“I’m afraid, Jaz,” said Somers, “that, like Nietzsche, I no longer believe in great events. The war was a great event—and it made everything more pretty. I doubt if I care about the mass of mankind, Jaz. You make them more than ever distasteful to me.”
“Oh, you know, you needn’t commit yourself. You’ve only to be friendly with Kangaroo, and work him into it. You know you said yourself you’d give anything to have a clearance made, in the world.”
“I know. Sometimes I feel I’d give anything, soul and body, for a smash up in this social-industrial world we’re in. And I would. And then when I realise people—just people—the same people after it as before—why, Jaz, then I don’t care any more, and feel it’s time to turn to the gods.”
“You feel there’s any gods to turn to, do you?” asked Jaz, with the sarcasm of disappointment.
“I feel it would probably be like Messina before and after the earthquake. Before the earthquake it was what is called a fine town, but commercial, low, and hateful. You felt you’d be glad if it was wiped out. After the earthquake it was horrible heaps of mortar and rubble, and now it’s rows and rows of wood and tin shanties, streets of them, and more commercial, lower than ever, and infinitely more ugly. That would probably be the world after your revolution. No, Jaz, I leave mankind to its own contrivances, and turn to the gods.”
“But you’ll say a word to Kangaroo?” said Jaz, persistent.
“Yes, if I feel like it,” said Richard.
Darkness had almost fallen, and Somers shivered as he rose to go indoors.
Next morning, when Somers had made the coffee, he and Harriet sat on the loggia at breakfast. It had rained in the night, and the sea was whitish, sluggish, with soft, furry waves that had no plunge. The last thin flush of foam behaved queerly, running along with a straight, swift splash, just as when a steel rope rips out of water, as a tug hauls suddenly, jerking up a white splash that runs along its length.
“What had William James so much to say about?” asked Harriet, on the warpath.