第84章 THE FOURTH(11)

"Good God!" I said in hot reaction, "what am I doing here?"It was one of those moments infinitely trivial in themselves, that yet are cardinal in a man's life.It came to me with extreme vividness that it wasn't so much that I had got hold of something as that something had got hold of me.I distinctly recall the rebound of my mind.Whatever happened in this Parliament, I at least would attempt something."By God!" I said, "I won't be overwhelmed.I am here to do something, and do something I will!"But I felt that for the moment I could not remain in the House.

I went out by myself with my thoughts into the night.It was a chilling night, and rare spots of rain were falling.I glanced over my shoulder at the lit windows of the Lords.I walked, I remember, westward, and presently came to the Grosvenar Embankment and followed it, watching the glittering black rush of the river and the dark, dimly lit barges round which the water swirled.Across the river was the hunched sky-line of Doulton's potteries, and a kiln flared redly.Dimly luminous trams were gliding amidst a dotted line of lamps, and two little trains crawled into Waterloo station.

Mysterious black figures came by me and were suddenly changed to the commonplace at the touch of the nearer lamps.It was a big confused world, I felt, for a man to lay his hands upon.

I remember I crossed Vauxhall Bridge and stood for a time watching the huge black shapes in the darkness under the gas-works.A shoal of coal barges lay indistinctly on the darkly shining mud and water below, and a colossal crane was perpetually hauling up coal into mysterious blacknesses above, and dropping the empty clutch back to the barges.Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men toiled amidst these monster shapes.They did not seem to be controlling them but only moving about among them.These gas-works have a big chimney that belches a lurid flame into the night, a livid shivering bluish flame, shot with strange crimson streaks....

On the other side of Lambeth Bridge broad stairs go down to the lapping water of the river; the lower steps are luminous under the lamps and one treads unwarned into thick soft Thames mud.They seem to be purely architectural steps, they lead nowhere, they have an air of absolute indifference to mortal ends.

Those shapes and large inhuman places--for all of mankind that one sees at night about Lambeth is minute and pitiful beside the industrial monsters that snort and toil there--mix up inextricably with my memories of my first days as a legislator.Black figures drift by me, heavy vans clatter, a newspaper rough tears by on a motor bicycle, and presently, on the Albert Embankment, every seat has its one or two outcasts huddled together and slumbering.

"These things come, these things go," a whispering voice urged upon me, "as once those vast unmeaning Saurians whose bones encumber museums came and went rejoicing noisily in fruitless lives."...

Fruitless lives!--was that the truth of it all?...

Later I stood within sight of the Houses of Parliament in front of the colonnades of St Thomas's Hospital.I leant on the parapet close by a lamp-stand of twisted dolphins--and I prayed!

I remember the swirl of the tide upon the water, and how a string of barges presently came swinging and bumping round as high-water turned to ebb.That sudden change of position and my brief perplexity at it, sticks like a paper pin through the substance of my thoughts.It was then I was moved to prayer.I prayed that night that life might not be in vain, that in particular I might not live in vain.I prayed for strength and faith, that the monstrous blundering forces in life might not overwhelm me, might not beat me back to futility and a meaningless acquiescence in existent things.

I knew myself for the weakling I was, I knew that nevertheless it was set for me to make such order as I could out of these disorders, and my task cowed me, gave me at the thought of it a sense of yielding feebleness.

"Break me, O God," I prayed at last, "disgrace me, torment me, destroy me as you will, but save me from self-complacency and little interests and little successes and the life that passes like the shadow of a dream."