Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/239

 face emptiness long. You have to come back and do something to keep from being frightened at your own emptiness, and everything else's emptiness. It may be empty. But it's wicked, and it'll kill you if it can. Something comes out of the emptiness, to kill you. You have to come back and do things with mankind, to forget."

"It's wonderful to be empty. It's wonderful to feel this blue globe of emptiness of the Australian air. It shuts everything out," protested Richard.

"You'll be an Aussie yet," smiled Jaz slowly.

"Shall I regret it?" asked Richard.

The eyes of the two men met. In the pale grey eyes of Jaz something lurking, like an old, experienced consciousness looking across at the childish consciousness of Somers, almost compassionately: and half in mockery.

"You'll change back before you regret it," he said.

"Are you wise, Jaz? And am I childish?" Richard's look suddenly changed also to mockery. "If you're wise, Jaz, why do you wander round like a lost soul? Because you do. And what takes you to Struthers, if you belong to Kangaroo?"

"I'm secretary for the coal-and timber-merchants' union," said Jaz quietly.

They got out of the cab to look at the aviaries. Wonderful, brilliant-coloured little birds, the love-birds self-consciously smirking. "Hello!"—pronounced pure Australian-cockney: "Helleow!" "Hello! Hello!" "Hello Cocky! What yer want?" This in a more-than-human voice from a fine sulphur-crested cockatoo. "Hello Cocky!" His thick black tongue worked in his narrow mouth. So absolutely human the sound, and yet a bird's. It was startling, and very funny. The two men talked to the cockatoos, fascinated and amused, for a quarter of an hour. The emu came prancing up, with his alert, large, sticking-out eyes and his whiskers. An alert gentleman, with the dark Australian eye. Very wide-awake, and yet far off in the past. And a remote, alert, sharp gentleness belonging to far past twilight ages, before enemies and iron weapons were perfected. A very remote, dirt-brown gentleman from the lost plains of time. The peacock rustling his blue fireworks seemed a sort of nouveau-riche in comparison.