and one long blue string that trailed almost a yard across the sand, straight and blue and translucent. They must have been some sort of little octopus, with the bright glass bladder, big as smallish narrow pears, with a blue frill along the top to float them, and the strings to feel with—and perhaps the long string to anchor by. Who knows? Yet there they were, soft, brilliant, like pouches of frailest sea–glass. It reminded Somers of the glass they blow at Butano, at Venice. But there they never get the lovely soft texture and the colour.

The sky was tufted with cloud, and in the afternoon veils of rain swept here and there across the sea, in a changing wind. But then it cleared again, and Somers and Harriet walked along the sands, watching the blue sky mirror purple and the white clouds mirror warm on the wet sand. The sea talked and talked all the time, in its disintegrative, elemental language. And at last it talked its way into Somers’ soul, and he forgot the world again, the babel. The simplicity came back, and with it the inward peace. The world had left him again. He had been thinking, in his anger of the morning, that he would get Jack to teach him to shoot with a rifle and a revolver, so that he might take his part. He had never shot with a gun in his life, so he had thought it was high time to begin. But now he went back on his thoughts. What did he want with guns or revolvers? Nothing. He had nothing to do with them, as he had nothing to do with so much that is in the world of man. When he was truly himself he had a quiet stillness in his soul, an inward trust. Faith, undefined and undefinable. Then he was at peace with himself. Not content, but peace like a river, something flowing and full. A stillness at the very core.

But faith in what? In himself, in mankind, in the destiny of mankind? No, no. In Providence, in Almighty God? No, not even that. He tried to think of the dark God he declared he served. But he didn’t want to. He shrank away from the effort. The fair morning seaward world, full of bubbles of life.

So again came back to him the ever–recurring warning that SOME men must of their own choice and will listen only to the living life that is a rising tide in their own being, and listen, listen, listen for the injunctions, and give heed and know and speak and obey all they can. Some men must live by this unremitting inwardness, no matter what the rest of the world does. They must not let the rush of the world’s “outwardness” sweep them away: or if they are swept away, they must struggle back. Somers realised that he had had a fright against being swept away, because he half wanted to be swept away: but that now, thank God, he was flowing back. Not like the poor, weird “ink–bubbles”, left high and dry on the sands.

Now he could remember the frenzied outward rushing of the vast masses of people, away from themselves, without being driven mad by it. But it seemed strange to him that they should rush like this in their vast herds, outwards, outwards, always frenziedly outwards, like souls with hydrophobia rushing away from the pool of water. He himself, when he was caught up in the rush, felt tortured and maddened, it was an agony of irritation to him till he could feel himself drifting back again like a creature into the sea. The sea of his own inward soul, his own unconscious faith, over which his will had no exercise. Why did the mass of people not want this stillness and this peace with their own being? Why did they want cinemas and excitements? Excitements are as nauseous as sea–sickness. Why does the world want them?

It is their problem. They must go their way. But some men, some women must stay by their own inmost being, in peace, and without envy. And there in the stillness listen, listen, and try to know, and try to obey. From the innermost, not from the outside. It is so lovely, the peace. But poor dear Richard, he was only resting and basking in the old sunshine just now, after his fray. The fight would come again, and only in the fight would his soul burn its way once more to the knowledge, the intense knowledge of his “dark god”. The other was so much sweeter and easier, while it lasted.

At tea–time it began to rain again. Somers sat on the verandah looking at the dark green sea, with its films of floating yellow light between the ruffled waves. Far back, in the east, was a cloud that was a rainbow. It was a piece of rainbow, but not sharp, in a band; it was a tall fume far back among the clouds of the sea–wall.

“Who is there that you feel you are with, besides me—or who feel themselves with you?” Harriet was asking.

“No one,” he replied. And at the same moment he looked up and saw the rainbow fume beyond the sea. But it was on a dark back ground, like a coloured darkness. The rainbow was always a symbol to him—a good symbol: of this peace. A pledge of unbroken faith, between the universe and the innermost. And the very moment he said “No one,” he saw the rainbow for an answer.

Many times in his life he had seen a rainbow. The last had been on his arrival in Sydney. For some reason he felt absolutely wretched and dismal on that Saturday morning when the ship came into Sydney harbour. He had an unspeakable desire not to get out of the ship, not to go down on to the quay and into that town. The having to do it was a violation of himself. When he came on deck after breakfast and the ship had stopped, it was pouring with rain, the P. and O. wharf looked black and dismal, empty. It might almost have been an abandoned city. He walked round to the starboard side, to look towards the unimposing hillock of the city and the Circular Quay. Black, all black and unutterably dismal in the pouring rain, even the green grass of the Botanical Gardens, and the bits of battlement of the Conservatorium. Unspeakably forlorn. Yet over it all, spanning the harbour, the most magnificent great rainbow. His mood was so miserable he didn’t want to see it. But it was unavoidable. A huge, brilliant, supernatural rainbow, spanning all Sydney.

He was thinking of this, and still watching the dark–green, yellow–reflecting sea, that was like a northern sea, a Whitby sea, and watching the far–off fume of a dark rainbow apparition, when Harriet heard somebody at the door. It was William James, who had an hour to wait for his train, and thought they wouldn’t mind if he looked in. They were pleased, and Harriet brought him a cup and plate.

Thank goodness he, too, came in a certain stillness of spirit, saying very little, but being a quiet, grateful presence. When the tea was finished he and Somers sat back on the verandah out of the wind, and watched the yellow, cloudy evening sink. They hardly spoke, but lay lying back in the deckchairs.

“I was wondering,” said Somers, “whom Kangaroo depends on mostly for his following.”

William James looked back at him, with quiet, steady eyes.

“On the diggers—the returned soldiers chiefly: and the sailors.”

“Of what class?”

“Of any class. But there aren’t many rich ones. Mostly like me and Jack, not quite simple working men. A few doctors and architects and that sort.”

“And do you think it means much to them?”

Jaz shifted his thick body uneasily in his chair.

You never can tell,” he said.

“That’s true,” said Somers. “I don’t really know how much Jack Callcott cares. I really can’t make out.”

“He cares as much as about anything,” said Jaz. “Perhaps a bit more. It’s more exciting.”

“Do you think it IS the excitement they care about chiefly?”

“I should say so. You can die in Australia if you don’t get a bit of excitement.” There was silence for a minute or two.

“In my opinion,” said Somers, “it has to go deeper than excitement.” Again Jaz shifted uneasily in his chair.

“Oh, well—they don’t set much store on deepness over here. It’s easy come, easy go, as a rule. Yet they’re staunch chaps while the job lasts, you know. They are true to their mates, as a rule.”

“I believe they are. It’s the afterwards.”

“Oh, well—afterwards is afterwards, as Jack always says.” Again the two men were silent.

“If they cared deeply—” Somers began slowly—but he did not continue, it seemed fatuous. Jaz did not answer for some time.

“You see, it hasn’t come to that with them,” he said. “It might, perhaps, once they’d actually done the thing. It might come home to them then; they might HAVE to care. It might be a force–put. THEN they’d need a man.”

“They’ve got Kangaroo,” said Somers.

“You think Kangaroo would get them over the fence?” said Jaz carefully, looking up at Somers.

“He seems as if he would. He’s a wonderful person. And there seems no alternative to him.”

“Oh yes, he’s a wonderful person. Perhaps a bit too much of a wonder. A hatchet doesn’t look anything like so spanking as a lawn–mower, does it now, but it’ll make a sight bigger clearing.”

“That’s true,” said Somers, laughing. “But Kangaroo isn’t a lawn–mower.”

“Oh, I don’t say so,” smiled Jaz fidgeting on his chair. “I should like to hear your rock–bottom opinion of him though.”

“I should like to hear yours,” said Somers, “You know him much better than I do. I haven’t got a rock–bottom opinion of him yet.”

“It’s not a matter of the time you’ve known him,” said Jaz. He was manifestly hedging, and trying to get at something. “You know I belong to his gang, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Somers, wondering at the word “gang”.

“And for that reason I oughtn’t to criticize him, ought I?”

Somers reflected for some moments.

“There’s no oughts, if you FEEL critical,” he answered.

“I think you feel critical of him yourself at times,” said Jaz, looking up with a slow, subtle smile of cunning: like a woman’s disconcerting intuitive knowledge. It laid Somers’ soul bare for the moment. He reflected. He had pledged no allegiance to Kangaroo.

“Yet,” he said aloud to Jaz, “if I HAD joined him I wouldn’t want to hinder him.”

“No, we don’t want to hinder him. But we need to know where we are. Supposing you were in my position—and you DIDN’T feel sure of things! A man has to look things in the face. You yourself, now—you’re holding back, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I am,” said Richard, “But then I hold back from everything.”

Jaz looked at him searchingly.

You don’t like to commit yourself?” he said, with a sly smile.

“Not altogether that. I’d commit myself, if I could. It’s just something inside me shakes its head and holds back.”

Jaz studied his knuckles for some time.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Perhaps you can afford to stand out. You’ve got your life in other things. Some of us feel we haven’t got any life if we’re not—if we’re not mixed up in something.” He paused, and Richard waited. “But the point is this—” Jaz looked up again with his light–grey, serpent’s eyes. “Do you yourself see Kangaroo pulling it off?” There was a subtle mockery in the question.

“What?”

“Why—you know. This revolution, and this new Australia. Do you see him figuring on the Australian postage stamps—and running the country like a new Jerusalem?”

“The eyes watched Richard fixedly.

“If he’s got a proper backing, why not?” Somers answered.

“I don’t say why not. I ask you, WILL HE? Won’t you say how you feel?”

Richard sat quite still, not even thinking, but suspending himself. And in the suspense his heart went sad, oh so empty, inside him. He looked at Jaz, and the two men read the meaning in each other’s eyes.

“You think he won’t?” said Jaz, triumphing.

“No, I think he won’t,” said Richard. “There now. I knew you felt like that.”

“And yet,” said Richard, “if men were men still—if they had any of that belief in love they pretend to have—if they were FIT to follow Kangaroo,” he added fiercely, feeling grief in his heart.

Jaz dropped his head and studied his knuckles, a queer, blank smile setting round his mouth.

“You have to take things as they are,” he said in a small voice.

Richard sat silent, his heart for the moment broken again.

“And,” added Jaz, looking up with a slow, subtle smile, “if men aren’t what Kangaroo wants them to be, why should they be? If they don’t want a new Jerusalem, why should they have it? It’s another catch. They like to hear Kangaroo’s sweet talk—and they’ll probably follow him if he’ll bring off a good big row, and they think he can make it all pretty afterwards.” Again he smiled, but bitterly, mockingly. “I don’t know why I say these things to you, I’m sure. But it’s as well for a man to get to the bottom of what he thinks, isn’t it? And I feel, you know, that you and me think alike, if we allow ourselves to think.”

Richard looked at him, but never answered. He felt somehow treacherous.

“Kangaroo’s clever,” resumed Jaz. “He’s a Jew, and he’s damn clever. Maybe he’s the cleverest. I’ll tell you why. You’re not offended now at what I say, are you?”

“What’s the good of being offended by anything, if it’s a genuine opinion?”

“Well now, that’s what I mean. And I say Kangaroo is cleverer than the Red people, because he can make it look as if it would be all rosy afterwards, you know, everything as good as apple pie. I tell you what. All these Reds and I.W.W.’s and all, why don’t they make their revolution? Because they’re frightened of it when they’ve made it. They’re not frightened of hanging all the capitalists and such. But they’re frightened to death of having to keep things going afterwards. They’re frightened to death.” Jaz smiled to himself with a chuckle. “Nothing frightens them so much as the thought of having to look after things when their revolution is made. It frightens them to death. And that’s why they won’t make their grand revolution. Never. Unless somebody shoves them into it. That’s why they’ve got this new cry: Make the revolution by degrees, through winning in politics. But that’s no revolution, you know. It’s the same old thing with a bit of difference, such a small bit of difference that you’d never notice it if you weren’t made to.”

“I think that’s true,” said Richard. “Nobody’s more frightened of a Red revolution than the Reds themselves. They just absolutely funk it.”

“There now—that’s the word—they funk it. Yet, you know, they’re all ready for it. And if you got them started, if you could, they’d make a clearance, like they did in Russia. And we could do with that, don’t you think?”

“I do,” said Richard, sighing savagely.

“Well now, my idea’s this. Couldn’t we get Kangaroo—to join the Reds—the I.W.W.’s and all? Couldn’t we get him to use all his men to back Red Labour in this country, and blow a cleavage through the old system. Because, you know he’s got the trump cards in his hands. These Diggers’ Clubs, they’ve got all the army men, dying for another scrap. And then a sort of secret organisation has ten times the hold over men than just a Labour Party, or a Trades Union. He’s damned clever, he’s got a wonderful scheme ready. But he’ll spoil it, because he’ll want it all to happen without hurting anybody. Won’t he now?”

