Chapter XVIII: Adieu Australia 383 (15)

What Richard wanted was some sort of a new show: a new recognition of the life-mystery, a departure from the dreariness of money-making, money-having, and money-spending. It meant a new recognition of difference, of highness and of lowness, of one man meet for service and another man clean with glory, having majesty in himself, the innate majesty of the purest _individual_, not the strongest instrument, like Napoleon. Not the tuppenny trick-majesty of Kaisers. But the true majesty of the single soul which has all its own weaknesses, but its strength in spite of them, its own lovableness, as well as its might and dread. The single soul that stands naked between the dark God and the dark-blooded masses of men. “Now, Kangaroo,” said Richard, “is in a false position. He wants to save property for the property owners, and he wants to save Labour from itself and from the capitalist and the politician and all. In fact, he wants to save everything as we have it, and it can’t be done. You can’t eat your cake and have it, and I prefer Willie Struthers. Bolshevism is at least not sentimental. It’s a last step towards an end, a hopeless end. But better disaster than an equivocal nothingness, like the present. Kangaroo wants to be God Himself, and save everybody, which is just irritating, at last. Kangaroo as God Himself, with a kind marsupial belly, is worse than Struthers’ absolute of the People. Though it’s a choice of evils, and I choose neither. I choose the Lord Almighty.”

Having made up his mind so far, Richard came up to the big mass meeting of Labour in the great Canberra Hall, in Sydney. The Labour leaders had lost much ground. Labour was slipping into disorganization: the property-owning Conservatives and Liberals were just beginning to rejoice again. The reduction of the basic wage had been brought about, a further reduction was announced. At the same time the Government was aiming a strong blow at the Unions. It had pronounced the right of every man to work as he himself chose, and the right of employers to agree with non-union workers as to rate of wages. It had further announced its determination to protect the non-union worker, by holding the union responsible for any attacks on non-union men. The leaders of a union were to be arrested and held responsible for attacks on non-workers. In case of bloodshed and death, they were to be tried for manslaughter or for murder. The first to be arrested should be the chief of the union concerned. After him, his immediate subordinates.

Now the sword was drawn, and Labour was up in arms. Meetings were held every day. A special meeting was announced at Canberra Hall, admission by ticket. Somers had asked Jaz if he could get him a ticket, and Jaz had succeeded. There were two meetings: one, a small gathering for discussion, at half-past eight in the morning; the other, the mass meeting, at seven at night.

Richard got up in the dark, to catch the six o’clock train to Sydney. It was a dark, cloudy morning--night still--and a few frogs still were rattling away in a hollow towards the sea, like a weird little factory of machines whirring and trilling and screeching in the dark. At the station some miners were filling their tin bottles at the water-tap: pale and extinguished-looking men.

Dawn began to break over the sea, in a bluey-green rift between clouds. There seemed to be rain. The journey was endless.

In Sydney it was raining, but Richard did not notice. He hurried to the hall to the meeting. It lasted only half an hour, but it was straightforward and sensible. When Richard heard the men among themselves, he realised how _logical_ their position was, in pure philosophy.

He came out with Jaz, whom he had not seen for a long time. Jaz looked rather pale, and he was very silent, brooding.

“Your sympathy is with Labour, Jaz?”

“My sympathy is with various people, Mr Somers,” replied Jaz, non-communicative.

It was no use talking to him: he was too much immersed.

The morning was very rainy, and Sydney, big city as it is, a real metropolis in Pitt Street and George Street, seemed again like a settlement in the wilderness, without any core. One of the great cities of the world. But without a core: unless, perhaps, Canberra Hall were its real centre. Everybody very friendly and nice. The friendliest country in the world: in some ways, the gentlest. But without a core. There was no heart in it all, it seemed hollow.

With mid-day came the sun and the clear sky: a wonderful clear sky and a hot, hot sun. Richard bought sandwiches and a piece of apple turnover, and went into the Palace Gardens to eat them, so that he need not sit in a restaurant. He loathed the promiscuity and publicity of even the good restaurants. The promiscuous feeding gave him a feeling of disgust. So he walked down the beautiful slope to the water again, and sat on a seat by himself, near a clump of strange palm-trees that made a weird noise in the breeze. The water was blue and dancing: and again he felt as if the harbour were wild, lost and undiscovered, as it was in Captain Cook’s time. The city wasn’t real.

In front in the small blue bay lay two little war-ships, pale grey, with the white flag having the Union Jack in one corner floating behind. And one boat had the Australian flag, with the five stars on a red field. They lay quite still, and seemed as lost as everything else, rusting into the water. Nothing seemed to keep its positive reality, this morning in the strong sun after the rain. The two ships were like bits of palpable memory, that persisted, but were only memory images.

Two tiny birds, one brown, one with a sky-blue patch on his head, like a dab of sky, fluttered and strutted, hoisting their long tails at an absurd angle. They were real: the absurd, sharp, unafraid creatures. They seemed to have no deep natural fear, as creatures in Europe have. Again and again Somers had felt this in Australia: the creatures had no sense of fear as in Europe. There was no animal fear in the air, as there is so deeply in India. Only sometimes a grey metaphysical dread.

“Perhaps,” thought he to himself, “this is really the country where men might live in a sort of harmless Eden, once they have settled the old Adam in themselves.”

