Somers went pale. He didn’t want anybody laying down their lives for him. “Greater love than this—” But he didn’t want this great love. He didn’t believe in it: in that way of love.
“Let’s leave it, Jack,” he replied, laughing slowly and rising, giving his hand to the other man. “Don’t let us make any pledges yet. We’re friends, whatever else we are. As for being mates—wait till I feel sure. Wait till I’ve seen Kangaroo. Wait till I see my way clear. I feel I’m only six strides down the way yet, and you ask me to be at the end.”
“At the start you mean,” said Jack, gripping the other man’s hand, and rising too. “But take your time, old man.” He laid his hand on Somers’ shoulder. “If you’re slow and backward like a woman, it’s because it’s your nature. Not like me, I go at it in jumps like a kangaroo. I feel I could jump clean through the blooming tent-canvas sometimes.” As he spoke he was pale and tense with emotion, and his eyes were like black holes, almost wounds in the pallor of his face.
Somers was in a dilemma. Did he want to mix and make with this man? One part of him perhaps did. But not a very big part, since for his life he could not help resenting it when Jack put his hand on his shoulder, or called him “old man.” It wasn’t the commonness either. Jack’s “common” speech and manner was largely assumed—part of the colonial bluff. He could be accurate enough if he chose—as Somers knew already, and would soon know more emphatically. No, it was not the commonness, the vulgar touch in the approach. Jack was sensitive enough, really. And the quiet, well-bred appeal of upper-class young Englishmen, who have the same yearning for intimate comradeship, combined with a sensitive delicacy really finer than a woman’s, this made Somers shrink just the same. He half wanted to commit himself to this whole affection with a friend, a comrade, a mate. And then, in the last issue, he didn’t want it at all. The affection would be deep and genuine enough: that he knew. But—when it came to the point, he didn’t want any more affection. All his life he had cherished a beloved ideal of friendship—David and Jonathan. And now, when true and good friends offered, he found he simply could not commit himself, even to simple friendship. The whole trend of this affection, this mingling, this intimacy, this truly beautiful love, he found his soul just set against it. He couldn’t go along with it. He didn’t want a friend, he didn’t want loving affection, he didn’t want comradeship. No, his soul trembled when he tried to drive it along the way, trembled and stood still, like Balaam’s Ass. It did not want friendship or comradeship, great or small, deep or shallow.
It took Lovat Somers some time before he would really admit and accept this new fact. Not till he had striven hard with his soul did he come to see the angel in the way; not till his soul, like Balaam’s Ass, had spoken more than once. And then, when forced to admit, it was a revolution in his mind. He had all his life had this craving for an absolute friend, a David to his Jonathan, Pylades to his Orestes: a blood-brother. All his life he had secretly grieved over his friendlessness. And now at last, when it really offered—and it had offered twice before, since he had left Europe—he didn’t want it, and he realised that in his innermost soul he had never wanted it.
Yet he wanted some living fellowship with other men; as it was he was just isolated. Maybe a living fellowship!—but not affection, not love, not comradeship. Not mates and equality and mingling. Not blood-brotherhood. None of that.
What else? He didn’t know. He only knew he was never destined to be mate or comrade or even friend with any man. Some other living relationship. But what? He did not know. Perhaps the thing that the dark races know: that one can still feel in India: the mystery of lordship. That which white men have struggled so long against, and which is the clue to the life of the Hindu. The mystery of lordship. The mystery of innate, natural, sacred priority. The other mystic relationship between men, which democracy and equality try to deny and obliterate. Not any arbitrary caste or birth aristocracy. But the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority.
Before Somers went down to George Street to find Jack and to be taken by him to luncheon with the Kangaroo, he had come to the decision, or to the knowledge that mating or comradeship were contrary to his destiny. He would never pledge himself to Jack, nor to this venture in which Jack was concerned.
They arrived at Mr Cooley’s chambers punctually. It was a handsome apartment with handsome jarrah furniture, dark and suave, and some very beautiful rugs. Mr Cooley came at once: and he was a kangaroo. His face was long and lean and pendulous, with eyes set close together behind his pince-nez: and his body was stout but firm. He was a man of forty or so, hard to tell, swarthy, with short-cropped dark hair and a smallish head carried rather forward on his large but sensitive, almost shy body. He leaned forward in his walk, and seemed as if his hands didn’t quite belong to him. But he shook hands with a firm grip. He was really tall, but his way of dropping his head, and his sloping shoulders, took away from his height. He seemed not much taller than Somers, towards whom he seemed to lean the sensitive tip of his long nose, hanging over him as he scrutinised him sharply through his eyeglasses, and approaching him with the front of his stomach.
“Very glad to see you,” he said, in a voice half Australian, half official.