“Except a few.”

“Oh yes—maybe four of his enemies. But he wants to blow the house up without breaking the windows. He thinks he can turn the country upside–down without spilling milk, let alone blood. Now the Reds, let them loose, would make a hole in things. Only they’ll never move on their own responsibility. They haven’t got the guts, the stomach, the backbone.”

“You’re so clever, Jaz. I wonder you’re not a leader yourself.”

“Me?” A slow ironical smile wreathed his face. “You’re being sarcastic with me, Mr. Somers.” “Not at all. I think you’re amazing.”

Jaz only smiled sceptically still.

“You take what I mean, though, do you?”

“I do.”

“And what do you think of it?”

“Very clever.”

“But isn’t it feasible? You get Kangaroo, with his Diggers—the cleverest idea in the country, really—to quietly come in with the Reds, and explode a revolution over here. You could soon do it, in the cities: and the country couldn’t help itself. You let the Reds appear in the front, and take all the shine. You keep a bit of a brake on them. You let them call a Soviet, or whatever they want, and get into a real mess over it. And then Kangaroo steps in with the balm of Gilead and the New Jerusalem. But let them play Old Tommy Jenkins first with Capital and State Industries and the free press and religious sects. And then Kangaroo steps in like a redeeming angel, and reminds us that it’s God’s Own Country, so we’re God’s Own People, and makes us feel good again. Like Solomon, when David has done the dirty work.”

“The only point,” said Somers smiling, “is that an Australian Lenin and an Australian Trotsky might pop up in the scrimmage, and then Kangaroo could take to the bush again.”

Jaz shook his head.

“They wouldn’t,” he said. “There’s nobody with any grip. And you’d see, in this country, people would soon want to be good again, because it costs them least effort.”

“Perhaps Kangaroo is right, and they don’t want to be anything BUT good.”

Jaz shook his head.

“It’s not goodness they’re after just now,” he said. “They want to rip things up, or they want nothing. They aren’t ready to come under Kangaroo’s loving wing just yet. They’d as leave be under King George’s thumb, they can peep out easier. It seems to me, it’s SPITE that’s at the bottom, with most men. And they’ve got to let it out before anything’s any good.”

Somers began to feel tired now.

“But after all, Jaz,” he said, “what have I got to do with it?”

“You can put it to Kangaroo. You can make him see it. And you can keep him to it, if you promise him you’ll stick to him.”

“Me a power behind the throne?” protested the truly sceptical Richard.

“I take it you don’t want to sit on the throne yourself,” smiled Jaz. “And Kangaroo’s got more the figure. But what do you think of it?”

Somers was silent. He now was smiling subtly and ironically, and Jaz was watching him sharply, like a man who wants something. Jaz waited.

“I’m afraid, Jaz,” said Somers, “that, like Nietzsche, I no longer believe in great events. The war was a great event—and it made everything more pretty. I doubt if I care about the mass of mankind, Jaz. You make them more than ever distasteful to me.

“Oh, you know, you needn’t commit yourself. You’ve only to be friendly with Kangaroo, and work him into it. You know you said yourself you’d give anything to have a clearance made, in the world.”

“I know. Sometimes I feel I’d give anything, soul and body, for a smash up in this social–industrial world we’re in. And I would. And then when I realise people—just people—the same people after it as before—why, Jaz, then I don’t care any more, and feel it’s time to turn to the gods.”

“You feel there’s any gods to turn to, do you?” asked Jaz, with the sarcasm of disappointment.

“I feel it would probably be like Messina before and after the earthquake. Before the earthquake it was what is called a fine town, but commercial, low, and hateful. You felt you’d be glad if it was wiped out. After the earthquake it was horrible heaps of mortar and rubble, and now it’s rows and rows of wood and tin shanties, streets of them, and more commercial, lower than ever, and infinitely more ugly. That would probably be the world after your revolution. No, Jaz, I leave mankind to its own contrivances, and turn to the gods.”

“But you’ll say a word to Kangaroo?” said Jaz, persistent.

“Yes, if I feel like it,” said Richard.

Darkness had almost fallen, and Somers shivered as he rose to go indoors.

Next morning, when Somers had made the coffee, he and Harriet sat on the loggia at breakfast. It rained in the night, and the sea was whitish, sluggish, with soft, furry waves that had no plunge. The last thin flush of foam behaved queerly, running along with a straight, swift splash, just as when a steel rope rips out of water, as a tug hauls suddenly, jerking up a white splash that runs along its length.

“What had William James so much to say about?” asked Harriet, on the warpath.

“Why don’t you have the strength of mind not to ask?” he replied. “You know it’s better you left it alone: that I’m not supposed to blab.”

She gave him one fierce look, then went pale with anger. She was silent for some time. Then she burst out:

“Pah, as if I cared to know! What is all their revolution bosh to me! There have been revolutions enough, in my opinion, and each one more foolish than the last. And this will be the most foolish of the lot. And what have YOU got to do with revolutions, you petty and conceited creature? You and revolutions! You’re not big enough, not grateful enough to do anything real. I give you my energy and my life, and you want to put me aside as if I was a charwoman. Acknowledge ME first, before you can be any good.” With which she swallowed her coffee and rose from the table.

He finished too, and got up to carry in the cups and do the few chores that remained for his share. He always got up in the morning, made the fire, swept the room, and tidied roughly. Then he brought in coal and wood, made the breakfast, and did any little out–door job. After breakfast he helped to wash up, and settled the fire. Then he considered himself free to his own devices. Harriet could see to the rest.

His devices were not very many. He tried to write, that being his job. But usually, nowadays, when he tapped his unconscious, he found himself in a seethe of steady fury, general rage. He didn’t hate anybody in particular, nor even any class or body of men. He loathed politicians, and the well–bred darling young men of the well–to–do middle classes made his bile stir. But he didn’t fret himself about them specially. The off–hand self–assertive working people of Australia made him feel diabolic on their score sometimes. But as a rule the particulars were not in evidence, all the rocks were submerged, and his bile swirled diabolically for no particular reason at all. He just felt generally diabolical, and tried merely to keep enough good sense not to turn his temper in any particular direction.

“You think that nothing but goodness and virtue and wonderfulness comes out of you,” was one of Harriet’s accusations against him. “You don’t know how small and mean and ugly you are to other people.”

“Which means I am small and ugly and mean in her eyes,” he thought to himself. “All because of this precious gratitude which I am supposed to feel towards her, I suppose. Damn her and her gratitude. When she thwarts me and puts me in a temper I DON’T feel anything but spite. Damn her impudent gratitude.”

But Harriet was not going to be ignored: no, she was not. She was not going to sink herself to the level of a convenience. She didn’t really want protestations of gratitude or love. They only puzzled her and confused her. But she wanted him INWARDLY to keep a connection with her. Silently, he must maintain the flow between him and her, and safeguard it carefully. It is a thing which a man cannot do with his head: it isn’t REMEMBERING. And it is a thing which a woman cannot explain or understand, because it is quite irrational. But it is one of the deepest realities in life. When a man and woman truly come together, when there is a marriage, then an unconscious, vital connection is established between them, like a throbbing blood–circuit. A man may forget a woman entirely with his head, and fling himself with energy and fervour into whatever job he is tackling, and all is well, all is good, if he does not break that inner vital connection which is the mystery of marriage. But let him once get out of unison, out of conjunction, let him inwardly break loose and come apart, let him fall into that worst of male vices, the vice of abstraction and mechanisation, and have a concert of working ALONE and of himself, then he commits the breach. He hurts the woman and he hurts himself, though neither may know why. The greatest hero that ever existed was heroic only whilst he kept the throbbing inner union with something, God, or Fatherland, or woman. The most immediate is woman, the wife. But the most grovelling wife–worshippers are the foulest of traitors and renegades to the inner unison. A man must strive onward, but from the root of marriage, marriage with God, with wife, with mankind. Like a tree that is rooted, always growing and flowering away from its root, so is a vitally active man. But let him take some false direction, and there is torture through the whole organism, roots and all. The woman suffers blindly from the man’s mistaken direction, and reacts blindly.

Now in this revolution stunt, and his insistence on “male” activity, Somers had upturned the root flow, and Harriet was a devil to him—quite rightly—for he knew that inside himself he was devilish. She tried to keep her kindness and happiness. But no, it was false when the inner connection was betrayed. So her silent rage accumulated, and it was no good playing mental tricks of suppression with it. As for him, he was forced to recognize the devil in his own belly. He just felt devilish. While Harriet went about trying to be fair and happy, he realised that it was awful for him to be there, as black inside as an ink–bottle; however, he practised being nice. Theoretically he was grateful to her, and all that. But nothing conjured away that bellyful of black devilishness with which he was enceinte. He really felt like a woman who is with child by a corrosive fiend. In his lower man, just girning and demoniacal. No good pretending otherwise. No good playing tricks of being nice. Seven–thousand devils!

When he saw a motor–car parked in the waste lot next to Coo–ee, and saw two women in twelve–guinea black coats and skirts hobbling across the grass to the bungalow farther down, perhaps wanting to hire it: then the devil came and sat black and naked in his eyes. They hobbled along the uneven place so commonly, they looked so crassly common in spite of their tailors’ bills, so LOW, in spite of their motor–car, that the devil in him fairly lashed its tail like a cat. And yet, he knew, they were probably just two nice, kindly women, as the world goes. And truly, even the devil in him did not want to do them any PERSONAL harm. If they had fallen, or got into difficulty, he would have gone out at once to help them all he could. And yet, at the sight of their backs in their tailored “costumes” hobbling past the bushes, the devil in him lashed its tail till he writhed.

So there you are. Or rather, there was Richard Lovat Somers. He tried to square accounts with himself. Surely, he said to himself, I am not just merely a sort of human bomb, all black inside, waiting to explode I don’t know when or how or where. That’s what I seem like to myself, nowadays. Yet surely it is not the only truth about me. When I feel at peace with myself, and, as it were, so quietly at the CENTRE of things—like last evening, for example—surely that is also me. Harriet seems fairly to detest me for having this nice feeling all to myself. Well, it wasn’t my fault if I had it. I did have it. What does she want? She won’t leave a fellow alone. I felt fairly beatific last evening—I felt I could swim Australia into a future, and that Jaz was wonderful, and I was a sort of central angel. So now I must admit I am flabbergasted at finding my devil coiled up exultant like a black cat in my belly this morning, purring all the more loudly because of my “goodness” of last evening, and lashing his tail so venomously at the sight of the two women in the black “costumes”. Is this devil after all my god? Do I stand with the debbil–debbil worshippers, in spite of all my efforts and protestations?

This morning I do, and I admit it. I can’t help it: it is so, then let it be so. I shall change again, I know. I shall feel white again, and like a pearl, suave and quiet within the oyster of time. I shall feel again that, given but the ANSWER, the black poisonous bud will burst into a lovely new, unknown flower in me. The bud is deadly poison: the flower will be the flower of the tree of life. If Harriet let me alone, and people like Jaz really believed in me! Because they have a right to believe in me when I am at my best. Or perhaps he believes in me when I am my worst, and Kangaroo likes me when I am good. Yet I don’t really like Kangaroo. The devil in me fairly hates him. Him and everybody. Well, all right then, if I AM finally a sort of human bomb, black inside, and primed; I hope the hour and the place will come for my going off: for my exploding with the maximum amount of havoc. SOME men have to be bombs, to explode and make breaches in the walls that shut life in. Blind, havoc–working bombs too. Then so be it.

That morning as luck would have it Somers read an article by A. Meston in an old Sydney Daily Telegraph, headed:

EARTHQUAKES.

IS AUSTRALIA SAFE?

SLEEPING VOLCANOES.

The fact that Australia so far has had no trouble with volcanoes or earthquakes, and appears to be the most immune country in the world, accounts for our entire indifference to the whole subject. But here are phases of this problem entitled to some serious consideration by those in whom the thinking and observant faculties are not altogether dormant, and who have not a calm, cool disregard of very ominous inexorable facts. Australia is a very peaceful reposeful area, with the serious volcanoes of New Zealand on one side, and the still more serious volcanoes of Java on the other. We live in a soft flowery meadow between two jungles, a lion in one and a tiger in the other, but as neither animal has chased or bitten us, up to the present time, we go calmly to sleep quite satisfied they are harmless.

Now the line of volcanic action on the east coast of Australia is very clearly defined, from the basalt of Illawarra, north to the basalt within three miles of Cape York. The chief areas over all that distance are the Big Scrub on the Richmond River, the Darling Downs, and the Atherton Tableland, behind Cairns.

These are the largest basalt areas in Australia, the Darling Downs and Atherton containing each about 2,000,000 acres of basalt, the one chiefly black, and the other all red. The other conspicuous areas are the red basalt Isis and Woongarra scrubs, and north of Atherton the next basalt area is on the McIvor and Morgan Rivers, 40 miles north of Cooktown. From there I saw no basalt on the coast of the Peninsula, until somewhat surprised to find great piles of black basaltic stone, like artificial quarry heaps, in the dense Seaforthia palm scrubs ten miles west of Somerset.