He wandered the hot streets, walked round the circular quay and saw the women going to the ferries. So many women, _almost_ elegant. Yet their elegance provincial, without pride, awful. So many _almost_ beautiful women. When they were in repose, quite beautiful, with pure, wistful faces, and some nobility of expression. Then, see them change countenance, and it seemed almost always a grimace of ugliness. Hear them speak, and it was startling, so ugly. Once in motion they were not beautiful. Still, when their features were immobile, they were lovely.

Richard had noticed this in many cases. And they were like the birds, quite without fear, impudent, perky, with a strange spasmodic self-satisfaction. Almost every one of the younger women walked as if she thought she was sexually trailing every man in the street after her. And that was absurd, too, because the men seemed more often than not to hurry away and leave a blank space between them and these women. But it made no matter: like mad-women the females, in their quasi-elegance, pranced with that prance of crazy triumph in their own sexual powers which left little Richard flabbergasted.

Hot, big, free-and-easy streets of Sydney: without any sense of an imposition of _control_. No control, everybody going his own ways with alert harmlessness. On the pavement the foot-passengers walked in two divided streams, keeping to the left, and by their unanimity made it impossible for you to wander and look at the shops, if the shops happened to be on your right. The stream of foot passengers flowed over you.

And so it was: far more regulated than London, yet all with a curious exhilaration of voluntariness that oppressed Richard like a madness. No control, and no opposition to control. Policemen were cyphers, not noticeable. Every man his own policeman. The terrible lift of the _harmless_ crowd. The strange relief from all superimposed control. One feels the police, for example, in London, and their civic majesty of authority. But in Sydney no majesty of authority at all. Absolute freedom from all that. Great freedom in the air. Yet, if you got into the wrong stream on the pavement you felt they’d tread you down, almost unseeing. You just _mustn’t_ get in the wrong stream--Liberty!

Yes--the strange unanimity of _harmlessness_ in the crowd had a half paralysing effect on Richard. “Can it be?” he said to himself, as he drifted in the strong sun-warmth of the world after rain, in the afternoon of this strange, antipodal city. “Can it be that there is any harm in these people at all?”

They were quick, and their manners were, in a free way, natural and kindly. They might say Right-O, Right you are!--they did say it, even in the most handsome and palatial banks and shipping offices. But they were patient and unaffected in their response. That was the beauty of the men: their absolute lack of affectation, their naive simplicity, which was at the same time sensitive and gentle. The gentlest country in the world. Really, a high pitch of breeding. Good-breeding at a very high pitch, innate, and in its shirt sleeves.

A strange country. A wonderful country. Who knows what future it may have? Can a great continent breed a people of this magic harmlessness without becoming a sacrifice of some other, external power? The land that invites parasites now--where parasites breed like nightmares--what would happen if the power-lust came that way?

Richard bought himself a big, knobbly, green, soft-crusted apple, at a Chinese shop, and a pretty mother-of-pearl spoon to eat it with. The queer Chinese, with their gabbling-gobbling way of speaking--were they parasites too? A strange, strange world. He took himself off to the gardens to eat his custard apple--a pudding inside a knobbly green skin--and to relax into the magic ease of the afternoon. The warm sun, the big, blue harbour with its hidden bays, the palm trees, the ferry steamers sliding flatly, the perky birds, the inevitable shabby-looking, loafing sort of men strolling across the green slopes, past the red poinsetta bush, under the big flame-tree, under the blue, blue sky--Australian Sydney, with a magic like sleep, like sweet, soft sleep--a vast, endless, sun-hot, afternoon sleep with the world a mirage. He could taste it all in the soft, sweet, creamy custard apple. A wonderful sweet place to drift in. But surely a place that will some day wake terribly from this sleep.

Yet why should it? Why should it not drift marvellously for ever, with its sun and its marsupials?

The meeting in the evening, none the less, was a wild one. And Richard could not believe there was any _real_ vindictiveness. He couldn’t believe that anybody _really_ hated anybody. There was a touch of sardonic tolerance in it all. Oh, that sardonic tolerance! And at the same time that overwhelming obstinacy and power of endurance. The strange, Australian power of enduring--enduring suffering or opposition or difficulty--just blank enduring. In the long run, just endure.

Richard sat next to Jaz. Jaz was very still, very still indeed, seated with his hands in his lap.

“Will there be many diggers here?” Lovat asked.

“Oh, yes. There’s quite a crowd over there, with Jack.”

And Richard looked quickly, and saw Jack. He knew Jack had seen him. But now he was looking the other way. And again, Richard felt afraid of something.

It was a packed hall, tense. There was plenty of noise and interruption, plenty of homethrusts at the speakers from the audience. But still, that sense of sardonic tolerance, endurance. “What’s the odds, boys?”

Willie Struthers gave the main speech: on the solidarity of Labour. He sketched the industrial situation, and elaborated the charge that Labour was cutting its own throat by wrecking industry and commerce.

“But will anything get us away from this fact, mates,” he said: “that there’s never a shop shuts down because it can’t pay the weekly wage-bill. If a shop shuts down, it is because it can’t pay a high enough _dividend_, and there you’ve got it.

“Australian Labour has set out from the first on the principle that huge fortunes should not be made out of its efforts. We have had the obvious example of America before us, and we have been determined from the start that Australia should not fall into the hands of a small number of millionaires and a larger number of semi-millionaires. It has been our idea that a just proportion of all profits should circulate among the workers in the form of wages. Supposing the worker _does_ get his pound a day. It is enormous, isn’t it! It is preposterous. Of course it is. But it isn’t preposterous for a small bunch of owners or shareholders to get their ten pounds a day, _for doing nothing_. Sundays included. That isn’t preposterous, is it?

