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.”
