“No,” he repeated. “I mean the world — economics and politics. The welfare of the world.”
“It’s no good asking me,” said Somers. “Since the war burst my bubble of humanity I’m a pessimist, a black pessimist about the present human world.”
“You think it’s going to the bad?” said Jack, still drawing him with the same appearance of deference, of wanting to hear.
“Yes, I do. Faster or slower. Probably I shall never see any great change in my lifetime, but the tendency is all downhill, in my opinion. But then I’m a pessimist, so you needn’t bother about my opinion.”
Somers wanted to let it all go at that. But Callcott persisted.
“Do you think there’ll be more wars? Do you think Germany will be in a position to fight again very soon?”
“Bah, you bolster up an old bogey out here. Germany is the bogey of yesterday, not of to-morrow.”
“She frightened us out of our sleep before,” said Jack, resentful.
“And now, for the time being, she’s done. As a war-machine she’s done, and done for ever. So much scrap-iron, her iron fist.”
“You think so?” said Jack, with all the animosity of a returned hero who wants to think his old enemy the one and only bugbear, and who feels quite injured if you tell him there’s no more point in his old hate.
“That’s my opinion. Of course I may be wrong.”
“Yes, you may,” said Jack.
“Sure,” said Somers. And there was silence. This time Somers smiled a little to himself.
“And what do you consider, then, is the bogey of to-morrow?” asked Jack at length, in a rather small, unwilling voice.
“I don’t really know. What should you say?”
“Me? I wanted to hear what you have to say.”
“And I’d rather hear what you have to say,” laughed Somers.
There was a pause. Jack seemed to be pondering. At last he came out with his bluff, manly Australian self.
“If you ask me,” he said, “I should say that Labour is the bogey you speak of.”
Again Somers knew that this was a draw. “He wants to find out if I’m socialist or anti,” he thought to himself.
“You think Labour is a menace to society?” he returned.
“Well,” Jack hedged. “I won’t say that Labour is the menace, exactly. Perhaps the state of affairs forces Labour to be the menace.”
“Oh, quite. But what’s the state of affairs?”
“That’s what nobody seems to know.”
“So it’s quite safe to lay the blame on,” laughed Somers. He looked with real dislike at the other man, who sat silent and piqued and rather diminished: “Coming here just to draw me and get to know what’s inside me!” he said to himself angrily. And he would carry the conversation no further. He would not even offer Jack a whisky and soda. “No,” he thought to himself. “If he trespasses on my hospitality, coming creeping in here, into my house, just to draw me and get the better of me, underhandedly, then I’ll pour no drink for him. He can go back to where he came from.” But Somers was mistaken. He only didn’t understand Jack’s way of leaving seven-tenths of himself out of any intercourse. Richard wanted the whole man there, openly. And Jack wanted his own way, of seven-tenths left out.
So that after a while Jack rose slowly, saying:
“Well, I’ll be turning in. It’s work to-morrow for some of us.”
“If we’re lucky enough to have jobs,” laughed Somers.
“Or luckier still, to have the money so that we don’t need a job,” returned Jack.
“Think how bored most folks would be on a little money and no settled occupation,” said Somers.
“Yes, I might be myself,” said Jack, honestly admitting it, and at the same time slightly despising the man who had no job, and therefore no significance in life.
“Why, of course.”
When Callcott came over to Torestin, either Victoria came with him, or she invited Harriet across to Wyewurk. Wyewurk was the name of Jack’s bungalow. It had been built by a man who had inherited from an aunt a modest income, and who had written thus permanently his retort against society on his door.
“Wyewurk?” said Jack. “Because you’ve jolly well got to.”
The neighbours nearly always spoke of their respective homes by their elegant names. “Won’t Mrs. Somers go across to Wyewurk, Vicky said. She’s making a blouse or something, sewing some old bits of rag together — or new bits — and I expect she’ll need a pageful of advice about it.” This was what Jack had said. Harriet had gone with apparent alacrity, but with real resentment. She had never in all her life had “neighbours”, and she didn’t know what neighbouring really meant. She didn’t care for it, on trial. Not after she and Victoria had said and heard most of the things they wanted to say and hear. But they liked each other also. And though Victoria could be a terribly venomous little cat, once she unsheathed her claws and became rather “common”, still, so long as her claws were sheathed her paws were quite velvety and pretty, she was winsome and charming to Harriet, a bit deferential before her, which flattered the other woman. And then, lastly, Victoria had quite a decent piano, and played nicely, whereas Harriet had a good voice, and played badly. So that often, as the two men played chess or had one of their famous encounters, they would hear Harriet’s strong, clear voice singing Schubert or Schumann or French or English folk songs, whilst Victoria played. And both women were happy, because though Victoria was fond of music and had an instinct for it, her knowledge of songs was slight, and to be learning these old English and old French melodies, as well as the German and the Italian songs, was a real adventure and a pleasure to her.
They were still singing when Jack returned.
“Still at it!” he said manfully, from the background chewing his little pipe.
Harriet looked round. She was just finishing the joyous moan of Plaisir d’amour, a song she loved because it tickled her so. “Dure toute la vie — i — i — ie — i — e,” she sang the concluding words at him, laughing in his face.
“You’re back early,” she said.
“Felt a mental twilight coming on,” he said, “so thought we’d better close down for the night.”
Harriet divined that, to use her expression, Somers had been “disagreeable to him”.
“Don’t you sing?” she cried.
“Me! Have you ever heard a cow at a gate when she wants to come in and be milked?”
“Oh, he does!” cried Victoria. “He sang a duet at the Harbour Lights Concert.”
“There!” cried Harriet. “How exciting! What duet did he sing?”
“Larboard Watch ahoy!”
“Oh! Oh! I know that,” cried Harriet remembering a farmer friend of Somers’, who had initiated her into the thrilling harmony, down in Cornwall.
“There wasn’t a soul left in the hall, when we’d finished, except Victoria and the other chap’s wife,” said Jack.
“Oh, what a fib. They applauded like anything, and made you give an encore.”
“Ay, and we didn’t know another bally duet between