“They raise the plea that their fathers and their forefathers accumulated the capital by their labours. Well, haven’t _our_ fathers and forefathers laboured? Haven’t they? And what have they accumulated? The right to labour on, and be paid for it what the others like to give ’em.

“We don’t want to wreck industry. But, we say, wages shall go up so that profits shall go down. Why should there be any profits, after all? Forefathers! Why, we’ve all had forefathers, and I’m sure mine worked. Why should there be any profits _at all_, I should like to know. And if profits there _must_ be, well then, the profit grabber isn’t going to get ten times as much as the wage-earner, just because he had a few screwing forefathers. We, who work for what we get, are going to see that the man who doesn’t work shall not receive a large income for not working. If he’s _got_ to have an income for doing nothing, let him have no more than what we call wages. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and the hire is worthy of his labourer. But I can _not_ see that any man is worthy of an unearned income. Let there be no unearned incomes. So much for the basic wage. We know it is not the basic wage that wrecks industry. It’s big profits. When the profits are not forthcoming the directors would rather close down. A criminal proceeding. Because, after all, any big works is run, first, to supply the community with goods, and second, to give a certain proportion of the community a satisfactory occupation. Whatever net profits are made are made by cheating the worker and the consumer, filching a bit from every one of them, no matter how small a bit. And we will not see wages reduced one ha’penny, to help to fill the pockets of shareholders--”

“What about your own shares in Nestles Milk, Willie?” asked a voice.

“I’ll throw them in the fire the minute they’re out of date,” said Willie, promptly, “they’re pretty well wastepaper already.”

He went on to answer the charges of corruption and “Tammany,” with which the Labour Party in Australia had been accused. This led to the point of class hatred.

“It is we who are supposed to foster class hatred,” he said. “Now I put it to you. Does the so-called upper class hate us, or do we hate them more? If you’ll let me answer, I tell you it’s they who do the hating. We don’t wear the flesh off our bones hating them. They aren’t worth it. They’re far beneath hatred.

“We do want one class only--not your various shades of upper and lower. We want The People--and The People means the worker. I don’t mind what a man works at. He can be a doctor or a lawyer even, if men are such fools they must have doctors and lawyers. But look here, mates, what do we all work _for_? For a living? Then why won’t a working-man’s living wage do for a lawyer? Why not? Perhaps a lawyer makes an ideal of his job. Perhaps he is inspired in his efforts to right the wrongs of his client. Very well: virtue is its own reward. If he wants to be paid for it, it isn’t virtue any more. It’s dirty trading in justice, or whatever law means.

“Look at your upper classes, mates. Look at your lawyer charging you two guineas for half an hour’s work. Look at your doctor scrambling for his guinea a visit. Look at your experts with their five thousand a year. Call these _upper_ classes? Upper in what? In the make-and-grab faculties, that’s all.

“To hell with their ‘upper.’ If a working man thinks he’ll be in the running, and demand say half of what these gentry get, then he’s the assassin of his trade and country. It’s his business to grovel before these ‘upper’ gents, is it?

“No, mates, it’s his business to rise up and give ’em a good kick in the seats of their pants, to remind them of their bed-rock bottoms. You’d think, to hear all the fairy tales they let off, that their pants didn’t have such a region as seats. Like the blooming little angels, all fluttery tops and no bottoms. Don’t you be sucked in any more, mates. Look at ’em, and you’ll see they’ve got good, heavy-weight sit-upons, and big, deep trouser-pockets next door. That’s them. Up-end ’em for once, and look at ’em upside down. Greedy fat-arses, mates, if you’ll pardon the vulgarity for once. Greedy fat-arses.

“And that’s what we’ve got to knuckle under to, is it? They’re the upper classes? Them and a few derelict lords and cuttle-fish capitalists. Upper classes? I’m damned if I see much upper about it, mates. Drop ’em in the sea and they’ll float butt-end uppermost, you see if they don’t. For that’s where they keep their fat, like the camel his hump. Upper classes!

“But I wish them no special harm. A bit of a kick in the rear, to remind them that they’ve got a rear, a largely kickable rear. And then, let them pick themselves up and mingle with the rest. Give them a living wage, like any other working man. But it’s hell on earth to see them floating their fat bottoms through the upper regions, and just stooping low enough to lick the cream off things, as it were, and to squeal if a working man asks for more than a gill of the skilly.

“Work? What is one man’s job more than another. Your Andrew Carnegies and your Rothschilds may be very smart at their jobs. All right--give ’em the maximum wage. Give ’em a pound a day. They won’t starve on it. And what do they want with more? A job is nothing but a job, when all’s said and done. And if Mr Hebrew Rothschild is smart on the finance job, so am I a smart sheep-shearer, hold my own with any man. And what’s the odds? Wherein is Mr Hebrew, or Lord Benjamin Israelite any better man than I am? Why does he want so damned much for his dirty financing, and begrudges me my bit for shearing ten score o’ sheep?

“No, mates, we’re not sucked in. It may be Mr Steel-trust Carnegie, it may even be Mr Very-clever Marconi, it may be Marquis Tribes von Israel; and it certainly _is_ Willie Struthers. Now, mates, I, Willie Struthers, a big fortune _I do not want_. But I’m damned if I am going to let a few other brainy vampires suck big fortunes out of me. Not I. I wouldn’t be a man if I did. Upper classes? They’ve got more greedy brains in the seats of their pants than in their top storeys.

