silk hat, already worn with a parliamentary tilt backward; I found I was
surveying this statesmanlike outline with a weak approval. "A MEMBER!"
I felt the little cluster of people that were scattered about the lobby
must be saying.

"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