Part 32

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.

“Do you think it can’t be done?” asked Kangaroo, his voice growing fuller. “I hope I may live to show you. The working men have not realised yet what love is. The perfect love that men may have for one another, passing the love of women. Oh, Lovat, they still have that to experience. Don’t harden your heart. Don’t stiffen your neck before your old Jewish Kangaroo. You know it is true. Perfect love casteth out fear, Lovat. Teach a man how to love his mate, with a pure and fearless love. Oh, Lovat, think what can be done that way!”

Somers was very pale, his face set.

“Say you believe me. Say you believe me. And let us bring it to pass together. If I have you with me I know we can do it. If you had been with me this would never have happened to me.”

His face changed again as if touched with acid at the thought. Somers sat still, remote. He was distressed, but it made him feel more remote.

“What class do you feel that you belong to, as far as you belong to any class?” asked Kangaroo, his eyes on Richard’s face.

“I don’t feel I belong to any class. But as far as I _do_ belong--it is to the working classes. I know that. I can’t change.”

Kangaroo watched him eagerly.

“I wish I did,” he said, eagerly. Then, after a pause, he added: “They have never known the full beauty of love, the working classes. They have never admitted it. Work, bread has always stood first. But we can take away that obstacle. Teach them the beauty of love between men, Richard, teach them the highest--greater love than this hath no man--teach them how to love their own mate, and you will solve the problem of work for ever. Richard, this is true, you know it is true. How beautiful it would be! How beautiful it would be! It would complete the perfect circle--”

His voice faded down into a whisper, so that Somers seemed to hear it from far off. And it seemed like some far off voice of annunciation. Yet Richard’s face was hard and clear and sea-bitter as one of the worn shells he had brought.

“The faithful, fearless love of man for man,” whispered Kangaroo, as he lay with his dark eyes on Richard’s face, and the wisp of hair on his forehead. Beautiful, he was beautiful again, like a transfiguration.

“We’ve got to save the People, we’ve got to do it. And when shall we begin, friend, when shall we begin, you and I?” he repeated in a sudden full voice. “Only when we dare to lead them, Lovat,” he added in a murmur. “The love of man for wife and children, the love of man for man, so that each would lay down his life for the other, then the love of man for beauty, for truth, for the Right. Isn’t that so? Destroy no love. Only open the field for further love.”

He lay still for some moments after this speech, that ended in a whisper almost. Then he looked with a wonderful smile at Somers, without saying a word, only smiling from his eyes, strangely, wonderfully. But Richard was scared.

“Isn’t that all honest injun, Lovat?” he whispered playfully.

“I believe it is,” said Richard, though with unchanging face. His eyes, however, were perplexed and tormented.

“Of course you do. Of course you do,” said Kangaroo softly. “But you are the most obstinate little devil and child that ever opposed a wise man like me. For example, don’t you love me in your heart of hearts, only you daren’t admit it? I know you do. I know you do. But admit it, man, admit it, and the world will be a bigger place to you. You are afraid of love.”

Richard was more and more tormented in himself.

“In a way, I love you, Kangaroo,” he said. “Our souls are alike somewhere. But it is true I don’t _want_ to love you.”

And he looked in distress at the other man.

Kangaroo gave a real little laugh.

“Was ever woman so coy and hard to please!” he said, in a warm, soft voice. “Why don’t you want to love me, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised Philistine? Don’t you want to love Harriet, for example?”

“No, I don’t want to love anybody. Truly. It simply makes me frantic and murderous to have to feel loving any more.”

“Then why did you come to me this morning?”

The question was pertinent. Richard was baffled.

“In a way,” he said vaguely, “because I love you. But love makes me feel I should die.”

“It is your wilful refusal of it,” said Kangaroo, a little wearily. “Put your hand on my throat, it aches a little.”

He took Richard’s hand and laid it over his warm, damp, sick throat, there the pulse beat so heavy and sick, and the Adam’s apple stood out hard.

“You must be still now,” said Lovat, gentle like a physician.

“Don’t let me die!” murmured Kangaroo, almost inaudible, looking into Richard’s muted face. The white, silent face did not change, only the blue-grey eyes were abstract with thought. He did not answer. And even Kangaroo dared not ask for an answer.

At last he let go Richard’s hand from his throat. Richard withdrew it, and wanted to wipe it on his handkerchief. But he refrained, knowing the sick man would notice. He pressed it very secretly, quietly, under his thigh, to wipe it on his trousers.

“You are tired now,” he said softly.

“Yes.”

“I will tell the nurse to come?”

“Yes.”

“Good-bye--be better,” said Richard sadly, touching the man’s cheek with his finger-tips slightly. Kangaroo opened his eyes with a smile that was dark as death. “Come again,” he whispered, closing his eyes once more. Richard went blindly to the door. The nurse was there waiting.

Poor Richard, he went away almost blinded with stress and grief and bewilderment. Was it true what Kangaroo had said? Was it true? Did he, Richard, love Kangaroo? Did he love Kangaroo, and deny it? And was the denial just a piece of fear? Was it just fear that made him hold back from admitting his love for the other man?

Fear? Yes, it was fear. But then, did he not believe also in the God of fear? There was not only one God. There was not only the God of love. To insist that there is only one God, and that God the source of Love, is perhaps as fatal as the complete denial of God, and of all mystery. He believed in the God of fear, of darkness, of passion, and of silence, the God that made a man realise his own sacred aloneness. If Kangaroo could have realised that too then Richard felt he would have loved him, in a dark, separate, other way of love. But never this all-in-all thing.

As for politics, there was so little to choose, and choice meant nothing. Kangaroo and Struthers were both right, both of them. Lords or doctors or Jewish financiers _should_ not have more money than a simple working man, just because they were lords and doctors and financiers. If service was the all in all it was absolutely wrong. And Willie Struthers was right.