VOLCANIC EVIDENCE.

Here, then, is a clearly defined but very intermittent line of volcanic action along our entire east coast for over two thousand miles. Yet to–day there is not only not one active volcano on the whole of that area, but not even one clearly authentic dead one. There is nothing to show whence came the basalt of the Darling Downs, the Big Scrub, or the Atherton Tableland, unless in the last case the two deep freshwater lakes, Barrine and Eacham, the Barrang and Zeetcham of the aboriginals, represent the craters of extinct volcanoes.

Whence, then, came the basalt spread along a narrow line of our east coast for two thousand miles, and all of it east of the Dividing Range? There is a lot of room for theories...

When the late Captain Audley Coote was laying the cable from New Caledonia to Sandy Cape, at the north end of Fraser Island, on the South Queensland coast, he passed a submerged mountain 6,000 feet in height, and found a tremendous chasm, so deep that they could find no bottom, and had to work the cable round the edge. When he reached the coast of Fraser Island he got the same soundings as Cook and Flinders and the Admiralty survey in the ’sixties, six to eight fathoms, but there came a break in the cable in after years, located in that six and eight fathom area, and they found the broken cable hanging over a submarine precipice of eight hundred feet.

That I read in Captain Coote’s own manuscript journal, and it was confirmed by Captain John Mackay, the Brisbane harbourmaster, who assured me that an 800 feet chasm had suddenly formed there in the bottom of the ocean!

On the coast of Japan, the ocean bottoms sank in one place suddenly from four or five fathoms to 4,000 feet.

The old Fraser Island aboriginals told me that the deep blue lake, two miles from the White Cliffs, was once a level plateau, on which their fathers held fights and corroborees, and that it sank in one night. On the North Queensland coast, there is fairly shallow water from the seashore out to the edge of the Barrier, and then the ocean goes down to depths up to two and three thousand feet, so if the sea were removed you would look down from the outer Barrier into a tremendous valley with a wall of granite cliffs.

When the town of Port Royal in Jamaica was destroyed by an earthquake on June 7, 1692, the houses all disappeared into an ocean chasm 300 feet in depth; and in the terrible earthquake at Lisbon, 1755, destroying 2,000 houses and 5,000 people, the wharves and piers, and even the vessels lying beside them, disappeared into some tremendous gulf, leaving no trace whatever.

It is a singular fact that the heights of the loftiest mountains correspond with the depths of the deepest seas, and that the 29,000 feet of Mount Everest is equal with what is known as the “Tuscarora Deep”, fathomed by the U.S.A. vessel Tuscarora.

ISLANDS THAT VANISHED.

From the days of Seneca there are records of islands suddenly appearing before astonished mariners, and others disappearing suddenly before mariners equally astonished. In the dreadful volcanic explosion of Krakatoa in August, 1883, one mountain peak was blown to pieces, while others were thrown up from the ocean. The tidal wave created by Krakatoa destroyed 40,000 people, and the air wave from the concussion pulsated three times round the world. And Krakatoa and the Javanese volcanoes are only a short distance from the coast of Australia!

Doubtless many of the ships that have mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace, have gone down in the vortex of a submarine earthquake, or a chasm created by a sudden shrinkage in the bottom of the ocean. From the facts above available it is reasonable to believe that the present continent of Australia is only a portion of the original, and that in some remote period it extended hundreds or thousands of miles to the eastward, probably including Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands and New Zealand, possibly New Caledonia. How came the ancient Cretaceous Ocean, which once covered all Central Australia, from the gulf to the Bight, to withdraw from the land, leaving nothing but marine fossils in the desert sandstone?

Was the Cretaceous Ocean shallow all round this continent, and did it suddenly subside to fill some tremendous chasm caused by a sudden submarine shrinkage of the earth’s crust, followed by the inland sea which naturally rushed out into the vacancy?

What seems the only real danger to Australia lies not in the eruptions of some suddenly created new volcano, or any ordinary earthquake, but in just such shrinkages in the sea bottom as occurred on the coast of Japan, off Fraser Island, and many other localities, including Lisbon and Port Royal.

If such a subsidence were to come under Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide or Brisbane, it might be of such a magnitude that the whole city would disappear into the gulf.

We know nothing whatever of the awful forces at work beneath the crust of the earth, and nothing of the internal fires, or that awful subterranean abode where Shelley said “the old earthquake Demon nurses her young Ruin”. The history of volcanoes and earthquakes is an appalling record of lost countless millions of lives and awful destruction.

One Peking earthquake destroyed 300,000 people, one in Naples 70,000, another at Naples 40,000; and we are not far from July, 1902, when the volcano of Mount Pelee, in the island of Martinique, wiped out the town of St. Pierre and 30,000 inhabitants.

Still nearer is that 18th April, 1906, when the San Francisco earthquake killed over a thousand people, and did damage to the extent of sixty millions.

And so far in Australian history we have not had an earthquake that would capsize a tumbler of hot punch.

Why hot punch, thought Somers, why not hot bitters or ice–cream soda, which are much more Austral and to the point? But he had read this almost thrilling bit of journalism with satisfaction. If the mother earth herself is so unstable, and upsets the applecart without caring a straw, why, what can a man say to himself if he DOES happen to have a devil in his belly!

And he looked at the ocean uneasily moving, and wondered when next it would thrust an angry shoulder out of the watery bed–covering, to give things a little jog. Or when his own devil would get a leg up into affairs.

CHAPTER 9. HARRIET AND LOVAT AT SEA IN MARRIAGE.

When a sincere man marries a wife, he has one or two courses open to him, which he can pursue with that wife. He can propose to himself to be (a) the lord and master who is honoured and obeyed, (b) the perfect lover, (c) the true friend and companion. Of these (a) is now rather out of date. The lord and master has been proved, by most women quite satisfactorily, to be no more than a grown–up child, and his arrogance is to be tolerated just as a little boy’s arrogance is tolerated, because it is rather amusing, and up to a certain point becoming. The case of (b), the perfect lover, is the crux of all ideal marriage to–day. But alas, not even the lord and master turns out such a fiasco as does the perfect lover, ninety–nine times out of a hundred. The perfect–lover marriage ends usually in a quite ghastly anti–climax, divorce and horrors and the basest vituperation. Alas for the fact, as compared with the ideal. A marriage of the perfect–lover type is bound either to end in catastrophe, or to slide away towards (a) or (c). It must either revert to a mild form of the lord–and–master marriage, and a wise woman, who knows the sickeningness of catastrophes and the ridiculous futility of second shots at the perfect–love paradise, often wisely pushes the marriage back gradually into one of the little bays or creeks of this Pacific ocean of marriage, lord–and–masterdom. Not that either party really believes in the lordship of man. But you’ve got to get into still water some time or other. The perfect–love business inevitably turns out to be a wildly stormy strait, like the Straits of Magellan, where two fierce and opposing currents meet and there is the devil of a business trying to keep the bark of marriage, with the flag of perfect–love at the mast, from dashing on a rock or foundering in the heavy seas. Two fierce and opposing currents meet in the narrows of perfect love. They may meet in blue and perfect weather, when the albatross hovers in the great sky like a permanent benediction, and the sea shimmers a second heaven. But you needn’t wait long. The seas will soon begin to rise, the ship to roll. And the waters of perfect love—when once this love is consummated in marriage—become inevitably a perfect hell of storms and furies.

Then, as I say, the hymeneal bark either founders, or dashes on a rock, or more wisely gets out of the clash of meeting oceans and takes one tide or the other, where the flood has things all its own way. The woman being to–day the captain of the marriage bark, either steers into the vast Pacific waters of lord–and–masterdom, though never, of course, hauling down the flag of perfect love; or else, much more frequently these latter days, she steers into the rather grey Atlantic of true friendship and companionship, still keeping the flag of perfect love bravely afloat.

And now the bark is fairly safe. In the great Pacific, the woman can take the ease and warm repose of her new dependence, but she is usually laughing up her sleeve. She lets the lord and master manage the ship, but woe betide him if he seeks to haul down the flag of perfect love. There is mutiny in a moment. And his chief officers and his crew, namely his children and his household servants, are up and ready to put him in irons at once, at a word from that wondrous goddess of the bark, the wife of his bosom. It is Aphrodite, mistress of the seas, in her grand capacity of motherhood and attendant wifehood. None the less, with a bit of managing the hymeneal bark sails on across the great waters into port. A lord and master is not much more than an upper servant while the flag of perfect love is flying and the sea–mother is on board. But a servant with the name of captain, and the pleasant job of sailing the ship and giving the necessary orders. He feels it is quite all right. He is supreme servant–in–command, while the mistress of mistresses smiles as she suckles his children. She is suckling him too.

Nevertheless, this is the course I would recommend young married women to DRIFT INTO, after the first two years of “perfect love”.

They won’t often take my advice, I know that. Ha–ha! they will say. We see through your lord–and–master tricks. Course East–North–East, helmsman, into the safer and more populous waters of perfect companionship. If we can’t have one thing perfect we’ll have another. If it isn’t exactly perfect love, it is perfect companionship, and the two are pretty nearly one and the same.

For woman, even more than man, when once she gets an idea into her head, or worse, when once she gets HERSELF into her head, will have nothing short of perfection. She simply will tolerate nothing short of perfection. East–north–east then, into the democratic Atlantic of PERFECT companionship.

Well, they are grey waters, and the perfect companionship usually resolves, subtly, and always under the perfect love flag, into a very nearly perfect limited liability company, the bark steering nicely according to profit and loss, and usually “getting on” fabulously. The Golden Vanity. If this perfect love flag is a vanity, the perfect–companionship management is certainly Golden. I would recommend perfect–companionship to all those married couples who truly and sincerely want TO GET ON.

Now the good bark Harriet and Lovat had risen from the waves, like Aphrodite’s shell as well as Aphrodite, in the extremest waters of perfect love. Love and love alone! Wide, wild, lonely waters, with the great albatross like a sign of the cross, sloping in the immense heavens. A sea to themselves, the waters of perfect love. And the good ship Harriet and Lovat, with white sails spread, sailing with never a master, like the boat of Dionysus, which steered of its own accord across the waters, in the right direction mark you, to the sound of the music of the dolphins, while the master of the ship put forth tendrils of vine and purple bunches of grapes, and the grapes of themselves dripped vinous down the throats of the true Dionysians. So sailed the fair ship Harriet and Lovat in the waters of perfect love.

I have not made up my mind whether she was a ship, or a bark, or a schooner, technically speaking. Let us imagine her as any one of them. Or perhaps she was a clipper, or a frigate, or a brig. All I insist is that she was not a steam–boat with a funnel, as most vessels are nowadays, sailing because they are stoked.

Fair weather and foul alternated. Sometimes the brig Harriet and Lovat skimmed along the path of the moon like a phantom: sometimes she lay becalmed, while sharks flicked her bottom: then she drove into the most awful hurricanes, and spun round in a typhoon: and yet behold her sailing out through the glowing arch of a rainbow into halcyon waters again. And so for years, till she began to look rather worn, but always attractive. Her paint had gone, so her timbers now were sea–silvery. Her sails were thin, but very white. The mainsail also was slit, and the stun–sails had been carried away in a blizzard. As for the flag of perfect love, the flag of the red–and–white rose upon the cross of thorns, all on a field of azure, it was woefully frayed and faded. The azure field was nearly tattered away, and the rose was fading into invisibility.

She had some awful weather, did the poor bark Harriet and Lovat. The seas opened great jaws to swallow her, the treacherous seas of perfect love, while cynical rocks gnashed their teeth at her, and unstable heavens opened chasms of wind on her, and fierce, full–blooded lusty bull–whales rushed at her and all but burst her timbers. Dazed and battered, she wandered hither and thither on the seas of perfect love, that she always had all to herself. Never another sail in sight, never another ship in hail. Only sometimes the smoke of a steamer skirting the horizon, making for one of the oceans.

And now the Harriet and Lovat began to feel the pull of the two opposing currents. It was as if she had a certain homesickness for one or other of the populous oceans: she was weary of the lone and wasteful waters of the sea of perfect love. Sometimes she drifted east–north–east towards the Atlantic of true companionship. And then Lovat, seeing the long swell of that grey sea, and the funnels of ships like a city suburb, put the helm hard aport, and turned the ship about, and beat against a horrible sea and wind till they got into the opposite drift. Then things went a little easier, till Harriet saw before her the awful void opening of the other ocean, and the great, dark–blue, dominant swell of the waters, and the loneliness and the vastness and the feeling of being overwhelmed. She looked at the mast and saw the flag of perfect love falling limp, the faded rose of all roses dying at last.

