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 Burano, 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 background, 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 deck-chairs.
“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, fidgetting 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 criticise 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 very 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 had 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 just 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.”