Kangaroo

by D. H. Lawrence

  Thank goodness he, too, came in a certain stillness of spirit, saying very little, but being a quiet, grateful presence. When the tea was finished he and Somers sat back on the verandah out of the wind, and watched the yellow, cloudy evening sink. They hardly spoke, but lay lying back in the deckchairs.

  ‘I was wondering,’ said Somers, ‘whom Kangaroo depends on mostly for his following.’

  William James looked back at him, with quiet, steady eyes.

  ‘On the diggers—the returned soldiers chiefly: and the sailors.’

  ‘Of what class?’

  ‘Of any class. But there aren’t many rich ones. Mostly like me and Jack, not quite simple working men. A few doctors and architects and that sort.’

  ‘And do you think it means much to them?’

  Jaz shifted his thick body uneasily in his chair.

  ‘You never can tell,’ he said.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Somers. ‘I don’t really know how much Jack Callcott cares. I really can’t make out.’

  ‘He cares as much as about anything,’ said Jaz. ‘Perhaps a bit more. It’s more exciting.’

  ‘Do you think it is the excitement they care about chiefly?’

  ‘I should say so. You can die in Australia if you don’t get a bit of excitement.’ There was silence for a minute or two.

  ‘In my opinion,’ said Somers, ‘it has to go deeper than excitement.’ Again Jaz shifted uneasily in his chair.

  ‘Oh, well—they don’t set much store on deepness over here. It’s easy come, easy go, as a rule. Yet they’re staunch chaps while the job lasts, you know. They are true to their mates, as a rule.’

  ‘I believe they are. It’s the afterwards.’

  ‘Oh, well—afterwards is afterwards, as Jack always says.’ Again the two men were silent.

  ‘If they cared deeply—’ Somers began slowly—but he did not continue, it seemed fatuous. Jaz did not answer for some time.

  ‘You see, it hasn’t come to that with them,’ he said. ‘It might, perhaps, once they’d actually done the thing. It might come home to them then; they might have to care. It might be a force-put. Then they’d need a man.’

  ‘They’ve got Kangaroo,’ said Somers.

  ‘You think Kangaroo would get them over the fence?’ said Jaz carefully, looking up at Somers.

  ‘He seems as if he would. He’s a wonderful person. And there seems no alternative to him.’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s a wonderful person. Perhaps a bit too much of a wonder. A hatchet doesn’t look anything like so spanking as a lawnmower, does it now, but it’ll make a sight bigger clearing.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Somers, laughing. ‘But Kangaroo isn’t a lawnmower.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t say so,’ smiled Jaz fidgeting on his chair. ‘I should like to hear your rock-bottom opinion of him though.’

  ‘I should like to hear yours,’ said Somers, ‘You know him much better than I do. I haven’t got a rock-bottom opinion of him yet.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of the time you’ve known him,’ said Jaz. He was manifestly hedging, and trying to get at something. ‘You know I belong to his gang, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Somers, wondering at the word ‘gang’.

  ‘And for that reason I oughtn’t to 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 few.’

  ‘Oh yes—maybe four of his enemies. But he wants to blow the house up without breaking the windows. He thinks he can turn the country upside-down without spilling milk, let alone blood. Now the Reds, let them loose, would make a hole in things. Only they’ll never move on their own responsibility. They haven’t got the guts, the stomach, the backbone.’

  ‘You’re so clever, Jaz. I wonder you’re not a leader yourself.’

  ‘Me?’ A slow ironical smile wreathed his face. ‘You’re being sarcastic with me, Mr Somers.’

  ‘Not at all. I think you’re amazing.’

  Jaz only smiled sceptically still.

  ‘You take what I mean, though, do you?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And what do you think of it?’

  ‘Very clever.’

  ‘But isn’t it feasible? You get Kangaroo, with his Diggers—the cleverest idea in the country, really—to quietly come in with the Reds, and explode a revolution over here. You could soon do it, in the cities: and the country couldn’t help itself. You let the Reds appear in the front, and take all the shine. You keep a bit of a brake on them. You let them call a Soviet, or whatever they want, and get into a real mess over it. And then Kangaroo steps in with the balm of Gilead and the New Jerusalem. But let them play Old Tommy Jenkins first with Capital and State Industries and the free press and religious sects. And then Kangaroo steps in like a redeeming angel, and reminds us that it’s God’s Own Country, so we’re God’s Own People, and makes us feel good again. Like Solomon, when David has done the dirty work.’

  ‘The only point,’ said Somers smiling, ‘is that an Australian Lenin and an Australian Trotsky might pop up in the scrimmage, and then Kangaroo could take to the bush again.’

  Jaz shook his head.

  ‘They wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody with any grip. And you’d see, in this country, people would soon want to be good again, because it costs them least effort.’

  ‘Perhaps Kangaroo is right, and they don’t want to be anything but good.’

  Jaz shook his head.

  ‘It’s not goodness they’re after just now,’ he said. ‘They want to rip things up, or they want nothing. They aren’t ready to come under Kangaroo’s loving wing just yet. They’d as leave be under King George’s thumb, they can peep out easier. It seems to me, it’s spite that’s at the bottom, with most men. And they’ve got to let it out before anything’s any good.’

  Somers began to feel tired now.

  ‘But after all, Jaz,’ he said, ‘what have I got to do with it?’

  ‘You can put it to Kangaroo. You can make him see it. And you can keep him to it, if you promise him you’ll stick to him.’

  ‘Me a power behind the throne?’ protested the truly sceptical Richard.

  ‘I take it you don’t want to sit on the throne yourself,’ smiled Jaz. ‘And Kangaroo’s got more the figure. But what do you think of it?’