And in a moment when he was asleep, her almost lord–and–master, she whipped the ship about and steered east–south–east into the heart of the sea of perfect love, hoping to get into the current east–north–east and so out into the open Atlantic. Then storms intolerable.

Then they took to cruising the far, lone, desert fringes of the sea of perfect love, utterly lonely and near the ice, the fringe of the seas of death. There they cruised, in the remote waters on the edge of extinction. And then they looked at one another.

“We will be perfect companions: you know how I love you,” said Harriet, of the good ship Harriet and Lovat.

“Never,” said Lovat, of the same ship. “I will be lord and master, but ah, such a wonderful lord and master that it will be your bliss to belong to me. Look, I have been sewing a new flag.”

She didn’t even look at the flag.

“You!” she exclaimed. “You a lord and master! Why, don’t you know that I love you as no man ever was loved? You a lord and master! Ph! you look it! Let me tell you I love you far, far more than ever you ought to be loved, and you should acknowledge it.”

“I would rather,” said he, “that you deferred your loving of me for a while, and considered the new proposition. We shall never sail any straight course at all, until you realise that I am lord and master, and you my blissful consort. Supposing, now, you had the real Hermes for a husband, Trismegistus. Would you not hold your tongue for fear you lost him, and change from being a lover, and be a worshipper? Well, I am not Hermes or Dionysus, but I am a little nearer to it than you allow. And I want you to yield to my mastery and my divination, and let me put my flag of a phoenix rising from a nest in flames in place of that old rose on a field azure. The gules are almost faded out,”

“It’s a LOVELY design!” she cried, looking at the new flag. “I might make a cushion–embroidery of it. But as a flag it’s absurd. Of course, you lonely phoenix, you are the bird and the ashes and the flames all by yourself! You would be. Nobody else enters in at all. I—I am just nowhere—I don’t exist.”

“Yes,” he said, “you are the nest.”

“I’ll watch it!” she cried. “Then you shall sleep on thorns, Mister.”

“But consider,” he said.

“That’s what I am doing,” she replied. “Mr. Dionysus and Mr. Hermes and Mr. Thinks–himself–grand. I’ve got one thing to tell you. Without ME you’d be nowhere, you’d be nothing, you’d not be THAT,” and she snapped her fingers under his nose, a movement he particularly disliked.

“I agree,” he replied, “that without the nest the phoenix would be—would be up a tree—would be in the air—would be nowhere, and couldn’t find a stable spot to resurrect in. The nest is as the body to the soul: the cup that holds the fire, and in which the ashes fall to take form again. The cup is the container and the sustainer.”

“Yes, I’ve done enough containing and sustaining of you, my gentleman, in the years I’ve known you. It’s almost time you left off wanting so much mothering. You can’t live a moment without me.”

“I admit that the phoenix without a nest is a bird absolutely without a perch, he must dissipate in the air. But—.”

“Then I’ll make a cushion–cover of your flag, and you can rest on that.”

“No, I’m going to haul down the flag of perfect love.”

“Oh, are you! And sail without a flag? Just like you, destroy, destroy, and nothing to put in its place.”

“Yes, I want to put in its place this crowned phoenix rising from the nest in flames. I want to set fire to our bark, Harriet and Lovat, and out of the ashes construct the frigate, Hermes, which name still contains the same reference, ‘her’ and ‘me’, but which has a higher total significance.”

She looked at him speechless for some time. Then she merely said:

“You’re mad,” and left him with his flag in his hands.

Nevertheless he was a determined little devil, as she knew to her cost, and once he’d got an idea into his head not heaven nor hell nor Harriet would ever batter it out. And now he’d got into his head this idea of being lord and master, and Harriet’s acknowledging him as such. Not just verbally. No. Not under the flag of perfect love. No. Obstinate and devilish as he was, he wanted to haul down the flag of perfect love, to set fire to the bark Harriet and Lovat, to seat himself in glory on the ashes, like a resurrected phoenix, with an imaginary crown on his head. And she was to be a comfortable nest for his impertinence.

In short, he was to be the lord and master, and she the humble slave. Thank you. Or at the very best, she was to be a sort of domestic Mrs. Gladstone, the Mrs. Gladstone of that old chestnut—who, when a female friend was lamenting over the terrible state of affairs, in Ireland or somewhere, and winding up her lament with: “Terrible, terrible. But there is One above”—replied: “Yes, he’s just changing his socks. He’ll be down in a minute.” Mr. Lovat was to be the One above, and she was to be happy downstairs thinking that this lord, this master, this Hermes cum Dionysus wonder, was comfortably changing his socks. Thank you again. The man was mad.

Yet he stuck to his guns. She was to submit to the mystic man and male in him, with reverence, and even a little awe, like a woman before the altar of the great Hermes. She might remember that he WAS only human, that he had to change his socks if he got his feet wet, and that he would make a fool of himself nine times out of ten. But—and the but was emphatic as a thunderbolt—there was in him also the mystery and lordship of—of Hermes, if you like—but the mystery and the lordship of the forward–seeking male. That she must emphatically realise and bow down to. Yes, bow down to. You can’t have two masters of one ship: neither can you have a ship without a master. The Harriet and Lovat had been an experiment of ten years’ endurance. Now she was to be broken up, or burnt, so he said, and the non–existent Hermes was to take her place.

You can’t have two masters to one ship. And if it IS a ship: that is, if it has a voyage to sail, a port to make, even a far direction to take, into the unknown, then a master it must have. Harriet said it wasn’t a ship, it was a houseboat, and they could lie so perfectly here by the Pacific for the rest of time—or be towed away to some other lovely spot to house in. She could imagine no fairer existence. It was a houseboat.

But he with his no, no, he almost drove her mad. The bark of their marriage was a ship that must sail into uncharted seas, and he must be the master, and she must be the crew, sworn on. She was to believe in his adventure and deliver herself over to it; she was to believe in his mystic vision of a land beyond this charted world, where new life rose again.

And she just couldn’t. His land beyond the land men knew, where men were more than they are now: she couldn’t believe in it. “Then believe in ME,” he said desperately. “I know you too well,” she replied. And so, it was an impasse.

Him, a lord and master! Why, he was not really lord of his own bread and butter; next year they might both be starving. And he was not even master of himself, with his ungovernable furies and his uncritical intimacies with people: even people like Jack Callcott, whom Harriet quite liked, but whom she would never have taken seriously. Yet there was Lovat pouring himself out to him. Pah—believe! How could one believe in such a man! If he had been naturally a master of men, general of an army, or manager of some great steel works, with thousands of men under him—then, yes, she could have acknowledged the MASTER part of the bargain, if not the lord. Whereas, as it was, he was the most forlorn and isolated creature in the world, without even a dog to his command. He was so isolated he was hardly a man at all, among men. He had absolutely nothing but her. Among men he was like some unbelievable creature—an emu, for example. Like an emu in the streets or in a railway carriage. He might well say phoenix.

All he could do was to try and come it over her with this revolution rubbish and a stunt of “male” activity. If it were even real!

He had nothing but her, absolutely. And that was why, presumably, he wanted to establish this ascendancy over her, assume this arrogance. And so that he could refute her, deny her, and imagine himself a unique male. He WANTED to be male and unique, like a freak of a phoenix. And then go prancing off into connections with men like Jack Callcott and Kangaroo, and saving the world. She could NOT stand these world–saviours. And she, she must be safely there, as a nest for him, when he came home with his feathers pecked. That was it. So that he could imagine himself absolutely and arrogantly It, he would turn her into a nest, and sit on her and overlook her, like the one and only phoenix in the desert of the world, gurgling hymns of salvation.

Poor Harriet! No wonder she resented it. Such a man, such a man to be tied to and tortured by!

And poor Richard! To be a man, and to have a man’s uneasy soul for his bed–fellow.

But he kicked against the pricks. He did not yet submit to the fact which he HALF knew: that before mankind would accept any man for a king, and before Harriet would ever accept him, Richard Lovat, as a lord and master, he, the selfsame Richard who was so strong on kingship, must open the doors of his soul and let in a dark Lord and Master for himself, the dark god he had sensed outside the door. Let him once truly submit to the dark majesty, break open his doors to this fearful god who is master, and enters us from below, the lower doors; let himself once admit a Master, the unspeakable god: and the rest would happen.

The fire began to burn the stick,
The stick began to beat the dog.
The dog began to bite the pig.
The pig began to go over the bridge,
And so the old woman got home that night...

CHAPTER 10. DIGGERS.

They had another ferocious battle, Somers and Harriet; they stood opposite to one another in such fury one against the other that they nearly annihilated one another. He couldn’t stay near her, so started walking off into the country. It was winter, but sunny, and hot walking. He climbed steadily up and up the highroad between the dense, damp jungle that grew at the base and up the steep rise of the tor–face, which he wanted to get to the top of. Strange birds made weird, metallic noises. Tree–ferns rose on their notchy little trunks, and great mosses tangled in with more ordinary bushes. Overhead rose the gum–trees, sometimes with great stark, dead limbs thrown up, sometimes hands over like pine–trees.

He sweated up the steep road till at last he came to the top. There, on the farther side, the dip slope, the hills sank and ran in spurs, all fairly densely wooded, but not like the scarp slope up which he had toiled. The scarp slope was jungle, impenetrable, with tree–ferns and bunchy cabbage–palms and mosses like bushes, a thick matted undergrowth beneath the boles of the trees. But the dip slope was bush: gum trees rather scattered, and a low undergrowth like heath. The same lonely, unbreakable silence and loneliness that seemed to him the real bush. Curiously unapproachable to him. The mystery of the bush seems to recede from you as you advance, and then it is behind you if you look round. Lonely, and weird, and hoary.

He went on till he could look over the tor’s edge at the land below. There was the scalloped sea–shore, for miles, and the strip of flat coast–land, sometimes a mile wide, sprinkled as far as the eye could reach with the pale–grey zinc roofs of the bungalows: all scattered like crystals in the loose cells of the dark tree–tissue of the shore. It was suggestive of Japanese landscape, dark trees and little, single, scattered toy houses. Then the bays of the shore, the coal–jetty, far off rocks down the coast, and long white lines of breakers.

But he was looking mostly straight below him, at the massed foliage of the cliff–slope. Down into the centre of the great, dull–green whorls of the tree–ferns, and on to the shaggy mops of the cabbage palms. In one place a long fall of creeper was yellowish with damp flowers. Gum–trees came up in tufts. The previous world!—the world of the coal age. The lonely, lonely world that had waited, it seemed, since the coal age. These ancient flat–topped tree–ferns, these towsled palms like mops. What was the good of trying to be an alert conscious man here? You couldn’t. Drift, drift into a sort of obscurity, backwards into a nameless past, hoary as the country is hoary. Strange old feelings wake in the soul: old, non–human feelings. And an old, old indifference, like a torpor, invades the spirit. An old, saurian torpor. Who wins? There was the land sprinkled with dwellings as with granulated sugar. There was a black smoke of steamers on the high pale sea, and a whiteness of steam from a colliery among the dull trees. Was the land awake? Would the people waken this ancient land, or would the land put them to sleep, drift them back into the semi–consciousness of the world of the twilight?

Somers felt the torpor coming over him. He hung there on the parapet looking down, and he didn’t care. How profoundly, darkly he didn’t care. There are no problems for the soul in its darkened, wide–eyed torpor. Neither Harriet nor Kangaroo nor Jaz, nor even the world. Worlds come, and worlds go: even worlds. And when the old, old influence of the fern–world comes over a man, how can he care? He breathes the fern seed and drifts back, becomes darkly half vegetable, devoid of preoccupations. Even the never–slumbering urge of sex sinks down into something darker, more monotonous, incapable of caring: like sex in trees. The dark world before conscious responsibility was born.

A queer bird sat hunched on a bough a few yards away, just below; a bird like a bunch of old rag, with a small rag of a dark tail, and a fluffy pale top like an owl, and a sort of frill round his neck. He had a long, sharp, dangerous beak. But he too was sunk in unutterable apathy. A kukooburra! Some instinct made him know that Somers was watching, so he just shuffled round on the bough and sat with his back to the man, and became utterly oblivious. Somers watched and wondered. Then he whistled. No change. Then he clapped his hands. The bird looked over its shoulder in surprise. What! it seemed to say. Is there somebody alive? Is that a live somebody? It had quite a handsome face, with the exquisite long, dagger beak.

It slowly took Somers in. Then he clapped again. Making an effort the bird spread quite big wings and whirred in a queer, flickering flight to a bough a dozen yards farther off. And there it clotted again.

Ah well, thought Somers, life is so big, and has such huge ante–worlds of grey twilight. How can one care about anything in particular!

He went home again, and had forgotten the quarrel and forgotten marriage or revolutions or anything: drifted away into the grey pre–world where men didn’t have emotions. Where men didn’t have emotions and personal consciousness, but were shadowy like trees, and on the whole silent, with numb brains and slow limbs and a great indifference.

