“Ay, and we didn’t know another bally duet between us, so we had to sing Larboard Watch over again. It was Larboard Alarum Clock by the time we got to the end of it, it went off with such a rattle.”
“Oh, do let us sing it,” said Harriet. “You must help me when I go wrong, because I don’t know it well.”
“What part do you want to sing?” said Jack.
“Oh, I sing the first part.”
“Nay,” said Jack. “I sing that part myself. I’m a high tenor, I am, once I get the wind up.”
“I couldn’t possibly sing the alto,” said Harriet.
“Oh, Jack, do sing the alto,” said Victoria. “Go on, do! I’ll help you.”
“Oh well, if you’ll go bail for me, I don’t care what I do,” said Jack.
And very shortly Somers heard a gorgeous uproar in Wyewurk. Harriet breaking down occasionally, and being picked up. She insisted on keeping on till she had it perfect, and the other two banged and warbled away with no signs of fatigue. So that they were still hailing the Larboard Watch Ahoy when the clock struck eleven.
Then when silence did ensue for a moment, Mrs. Callcott came flying over to Torestin.
“Oh, Mr. Somers, won’t you come and have a drink with Jack? Mrs. Somers is having a glass of hop bitters.”
When Somers entered the living room of Wyewurk, Jack looked up at him with a smile and a glow in his dark eyes, almost like love.
“Beer?” he said.
“What’s the alternative?”
“Nothing but gas-water.”
“Then beer.”
Harriet and Victoria were still at the piano, excitedly talking songs. Harriet was teaching Victoria to pronounce the words of a Schubert song: for there was still one person in the world unacquainted with: “Du bist wie eine Blume.” And Victoria was singing it in a wavering, shy little voice.
“Let’s drink our beer by the kitchen fire,” said Jack. “Then we shall be able to hear ourselves speak, which is more than we can do in this aviary.”
Somers solemnly followed into the tiny kitchen, and they sat in front of the still hot stove.
“The women will keep up the throat-stretching for quite a time yet,” said Jack.
“If we let them. It’s getting late.”
“Oh, I’ve just started my second awakening—feel as sharp as a new tin-tack.”
“Talking about pessimism,” he resumed after a pause. “There’s some of us here that feels things are pretty shaky, you know.” He spoke in a subdued, important sort of voice.
“What is shaky—Australian finance?”
“Ay, Australian everything.”
“Well, it’s pretty much the same in every country. Where there’s such a lot of black smoke there’s not a very big fire. The world’s been going to the dogs ever since it started to toddle, apparently.”
“Ay, I suppose it has. But it’ll get there one day. At least Australia will.”
“What kind of dogs?”
“Maybe financial smash, and then hell to pay all round. Maybe, you know. We’ve got to think about it.”
Somers watched him for some moments with serious eyes. Jack seemed as if he were a little bit drunk. Yet he had only drunk a glass of lager beer. He wasn’t drunk. But his face had changed, it had a kind of eagerness, and his eyes glowed big. Strange, he seemed, as if in a slight ecstasy.
“It may be,” said Somers slowly. “I am neither a financier nor a politician. It seems as if the next thing to come a cropper were capital: now there are no more kings to speak of. It may be the middle classes are coming smash—which is the same thing as finance—as capital. But also it may not be. I’ve given up trying to know.”
“What will be will be, eh,” said Jack with a smile.
“I suppose so, in this matter.”
“Ay, but, look here, I believe it’s right what you say. The middle classes are coming down. What do they sit on?—they sit on money, on capital. And this country is as good as bankrupt, so then what have they left to stand on?”
“They say most countries are really bankrupt. But if they agree among themselves to carry on, the word doesn’t amount to much.”
“Oh, but it does. It amounts to a hull of a lot, here in this country. If it ever came to the push, and the state was bankrupt, there’d be no holding New South Wales in.”
“The state never will be bankrupt.”
“Won’t it? Won’t there be a financial smash, a proper cave in, before we’re much older? Won’t there? We’ll see. But look here, do you care if there is?”
“I don’t know what it means, so I can’t say. Theoretically I don’t mind a bit if international finance goes bust: if it can go bust.”
“Never mind about theoretically. You’d like to see the power of money, the power of capital, broke. Would you or wouldn’t you?”
Somers watched the excited, handsome face opposite him, and answered slowly:
“Theoretically, yes. Actually, I really don’t know.”
“Oh to hell with your theoretically. Drown it. Speak like a man with some feeling in your guts. You either would or wouldn’t. Don’t leave your shirt-tail hanging out, with a theoretically. Would you or wouldn’t you.”
Somers laughed.
“Why, yes, I would,” he said, “and be damned to everything.”
“Shake,” cried Jack, stretching over. And he took Somers’ small hand between both his own. “I knew,” he said in a broken voice, “that we was mates.”
Somers was rather bewildered.
“But you know,” he said, “I never take any part in politics at all. They aren’t my affair.”
“They’re not! They’re not! You’re quite right. You’re quite right, you are. You’re a damned sight too good to be mixing up in any dirty politics. But all I want is that your feelings should be the same as mine, and they are, thank my stars, they are.”
By this time Somers was almost scared.
“But why should you care?” he said, with some reserve. The other however did not heed him.
“You’re not with the middle classes, as you call them, the money-men, as I call them, and I know you’re not. And if you’re not with them you’re against them.”
“My father was a working-man. I come from the working people. My sympathy is with them, when it’s with anybody, I assure you.”
Jack stared at Somers wide-eyed, a smile gathering round his mouth.
“Your father was a working-man, was he? Is that really so? Well, that is a surprise! And yet,” he changed his tone, “no, it isn’t. I might have known. Of course I might. How should I have felt for you as I did, the very first minute I saw you, if it hadn’t been so. Of course you’re one of us: same flesh and blood, same clay. Only you’ve had the advantages of a money-man. But you’ve stuck true to your flesh and blood, which is what most of them don’t do. They turn into so much dirt, like the washings in the pan, a lot of dirt to a very little gold. Well, well, and your father was a working man! And you now being as