  Somers was silent. He now was smiling subtly and ironically, and Jaz was watching him sharply, like a man who wants something. Jaz waited.

  ‘I’m afraid, Jaz,’ said Somers, ‘that, like Nietzsche, I no longer believe in great events. The war was a great event—and it made everything more pretty. I doubt if I care about the mass of mankind, Jaz. You make them more than ever distasteful to me.’

  ‘Oh, you know, you needn’t commit yourself. You’ve only to be friendly with Kangaroo, and work him into it. You know you said yourself you’d give anything to have a clearance made, in the world.’

  ‘I know. Sometimes I feel I’d give anything, soul and body, for a smash up in this social-industrial world we’re in. And I would. And then when I realise people—just people—the same people after it as before—why, Jaz, then I don’t care any more, and feel it’s time to turn to the gods.’

  ‘You feel there’s any gods to turn to, do you?’ asked Jaz, with the sarcasm of disappointment.

  ‘I feel it would probably be like Messina before and after the earthquake. Before the earthquake it was what is called a fine town, but commercial, low, and hateful. You felt you’d be glad if it was wiped out. After the earthquake it was horrible heaps of mortar and rubble, and now it’s rows and rows of wood and tin shanties, streets of them, and more commercial, lower than ever, and infinitely more ugly. That would probably be the world after your revolution. No, Jaz, I leave mankind to its own contrivances, and turn to the gods.’

  ‘But you’ll say a word to Kangaroo?’ said Jaz, persistent.

  ‘Yes, if I feel like it,’ said Richard.

  Darkness had almost fallen, and Somers shivered as he rose to go indoors.

  Next morning, when Somers had made the coffee, he and Harriet sat on the loggia at breakfast. It rained in the night, and the sea was whitish, sluggish, with soft, furry waves that had no plunge. The last thin flush of foam behaved queerly, running along with a straight, swift splash, just as when a steel rope rips out of water, as a tug hauls suddenly, jerking up a white splash that runs along its length.

  ‘What had William James so much to say about?’ asked Harriet, on the warpath.

  ‘Why don’t you have the strength of mind not to ask?’ he replied. ‘You know it’s better you left it alone: that I’m not supposed to blab.’

  She gave him one fierce look, then went pale with anger. She was silent for some time. Then she burst out:

  ‘Pah, as if I cared to know! What is all their revolution bosh to me! There have been revolutions enough, in my opinion, and each one more foolish than the last. And this will be the most foolish of the lot. And what have you got to do with revolutions, you petty and conceited creature? You and revolutions! You’re not big enough, not grateful enough to do anything real. I give you my energy and my life, and you want to put me aside as if I was a charwoman. Acknowledge me first, before you can be any good.’ With which she swallowed her coffee and rose from the table.

  He finished too, and got up to carry in the cups and do the few chores that remained for his share. He always got up in the morning, made the fire, swept the room, and tidied roughly. Then he brought in coal and wood, made the breakfast, and did any little outdoor job. After breakfast he helped to wash up, and settled the fire. Then he considered himself free to his own devices. Harriet could see to the rest.

  His devices were not very many. He tried to write, that being his job. But usually, nowadays, when he tapped his unconscious, he found himself in a seethe of steady fury, general rage. He didn’t hate anybody in particular, nor even any class or body of men. He loathed politicians, and the well-bred darling young men of the well-to-do middle classes made his bile stir. But he didn’t fret himself about them specially. The off-hand self-assertive working people of Australia made him feel diabolic on their score sometimes. But as a rule the particulars were not in evidence, all the rocks were submerged, and his bile swirled diabolically for no particular reason at all. He just felt generally diabolical, and tried merely to keep enough good sense not to tu
rn his temper in any particular direction.

  ‘You think that nothing but goodness and virtue and wonderfulness comes out of you,’ was one of Harriet’s accusations against him. ‘You don’t know how small and mean and ugly you are to other people.’

  ‘Which means I am small and ugly and mean in her eyes,’ he thought to himself. ‘All because of this precious gratitude which I am supposed to feel towards her, I suppose. Damn her and her gratitude. When she thwarts me and puts me in a temper I don’t feel anything but spite. Damn her impudent gratitude.’

  But Harriet was not going to be ignored: no, she was not. She was not going to sink herself to the level of a convenience. She didn’t really want protestations of gratitude or love. They only puzzled her and confused her. But she wanted him inwardly to keep a connection with her. Silently he must maintain the flow between him and her, and safeguard it carefully. It is a thing which a man cannot do with his head: it isn’t remembering. And it is a thing which a woman cannot explain or understand, because it is quite irrational. But it is one of the deepest realities in life. When a man and woman truly come together, when there is a marriage, then an unconscious, vital connection is established between them, like a throbbing blood-circuit. A man may forget a woman entirely with his head, and fling himself with energy and fervour into whatever job he is tackling, and all is well, all is good, if he does not break that inner vital connection which is the mystery of marriage. But let him once get out of unison, out of conjunction, let him inwardly break loose and come apart, let him fall into that worst of male vices, the vice of abstraction and mechanisation, and have a concert of working alone and of himself, then he commits the breach. He hurts the woman and he hurts himself, though neither may know why. The greatest hero that ever existed was heroic only whilst he kept the throbbing inner union with something, God, or Fatherland, or woman. The most immediate is woman, the wife. But the most grovelling wife-worshippers are the foulest of traitors and renegades to the inner unison. A man must strive onward, but from the root of marriage, marriage with God, with wife, with mankind. Like a tree that is rooted, always growing and flowering away from its root, so is a vitally active man. But let him take some false direction, and there is torture through the whole organism, roots and all. The woman suffers blindly from the man’s mistaken direction, and reacts blindly.