But Harriet was waiting for him rather wistful, and loving him rather quiveringly. And yet even in the quiver of her passion was some of this indifference, this twilight indifference of the fern–world.

Jack and Victoria came for the week–end, and Somers and Callcott met in a much nearer sympathy than they had ever known before. Victoria was always thrilled and fascinated by both the Somers: they had an inexhaustible fascination for her, the tones of their voices, their manner, their way with each other. She could not understand the strange sureness they had in themselves, the sureness of what they were saying or going to say, the sureness of what they were feeling. For herself, her words fluttered out of her without her direct control, and her feelings fluttered in her the same. She was one perpetually agitated dovecot of words and emotions, always trying consciously to find HERSELF amid the whirl, and never quite succeeding. She thought someone might TELL her. Whereas the Somers had an unconscious sureness, something that seemed really royal to her. But she had in the last issue the twilight indifference of the fern–world. Only she still quivered for the light.

Poor Victoria! She clung to Jack’s arm vibrating, always needing to vibrate outwards. And he seemed to become more Australian and apathetic every week. The great indifference, the darkness of the fern–world, upon his mind. Then spurts of energy, spurts of sudden violent desire, spurts of gambling excitement. But the mind in a kind of twilight sleep.

He made no more appeals. He was just static, and quite gentle. Even at table he was half oblivious of the presence of the other people. Then Victoria would poke him with her elbow, poke him hard, into consciousness, and bring back the lively Jack that the Somers had first known. Strange that the torpor had come on him so completely of late. Yet there was a queer light in his eyes, as if he might do something dangerous. And when he was once talking, he was perfectly logical and showed surprising calm common–sense. When he was discussing or criticising, he seemed so unusually sane as to be peculiar. Like a man in his sleep.

Just outside the station was the football field, and Mullumbimby was playing Wollondindy, Mullumbimby in royal blue, and Wollondindy in rather faded red. Along the roadside buggies and motor–cars were pulled up, the ponies were taken out of harness and left to feed on the roadside grass. Two riders sat on horseback to survey the scene. And under the flowering coral–trees, with their sharp red cockatoo flowers, stood men in their best clothes smoking pipes, or men in their best clothes squatting on the fence, and lasses mingling in or strolling past in white silk stockinette frocks, or pink crepe de chine, or muslin. Just like prostitutes, arm in arm, strolled the lasses, airing themselves and their pronounced hips. And the men apathetically took no notice, but watched the field.

This scene was too much for Jack Callcott. Somers or no Somers, he must be there. So there he stood, in his best clothes and a cream velour hat and a short pipe, staring with his long, naked, Australian face, impassive. On the field the blues and the reds darted madly about, like strange bird–creatures rather than men. They were mostly blond, with hefty legs, and with prominent round buttocks that worked madly inside the little white cotton shorts. And Jack, with his dark eyes, watched as if it was Doomsday. Occasionally the tail–end of a smile would cross his face, occasionally he would take his pipe–stem from his mouth and give a bright look into vacancy and say, “See that!” Heaven knows what it was that he saw. The game, the skill? Yes. But more, the motion, the wild combative motion. And most of all, fate. Fate had a fascination for him. It was the only real point of curiosity left in him: how would chance work things out. Chance! Now then, how would chance settle it? Even the football field, with its wildly scurrying blues and bits of red, was only a frenzied shuffling of fate, with men for the instruments. The living instruments of fate! And how would it work out, how would it work out? He could have stood there, static, with his little pipe, till Doomsday, waiting for fate to settle it. The wild scurrying motion, and the jumps in the air, of course made his heart beat faster. Towards the close one of the chaps got a kick on the jaw, and was knocked out. They couldn’t finish the game. Hard lines.

Jack was a queer sight to Somers, when he was in this brightly vacant mood, not a man at all, but a chance thing, gazing spellbound on the evolutions of chance. And in this state, this very Australian state, you could hardly get a word out of him. Or, when he broke into a little volley of speech, you listened with wonder to the noise of it, as if a weird animal had suddenly given voice.

The indifference, the marvellous, bed–rock indifference. Not the static fatalism of the east. But an indifference based on real recklessness, an indifference with a deep flow of loose energy beneath it, ready to break out like a geyser. Ready to break into a kind of frenzy, a berserk frenzy, running amok in wild generosity, or still more wild smashing up. The wild joy in letting loose, in a smash–up. But will he ever let loose? Or will the static patience settle deeper, and the fern–twilight altogether envelop him. The slow transmutation! What does to–day matter, or this country? Time is so huge, and in Australia the next step back is to the fern age.

The township looked its queerest as dusk fell. Then the odd electric lights shone at rather wide intervals, the wide, unmade roads of rutted earth seemed to belong again to the wild, in the semi–dark, and the low bungalows with the doors open and the light showing seemed like shacks in the wilderness, a settlement in the fierce gloom of the wilderness. Then youths dashed fiercely on horseback down the soft roads, standing in the stirrups and crouching over the neck of the thin, queer brown racehorses that sprinted along like ghosts. And the young baker, in emulation, dashed through the village on his creamy pony. A collier who had been staying somewhere cantered stiffly away into the dark on a pony like a rocking horse. Young maidens in cotton dresses stood at the little rail gates of their bungalow homes talking to young men in a buggy, or to a young man on foot, or to the last tradesman’s cart, or to youths who were strolling past. It was evening, and the intense dusk of the far–off land, and white folks peering out of the dusk almost like aborigines. The far–off land, just as far–off when you are in it: nay, then furthest off.

The evening came very dark, with lightning playing pallid in the south–east, over the sea. There was nothing to be done with Jack but to play draughts with him. He wasn’t in a real sporting mood, so he let himself be beaten even at draughts. When he was in a sporting mood he could cast a spell of confusion over Somers, and win every time, with a sort of gloating. But when he wasn’t in a sporting mood he would shove up his men recklessly and lose them. He didn’t care. He just leaned back and stretched himself in that intense physical way which Somers thought just a trifle less than human. The man was all body: a strong body full of energy like a machine that has got steam up, but is inactive. He had no mind, no spirit, no soul: just a tense, inactive body, and an eye rather glazed and a trifle bloodshot. The old psyche slowly disintegrating.

Meanwhile Victoria in a trill of nervous excitement and exaltation was talking Europe with Harriet. Victoria was just the opposite of Jack: she was all a quiver of excited consciousness, to know, to see, to realise. She would almost have done anything, to be able to LOOK at life, look at the inside of it, see it in its intimacy. She had had wild ideas of being a stewardess on a boat, a chambermaid in an hotel, a waitress in a good restaurant, a hospital nurse—anything, so that she could SEE intimacies, touch the private mysteries. To travel seemed to her the great desirable: to go to Europe and India, and SEE it all. She loved Australia, loved it far more quiveringly and excitedly than he. But it wasn’t Australia that fascinated her: it was the secret intimacies of life, and what OTHER FOLKS FELT. That strange and aboriginal indifference that was bottommost in him seemed like a dynamo in her. She fluttered in the air like a loose live nerve, a nerve of the sympathetic system. She was all sympathetic drive: and he was nearly all check. He sat there apathetic, nothing but body and solid, steady, physical indifference. He did not oppose her at all, or go counter to her. He was just the heavy opposite pole of her energy. And of course she belonged to him as one pole belongs to the other pole in a circuit.

And he, he would stretch his body continuously, but he would not go to bed, though Somers suggested it. No, there he sat. So Somers joined in the more exciting conversation of the women, and Jack sat solidly there. Whether he listened or whether he didn’t, who knows? The aboriginal SYMPATHETIC apathy was upon him, he was like some creature that has lost its soul, and simply stares.

The morning was one of the loveliest Australian mornings, perfectly golden, all the air pure gold, the great gold effulgence to seaward, and the pure, cold pale–blue inland, over the dark range. The wind was blowing from inland, the sea was quiet as a purring cat with white paws, becoming darkish green–blue flecked with innumerable white flecks like rain–spots splashing the surface of a pool. The horizon was a clear and hard and dark sea against an almost white sky, but from far behind the horizon showed the mirage–magic tops of hazed, gold–white clouds, that seemed as if they indicated the far Pacific isles.

Though it was cold, Jack was sauntering about in his shirtsleeves with his waistcoat open and his hands in his pockets: rather to the vexation of Victoria. “Pull yourself together, Jack dear, do. Put your collar and tie on,” she coaxed, fondling him.

“In a minute,” he said.

The indifference—the fern–dark indifference of this remote golden Australia. Not to care—from the bottom of one’s soul, not to care. Overpowered in the twilight of fern–odour. Just to keep enough grip to run the machinery of the day: and beyond that, to let yourself drift, not to think or strain or make any effort to consciousness whatsoever. That was Jack, sauntering down there in his shirt–sleeves, with his waistcoat open showing his white shirt, his strong neck bare: sauntering with his hands in his pockets beside Somers, at the water’s edge. Somers wore a dark flannel jacket, and his necktie hung dark and broke the intimacy of the white shirt–breast.

The two women stood on the cliff, the low, bushy cliff, looking down. Harriet was in a plain dress of dark–coloured purplish–and–brown hand–woven stuff of cotton and silk mixture, with old silver lace round the collar; Victoria in a pale–green knitted dress. So they stood in the morning light, watching the men on the fawn–coloured sand by the sea–fringe, waiting to wave when they looked up.

Jack looked up first. The two women coo–eed and waved. He took his pipe from his mouth and held it high in his hand, in answer. A strange signal. The pale–green wisp of Victoria in the sky was part of his landscape. But the darker figure of Harriet had for some reason a menace to him, up there. He suddenly felt as if he were down below: he suddenly realised a need to bethink himself. He turned to Somers, looking down and saying in his peculiar Australian tone:

“Well, I suppose we’d better be going up.”

The curious note of obedience in the manly twang!

Victoria made him put on coat and collar and tie for breakfast.

“Yes, dear, come on. I’ll tie your tie for you.”

“I suppose a man was born to give in,” said he, with laconic good humour and obstinacy. But he was a little uneasy. He realised the need to gather himself together.

“You get like the rest of them,” Victoria scolded him in a coaxing tone. “You used to be so smart. And you promised me you’d never go slack like they all are. Didn’t you, you bad boy?”

“I forget,” said he. But nevertheless the constraint of breakfast pulled him up. Because Harriet REALLY disapproved, and he didn’t know what was inside that rose–and–brown–purple cloud of her. The ancient judgment of the Old World. So he gathered himself somewhat together. But he was so far, fern–lost, from the old world.

“My God!” thought Somers. “These are the men Kangaroo wants to build up a new state with.”

After breakfast Somers got Jack to talk about Kangaroo and his plans. He heard again all about the Diggers’ Clubs: nearly all soldiers and sailors who had been in the war, but not restricted to these. They had started like any other social club: games, athletics, lectures, readings, discussions, debates. No gambling, no drink, no class or party distinction. The clubs were still chiefly athletics, but not SPORTING. They went in for boxing, wrestling, fencing, and knife–throwing, and revolver practice. But they had swimming and rowing squads, and rifle–ranges for rifle practice, and they had regular military training. The colonel who planned out the military training was a clever chap. The men were grouped in little squads of twenty, each with sergeant and corporal. Each of these twenty was trained to act like a scout, independently, though the squad worked in absolute unison among themselves, and were pledged to absolute obedience of higher commands. These commands, however, left most of the devising and method of execution of the job in hand to the squad itself. In New South Wales the Maggies, as these private squads were called, numbered already about fourteen hundred, all perfectly trained and equipped. They had a distinctive badge of their own: a white, broad–brimmed felt hat, like the ordinary khaki military hat, but white, and with a tuft of white feathers. “Because,” said Ennis, the colonel, “we’re the only ones that can afford to show the white feather.”

These Maggies, probably from Magpies, because Colonel Ennis used to wear white riding–breeches and black gaiters, and a black jacket and a white stock, with his white hat—were the core and heart of the Digger Movement. But Kangaroo had slaved at the other half of the business, the mental side. He DID want his men to grip on to the problem of the future of Australia. He had insisted on attendance at debates and discussions: Australia and the World, Australia and the Future, White Australia, Australia and the Reds, Class Feeling in Australia, Politics and Australia, Australians and Work, What is Democracy? What is an Australian? What do our Politicians do for Australia? What our State Parliament does for us, What our Federal Parliament does for us, What side of the Australian does Parliament represent? Is Parliament necessary to Democracy? What is wrong with Soviet rule? Do we want a Statesman, or do we want a Leader? What kind of Leader do we want? What aim have we in view? Are we Australians? Are we Democratic? Do we believe in Ourselves?

So the debates had been going on, for a year and a half now. These debates were for club members only. And each club numbered only fifty members. Every member was asked to take part in the debates, and a memorandum was kept of each meeting. Then there were monthly united gatherings, of five or six or more clubs together. And occasionally a mass–meeting, at which Kangaroo spoke.

