“There has to be chaos occasionally. And then, Roo, if you do want a benevolent fatherly autocracy, I’m sure you’d better step in after there’s been a bit of chaos.”
Kangaroo shook his head.
“Like a wayward child! Like a wayward child!” he murmured. “You are not such a fool, Lovat, that you can’t see that once you break the last restraints on humanity to-day, it is the end. It is the end. Once burst the flood-gates, and you’ll never get the water back into control. Never.”
“Then let it distil up to heaven. I really don’t care.”
“But man, you are perverse. What’s the matter with you?” suddenly bellowed Kangaroo.
They had gone into the study for coffee. Kangaroo stood with his head dropped and his feet apart, his back to the fire. And suddenly he roared like a lion at Somers. Somers started, then laughed.
“Even perversity has its points,” he said.
Kangaroo glowered like a massive cloud. Somers was standing staring at the Dürer etching of St Jerome: he loved Dürer. Suddenly, with a great massive movement, Kangaroo caught the other man to his breast.
“Don’t, Lovat,” he said, in a much moved voice, pressing the slight body of the lesser man against his own big breast and body. “Don’t!” he said, with a convulsive tightening of the arm.
Somers, squeezed so that he could hardly breathe, kept his face from Kangaroo’s jacket and managed to ejaculate: