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 seaside. 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 today, 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, ‘forever.’
‘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 flowerpot.’
‘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 tomcat. 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 Englan
d’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 s’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 s’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 ha
d 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.
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