Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/39

Rh Somers watched him. Callcott had a pale, clean-shaven, lean face with close-shut lips. But his lips weren't bitten in until they just formed a slit, as they so often are in Colonials. And his eyes had a touch of mystery, of aboriginal darkness.

"Do you care very much for Australia?" said Somers, a little wistfully.

"I believe I do," said Jack. "But if I was out of a job like plenty of other unlucky diggers, I suppose I should care more about getting a job."

"But you care very much about your Australia?"

"My Australia? Yes, I own about seven acres of it, all told. I suppose I care very much about that. I pay my taxes on it, all right."

"No, but the future of Australia."

"You'll never see me on a platform shouting about it."

The Lovats said they must be going.

"If you like to crowd in," said Jack, "we can take you in the car. We can squeeze in Mr Somers in front, and there'll be plenty of room for the others at the back, if Gladys sits on her Dad's knee."

This time Somers accepted at once. He felt the halting refusals were becoming ridiculous.

They left at sunset. The west, over the land, was a clear gush of light up from the departed sun. The east, over the Pacific, was a tall concave of rose-coloured clouds, a marvellous high apse. Now the bush had gone dark and spectral again, on the right hand. You might still imagine inhuman presences moving among the gum trees. And from time to time, on the left hand, they caught sight of the long green rollers of the Pacific, with the star-white foam, and behind that the dusk-green sun glimmered over with smoky rose, reflected from the eastern horizon where the bank of flesh-rose colour and pure smoke-blue lingered a long time, like magic, as if the sky's rim were cooling down. It seemed to Somers characteristic of Australia, this far-off flesh-rose bank of colour on the sky's horizon, so tender and unvisited, topped with the smoky, beautiful blueness. And then the thickness of the night's stars overhead, and one star very brave in the last effulgence of sunset, westward over the continent. As soon as night came, all the raggle-taggle of amorphous white settlements