“We’re having no more of their classes and masses. We’ll just put a hook in their trouser-bottoms and hook ’em gently to earth. That’s all. And put ’em on a basic wage like all the rest: one job, one wage. Isn’t that fair? No man can do more than his best. And why should one poor devil get ten bob for his level best, and another fat-arse get ten thousand for some blooming trick? No, no, if a man’s a sincere citizen he does his _best_ for the community he belongs to. And his simple wage is enough for him to live on.

“That’s why we’ll have a Soviet. Water finds its own level, and so shall money. It shall not be dammed up by a few sly fat-arses much longer. I don’t pretend it will be paradise. But there’ll be fewer lies about it, and less fat-arsed hypocrisy, and less dirty injustice than there is now. If a man works, he shall not have less than the basic wage, be he even a lying lawyer. There shall be no politicians, thank God. But more than the basic wage also he shall not have. Let us bring things down to a rock-bottom.

“Upper? Why all their uppishness amounts to is extra special greedy guts, ten-thousand-a-year minimum. Upper classes! Upper classes! Upper arses.

“We’ll have a Soviet, mates, and then we shall feel better about it. We s’ll be getting nasty tempered if we put it off much longer. Let’s know our own mind. We’ll unite with the World’s Workers. Which doesn’t mean we’ll take the hearts out of our chests to give it Brother Brown to eat. No, Brother Brown and Brother Yellow had, on the whole, best stop at home and sweep their own streets, rather than come and sweep ours. But that doesn’t mean we can’t come to more or less of an understanding with them. We don’t want to get too much mixed up with them or anybody. But a proper understanding we can have. I don’t say, Open the gates of Australia to all the waiting workers of India and China, let alone Japan. But, mates, you can be quite friendly with your neighbour over the fence without giving him the run of your house. And that is International Labour. You have a genuine understanding with your neighbours down the street. You know they won’t shy stones through your windows or break into your house at night or kill your children in a dark corner. Why not? Because they’re your neighbours and you all have a certain amount of trust in one another. And that is International Labour. That is the World’s Workers.

“After all, mates, the biggest part of our waking lives belongs to our work. And certainly the biggest part of our importance is our importance as workers. Mates we are, and we are bound to be, workers, first and foremost. So were our fathers before us, so will our children be after us. Workers first. And as workers, mates. On this everything else depends. On our being workers depends our being husbands and fathers and playmates: nay, our being men. If we are not workers we are not even men, for we can’t exist.

“Workers we are, mates, workers we must be, and workers we will be, and there’s the end of it. We take our stand on it. Workers first, and whatever soul we have, it must go first into our work. Workers, mates, we are workers. A man is a man because he works. He must work and he does work. Call it a curse, call it a blessing, call it what you like. But the Garden of Eden is gone for ever, and while the ages roll, we must work.

“Let us take our stand on that fact, mates, and trim our lives accordingly. While time lasts, whatever ages come or go, we must work, day in, day out, year in, year out, so for ever. Then, mates, let us abide by it. Let us abide by it, and shape things to fit. No use shuffling, mates. Though you or I may make a little fortune, enough for the moment to keep us in idleness, yet, mates, as sure as ever the sun rises, as long as ever times lasts, the children of men must rise up to their daily toil.

“Is it a curse?--is it a blessing? I prefer to think it is a blessing, so long as, like everything else, it is in just proportion. My happiest days have been shearing sheep, or away in the gold mines--”

“What, not talking on a platform?” asked a voice.

“No, not talking on a platform. Working along with my mates, in the bush, in the mines, wherever it was. That’s where I put my manhood into my work. There I had my mates--my fellow workers. I’ve had playmates as well. Wife, children, friends--playmates all of them. My fellow workers were my mates.

“So, since workers we are and shall be, till the end of time, let us shape the world accordingly. The world is shaped now for the idlers and the play-babies, and we work to keep _that_ going. No, no, mates, it won’t do.

“Join hands with the workers of the world: just a fist-grip, as a token and a pledge. Take nobody to your bosom--a worker hasn’t got a bosom. He’s got a fist, to work with, to hit with, and lastly, to give the tight grip of fellowship to his fellow-workers and fellow-mates, no matter what colour or country he belong to. The World’s Workers--and since they _are_ the world, let them take their own, and not leave it all to a set of silly playboys and Hebrews who are not only silly but worse. The World’s Workers--we, who are the world’s millions, the world is our world. Let it be so, then. And let us so arrange it.

“What’s the scare about being mixed up with Brother Brown and Chinky and all the rest: the Indians in India, the niggers in the Transvaal, for instance? Aren’t we tight mixed up with them as it is? Aren’t we in one box with them, in this Empire business? Aren’t we all children of the same noble Empire, brown, black, white, green, or whatever colour we may be? We may not, of course, be reposing on the bosom of Brother Brown and Brother Black. But we are pretty well chained at his side in a sort of slavery, slaving to keep this marvellous Empire going, with its out-of-date Lords and its fat-arsed, hypocritical upper classes. I don’t know whether you prefer working in the same imperial slave-gang with Brother Brown of India, or whether you’d prefer to shake hands with him as a free worker, one of the world’s workers--but--”

“_One!_” came a loud, distinct voice, as if from nowhere, like a gun going off.

“But one or the other--”

“_Two!_” a solid block of men’s voices, like a bell.

“One or the other you’ll--”

“_Three!_” The voice, like a tolling bell, of men counting the speaker out. It was the diggers.

A thrill went through the audience. The diggers sat mostly together, in the middle of the hall, around Jack. Their faces were lit up with a new light. And like a bell they tolled the numbers against the speaker, counting him out, by their moral unison annihilating him.

Willie Struthers, his dark-yellow face gone demonic, stood and faced them. His eyes too had suddenly leaped with a new look: big, dark, glancing eyes, like an aboriginal’s, glancing strangely. Was it fear, was it a glancing, gulf-like menace? He stood there, a shabby figure of a man, with undignified legs, facing the tolling enemy.

“_Four!_” came the sonorous, perfect rhythm. It was a strange sound, heavy, hypnotic, trance-like. Willie Struthers stood as if he were fascinated, glaring spell-bound.

“_Five!_” The sound was unbearable, a madness, tolling out of a certain devilish cavern in the back of the men’s unconscious mind, in terrible malignancy. The Socialists began to leap to their feet in fury, turning towards the block of Diggers. But the lean, naked faces of the ex-soldiers gleamed with a smiling, demonish light, and from their narrow mouths simultaneously:

“_Six!_”

Struthers, looking as if he were crouching to spring, glared back at them from the platform. They did not even look at him.

“_Seven!_” In two syllables, _Sev-en!_

The sonorous gloating in the sound was unbearable. It was like hammer-strokes on the back of the brain. Everybody had started up save the Diggers. Even Somers was wildly on his feet, feeling as if he could fly, swoop like some enraged bird. But his feeling wavered. At one moment he gloated with the Diggers against the black and devilish figure of the isolated man on the platform, who half-crouched as if he were going to jump, his face black and satanic. And then, as the numbers came, unbearable in its ghastly striking:

“_Eight!_” like some hammer-stroke on the back of his brain it sent him clean mad, and he jumped up into the air like a lunatic, at the same moment as Struthers sprang with a clear leap, like a cat, towards the group of static, grinning ex-soldiers.

There was a crash, and the hall was like a bomb that has exploded. Somers tried to spring forward. In the blind moment he wanted to kill--to kill the soldiers. Jaz held him back, saying something. There was a most fearful roar, and a mad whirl of men, broken chairs, pieces of chairs brandished, men fighting madly with fists, claws, pieces of wood--any weapon they could lay hold of. The red flag suddenly flashing like blood, and bellowing rage at the sight of it. A Union Jack torn to fragments, stamped upon. A mob with many different centres, some fighting frenziedly round a red flag, some clutching fragments of the Union Jack, as if it were God incarnate. But the central heap a mass struggling with the Diggers, in real blood-murder passion, a tense mass with long, naked faces gashed with blood, and hair all wild, and eyes demented, and collars bursted, and arms frantically waving over the dense bunch of horrific life, hands in the air with weapons, hands clawing to drag them down, wrists bleeding, hands bleeding, arms with the sleeves ripped back, white, naked arms with brownish hands, and thud! as the white flesh was struck with a chair-leg.

The doors had been flung open--many men had gone out, but more rushed in. The police in blue uniforms and in blue clothes wielding their batons, the whole place gone mad. Richard, small as he was, felt a great frenzy on him, a great longing to let go. But since he didn’t _really_ know whom he wanted to let go at, he was not quite carried away. And Jaz, quiet, persistent, drew him gradually out into the street. Though not before he had lost his hat and had had his collar torn open, and had received a bang over the forehead that helped to bring him to his senses.

Smash went the lights of the hall--somebody smashing the electric lamps. The place was almost in darkness. It was unthinkable.

Jaz drew Somers into the street, which was already a wide mass of a crowd, and mounted police urging their way to the door, laying about them. The crowd too was waiting to catch fire. Almost beside himself Richard struggled out of the crowd, to get out of the crowd. Then there were shots in the night, and a great howl from the crowd. Among the police on horseback he saw a white hat--a white felt hat looped up at the side--and he seemed to hear the bellowing of a big, husky voice. Surely that was Kangaroo, that was Kangaroo shouting. Then there was a loud explosion and a crash--a bomb of some sort.

And Richard suddenly was faint--Jaz was leading him by the arm--leading him away--in the city night that roared from the direction of the hall, while men and women were running thither madly, and running as madly away, and motor cars came rushing: and even the fire-brigade with bright brass helmets--a great rush towards the centre of conflict--and a rush away, outwards. While hats--white hats--Somers, in his dazed condition saw three or four, and they occupied his consciousness as if they were thousands.

“We must go back,” he cried. “We must go back to them!”

“What for?” said Jaz. “We’re best away.”

And he led him sturdily down a side street, while Somers was conscious only of the scene he had left, and the sound of shots.

They went to one of the smaller, more remote Digger’s Clubs. It consisted only of one large room, meeting room and gymnastics hall in turn, and a couple of small rooms, one belonging to the secretary and the head, and the other a sort of little kitchen with a sink and a stove. The one-armed caretaker was in attendance, but nobody else was there. Jaz and Somers went into the secretary’s room, and Jaz made Richard lie down on the sofa.

“Stay here,” he said, “while I go and have a look round.”

Richard looked at him. He was feeling very sick: perhaps the bang over the head. Yet he wanted to go back into the town, into the melee. He felt he would even die if he did so. But then why not die? Why stay outside the row? He had always been outside the world’s affairs.

“I’ll come with you again,” he said.

“No, I don’t want you,” snapped Jaz. “I have a few of my own things to attend to.”

“Then I’ll go by myself,” said Richard.

“If I were you I wouldn’t,” said Jaz.

And Richard sat back feeling very sick, and confused. But such a pain in his stomach, as if something were torn there. And he could not keep still--he wanted to do something.

