Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/237

 "Very well. I'll see you have the whole scheme of the proposal to-morrow. I don't think you'll be able to run away from it."

Richard was thankful to get out of Canberra Hall. It was like escaping from one of the medical-examination rooms in the war. He and Jaz went in silence down the crowded, narrow pavement of George Street, towards the Circular Quay. Richard called at the General Post-office in Martin Place. As he came out again, and stood on the steps folding the stamps he had bought, seeing the sun down Pitt Street, the people hurrying, the flowers at the corner, the pink spread of Bulletins for sale at the corner of George Street, the hansom-cabs and taxis standing peacefully in the morning shadow of the post-office, suddenly the whole thing switched right away from him. He hailed a hansom.

"Jaz," he said, "I want to drive round the Botanical Gardens and round the spit there—and I want to look at the peacocks and cockatoos."

Jaz climbed in with him. "Right O!" said the cabby, hearing the order, and they clock-clocked away up the hill to Macquarie Street.

"You know, Jaz," said Richard, looking with joy at the blue harbour inlet, where the Australian "fleet" lay rusting to bits, with a few gay flags; "you know, Jaz, I shan't do it. I shan't do anything. I just don't care about it."

"You don't?" said Jaz, with a sudden winsome smile.

"I try to kid myself that I care about mankind and its destiny. And I have fits of wistful love for the working men. But at the bottom I'm as hard as a mango nut. I don't care about them all. I don't really care about anything, no I don't. I just don't care, so what's the good of fussing."

"Why no," said Jaz, again with a quick smile.

"I feel neither good nor bad. I feel like a fox that has gnawed his tail off and so escaped out of a trap. It seems like a trap to me, all this social business and this saving mankind. Why can't mankind save itself? It can if it wants to. I'm a fool. I neither want love nor power. I like the world. And I like to be alone in it, by myself, What do you want, Jaz?"