All this went on in the open, and roused some comment in the press: at first a great deal of praise, later some suspicion and considerable antagonism, both from Conservatives and Labour. Ben Cooley was supposed to be working himself in as a future Prime Minister, with a party behind him that would make him absolute, a Dictator. As soon as one paper came out with this alarm, an opponent sneered and pooh–poohed, and spoke of the Reds lounging about, a fearful menace, in Sydney, and recalled the Reigns of Terror in Paris and in Petrograd. Was another Reign of Terror preparing for Sydney? Was a bloodthirsty Robespierre or a ruthless Lenin awaiting his moment? Would responsible citizens be lynched in Martin Place, and dauntless citizenesses thrown into the harbour, when the fatal hour struck? Whereupon a loud burst from the press: were we to be alarmed by the knock–kneed, loutish socialist gang that hung round Canberra House? These gentry could hardly kill the vermin in their own clothing, not to speak of lynching in Martin Place. Whereas the Maggies were a set of efficient, well–armed, and no doubt unscrupulous tools of still more designing and unscrupulous masters. If we had to choose between Napoleon, in the shape of Ben Cooley, or Lenin, in the lack–of–shape of Willie Struthers, we should be hard put to it to know which was worse. Whereupon a fierce blast about our returned heroes and the white–livered skulkers who had got themselves soft jobs as coast–watchers, watching that the sharks didn’t nibble the rocks, and now dared lift their dishonourable croaks against the revered name of Digger. And a ferocious rush–in from Labour, which didn’t see much Napoleon in Ben Cooley, except his belly and the knack of filling his pockets. Napoleon, though but a Dago and not a Jew, had filled one of the longest pockets Europe had ever emptied herself into, so where would poor little Australia be when the sham Kangaroo, with the help of the Magpies, which were indeed strictly Butcher Birds, started to coin her into shekels?

Then the boom died down, but the Digger Clubs had grown immensely on the strength of it. There were now more than a hundred clubs in New South Wales, and nearly as many in Victoria. The chief in Victoria was a smart chap, a mining expert. They called him the Emu, to match Kangaroo on the Australian coat of arms. He would be the Trotsky to the new Lenin, for he was a born handler of men. He had been a lieutenant–colonel in the war, a very smart soldier, and there had been a great cry to keep him on, for the Defence Force. But he had got the shove from Government, so he cleared out and went back to his mining.

But every club had its own committee, and this committee was composed of five or six of the best, surest members, sworn in to secrecy and to absolute obedience to any decision. Each club committee handled every question of development, and the master and the teller went to section–meetings. A section consisted of ten clubs. A decision at a section meeting was carried to the state meeting, where the chief of the state always had the ruling vote. Once a decision was passed, it became a law for all members, embodied in the person of the chief, and interpreted by him unquestioned save by his lieutenant, the chief of all the secretaries, or tellers.

The public members of the clubs were initiated into no secrets. The most important questions were discussed only among the chiefs. More general secrets were debated at the section meetings. That is, the great bulk of the members gave only their allegiance and their spirit of sympathy. The masters and chiefs carefully watched the response to all propositions at all open discussions. They carefully fostered the feeling they wished for, or which they were instructed to encourage. When the right feeling was arrived at, presumably, then the secret members started the discussion of propositions proposed from above. A secret member was allowed to make a proposition also, and the list was read over at the section meetings. But the Jack, the chief of the tellers, had right of absolute veto.

Somers could not get it very clear, from Jack Callcott’s description. But it seemed to him as if all the principal ideas originated with the chief, went round the circuit of the clubs, disguised as general topics for debate, and returned as confirmed principles, via the section meetings and the state meetings. All the debates had been a slow, deliberate crystallising of a few dominant ideas in all the members. In the actual putting into practice of any principle, the chief was an autocrat, though he might, if he chose, send his propositions through the section meetings and the state meetings for criticism and amendment.

“What I feel,” said Somers to Jack, “is that the bulk of you just don’t care what the chief does, so long as he does something.”

“Oh, we don’t lose our sleep at nights. If he likes to be the boss, let him do the thinking. We know he’s our man, and so we’ll follow him. We can’t all be Peter and Paul and know all about it.”

“You just feel he’s your man?”

“Oh, we do.”

“But supposing you go in and win—and he is the boss of Australia. Shall you still leave things to him?”

Jack thought lazily for a time.

“I should think so,” he replied, with a queer, mistrustful tone.

And Somers felt again so distinctly they were doing it all just in order to have something to do, to put a spoke in the wheel of the present bosses, to make a change. Just temporary. There would be a change, and that was what they wanted. There was all the time the excitement. Damn the consequences.

“You don’t think it would be as well to HAVE a Soviet and Willie Struthers?”

“No, I don’t,” said Jack, in a thin, sharp voice. “I don’t want to be bullied by any damned Red International Labour. I don’t want to be kissing and hugging a lot of foreign labour tripe: niggers and what the hell. I’d rather have the British Empire ten thousand times over, and that bed’s a bit too wide, and too many in it for me. I don’t like sleeping with a lot of neighbours. But when it comes to going to bed with a crowd of niggers and dagoes, in an International Labour Combine, with a pair of red sheets so that the dirt won’t show, I’m absolutely sure I won’t have it. That’s why I like Kangaroo. We shall be just cosy and Australian with a boss like a father who gets up first in the morning, and locks up at night before you go to bed.”

“And who will stop in the Empire?”

“Oh, I suppose so. But he won’t be asking even the British to go to bed with him. He knows the difference between Australia and the rest of the Empire, The Empire’s like a lot of lock–up shops that you do your trade in. But I know Kangaroo well enough to know he’s not mixing his family in. He’ll keep Australia close and cosy. That’s what I want. And that’s what we all want, when we’re in our senses and aren’t bitten into spots by the Red International bug.”

Somers then mentioned Jaz’s proposition, of a red revolution first.

“I know,” said Jack. “It may be so. He’s one of your sly, crawling devils, Jaz is, and that seems to be the road nowadays. I wouldn’t mind egging the Reds in, and then slapping them clean out into nowhere. I wouldn’t mind at all. But I’m bound to follow Kangaroo’s orders, so I’m not bothering my chump over Jaz’s boodle.”

“You don’t care which way it happens?”

Jack looked at him sideways, like the funny bird.

“No,” he said, with an Australian drawl. “So long as it does happen. I don’t like things as they are, and I don’t feel safe about them. I don’t mean I want to feel safe as if nothing would ever happen. There’s some sorts of sport and risk that you enjoy, and there’s others you hate the thought of. Now I hate the thought of being bossed and messed about by the Old Country, or by Jew capitalists and bankers, or by a lot of labour bullies, or a Soviet. There’s no fun in that sort of sport, to me, unless you can jolly well wipe the bleeders out afterwards. And I don’t altogether want the mills of the British Empire to go grinding slowly on, and yourself compelled to do nothing but grind slowly with ’em. It’s too much of a sameness altogether, and not as much sport as a tin Lizzie. We’re too much mixed up with other folk’s business, what’s absolutely no fun for us. No, what I want is a cosy, lively little Australia away from all this blooming world–boost. I’ve no use for a lot of people across a lot of miles of sea nudging me while I handle my knife and fork. Leave us Australians to ourselves, we shall manage.”

They were interrupted by Harriet calling for Somers to come and rescue the tea–towel from the horns of a cow who had calmly scrambled through the fence on to their grass. Somers was used to the cow: she had scrambled through the Coo–ee fence long before the Somers had ever walked through the gate, so she looked on them as mild intruders. He was quite friendly with her, she ate the pumpkin rind and apple parings from his hand. Now she looked at him half guiltily out of one eye, the kitchen towel hanging over the other eye. She took it quite calmly, but had a disreputable appearance.

“Come here,” said he. “Come here and have it taken off. Of course you had to poke your head into the bush if you thought there was a towel on it.”

She came mildly up and held her head while he disentangled the towel from her horns. Then she went calmly on, snuffing at the short, bitten grass for another mouthful, and twitching leaves off the stunted bushes.

So they were, the cows, so unafraid. In Cornwall, Harriet said, the cows had always sniffed in when she came near, and then breathed out heavily, nnh! nnh! as if they did not like the smell of human beings, breathing out against her, and backing. And that had scared her. But these cows didn’t do that. They seemed so calm. They fed over all the bush, the unoccupied grassy lots above the sea, among the unbuilt streets. And they pushed in among the trees and bushes where the creek came in. And then at dusk a boy would come on a cream–coloured pony riding round and driving them in, scaring a sort of crane or heron bird from the still waters of the marshy creek–edge. Then the cows walked or trotted placidly home: so unconcerned. And the bird with the great, arched grey wings flapped in a low circle round, then settled again a yard or two from where she was before.

So unconcerned. Somers had noticed a pair of fishing birds by the creek, queer objects nearly as big as ducks, perched at the extremity of a dead gum–tree, above the water. They flew away at his coming, but while he stood looking, they circled with their longish necks stretched out and their wings sharply flicking in the high air, then one returned and sat again on the tree, and the other perched on another dead tree. The near one looked sideways at him.

“Yes, I’m here,” said he aloud.

Whereupon she did the inevitable, turned her back on him and he no longer existed for her. These ostriches needed no sand. She so far forgot him as to turn sideways to him again, so he had her in profile, clutched grey like an old knot at the tip of the stark, dead grey tree. And there she performed queer corkscrew exercises with her neck in the air. Whether it was she was getting down a last fishbone in her gizzard, or whether she was merely asserting herself in the upper air, he could not tell.

“What a fool you look,” he said aloud to her.

Then away the birds rose. And he saw a seedy, elderly man in black, in a long–skirted black coat like a cast–off Methodist parson, spying at him furtively from behind the bushes on the other side of the creek. This parson–looking weed carried a gun, and was shooting heaven knows what. He thought Richard Lovat a very suspicious bird, and Richard Lovat thought him the last word in human weeds. So our young man turned away to the sands, where the afternoon sea had gone a very dark blue. Another human weed with a very thin neck and a very red face sat on the sand ridge up which the foam–edge swished, his feet wide apart, facing the ocean, and tending a line which he had in some way managed to cast out into the low surf. An urchin, barefoot, was pottering round in silence, like a sandpiper. The elderly one made unintelligible noises as Somers approached. The latter realised it meant he was not to catch with his foot the line, which reached out behind the thin fisherman, covered with sand. So he stepped over it. The brown, barefoot urchin pottered round unheeding. He did not even look up when the elder made more unintelligible sounds to him.

My father is a fisherman,
Oh a fisherman! Yes a fisherman!
He catches all the fish–e–can.

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays were the library nights. When you had crossed the iron foot–bridge over the railway, you came to a big wooden building with a corrugated iron roof, standing forlorn at an unmade corner, like the fag–end of the village. But the village was an agglomeration of fag ends. This building might have been a temporary chapel, as you came at it from the back. But in front it was labelled “Pictoria”, so it was the cinema. But there was also a black board with gilt letters, like a chapel notice–board, which said “School of Arts Library”. And the Pictoria had a sort of little wing, all wood, like a little school–room. And in one section of this wing was the School of Arts Library, which the Somers had joined. Four rows of novels: the top row a hundred or more thin books, all Nat Gould or Zane Grey. The young women came for Zane Grey. “Oh, ‘The Maid of Mudgee’ is a lovely thing, lovely”—a young woman was pronouncing from the top of the broken chair which served as stool to give access to this top row. “Y’aven’ got a new Zaine Greye, have yer?” She spoke in these tones of unmitigated intimacy to the white–moustached librarian. One would have thought he was her dear old dad. Then came a young railway man who had heard there was a new Nat Gould.

“But,” said Somers, as he and Harriet went off with a Mary E. Mann and a George A. Birmingham, “I don’t wonder they can’t read English books, or only want Nat Gould. All the scruples and the emotions and the regrets in English novels do seem waste of time out here.”

“I suppose,” said Harriet, “if you don’t have any inside life of your own it must seem a waste of time. But look at it—look!”

The object she bade him look at was a bone of contention between them. She wanted to give five pounds to have four posts and an iron chain put round it, and perhaps a bit of grass sowed inside the enclosure. He declared that they’d probably charge ten pounds for the chain alone, since it was Australia. And let it alone. It was of a piece with the rest. But Harriet said she couldn’t leave the place till she’d had something done to it. He said she was an interfering female.

The object was the memorial to the fallen soldiers. It was really a quite attractive little monument: a statue in pale, fawnish stone, of a Tommy standing at ease, with his gun down at his side, wearing his puttees and his turned–up felt hat. The statue itself was about life size, but standing just overhead on a tall pedestal it looked small and stiff and rather touching. The pedestal was in very nice proportion, and had at eye level white inlet slabs between little columns of grey granite, bearing the names of the fallen on one slab, in small black letters, and on the other slabs the names of all the men who served: “God Bless Them”. The fallen had “Lest we forget”, for a motto. Carved on the bottom step it said, “Unveiled by Grannie Rhys”. A real township monument, bearing the names of everybody possible: the fallen, all those who donned khaki, the people who presented it, and Grannie Rhys. Wonderfully in keeping with the place and its people, naive but quite attractive, with the stiff, pallid, delicate fawn–coloured soldier standing forever stiff and pathetic.