Jaz poured out a measure of whiskey for himself and one for Richard. Then he went out, saying:

“You’d best stay here till I come back, Mr Somers. I shan’t be very long.”

Jaz too was very pale, and his manner was furtive, like one full of suppressed excitement.

Richard looked at him, and felt very alien, far from him and everybody. He rose to his feet to rush out again. But the torn feeling at the pit of his stomach was so strong he sat down and shoved his fists in his abdomen, and there remained. It was a kind of grief, a bitter, agonised grief for his fellow-men. He felt it was almost better to die, than to see his fellow-men go mad in this horror. He could hear Jaz talking for some time to the one-armed care-taker, a young soldier who was lame with a bad limp as well as maimed.

“I can’t do anything. I can’t be on either side. I’ve got to keep away from everything,” murmured Richard to himself. “If only one might die, and not have to wait and watch through all the human horror. They are my fellow-men, they are my fellow-men.”

So he lay down, and at length fell into a sort of semi-consciousness, still pressing his fists into his abdomen, and feeling as he imagined a woman might feel after her first child, as if something had been ripped out of him. He was vaguely aware of the rage and chaos in the dark city round him, the terror of the clashing chaos. But what was the good even of being afraid?--even of grief? It was like a storm, in which he could do nothing but lie still and endure and wait. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Perhaps it is the bitterest part, to keep still through it all, and watch and wait. In a numb half-sleep Richard lay and waited--waited for heaven knows what.

It seemed a long time. Then he heard voices. There was Jack and Jaz and one or two others--loud voices. Presently Jack and Jaz came in to him. Jack had a big cut on the chin, and was pale as death. There was blood on his coat, and he had a white pocket-handkerchief round his neck, having lost his collar. He looked with black eyes at Richard.

“What time is it?” asked Richard.

“Blowed if I know,” answered Jack, like a drunken man.

“Half past eleven,” said Jaz quietly.

Only an hour--or an hour and a half. Time must have stood still and waited.

“What has happened?” asked Richard.

“Nought!” blurted Jack, still like a drunken man. “Nought happened. Bloody blasted nothing.”

“Kangaroo is shot,” said Jaz.

“Dead?”

“No--o!” snarled Jack. “No, damn yer, not dead.”

Somers looked at Jaz.

“They’ve taken him home--shot in the belly,” said Jaz.

“In his bloomin’ Kangaroo guts,” said Jack. “Ain’t much left of the ant that shot ’im, though--neither guts nor marrow.”

Richard stared at the two men.

“Are you hurt?” he said to Jack.

“Me? Oh, no, I just scratched myself shaving, darling. Making me toilet.”

There was silence for some time. Jaz’s plump, pale face was still impassive, inscrutable, and his clothing was in order. Jack poured himself a half-glass of neat whiskey, put in a little water, and drank it off.

“And Willie Struthers and everybody?” asked Richard.

“Gone ’ome to his missis to have sausage for tea,” said Jack.

“Not hurt?”

“Blowed if I know,” replied Jack indifferently, “whether he’s hurt or not.”

“And is the town quiet?” Somers turned to Jaz. “Has everything blown over? What has happened?”

“What has happened exactly I couldn’t tell you. I suppose everything is quiet. The police have everything in hand.”

“Police!” snarled Jack. “Bloody Johnny Hops! They couldn’t hold a sucking pig in their hands, unless somebody hung on to its tail for them. It’s our boys who’ve got things in hand. And handed them over to the Hops.”

Somers knew that Johnny Hops was Australian for a policeman. Jack spoke in a suppressed frenzy.

“Was anybody killed?” Somers asked.

“I’m sure I hope so. If I haven’t done one or two of ’em in I’m sorry. Damned sorry. Bloody sorry,” said Jack.

“I should be careful what I say,” said Jaz.

“I know you’d be careful, you Cornish whisper. Careful Jimmy’s your name and nation. But I _hope_ I did one or two of ’em in. And I _did_ do one or two of ’em in. See the brains sputter out of that chap that shot ’Roo?”

“And suppose they arrest you to-night and shove you in gaol for manslaughter?” said Jaz.

“I wouldn’t advise anybody to lay as much as a leaf of maidenhair fern on me to-night, much less a finger.”

“They might to-morrow. You be still, and go home.”

Jack relapsed into a white silence. Jaz went into the common room again, where members dropped in from the town. Apparently everything had gone quiet. It was determined that everybody should go home as quietly and quickly as possible.

Richard found himself in the street with Jaz and Jack, both of whom were silent. They walked briskly through the streets. Groups of people were hurrying silently home. The town felt very dark, and as if something very terrible had happened. A few taxi-cabs were swiftly and furtively running. In George Street and Pitt Street patrols of mounted police were stationed, and the ordinary police were drawn up on guard outside the most important places. But the military had not been called out.

On the whole, the police took as little notice as possible of the foot-passengers who were hurrying away home, but occasionally they held up a taxi-cab. Jaz, Jack and Somers proceeded on foot, very quickly and in absolute silence. They were not much afraid of the city authorities: perhaps not so much afraid as were the authorities themselves. But they all instinctively felt it best to keep quiet and unnoticed.

It was nearly one o’clock when they reached Wyewurk. Victoria had gone to bed. She called when she heard the men enter. Evidently she knew nothing of the row.

“Only me and Jaz and Mr Somers,” called Jack. “Don’t you stir.”

“Of course I must,” she cried brightly.

