This was the way the sons of his old friends talked; this was the way they acted—sad to relate. He heard them at the clubs—where they came down late for breakfast, looking as if they required a ‘strongish nip’ to steady their nerves. They confessed with cheerful confidence that ‘supper after the theatre had not been conducive to appetite. They really intended to take a pull some day—perhaps get married. But, really, Sydney and Melbourne had become such infernally dull holes that there was nothing to keep a fellow from goin’ to sleep except bridge and billiards—which didn’t always pay.’
Would it not be worth while to try politics for a little excitement? was suggested. There [252] ]was the landed interest to develop legitimately—or indeed to defend. A wave of socialism had arisen, was indeed likely to become a tidal wave if no effort was made to arrest the doctrine of which among the earliest expositors was the late lamented John Cade.
‘What!’ cries ‘the heir of all the ages’—‘mug up Goldwin Smith, Herbert Spencer, and those other Johnnies—to rub shoulders with a lot of fellows that drop their h’s all over the shop? Shouldn’t get in, for one thing—and, if I did, why there’s hardly a gentleman in the whole caboodle!’
‘Whose fault is that?’ queried the senior. ‘Have you ever tried?—or have any young men of your class, except Wharton and Conyers, and what are they among so many?’
‘Don’t know that I have—not built that way. Some fellahs like that sort of thing—I don’t.’
‘Of course it doesn’t matter. It might interfere with your amusements. Then you don’t mind that the laws are being made by the people you despise and won’t associate with—laws to bind your children—and their children after you—if you ever have any: you’ve lost the chance of modifying them—or blocking the suicidal and destructive ones. Laws made by men without capital in land or business—chiefly without culture, often without character; laws made to bind that part of the population who are handicapped by the possession of qualifications anciently held to be titles to respect—now held to place them below the swagman, the loafer, the drunkard, and the [253] ]pauper, as guarantee for place and power! How does that strike you?’
‘Well, it does look mean—rather a crowd of “rotters” to belong to—I must think it over—I’m popular round about old Banda-widgeree—I think I’ll have a shy for the district next election if it’s not too late. I’m almost afraid it is. They’re talking of nationalising the goldfields—the land—the railways. Hang it!—they’ll want to nationalise a fellah’s bank-balance next.’
‘They’ll do that by a side wind, and if they have the voting power on their side—as they have pretty well now, what with adult and female suffrage: ten thousand female voters in a metropolitan constituency against nine thousand male voters—whose fault is that?’
‘I’m afraid our crowd had most to do with it by letting things drift—and I’m as bad as anybody. Good-bye—thanks—I do see things a trifle more clearly. Perhaps I’ll stand after all.’
Arnold Banneret had listened to, indeed joined in, a conversation much resembling it one day. It deepened the lines on his brow, which were beginning to be more pronounced than the advance of time warranted.