But there it stood, a few yards from the corner of the corrugated Pictoria, at the corner of the fag–end road to the station, like an old milk–can someone had set down and forgotten: or a bran new milk–can. Old rags of paper littered the ground at the base, with an old tin or two. A little further back was a German machine gun, also looking as if it had been scrapped and forgotten. Standing there, with its big metal screen–flap, it looked exotic, a thing of some higher culture, demoniac and fallen.

Harriet was dying to rescue the forlorn monument that seemed as if it had been left there in the bustle of removal. She wanted to enclose it. But he said: “Leave it. Leave it. They don’t like things enclosed.”

She still had in her mind’s eye an Australia with beautiful manorial farm–houses and dainty, perfect villages. She never acquiesced in the UNCREATEDNESS of the new country, the rawness, the slovenliness. It seemed to her comical, for instance, that no woman in Australia would carry a basket. Harriet went shopping as usual with her pretty straw basket in the village. But she felt that the women remarked on it. Only then did she notice that everybody carried a suit–case in this discreet country. The fat old woman who came to the door with a suit–case must, she thought, be a visitor coming to the wrong house. But no. “Did you want a cabbage?” In the suitcase two cabbages and half a pumpkin. A little girl goes to the dairy for six eggs and half a pound of butter with a small, elegant suit–case. Nay, a child of three toddled with a little six–inch suit–case, containing, as Harriet had occasion to see, two buns, because the suit–case flew open and the two buns rolled out. Australian suit–cases were always flying open, and discharging groceries or a skinned rabbit or three bottles of beer. One had the impression that everybody was perpetually going away for the week–end: with a suit–case. Not so at all. Just a new–country bit of convention.

Ah, a new country! The cabbage, for example, cost tenpence in the normal course of things, and a cauliflower a shilling. And the tradesmen’s carts flew round in the wilderness, delivering goods. There isn’t much newness in MAN, whatever the country.

That old aeroplane that had lain broken–down in a field. It was nowadays always staggering in the low air just above the surf, past the front of Coo–ee, and lurching down on to the sands of the town “beach”. There, in the cold wind, a forlorn group of men and boys round the aeroplane, the sea washing near, the marsh of the creek desolate behind. Then a “passenger mounted”, and men shoving the great insect of a thing along the sand to get it started. It buzzed venomously into the air, looking very unsafe and wanting to fall in the sea.

“Yes, he’s carrying passengers. Oh, quite a fair trade. Thirty–five shillings a time. Yes, it seems a lot, but he has to make his money while he can. No, I’ve not been up myself, but my boy has. No, you see, there was four boys, and they had a sweepstake: eight–and–six apiece, and my boy won. He’s just eleven. Yes, he liked it. But they was only up about four minutes: I timed them myself. Well, you know, it’s hardly worth it. But he gets plenty to go. I heard he made over forty pounds on Whit Monday, here on this beach. It seems to me, though, he favours some more than others. There’s some he flies round with for ten minutes, and that last chap now, I’m sure he wasn’t up a second more than three minutes. No, not quite fair. Yes, he’s a man from Bulli: was a flying–man all through the war. Now he’s got this machine of his own, he’s quite right to make something for himself if he can. No, I don’t know that he has any licence or anything. But a chap like that, who went through the war—why, who’s going to interfere with his doing the best for himself?”

CHAPTER 11. WILLIE STRUTHERS AND KANGAROO.

Jaz took Somers to the famous Canberra House, in Sydney, where the Socialists and Labour people had their premises: offices, meeting–rooms, club–rooms, quite an establishment. There was a lively feeling about the place, in spite of various down–at–heel malcontents who stood about in the passage and outside on the pavement. A business–like air.

The two men were conducted into an inner room where a man sat at a desk. He was very dark, red–faced, and thin, with deep lines in his face, a tight shut, receding mouth, and black, burning eyes. He reminded Somers of the portraits of Abraham Lincoln, the same sunken cheeks and deep, cadaverous lines and big black eyes. But this man, Willie Struthers, lacked that look of humour and almost of sweetness that one can find in Abraham Lincoln’s portraits. Instead, he was suspicious, and seemed as if he were brooding an inner wrong.

He was a born Australian, had knocked about the continent, and spent many years on the goldfields. According to report, he was just comfortably well–off—not rich. He looked rather shabby, seedy; his clothes had that look as if he had just thrown them on his back, after picking them off the floor. Also one of his thin shoulders was noticeably higher than the other. But he was a distinct Australian type, thin, hollow–cheeked, with a brightish brittle, red skin on his face, and big, dark, incensed–looking eyes. He nodded to the two men as they entered, but did not speak nor rise from his desk.

“This is Mr. Somers,” said Jaz. “You’ve read his book on democracy.”

“Yes, I’ve read it,” said Struthers. “Take a seat.”

He spoke with a pronounced Australian accent—a bad cockney. He stared at Somers for a few seconds, then looked away.

He asked the usual questions, how Richard liked Australia, how long he had been there, how long he thought of staying. The two didn’t get into any easy harmony.

Then he began to put a few shrewd questions concerning the Fascisti and Socialisti in Italy, the appropriation of the land by the peasants, and so on; then about Germany, the actual temper of the working people, the quality of their patriotism since the war, and so on.

“You understand,” said Somers, “I don’t pretend to give anything but personal impressions. I have no claim to knowledge, whatever.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Somers. I want your impressions. What they call knowledge is like any other currency, it’s liable to depreciate. Sound valuable knowledge to–day may not be worth the paper it’s printed on to–morrow—like the Austrian krone. We’re no slaves to facts. Give us your impressions.”

He spoke with a peculiar kind of bitterness, that showed passion too. They talked about Europe for some time. The man could listen: listen with his black eyes too. Watchful, always watchful, as if he expected some bird to fly suddenly out of the speaker’s face. He was well–informed, and seemed to weigh and judge everything he heard as he heard it.

“Why, when I left Europe it seemed to me socialism was losing ground everywhere—in Italy especially. In 1920 it was quite a living, exciting thing, in Italy. It made people insolent, usually, but it lifted them up as well. Then it sort of fizzled down, and last year there was only the smoke of it: and a nasty sort of disappointment and disillusion, a grating sort of irritation. Florence, Siena—hateful! The Fascisti risen up and taking on airs, all just out of a sort of spite. The Dante festival at Florence, and the King there, for example. Just set your teeth on edge, ugh!—with their “Savoia!” All false and out of spite.”

“And what do you attribute that to, Mr. Somers?”

“Why, I think the Socialists didn’t QUITE believe in their own socialism, so everybody felt let down. In Italy, particularly, it seemed to me they were on the brink of a revolution. And the King was ready to abdicate, and the Church was ready to make away with its possessions: I know that. Everything ready for a flight. And then the Socialists funked. They just funked. They daren’t make a revolution, because then they’d be responsible for the country. And they DAREN’T. And so the Fascisti, seeing the Socialists in a funk, got up and began to try to kick their behinds.”

Mr. Struthers nodded his head slowly.

“I suppose that is so,” he said. “I suppose that’s what it amounts to, they didn’t believe in what they were doing. But then they’re a childish, excitable people, with no stability.”

“But it seems to me socialism hasn’t got the spark in it to make a revolution. Not in any country. It hasn’t got the spunk, either. There’s no spunk in it.”

“What is there any spunk in?” asked the other man, a sort of bitter fire corroding in his eyes. “Where do you find any spunk?”

“Oh, nowhere,” said Richard.

There was a silence. Struthers looked out of the window as if he didn’t know what to say next, and he played irritably with a blotter on the desk, with his right hand. Richard also sat uncomfortably silent.

“Nowhere any spunk?” said Struthers, in his flat metallic voice.

“No,” said Richard.

And again the uncomfortable silence.

“There was plenty of spunk in the war,” said Struthers.

“Of a sort. And because they felt they HAD to, not from choice.”

“And mayn’t they feel they HAVE to again?” said Struthers, smiling rather grimly.

The two men eyed one another.

“What’ll make them?” asked Richard.

“Oh—circumstances.”

“Ah well—if circumstances.” Richard was almost rude. “I know if it was a question of WAR the majority of returned soldiers would join up in a month—in a week. You hear it over and over again from the Diggers here. The war was the only time they ever felt properly alive. But then they moved because they hated the Germans—self–righteously hated them. And they can’t quite bring it off, to hate the capitalist with a self–righteous hate. They don’t hate him. They know that if they themselves got a chance to make a pile of money and be capitalists, they’d JUMP at it. You can’t work up a hate except on fear. And they DON’T fear the capitalist, and you can’t make them. The most they’ll do is sneer about him.”

Struthers still fidgetted with the blotter, with his thin, very red, hairy hand, and abstractedly stared at the desk in front of him.

“And what does all that mean, in your estimation, Mr. Somers?” he asked dryly, looking nervously up.

“That you’ll never get them to act. You’ll never get Labour, or any of the Socialists, to make a revolution. They just won’t act. Only the Anarchists might—and they’re too few.”

“I’m afraid they are growing more.”

“Are they? Of that I know nothing. I should have thought they were growing fewer.”

Mr. Struthers did not seem to hear this. At least he did not answer. He sat with his head dropped, fingering the blotter, rather like a boy who is being told things he hates to hear, but which he doesn’t deny.

At last he looked up, and the fighting look was in the front of his eyes.

“It may be as you say, Mr. Somers,” he replied. “Men may not be ready yet for any great change. That does not make the change less inevitable. It’s coming, and it’s got to come. If it isn’t here to–day, it will be here next century, at least. Whatever you may say, the socialistic and communal ideal is a great ideal, which will be fulfilled when men are ready. We aren’t impatient. If revolution seems a premature jump—and perhaps it does—then we can go on, step by step, towards where we intend to arrive at last. And that is, State Ownership, and International Labour Control. The General Confederation of Labour, as perhaps you know, does not aim at immediate revolutions. It wants to make the great revolution by degrees. Step by step, by winning political victories in each country, by having new laws passed by our insistence, we intend to advance more slowly, but more surely towards the goal we have in sight.

“Now, Mr. Somers, you are no believer in capitalism, and in this industrial system as we have it. If I judge you correctly from your writings, you are no lover of the great Washed Middle Classes. They are more than washed, they are washed out. And I think in your writings you say as much. You want a new spirit in society, a new bond between men. You want a new bond between men. Well, so do I, so do we. We realise that if we are going to go ahead we need first and foremost SOLIDARITY. Where we fail in our present position is in our lack of solidarity.

“And how are we to get it? You suggest us the answer in your writings. We must have a new bond between men, the bond of real brotherhood. And why don’t we find that bond sufficiently among us? Because we have been brought up from childhood to mistrust ourselves and to mistrust each other. We have been brought up in a kind of fetish worship. We are like tribes of savages with their witch–doctors. And who are our witch–doctors, our medicine–men? Why, they are professors of science and professors of medicine and professors of law and professors of religion, all of whom thump on their tom–tom drums and overawe us and take us in. And they take us in with the clever cry, “Listen to us, and you will get on, get on, get on, you will rise up into the middle classes and become one of the great washed.”

“The trick of this only educated men like yourself see through. The working man can’t see through it. HE can’t see that, for every one that GETS ON, you must have five hundred fresh slavers and toilers to produce the graft. Tempt all men to get on, and it’s like holding a carrot in front of five thousand asses all harnessed to your machine. One ass gets the carrot, and all the others have done your pulling for you.

“Now what we want is a new bond between fellow–men. We’ve got to knock down the middle–class fetish and the middle–class medicine–men. But you’ve got to build up as you knock down. You’ve got to build up the real fellow–feeling between fellow–men. You’ve got to teach us working men to trust one another, absolutely trust one another, and to take all our trust away from the Great Washed and their medicine men who bleed us like leeches. Let us mistrust them—but let us trust one another. First and foremost, let us trust one another, we working men.

“Now Mr. Somers, you are a working man’s son. You know what I’m talking about. Isn’t it right, what I say? And isn’t it feasible?”

A strange glow had come into his large black eyes, something glistening and half–sweet, fixing itself on you. You felt drawn towards a strange sweetness—perhaps poisonous. Yet it touched Richard on one of his quivering strings—the latent power that is in man to–day, to love his near mate with a passionate, absolutely trusting love. Whitman says the love of comrades. We say, the mate love. “He is my mate.” A depth of unfathomed, unrealised love can go into that phrase! “My mate is waiting for me,” a man says, and turns away from wife, children, mother and all. The love of a man for his mate.