“Don’t you move,” thundered Jack, and she relapsed into silence. She knew, when he had one of his hell-moods on him, it was best to leave him absolutely alone.

The men drank a little whiskey, then sat silent for some time. At last Jaz had the energy to say they must go to bed.

“Trot off, Jazzy,” said Jack. “Go to bee-by, boys.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” said Jaz, as he retired. He was sleeping the night at Wyewurk, his own home being across the harbour.

Somers still sat inert, with his unfinished glass of whiskey, though Jaz said to him pertinently:

“Aren’t you retiring, Mr Somers?”

“Yes,” he answered, but didn’t move.

The two were left in silence: only the little clock ticking away. Everything quite still.

Suddenly Jack rose and looked at his face in the mirror.

“Nicked a bit out of my chin, seemingly. It was that little bomb that did that. Dirty little swine, to throw a bomb. But it hadn’t much kick in it.”

He turned round to Somers, and the strangest grin in the world was on his face, all the lines curved upwards.

“Tell you what, boy,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “I settled _three_ of ’em--three!” There was an indescribable gloating joy in his tones, like a man telling of the good time he has had with a strange mistress--“Gawr, but I was lucky. I got one of them iron bars from the windows, and I stirred the brains of a couple of them with it, and I broke the neck of a third. Why it was as good as a sword to defend yourself with, see--”

He reached his face towards Somers with weird, gruesome exultation, and continued in a hoarse, secret voice:

“Cripes, there’s _nothing_ bucks you up sometimes like killing a man--_nothing_. You feel a perfect _angel_ after it.”

Richard felt the same torn feeling in his abdomen, and his eyes watched the other man.

“When it comes over you, you know, there’s nothing else like it. _I_ never knew, till the war. And I wouldn’t believe it then, not for many a while. But it’s _there_. Cripes, it’s there right enough. Having a woman’s something, isn’t it? But it’s a flea-bite, nothing, compared to killing your man when your blood comes up.”

And his eyes glowed with exultant satisfaction.

“And the best of it is,” he said, “you feel a perfect _angel_ after it. You don’t feel you’ve done any harm. Feel as gentle as a lamb all round. I can go to Victoria, now, and be as gentle--” He jerked his head in the direction of Victoria’s room. “And you bet she’ll like me.”

His eyes glowed with a sort of exaltation.

“Killing’s natural to a man, you know,” he said. “It is just as natural as lying with a woman. Don’t you think?”

And still Richard did not answer.

The next morning he left early for Mullumbimby. The newspaper gave a large space to the disturbance, but used the wisest language. “Brawl between Communists and Nationalists at Canberra Hall. Unknown anarchist throws a bomb. Three persons killed and several injured. Ben Cooley, the well-known barrister, receives bullets in the abdomen, but is expected to recover. Police, aided by Diggers, soon restored order.”

This was the tone of all the newspapers.

Most blamed the Labour incendiaries, with pious horror--but all declared that the bomb was thrown by some unknown criminal who had intruded himself into the crowd unknown to all parties. There was a mention of shots fired: and a loud shout of accusation against the Mounted Police from the Labour papers, declaring that these had fired on the crowd. Equally loud denials. A rigorous inquiry was to be instituted, fourteen men were arrested. Jack was arrested as the leader of the men who had counted-out Willie Struthers, but he was released on bail. Kangaroo was said to be progressing, as far as could be ascertained, favourably.

And then the papers had a lovely lot of topics. They could discuss the character and persons of Struthers and Ben Cooley, all except the Radical paper, the _Sun_, praising Ben for his laudable attempt to obtain order by the help of his loyal Diggers. The _Sun_ hinted at other things. Then the personal histories of all the men arrested. Jack, the well-known V.C., was cautiously praised.

What was curious was that nobody brought criminal charges against anybody. Jack’s iron bar, for instance, nobody mentioned. It was called a stick. Who fired the revolvers, nobody chose to know. The bomb thrower was an unknown anarchist, probably a new immigrant from Europe. Each side vituperated and poured abuse on the other sides. But nobody made any precise, criminal accusations. Most of the prisoners--including Jack--were bound over. Two of them got a year’s imprisonment, and five got six months. And the affair began to fizzle down.

A great discussion started on the subject of counting out. Tales were told, how the sick men in a hospital, from their beds, counted out an unsympathetic medical officer till the man dared not show his face. It was said that the Aussies had once begun to count out the Prince of Wales. It was in Egypt. The Prince had ridden up to review them, and he seemed to them, as they stood there in the sun, to be supercilious, “superior.” This is the greatest offence. So as he rode away like magic they started to count him out. “One! Two! Three!” No command would stop them. The Prince, though he did not know what it meant, instantly felt the thing like a blow, and rode back at once, holding up his hand, to ask what was wrong. And then he was so human and simple that they said they had made a mistake, and they cheered him passionately. But they had _begun_ to count him out. And once a man was counted out he was done: he was dead, he was counted out. So, newspaper talk.

And Somers, looking through the _Bulletin_, though he could hardly read it now, as if he could not _see_ it, in its one level, as if he had gone deaf to its note--was struck by the end of a paragraph:

“This tendency may be noted in the Christianised Melanesian native, in whom an almost uncontrolled desire to kill sometimes arises without any provocation whatever. Fortunately for the would-be victim the native often has a premonition of the impending nerve-storm. It is not uncommon for a white man to be addressed thus by his model houseboy, walking behind him on a bush track: ‘More better, taubada (master), you walk behind me. Me want make you kill!’ In five minutes (if the master has been wise enough to get out of the way) a smiling boy will indicate that his little trouble has been weathered. In these cases Brother Brown is certainly a gentleman compared to the atavistic white.”

CHAP: XVII. KANGAROO IS KILLED

“Dear Lovat, also Mrs Lovat: I don’t think it is very nice of you that you don’t even call with a tract or a tube-rose, when you know I am so smitten. Yours, Kangaroo.

P.S.--Bullets in my marsupial pouch.”

Of course Richard went up at once: and Harriet sent a little box with all the different strange shells from the beach. They are curious and interesting for a sick man.

Somers found Kangaroo in bed, very yellow, and thin, almost lantern-jawed, with haunted, frightened eyes. The room had many flowers, and was perfumed with eau-de-cologne, but through the perfume came an unpleasant, discernable stench. The nurse had asked Richard, please to be very quiet.

Kangaroo put out a thin yellow hand. His black hair came wispily, pathetically over his forehead. But he said, with a faint, husky briskness:

“Hello! Come at last,” and he took Somers’ hand in a damp clasp.

“I didn’t know whether you could see visitors,” said Richard.

“I can’t. Sit down. Behave yourself.”

Somers sat down, only anxious to behave himself.

“Harriet sent you such a silly present,” he said. “Just shells we have picked up from the shore. She thought you might like to play with them on the counterpane--”

“Like that sloppy Coventry Patmore poem. Let me look.”

The sick man took the little Sorrento box with its inlaid design of sirens and peered in at the shells.

“I can smell the sea in them,” he said hoarsely.

And very slowly he began to look at the shells, one by one. There were black ones like buds of coal, and black ones with a white spiral thread, and funny knobbly black and white ones, and tiny purple ones, and a bright sea-orange, semi-transparent clamp shell, and little pink ones with long, sharp points, and glass ones, and lovely pearly ones, and then those that Richard had put in, worn shells like sea-ivory, marvellous substance, with all the structure showing; spirals like fairy stair-cases, and long, pure phallic pieces that were the centres of big shells, from which the whorl was all washed away: also curious flat, oval discs, with a lovely whorl traced on them, and an eye in the centre. Richard liked these especially.

Kangaroo looked at them briefly, one by one, as if they were bits of uninteresting printed paper.

“Here, take them away,” he said, pushing the box aside. And his face had a faint spot of pink in the cheeks.

“They may amuse you some time when you are alone,” said Richard, apologetically.

“They make me know I have never been born,” said Kangaroo, huskily.

Richard was startled, and he didn’t know what to answer. So he sat still, and Kangaroo lay still, staring blankly in front of him. Somers could not detach his mind from the slight, yet pervading sickening smell.

“My sewers leak,” said Kangaroo, bitterly, as if divining the other’s thought.

“But they will get better,” said Richard.

The sick man did not answer, and Somers just sat still.

“Have you forgiven me?” asked Kangaroo, looking at Somers.

“There was nothing to forgive,” said Richard, his face grave and still.

“I knew you hadn’t,” said Kangaroo. Richard knitted his brows. He looked at the long, yellow face. It was so strange and so frightening to him.

“You bark at me as if I were Little Red Riding-hood,” he said, smiling. Kangaroo turned dark, inscrutable eyes on him.

“Help me!” he said, almost in a whisper. “Help me.”

“Yes,” said Richard.

Kangaroo held out his hand: and Richard took it. But not without a slight sense of repugnance. Then he listened to the faint, far-off noises of the town, and looked at the beautiful flowers in the room: violets, orchids, tuberoses, delicate yellow and red roses, iceland poppies, orange like transmitted light, lilies. It was like a tomb, like a mortuary, all the flowers, and that other faint, sickening odour.

“I am not wrong, you know,” said Kangaroo.

“No one says you are,” laughed Richard gently.

“I am not wrong. Love is still the greatest.” His voice sank in its huskiness to a low resonance. Richard’s heart stood still. Kangaroo lay quite motionless, but with some of the changeless pride which had lent him beauty, at times, when he was himself. The Lamb of God grown into a sheep. Yes, the nobility.

“You heard Willie Struthers’ speech?” said Kangaroo, his face changing as he looked up at Somers.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“It seemed to me logical,” said Richard, not knowing how to answer.

“Logical!” Even Kangaroo flickered with surprise. “You and logic!”

“You see,” said Richard very gently, “the educated world has preached the divinity of work at the lower classes. They broke them in, like draught-horses, put them all in the collar and set them all between the shafts. There they are, all broken in, _workers_. They are conscious of nothing save that they are workers. They accept the fact that nothing is divine but work: work being service, and service being love. The highest is work. Very well then, accept the conclusion if you accept the premises. The working classes are the highest, it is for them to inherit the earth. You can’t deny that, if you assert the sacredness of work.”

He spoke quietly, gently. But he spoke because he felt it was kinder, even to the sick man, than to avoid discussion altogether.

“But I don’t believe in the sacredness of work, Lovat,” said Kangaroo.

“No, but they believe it themselves. And it follows from the sacredness of love.”

“I want them to be men, men, men--not implements at a job.” The voice was weak now, and took queer, high notes.

“Yes, I know. But men inspired by love. And love has only service as its means of expression.”

“How do you know? You never love,” said Kangaroo in a faint, sharp voice. “The joy of love is in being with the beloved--as near as you can get--‘And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.’--For life, for life’s sake, Lovat, not for work. Lift them up, that they may live.”

Richard was silent. He knew it was no good arguing.