Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/128

 "I'm It.' Even the Lord Almighty is only relatively so; and as it were."

"How nice for us all," laughed Somers. "It needed a Jew to lead us this last step in liberty."

"Now we're all little Its, chirping like so many molecules one with another," said Jack, eyeing the roast duck with a shrewd gaze.

The luncheon passed frivolously. Somers was bored, but he had a shrewd suspicion that the other two men really enjoyed it. They sauntered into the study for coffee. It was a smallish room, with big, deep leather chairs of a delicate brown colour, and a thick, bluey oriental carpet. The walls even had an upper panelling of old embossed cordovan leather, a bluish colouring with gilt, old and tarnished away. It was evident that law pays, even in a new country.

Everybody waited for everybody to speak. Somers, of course, knew it was not his business to begin.

"The indiscreet Callcott told you about our Kangaroo clubs," said the host, smiling faintly. Somers thought that surely he had Jewish blood in him. He stirred his little gold coffee-cup slowly.

"He gave me a very sketchy outline."

"It interested you?"

"Exceedingly."

"I read your series of articles on Democracy," said Kangaroo. "In fact they helped me to this attempt now."

"I thought not a soul read them," said Somers, "in that absurd international paper published at the Hague, that they said was run absolutely by spies and shady people."

"It may have been. But I was a subscriber, and I read your essays here in Sydney. There was another man, too, writing on a new aristocracy. But it seemed to me there was too much fraternising in his scheme, too much reverence for the upper classes and passionate pity for the working classes. He wanted them all to be kind to one another, aristocrats of the spirit." Kangaroo smiled slowly. And when he smiled like that, there came an exceedingly sweet charm into his face, for a moment his face was like a flower. Yet he was quite ugly. And