Now Richard knew what Struthers wanted. He wanted this love, this mate–trust called into consciousness and highest honour. He wanted to set it where Whitman tried to set his Love of Comrades. It was to be the new tie between men, in the new democracy. It was to be the new passional bond in the new society. The trusting love of a man for his mate.

Our society is based on the family, the love of a man for his wife and his children, or for his mother and brothers. The family is our social bedrock and limit. Whitman said the next, broader, more unselfish rock should be the Love of Comrades. The sacred relation of a man to his mate, his fellow man.

If our society is going to develop a new great phase, developing from where we stand now, it must accept this new relationship as the new sacred social bond, beyond the family. You can’t make bricks without straw. That is, you can’t hold together the friable mixture of modern mankind without a new cohesive principle, a new unifying passion. And this will be the new passion of a man’s absolute trust in his mate, his love for his mate.

Richard knew this. But he had learned something else as well. He had learned the great danger of the new passion, which as yet lay only half realised and half recognised, half effective.

Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship. Two ships may sail together to the world’s end. But lock them together in mid–ocean and try to steer both with one rudder, and they will smash one another to bits. So it is when one individual seeks absolutely to love, or trust, another. Absolute lovers always smash one another, absolute trusters the same. Since man has been trying absolutely to love women, and women to love man, the human species has almost wrecked itself. If now we start a still further campaign of men loving and absolutely trusting each other, comrades or mates, heaven knows the horror we are laying up.

And yet, love is the greatest thing between human beings, men and women, men and men, women and women, when it is love, when it happens. But when human love starts out to lock individuals together, it is just courting disaster.

Man–and–woman love is a disaster nowadays. What a holy horror man–and–man love would be: mates or comrades!

What is it then that is wrong? Why, human beings CAN’T absolutely love one another. Each man DOES kill the thing he loves, by sheer dint of loving it. Is love then just a horror in life?

Ah no. This individuality which each of us has got and which makes him a wayward, wilful, dangerous, untrustworthy quantity to every other individual, because every individuality is bound to react at some time against every other individuality, without exception—or else lose its own integrity; because of the inevitable necessity of each individual to react away from any other individual, at certain times, human love is truly a relative thing, not an absolute. It CANNOT be absolute.

Yet the human heart must have an absolute. It is one of the conditions of being human. The only thing is the God who is the source of all passion. Once go down before the God–passion and human passions take their right rhythm. But human love without the God–passion always kills the thing it loves. Man and woman virtually are killing each other with the love–will now. What would it be when mates, or comrades, broke down in their absolute love and trust? Because, without the polarized God–passion to hold them stable at the centre, break down they would. With no deep God who is source of all passion and life to hold them separate and yet sustained in accord, the loving comrades would smash one another, and smash all love, all feeling as well. It would be a rare gruesome sight.

Any more love is a hopeless thing, till we have found again, each of us for himself, the great dark God who alone will sustain us in loving one another. Till then, best not play with more fire.

Richard knew this, and it came to him again powerfully, under the dark eyes of Mr. Struthers.

“Yes,” he answered slowly. “I know what you mean, and you know I know. And it’s probably your only chance of carrying Socialism through. I don’t really know how much it is feasible. But—.”

“Wait a minute, Mr. Somers. You are the man I have been waiting for: all except the but. Listen to me a moment further. You know our situation here in Australia. You know that Labour is stronger here, perhaps, more unopposed than in any country in the world. We might do anything. Then why do we do nothing? You know as well as I do. Because there is no real unifying principle among us. We’re not together, we aren’t one. And probably you never WILL be able to unite Australians on the wage question and the State Ownership question alone. They don’t care enough. It doesn’t really touch them emotionally. And they need to be touched emotionally, brought together that way. Once that was done, we’d be a grand, solid working–class people; grand, unselfish: a real PEOPLE. “When wilt thou save the People, Oh God of Israel, when?” It looks as if the God of Israel would never save them. We’ve got to save ourselves.

“Now you know quite well, Mr. Somers, we’re an unstable, unreliable body to–day, the Labour Party here in Australia. And why? Because in the first place we haven’t got any voice. We want a voice. Think of it, we’ve got no real Labour newspaper in Sydney—or in Australia. How CAN we be united? We’ve no voice to call us together. And why don’t we have a paper of our own? Well, why? Nobody has the initiative. What would be the good, over here, of a grievance–airing rag like your London Daily Herald? It wouldn’t be taken any more seriously than any other rag. It would have no real effect. Australians are a good bit subtler and more disillusioned than the English working classes. You can throw Australians chaff, and they’ll laugh at it. They may even pretend to peck it up. But all the time they KNOW, and they’re not taken in. The Bulletin would soon help them out, if they were. They’ve got a natural sarcastic turn, have the Australians. They’ll do imbecile things: because one thing is pretty well as good as another, to them. They don’t care.

“Then what’s the good starting another Red rag, if the bull won’t run at it? And this Australian bull may play about with a red rag, but it won’t get his real dander up.

“No, you’ve got to give them something to appeal to the deeper man in them. That deeper man is waiting to be appealed to. And we’re waiting for the right individual to come along to put the appeal to them.

“Now, Mr. Somers, here’s your chance. I’m in a position to ask you, won’t you help us to bring out a sincere, CONSTRUCTIVE Socialist paper, not a grievance airer, but a paper that calls to the constructive spirit in men? Deep calleth to deep. And the trouble with us here is, no one calls to our deeps, they lie there stagnant. I can’t do it, I’m too grimy. It wants a deep, fresh nature, and I’m too stale.

“Now Mr. Somers, you’re the son of a working man. You were born of the People. You haven’t turned your back on them, have you, now that you’re a well–known gentleman?”

“No, no,” said Richard, laughing at the irony.

“Then here is your work before you. Come and breathe the breath of life into us, through the printed word. Come and take charge of a true People’s paper for us. We needn’t make it a daily. Make it a twice–weekly. And let it appeal to the Australian, to his heart, for his heart is the right place to appeal to. Let it breathe the new air of trust and comradeship into us. We are ready for it: dying for it. Show us how to BELIEVE in one another, with all our hearts. Show us that the issue isn’t just the wage issue, or who holds the money. It’s brother–love at last, on which Christ’s Democracy is bound to rest. It’s the living People. It is man to man at last.”

The red face of Willie Struthers seemed to glow with fire, and his black eyes had a strange glisten as he watched Richard’s face. Richard’s pale, sombre face showed that he was moved. There was a strange excitement, a deep, exciting vibration in the air, as if something secret were taking place. Jaz in his corner sat silent as a mouse, his knees wide apart, his elbows on his knees, his head dropped. Richard’s eyes at length met the black, excited, glistening eyes of the other man, and he felt that something in the glisten was bearing him down, as a snake bears down a bird. Himself the bird.

But his heart was big within him, swollen in his breast. Because in truth he did love the working people, he did know them capable of a great, generous love for one another. And he did also believe, in a way, that they were capable of building up this great Church of Christ, the great beauty of a People, upon the generous passion of mate–love. All this theoretical socialism started by Jews like Marx, and appealing only to the will–to–power in the masses, making money the whole crux, this has cruelly injured the working people of Europe. For the working people of Europe were generous by nature, and money was not their prime passion. All this political socialism—all politics, in fact—has conspired to make money the only god. It has been a great treacherous conspiracy against the generous heart of the people. And that heart is betrayed: and knows it.

Then can’t the injury be remedied? Can’t the working men be called back, man to man, to a generous opening of the heart to one another, money forgotten? Can’t a new great inspiration of belief in the love of mates be breathed into the white Peoples of the world, and a new day be built on this belief?

It can be done. It could be done. Only, the terrible stress, the strain on the hearts of men, if as human beings the whole weight of the living world is to rest on them. Each man with the poles of the world resting on his heart. Men would go mad.

“You see,” stammered Richard, “it needs more than a belief of men in each other.”

“But what else is there to believe in? Quacks? Medicinemen? Scientists and politicians?”

“It DOES need some sort of religion.”

“Well then—well then—the religious question is ticklish, especially here in Australia. But all the churches are established on Christ. And Christ says Love one another.”

Richard laughed suddenly.

“That makes Christ into another political agent,” he said.

“Well then—I’m not deep enough for these matters. But surely you know how to square it with religion. Seems to me it IS religion—love one another.”

“Without a God.”

“Well—as I say—it’s Christ’s teaching, and that ought to be God enough.”

Richard was silent, his heart heavy. It all seemed so far from the dark God he wished to serve, the God from whom the dark, sensual passion of love emanates, not only the spiritual love of Christ. He wanted men once more to refer the sensual passion of love sacredly to the great dark God, the ithyphallic, of the first dark religions. And how could that be done, when each dry little individual ego was just mechanically set against any such dark flow, such ancient submission? As for instance Willie Struthers at this minute. Struthers didn’t mind Christ. Christ could easily be made to subserve his egoistic purpose. But the first, dark, ithyphallic God whom men had once known so tremendous—Struthers had no use for Him.

“I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I’ve the right touch,” said Richard slowly.

“Nay, Mr. Somers, don’t you be a funker, now. This is the work you were born for. Don’t leave us in the lurch.”

“I shouldn’t be doing what you want me to do.”

“Do what seems best to yourself. We’ll risk it. Make your own conditions. I know as far as money goes you won’t be hard. But take the job on, now. It’s been waiting for you, waiting for you to come out here. Don’t funk at the last minute.”

“I won’t promise at this minute,” said Richard, rising to escape. “I want to go now. I will tell you within a week. You might send me details of your scheme for the paper. Will you? And I’ll think about it hard.”

Mr. Struthers watched him as if he would read his soul. But Richard wasn’t going to have his soul read by force.

“Very well. I’ll see you have the whole scheme of the proposal to–morrow. I don’t think you’ll be able to run away from it.”

Richard was thankful to get out of Canberra Hall. It was like escaping from one of the medical–examination rooms in the war. He and Jaz went in silence down the crowded, narrow pavement of George Street, towards the Circular Quay. Richard called at the General Post–office in Martin Place. As he came out again, and stood on the steps folding the stamps he had bought, seeing the sun down Pitt Street, the people hurrying, the flowers at the corner, the pink spread of Bulletins for sale at the corner of George Street, the hansom–cabs and taxis standing peacefully in the morning shadow of the post–office, suddenly the whole thing switched right away from him. He hailed a hansom.

“Jaz,” he said, “I want to drive round the Botanical Gardens and round the spit there—and I want to look at the peacocks and cockatoos.”

Jaz climbed in with him. “Right–O!” said the cabby, hearing the order, and they clock–clocked away up the hill to Macquarie Street.

“You know, Jaz,” said Richard, looking with joy at the blue harbour inlet, where the Australian “fleet” lay rusting to bits, with a few gay flags; “you know, Jaz, I shan’t do it. I shan’t do anything. I just don’t care about it.”

“You don’t?” said Jaz, with a sudden winsome smile.

“I try to kid myself that I care about mankind and its destiny. And I have fits of wistful love for the working men. But at the bottom I’m as hard as a mango nut. I don’t care about them all. I don’t really care about anything, no I don’t. I just don’t care, so what’s the good of fussing.”

“Why no,” said Jaz, again with a quick smile.

“I feel neither good nor bad. I feel like a fox that has gnawed his tail off and so escaped out of a trap. It seems like a trap to me, all this social business and this saving mankind. Why can’t mankind save itself? It can if it wants to. I’m a fool. I neither want love nor power. I like the world and I like to be alone in it, by myself. What do you want, Jaz?”

Richard was like a child escaped from school, escaped from his necessity to BE something and to DO something. They had jogged past the palm trees and the grass of the gardens, and the blue wrens had cocked their preposterous tails. They jogged to the end of the promontory, under wild trees, and Richard looked at the two lobes of the harbour, blue water on either side, and another part of the town beyond.

“Now take us back to the cockatoos,” he said to the cabby.

Richard loved the look of Australia, that marvellous soft flower–blue of the air, and the sombre grey of the earth, the foliage, the brown of the low rocks: like the dull pelts of kangaroos. It had a wonder and a far–awayness, even here in the heart of Sydney. All the shibboleths of mankind are so trumpery. Australia is outside everything.

“I couldn’t exactly say,” Jaz answered. “You’ve got a bit of an Australian look this morning about you,” he added with a smile.

“I feel Australian. I feel a new creature. But what’s the outcome?”

“Oh, you’ll come back to caring, I should think: for the sake of having something to care about. That’s what most of them do. They want to turn bushrangers for six months, and then they get frightened of themselves, and come back and want to be good citizens.”

“Bushranger? But Australia’s like an open door with the blue beyond. You just walk out of the world and into Australia. And it’s just somewhere else. All those nations left behind in their schoolrooms, fussing. Let them fuss. This is Australia, where one can’t care.”

Jaz sat rather pale, and ten times more silent than ever.

“I expect you’ve got yourself to reckon with, no matter where you are. That’s why most Australians have to fuss about something—politics, or horse̵