Perhaps he was tempted to impress a visiting author like Lawrence with his own literary interests, local standing, and "achievements"...

"Fortunately you haven't anything very risky to trust [me] with," laughed Somers. "I don't know so much about that," said Jack.

Maybe Scott just wanted to show off, and prove that he, too, was a person of substance (and even some importance).

He had no reason to suspect that Lawrence would use anything he told him to put into a book that would one day be published, all around the world.

Yet that explanation for Scott's "indiscretion" - a bit of off-hand boasting - is not a sufficient explanation.

* * *

The clue - the answer - to why Scott "blabbed" lies, I believe, in that almost-mystical Australian male relationship...mateship.

In the following extract, taken from chapter 4 "Jack and Jaz", Lawrence gets very close to the concept of mateship, whose primary tenet was "instant trust" - a tradition (as observers of the Australian character have remarked) so necessary in a "frontier" society, where more formal relationships have yet to be forged...

"There's some of us chaps," said Jack, "who've been through the war and had a lick at Paris and London, you know, who can tell a man by the smell of him, so to speak. If we can't see the COLOUR of his aura, we can jolly well size up the QUALITY of it. And that's what we go by. Call it instinct or what you like. If I like a man, slap out, at the first sight, I'd trust him into hell, I would."

 

In that exchange, Callcott goes on to ask Somers if he can indeed trust him. "What with?" Somers responds (with Jack's arm around his shoulder):

"What with?" Jack hesitated. "Why everything!" he blurted. "Everything! Body and soul and money and every blessed thing. I can trust you with EVERYTHING! Isn't that right?"

 

That is what mateship implies. Your mate - as mentioned above, re the Digger tradition of not abandoning anyone in no-man's-land - should be almost willing to die for you.

Lawrence must have given Scott some encouragement - and perhaps more than just some encouragement - in response to his advances asking Lawrence to "become his mate".

If the text is to be believed - and I think it is - Lawrence must have given the "offer" some serious thought. He certainly shows signs of doing so in the early part of the novel.